London Free Press (Ontario)
April 15, 2006 Saturday
FINAL EDITION
WHEN ‘CLEANSING’ SOUNDS A LITTLE IMPURE
BY GEORGE CLARK, LONDON FREELANCE WRITER
Holy euphemism, Batman! Robin, the caped crusader’s sidekick, came to
mind when the OPP officer in charge of the investigation into the
slaughter of eight bikers last weekend referred to the motive of the
killings as an “internal cleansing.”
The bizarre killings and dumping of the bodies near the village of
Shedden in Elgin County brought a variety of responses, once the
original shock over the discovery had faded. Both print and talk
radio included the point of view that, because it was bikers who had
been killed, perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing.
At the same time, half the letters to the editor in the London Free
Press on Tuesday expressed dismay and disapproval over a newspaper
photo on the weekend showing part of a man’s body hidden in a car
trunk.
The use of the word “cleansing” by police in their search for a
motive seemed to also put this event on a different scale. I checked
Google’s news website for the mention of “cleansing” in news stories
in the past few days. At the top was the bikers’ bodies discovered in
Elgin County. There were also stories on a charge by the UN over
ethnic cleansing in the Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, a rights
group in Bangkok accusing Myanmar troops of ethnic cleansing in Karen
villages, and a story from Great Britain in the Telegraph in which
Labour MP Jane Kennedy accused the Tony Blair government of “social
cleansing” in a program that called for the destruction of thousands
of homes — many low-income — to make way for new housing and a road
to Liverpool’s city centre.
And now we join the world’s list of “cleansing” news with the
slayings in Elgin County.
It may be nitpicking, but to me, the use of the word “cleansing” as a
euphemism for slaughter in this case, goes way beyond the Merriam
Webster definition of “getting rid of impurities by, or as if by,
washing.” That’s like referring to a fire in a slum district as urban
renewal. The previously mentioned MP Kennedy might disagree with me.
What it does, though, is verbally put these homicides or executions
(which they really were) on a different scale, as though part of a
socially understood phenomenon: “cleansing.” Does that make the
killings, if not more acceptable, then more understandable? Probably.
Does it remove some of the horror from the situation? Probably.
Is that right? I’m not sure.
The London Free Press, in its thorough, detailed coverage of the
massacre, the history of bikers in the region, and potential
implications for the future, also included descriptions of the murder
victims as quiet, unassuming neighbours and family members. Does that
become muted when police choose to describe the slaughter of eight
men as a “cleansing”?
At the same time, I feel that when we broaden meanings of words to
embrace more and more uses, we can diminish their original
definitions. In this case, I wonder if it means in any way that the
racial or ethnic cleansing that still goes on in this world is any
more acceptable or understandable because of the widespread usage of
“cleansing.” Hopefully not.
The specific use of words still sparks debate and fierce
disagreement. The president of the UN General Assembly this week, in
describing the ethnic “cleansing” in the Sudan, said he didn’t know
if it was on the scale to qualify as “genocide,” as the U.S.
government had termed it. Reference to the forced removal in the
early part of this century of an estimated two million Armenians from
Turkey, and the tens of thousands of deaths that ensued, as a
“holocaust,” can bring a swift response that “holocaust” refers only
to the treatment and killing of Jews by Germany in the Second World
War.
Words and meanings matter. Before we trivialize the word “cleansing”
in reference to Elgin County last weekend or, on the other hand,
marginalize the slaughter through the use of words suggesting an
historically understood phenomenon, let’s think twice.
And let’s do it before Robin, the sidekick of the cartoon caped
crusader, Batman, can actually fit the situation with a saying
previously attributed to him: “Holy cliche, Batman!”
NOTES: George Clark is anchor/host of First Local News and
Politically Speaking on Rogers Television.
GRAPHIC: photo by Free Press File Photo LIMITED RISK: Ontario
Provincial Police tried to reassure Elgin County citizens this week
with statements that last weekend’s slaughter of eight bikers was an
“internal cleansing,” rather than an attack by the Bandidos on others.