Once upon a time, a parliament set itself the task of creating a common dictionary for an entity made up of 27 countries that we could call, for example, the European Union.
And they started to work. By the letter ‘a’.
Torturing, they came up with neologisms for concepts that ran smoothly through dictionaries. They surpassed and reached ‘otherness’.
“We’ll call him,” said the Italian. «added the German. “” replied the Hungarian. (…) So up to 27 ways to call that. There was no consensus to name the condition of the “other.” “Why do we want to talk about the ‘other’?” someone asked from one end of the room.
As days and days passed without result, they decided to remove the “otherness” from the future and hypothetical thesaurus.
“If the word does not exist, its corresponding reality must disappear,” said a reality expert.
Another commission took over.
Without the restraint of the tongue, they began to create a legislative body that would make others disappear, those who were different, those who were not like them. They thought (little) and came to an agreement. They called that, for example, the Migration and Asylum Pact. The text, elaborate and cumbersome, did make two concepts clear: “those inside” and “those outside.” They used many words to explain to “those inside” and make it clear to “those outside” that the latter were not welcome, that they were going to have a tough time trying to get in, that they were going to expel them with and without reasons, that they did not want them, that they were not in their dictionaries, that they did not want them in their reality.
The measure and the deletion of the dictionary came into effect on June 12, for example. The absence of the word and the law had bewitched the facts. Societies began to soften the color of their citizens, who later became monochromatic. People prayed to a single god. He danced a single son. All this shortly after – although much sooner than expected – some parliamentarians turned linguists decided to expel from the dictionary and from life a term, ‘otherness’, that did not fit in their dictionary. That is, in his speeches.
Red bunting.
