Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.05.2011, Page 27

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 6 — 2011
Vegetarian
Fish
Deserts
Cream of lobster soup
Garlic roasted lobster
Lobster & escargot “ragout”
Mushrooms, garlic
Whale “sashimi” dip sauce
Mushrooms, herbs, ginger, red beets
Lobster “maki”
Avocado, mango, cucumber, chilli mayo
Lobster salad
Rucola, pumpkin seeds, fruit chutney
Veggie steak
Red beets, potatoes, parsnip
Catch of the day
Please ask your waiter
Lobster grill
200 gr. lobster, horseradish,
salad
Chocolate “2 ways”
White and dark chocolade, fruits
“Lazy-daisy”
Coconut, yoghurt
Lunch
Humarhúsið
the
lobster
house
R E S T A U R A N T
AMTMANNSTÍGUR
BANKASTRÆTI
BÓKHLÖÐUSTÍGUR
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SKÓLABRÚ
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Located in City Center
Amtmannsstíg 1 · 101 Reykjavík · Tel: 561 3303
humarhusid@humarhusid.is
Words are weapons. Con-
trolling language—the
meaning of words, which
words exist and which do
not—is the ruling powers' fundamental
premise to keep society stagnant or
sway it toward their ideological direc-
tion.
This is for example known to
Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson, pro-
fessor at the University of Iceland and
Iceland's primary laissez faire capital-
ism cheerleader. For more than three
decades he has worked hard shaping
the Icelandic language, adjusting it to
the capitalist ideology and emptying it
of words and ideas that might be used
to resist capitalism. Book by book, ar-
ticle by article, he has rooted out the
use of terms needed to maintain and
expand the capitalist ideology. And his
success is most obviously manifested
in the tabooisation of the word ‘capi-
talism’ in everyday language, not due
to its negative meaning but because
its realisation has become an unques-
tioned part of our existence.
In addition to capitalism, words like
‘civilisation’, ‘peace’, ‘freedom’, ‘equal-
ity’ and ‘rights’—to mention only few
examples of many—are all words that
have gotten such a one-sided meaning
that using them to discuss or criticise is
almost impossible.
LINGUISTIC ASYLUM
For the last seven years, the life of Ira-
nian refugee to Iceland Medhi Kavyan-
poor has been centred on his fight for
his right to existence and to be recog-
nised. He has employed every method,
from attending meetings to going on
hunger strike. On May 6, he walked
into the Red Cross headquarters in
Reykjavík, poured petrol over himself
and threatened to ignite.
The major media outlets followed
by reporting that an asylum seeker
had been arrested after “barging into”
the Red Cross and “causing explosive-
ness”. A police officer stated that the
Red Cross staff had been in “emergen-
cy danger”, while the staff itself said
that only Medhi's life was threatened.
The Interior Minister and the direc-
tor the Directorate of Immigration ar-
gued that Medhi's case was based on
a “misunderstanding”. The editors of
newspaper Morgunblaðið repeatedly
framed the word ‘refugee’ within quo-
tation marks, toning down its mean-
ing and seriousness, questioning its
actuality. Enwrapped in rhetoric that
diagnosed Medhi and portrayed him
as a psychotic, it looked like a united
attempt to lighten his desperate act’s
political weight.
This is not a unique incident. The
majority of public discourse on refu-
gees in Iceland is characterised by
this same use of language. Regard-
less of whether it is conscious or not,
it entails that refugees not only have to
seek asylum in the corporeal world but
also within the language. After seven
years Medhi had enough, gave up on
language and took action that needed
no words of explanation.
But when looked at in close-up, his
action was full of words, repressed for
too long. And exactly this—how mean-
ingful the act of self-immolation is as a
political act—must be the main reason
why Medhi was met with such a bar-
rage of linguistic attacks.
THE SHADOW OF DEFINITION
Preventing discussion and action by
eliminating certain words and control-
ling the meaning of accepted ones is a
clever strategy. For example, Iceland's
Interior Minister, Ögmundur Jónasson,
is currently pushing for expanded po-
lice espionage-permits, now referred
to as “proactive investigation permits”.
His main weapon are the words “uni-
versal organised crime”, but he is not
referring to the international aluminium
companies that operate in Iceland, all
infamous for their world-wide crimes,
human rights violations and arms pro-
duction.
They are referred to as ‘companies’,
‘foreign investment’, ‘industry’—every-
thing but gangs of organised criminals.
In this case, an accepted definition of
a particular word weighs heavier than
the substantiality behind it. Another
example of this is a recent verdict from
the European Court of Human Rights,
linguistically limited by the European
Convention on Human Rights, which
legitimised the infamous murder of a
23-year old boy by an Italian policeman
during the 2001 anti-G8 riots in Genoa.
A powerless person's life was taken,
no one can argue against that, but be-
cause the act did not fall under the cor-
rect definition it is not recognised as a
human rights violation.
Similarly the definition of a ‘war
crime’ does not work on the assump-
tion that war is essentially a crime,
but rather a legitimate situation where
particularly defined crimes can take
place. In the shadow of these linguistic
definitions, the world's self-declared
civilised nation states and corporations
can commit their crimes—not defined
as crimes—undisturbed.

THE FIRST STEPS
It is in the shadow of such definitions
that the Icelandic state's felonious
refugee policy is practised. While refu-
gees have worked hard for the express
purpose of obtaining an appropriate
place in the dictionary, they have sys-
tematically been refused asylum or
their cases aren’t taken up at all. They
are ignored. There is a word for this and
that word is ‘segregation’. It is the rule
in Iceland, with the only exceptions be-
ing when foreigners can contribute to
economic growth and/or assist Iceland
in the competition of nation states.
Words are weapons and in the
struggle against oppressing economi-
cal and state powers, language is as
important a battlefield as the substan-
tial world. Here in Iceland we can start
by granting refugees an asylum within
our language, by recognising their ex-
istence within it. That would be the first
step: one small step for a man, one gi-
ant leap for the language.
Opinion | Snorri Páll Úlfhildarson Jónsson
The First Step Away
From Segregation
“Preventing discussion and action by eliminating
certain words and controlling the meaning of
accepted ones is a clever strategy.”