‘The sleep of reason brings forth monsters’ — the natural order of things and plain language against hatred promotion of totalitarian systems

Abstract

The semantic and pragmatic analysis carried out in the article — from the perspective of the natural order and plain language — of slogans used for over a decade during marches and demonstrations of the far-right National Radical Camp in Poland and its sympathisers clearly demonstrates the hateful and propagandist nature of the slogans. This is confirmed by the senders’ use of semantic and intentional obscenities, animal- and death-related metaphors, emotionality and aggression of speech acts as well as many other linguistic phenomena inciting hatred.All this makes it all the more surprising that investigations, proceedings and cases brought before justice institutions and relating to the nationalist and fascist slogans analysed in the article have been repeatedly dismissed or discontinued on the grounds that they do not constitute propaganda and incitement to hatred. No law can oppose life experience or natural order of things and fail to notice how such utterances are viewed from the perspective of not just the concepts mentioned above, but also of plain language and linguistic logicism.