A Time and Place for Rhetoric

Author: Tim Platnich

Date: September 4, 2025

In ancient times, rhetoric was taught as a necessary skill for public debate. The skill was to be persuasive in speech. The skill was deemed necessary for democratic government. It was also deemed necessary for philosophical debate and the pursuit of truth. Over time, rhetorical speech acquired a structure that we would now call logical argument with an introduction, a narrative, an argument section and a conclusion.

In medieval times, rhetoric was taught as part of the liberal curriculum of the early universities such as Oxford and Cambridge.

My, how times have changed. Rhetoric now is a tool used by alarmists and activists to direct the unwary public towards some ideological ends. Logical argument has gone by the wayside and has been replaced by emotional appeals. Plato and Aristotle are rolling in their graves.

Following are some words and phrases being used in modern rhetoric: 'existential threat'; 'genocide'; 'survivors'; and 'phobes'; to name a few.

Let's start with 'existential threat'. Everything is an existential threat these days. The biggest and baddest existential threat is climate change. Even Supreme Court Judges in Canada are not immune from using this device of rhetoric. The Supreme Court used an 'existential threat' finding to justify giving the Federal Government jurisdiction over carbon emissions under the 'peace, order and good government' preamble to section 91 of the Constitution Act of 1867. To use a little rhtoric myself, the Court said we are all going to die unless the Federal Government is given the jurisdiction to regulate carbon emissions through a carbon tax. From a common sense perspective, leaving aside the academic and legal mumbo-jumbo, how can carbon emissions really threaten the existence of all humans on the planet? As George Orwell noted ".... some ideas are so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them."

The 'we are all going to die unless ....' rhetoric is being used in an attempt to completely restructure how energy is developed and used across the entire globe.

Leaving rhetoric aside, logical arguments can be made for the potential harm of carbon emissions. Why not simply stick to making logical, persuasive arguments?

Let's now move to 'genocide'. The term 'genocide' was coined by a Polish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, to describe the atrocities committed during World War II especially concerning the mass murder and persecution of Jews by the Nazis. In 1948, the "Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide" was approved by the UN General Assembly. This Convention defined genocide to include certain heinous acts with 'the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group'. The heinous acts included, among other things, murder, serious bodily or mental harm and infliction of conditions upon a group to bring about the physical destruction of that group. The Convention made genocide 'punishable' seemingly on a go forward basis - not retroactively.

Notwithstanding the context within which the Convention was passed (including most notably the killing of 7 million Jews) and its express wording, everything today is being called a genocide. We even have a new version: cultural genocide. When one adds cultural genocide to genocide, 'colonialism', another word of modern rhetoric, becomes genocide. Taken to its logical conclusion, every civilization or group of people that migrated to areas that were already occupied by people of a different culture, committed genocide, or at least cultural genocide, including: the Assyrians, the Minoans, the Mycenaean Greeks, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Hellenistic Greeks, the Egyptians, the Romans, the Celts, the Muslims, the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, the Vikings, the British, the French, the Portuguese, the Spaniards, non-Native Canadians and Americans, to name a few. Indeed, following this line of rhetoric, 'modern humans' committed genocide against the Neanderthals.

The ideological end being sought by coining everything genocide is largely one of so-called social justice, whatever that means today: reconciliation; special status; compensation; re-writing history?

Everyone today is a 'survivor'. In her book, "Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People", Dr. Tana Dineen documents how the use of the word 'survivor' for all and sundry events of victimhood demeans those that are actually survivors of life-threatening events, like the Holocaust. Indeed 'victim' and 'survivor' have become synonymous for purposes of rhetoric. Everyone who has been the victim of some individual act, past wrong, historical wrong, economic wrong, whether actual or perceived, is now a survivor. Why the use of this word? It magnifies both the wrong and the harm caused. Victims of sexual assault, regardless of the severity (including say an unwanted kiss), become 'survivors'.

With 'existential threat', 'genocide' and 'survivors' in mind, what is the problem with using these rhetorical terms? The problem is several-fold. First, using these extremely loaded terms out of context and for every event, dilutes and demeans their true meaning. When everything is an existential threat, nothing is a real threat. When everything is genocide, the true horrors of genocide are lost. When everyone is a survivor of every wrong, there are no longer true survivors and all wrongs become the same. Something is lost when an unwanted kiss is equated with rape. Both are 'sexual assaults', but there is a huge difference between them. Second, the overuse of these terms desensitizes the population. Ya, ya, just another existential threat. I will add it to the list: climate change; nuclear war or catastrophe; astrophysical destruction - meteor hitting the earth; world-wide epidemic; mass starvation; mass migration, yada, yada. Third, the actual legitimate goals being pursued, like vaccinations against disease, get pushed further away. Consider the backlash against mandated vaccinations to prevent the existential threat of Covid.

Let's take another example of rhetoric. The accusation against some person or group as being '____phobic'. Two specific iterations are 'transphobic' and 'Islamaphobic'.

The DSM-5 defines a phobia as a disorder characterized by 'marked fear or anxiety about a specific object or situation' which is 'out of proportion to the actual danger posed by the specific object or situation and to the sociocultural context'. The previous version of the DSM, DSM-IV, defined a phobia as a 'marked and persistent fear that is excessive or unreasonable cued by the presence or anticipation of a specific object or situation'. DSM-5 goes on to say that 'the fear, anxiety, or avoidance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning.'

Starting with 'Islamaphobic', is there really anyone that has a 'marked fear' or 'marked and persistent fear' of being in a room with someone of the Islamic faith? Do they hide in a closet or on top of furniture to avoid the person? Are they fearful of going out because they might come across a Muslim? The same questions might be asked about someone accused of being 'transphobic'.

The fact that a person, say, doesn't like spiders, doesn't make them arachnophobic. Similarly, if that person doesn't like the Islamic faith, it doesn't make them Islamaphobic. If someone doesn't accept the ideology of non-biological, self-selected gender, that doesn't make the person transphobic.

So why is this rhetoric used - and it is clearly rhetoric because the use of the terms does not fit the definition of 'phobia'? The answer is simple: to shut down analysis, debate and criticism in these areas. Notably, there are no 'christianphobes' or 'cisphobes' or 'libertarianphobes'. It is open game against these groups so no need for rhetorical branding.

This is not to support bigotry, discrimnation and hateful acts (the word 'hate' has also become a matter of rhetoric - if you don't agree with something, you are a 'hater'). But we have laws against these forms of behaviour already. We have done away with laws against blasphemy. Are proposed laws against 'Islamaphobia' not bringing in blasphemy through the back door?

I hope I do not need to outline why shutting down appropriate debate is a bad thing.