IMPRESSION OF A BRIT The Art of Speaking Double Writing about Adolf Hitler in his book The Europeans, the Italian journalist Luigi Barzini says the Führer’s German opponents “did not take Hitler at his word…. Possibly judging from their own oratory, they thought his insane screaming in public and his outlandish threats were mainly meant for internal consumption.” Richard Hill F ortunately, some of Hitler’s opponents outside Germany thought otherwise and, even if belatedly, started preparing themselves for the worst. Just as well that they did! All too often in history, statesmen and women have failed to correctly identify the audiences chosen by their opponents. This tradition of double-talk is a characteristic of political life. Speaking of the Greco-Turk battle of words over the 1974 discovery of oil deposits in the Aegean sea, historian William H McNeill comments that “each government was playing to the gallery at home…”. The tradition of speaking double is still alive and well today. One contemporary example is Vladimir Putin: he has a habit of saying things that alarm foreign observers who fail to realise that much of what he says is directed at his own electorate (Russian society has a dammed up backlog of frustration and amour-propre which needs to be acknowledged, if only in passing). Incidentally, Putin’s armoury of two-sided weapons includes his skill in setting up situations to his coun62 BECI - Brussel metropool - oktober 2015 try’s advantage. What he has been up to in eastern Ukraine is in the tradition of tsarist Russia: in 1791, Catherine the Great financed a riot to justify her army crossing the Polish-Lithuanian frontier to support the rioters. We are left with the fact that, in the words of Lewis Carroll’s character Tweedledum: “A word means what I intend it to mean: nothing more, nothing less.” Confusion about the direction of messages uttered by contemporary politicians is still a common factor in public life. Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, recently said that the Greek government was speaking double by not telling the truth about its bailout proposals to avoid national bankruptcy. “I am blaming the Greeks”, he said, for telling “things to the Greek public which are not consistent with what I’ve told the Greek prime minister.” British PM David Cameron is also a key exponent of the Art of Speaking Double – to the extent that the apparent direction of his messages often overshadows the content of the messages themselves. Having got his knickers in a terrible twist at the time of the Scottish Referendum, Cameron went on to scramble his words and his audience’s minds on the issue of British attitudes towards Europe. The English, as opposed to the Scots and the other Celts, have always had a reputation with foreigners of not saying what they really think: this is not entirely attributable to what foreigners believe to be an admixture of hypocrisy and genuine duplicity, but to a desire not to shock or offend. The French, as in many other fields of endeavour, are also masters of the art of doublespeak. But there is less likelihood of confusion with Hollande and his likes, as they almost always say what the French public wants to hear. German politicians, on the other hand, are generally so well attuned to and in synch with the mood of their electorates that the problem doesn’t even arise. Even so, we are left with the fact that, in the words of Lewis Carroll’s character Tweedledum: “A word means what I intend it to mean: nothing more, nothing less.” ●
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