Monday, April 13, 2009

Oxymoron of the Day


"Self Styled Anarchist"

Is there any other kind? Is there an "authority" that recognizes only the "official" anarchists?

This is a sound byte that is juicy with derision and pre-judgement. It is as if actually labeling someone simply an 'anarchist' somehow legitimizes them. Instead by calling them 'self styled' it equates to calling them an amateur or a 'wanna-be'.

What I find really very interesting about this particular sound-byte is just how thoroughly it has spread and been adopted in general use in the news-service-newspeak.

Just as an experiment, here is a summary of the first page of results from google, using that term:

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