Words are never just words. They are sharp weapons, instruments of construction or destruction, capable of shaping reality, guiding thought, and redefining the world. Anyone who sees them as mere linguistic conventions has already lost the battle before even fighting it. Words carry with them an ideological weight, an intention, a project.
Socrates knew it, in the 5th century B.C., when he used dialogue as a weapon to unmask false truths and bring reality back to light through language. Orwell knew it, when in 1984 he described Newspeak as a tool to narrow thought and control the masses. And the woke progressives of today know it all too well, waging a silent yet relentless cultural war to seize control of words.
In recent decades, the left has carried out a systematic campaign to change language and, with it, the way we think and live reality. This is no coincidence, but a deliberate strategy: repeat a term, a concept, a narrative long enough until it becomes not just acceptable, but inevitable. It is cultural hammering.
Words like «inclusion», «sustainability» or «diversity» have ceased to be universal concepts and have turned into pillars of an ideology that promotes a distorted idea of equality, gender theory, and a single way of thinking disguised as progress. Whoever controls language controls the mind.
This is why an authentic conservative, rooted in the values of the right—individual freedom, identity, tradition, truth grounded in reality—cannot give up even a single syllable. Terms like «sindaca» (the feminine form of mayor), «ministra» (feminine minister) or «assessora» (feminine assessor) are not simply grammatical variations: they are symbols of cultural imposition. Using them means acknowledging—even implicitly—the validity of the ideological framework that sustains them.
It is a bow to their narrative, a step toward surrender. Giorgia Meloni has demonstrated this clearly by insisting on being called «il Presidente Meloni» (President in Italian is grammatically masculine; she refuses the feminized form), a choice of coherence that should serve as an example for all conservatives, for anyone who considers themselves right-wing. Another virtuous example is her systematic use of the word «nation» instead of «country»: a word that carries an idea, a belonging, and a vision far deeper, becoming a distinctive and defining mark on its own.
Conversely, giving in to the use of «migrant» instead of «immigrant» is an obvious sign of surrender to the left’s and mainstream media’s linguistic hammering. Today almost no one dares say «illegal immigrant», as if it were shameful or offensive, when in fact it is plain language. The same goes for the use of expressions like «gestazione per altri» instead of «utero in affitto» (womb for rent, a more direct and controversial term for surrogacy), or «voluntary interruption of pregnancy» instead of «abortion»: euphemisms crafted to soften the real impact of words and shift moral judgment. Using—or worse, letting into our vocabulary—terms like «fluidity» (referring to gender identity) means cultural surrender; it means accepting, along with the words, the concepts they represent. Examples of this kind could be multiplied endlessly.
Giorgio Almirante—leader of the Italian right until the late 1980s—understood it well: «The greatest joy is to see your truth flourish on the lips of your opponent». But the opposite danger is just as insidious: if we adopt our opponents’ language, we end up internalizing their mental categories, their way of seeing the world. It is a creeping capitulation, consumed sentence by sentence, conversation by conversation. When we use their terms, we fight on their ground, by their rules.
Words have never been neutral. Socrates, with his dialectical method, taught that language is the means by which we seek truth, but also the battlefield where lies disguise themselves as reason. Whoever manipulates words manipulates thought. We see it today with terms like «inclusion»: a noble concept emptied of its original meaning to become a tool for promoting diversity as an absolute value, at the expense of merit and biological reality. «Sustainability» has been bent to a political agenda that hides specific economic interests. «Diversity» has become a dogma that refuses debate and demonizes normality.
An even clearer example is the word «gender». Once synonymous with biological sex, it is now a fluid concept detached from material reality, used to argue that identity is purely a subjective construct. This semantic shift is no accident: it is the product of a cultural operation rewriting language to impose a new worldview. Using «gender» in this sense means accepting the idea that biology is irrelevant, that truth is malleable, that reality can be shaped at will.
The war of words is not fought only in parliaments, talk shows, or on social media. It is fought every day, in every conversation, in every lexical choice. Saying «sindaco» (mayor, masculine) instead of «sindaca» is not a matter of grammar: it is an act of cultural resistance. It is the refusal to bend language—and with it thought—to an ideology that wants to erase natural differences, rewrite history, and impose conformity disguised as progress.
Resisting is not easy. We live in an age where language is policed by thought-guards ready to brand as backward or intolerant anyone who dares dissent. But precisely for this reason, we cannot afford to yield. Every word we abandon is a piece of ground handed over to the enemy. Every term we accept is another brick in their ideological edifice.
The stakes are enormous. Words are the foundation of our identity, our culture, our freedom. When we allow them to be manipulated, we allow our thoughts, values, and worldview to be manipulated too. Defending language means defending the possibility to think freely, to call things by their name, to resist bending to a narrative that seeks to rewrite reality in the image of an ideology.
This is the war of words, a concrete struggle fought sentence by sentence, choice by choice. We cannot afford to be naïve or to yield for the sake of convenience. Socrates paid with his life for his fidelity to truth; Orwell warned us of the danger of language emptied of meaning. Today it is up to us to heed their warning. When we surrender on a word, we do not lose just a battle: we open the door to cultural surrender. And once language has been conquered, reconquering it is a monumental task. So let us resist, word by word, sentence by sentence. Not out of stubbornness, but out of loyalty to truth, to freedom, and to who we are.
