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this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2025
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Legality is a fiction created by the powerful. I’m saying the word arrest is a synonym for kidnapping. It’s only existence is to mislead people into accepting the violence of our rules against ordinary people.
This is a perfect example. The kidnapping of Greta is blatantly illegal. Yet the world will pretend otherwise. And not because of the law but because of power.
The use of specific vocabulary is important in how media normalizes the actions of "the powerful".
What you're saying is similar to how "died" could be a synonym for "killed". This was used constantly during the genocide. Israelis were "killed" or "slaughtered" on October 7th. Soldiers in tanks were "kidnapped" that day. But every day in Gaza children just "died". Like the news articles were describing some natural disaster event and not a genocide. The people spending decades in Israeli prisons camps with no trial were "prisoners" exchanged for "hostages".
Words matter. Especially when media is forming a narrative. Yes, legality is "fiction" but that doesn't mean the majority of the Western world doesn't believe that fiction. The entire idea of a justice system is "made up" it's power comes from the collective belief in that system and the use of "justified" violence it maintains a monopoly on. You may not believe it. But most people in the west still do.
It is important to call out the inconsistent and unfair use of the vocabulary the media uses to describe Israels actions. If we stop labeling their crimes because "it doesn't matter anymore, clearly no justice exists" but at the same time that language is still used to describe anyone's resistance to Israel then they have won the narrative.
I’m not saying don’t call it out. I wish more people would. But I’d like to go further to eliminate this type of propaganda as even an option whenever possible. Some words are too linguistically useful to eliminate but some things like kidnapped vs arrested are literally the same action just different context. There’s no need to ever use the word arrest and its elimination or undermining would weaken abusive authorities and their ability to spin the narrative in ways people don’t question.
Yeah. We just fundamentally disagree then. These words are not interchangeable. I would not say a pedophile was "kidnapped" by the state. The context matters. There is a difference between materialism and dialectical-materialism. You seem to be removing the tool of dialectics and saying only the material action is what matters. The way words are used to shape material actions (or lack thereof) and concent matters.
I mean you can think it’s good for people to be abducted under some circumstances. Maybe you are right, maybe not, but at least then you’d have to justify it. “Arrested” already means justified in most people’s minds. It’s a thought-terminating cliche, and as long as we make that distinction, it will be abused as in this case.
Using less savory words like kidnapping or abduction more accurately relays the severity and violence that’s happening. And yes, violence is sometimes necessary, but it’s still unsavory.
You (I hope) recognize that
vs.
are different beyond just the material action of forcefully taking someone against their will. There is context that matters. So we use different words to describe the different contextual relationships. This example is a clear difference. I really hope we don't have to debate that. It's why I'm using it as an example. So we can remove the moral ambiguity and agree to this distinction.
There are obviously less extreme examples of this. That is the why understanding how language is used is important. In reality we say "the child was kidnapped" and "the pedophile was arrested". It is vocabulary that describes the relationships of morality that we as a society assume to uphold.
By your reasoning they "are both acts of violence and taking someone against their will and imprisoning them". I get that mate. But the world you want to live in where we describe both these actions as "kidnapping" does not exist.
Like, in what reality is your opinion even useful to reality? We don't live in a world where language is used the way you want it to be. You need to understand the world you live in and the way language is used.
Understanding how and why the media uses words like "arrest" vs. "kidnap" to infer a false justification is significantly more helpful than saying "well we should simplify language". Human language isn't a programming language. It can't be. It needs to deal with significantly more ambiguity, emotions, and morals.
Like, how are you even trying to apply this type of reasoning to the world? It's useless for describing reality. Language isn't used the way you want it to. And it never will work that way. What you're trying to argue for isn't useful to describing reality.
Language is always subject to change and evolution. I can’t predict the future and neither can you. I think explaining that context verbally is less harmful than implying it with weasel words.
And even if my desired change doesn’t happen, I think it’s valuable to challenge the assumptions built into these words to make people think about them and the way they are used instead of just blindly accepting “the criminal was arrested”.
Abduction implies someone secretly being taken away and kept at an unknown location, their fate unknown and probably someone trying to ransom them to their family.
Here we have pictures of the IDF taking her, we know exactly where they're taking her and what's going to happen. They're not going to physically harm her, going to give her an inconsequential slap on the wrist, and put her on a plane back home.
It's ok to feel that's wrong, but trying to make it seem more horrible by using words invented for something else just seems petty.
Do we know that?
It's still important to not conflate the two.
While most legal systems are far from ideal, a lot of people appreciate having some semblance of law and order.
An arrest is made when someone is believed to have committed a crime. A kidnapping is the unlawful capturing of an individual.
Enforcers of the legal system (police, ICE, and other 3 letter agencies) carry out both legal arrests and unlawful kidnappings, the latter of which is what's being discussed here.
The fact that "the world will pretend otherwise" is exactly why it is so important to emphasise the difference between the 2 words.
Nah it’s why we need to challenge this idea that violence done by the state is automatically legitimate. Such as by critiquing the words we’ve created to separate things that clearly aren’t very different in reality.