Do words have any effect?

Those of us who write for a living like to think so.

We hope that we can use words to persuade, enlighten and perhaps even entertain.

But if words do have an effect, then why are so many people in positions of power so incredibly careless with the words they use?

In recent weeks here are just a few of the words that have been used to describe ICE officers: Gestapo. Neo-Nazis.

Secret Police.

And these words were not used by some deranged online hysteric typing from their basement.

They were used by — in order — Governor Tim Walz, Mayor of Boston Michelle Wu and Governor Gavin Newsom.

The first of those people could have been the Vice President had the election last November gone the other way.

The last of them — the Governor of California — clearly harbors an ambition to be a future President.

You would have thought that people in such prominent positions would have thought twice before sticking the worst possible labels onto federal employees.

After all, what are you meant to do with Nazis, or neo-Nazis?

You’re meant to shoot them, right?

You’re at the very least meant to get in there early and smash them up.

Who thinks that Nazis shouldn’t be challenged?

Let alone neo-Nazi stormtroopers like the Gestapo or Secret Police.

In a culture which has almost no other reference points for evil, calling people such things is an outright invitation for people to act.

Unless you believe that you can identify people as Nazis but believe that you should leave Nazis alone.

And exactly who thinks that?

Either that or these people do not really mean the words they are using, but are cynically deploying them in order to win some kind of argument.

Yet a lot of people will take words seriously — and do.

The young man who shot Charlie Kirk seems to have sincerely believed that Kirk was beyond-the-pale and his views utterly reprehensible.

Or, as the alleged assassin texted to his lover, “I had enough of his [Kirk’s] hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”

It seems that the alleged killer really believed that it was the right thing to shoot Kirk through the neck. After all that’s what you do with Nazis, right?

Of course Kirk was nothing like a Nazi.

He was a totally mainstream and inspiring young conservative.

You would have thought that in the wake of his murder people would tone down their rhetoric a bit.

If there are impressionable people out there who are listening and willing to pick up a gun and fire it then perhaps it would be a good idea to dial down the “Nazi” accusations.

But no.

The radical left and even the mainstream left — as exemplified by Walz and Newsom — have decided to keep going with their labels.

And they have decided that even federal officers working for a federal agency should also be labeled as Nazis.

And what would you know, but this week another person decided to act accordingly.

Joshua Jahn is another man in his twenties.

And he too decided to pick up a gun, get up on a roof and fire at people he had been told were Nazis.

Like Charlie Kirk’s murderer, he too engraved his bullets with slogans — in this case “Anti-ICE.”

And he fired his gun at ICE agents.

As it happened the only people he shot were three detainees, one of whom died of his injuries.

But wouldn’t this be a good time to stop telling people that everyone you don’t like is a Nazi?

Wouldn’t it be a good time to reflect that if you tell people day after day that ICE employees are not simply people going about their work and actually making this country safer by detaining foreign criminals, but that they are Nazis?

Just the night before Jahn picked up his gun, Governor Newsom was on Stephen Colbert’s show claiming that the deploying of ICE officers are “authoritarian actions by an authoritarian government.”

We have got so used to this.

We have got so used to mainstream figures using language like this.

And while some of us long-ago decided that these words have been stripped of any meaning, there are clearly people in our society who do not agree with that conclusion.

They take these claims literally.

Newsom also said this week that he believes that there may not be an election in this country in 2028.

He was whooped and applauded for this “brave” warning.

But just let that sink in.

There are senior figures, once responsible figures, who are even now saying what they said in 2016-2020 and from 2020-2024.

Kamala Harris, Tim Walz and others have all accelerated this rhetoric.

As did the “great uniter” Joe Biden.

They have all at different stages claimed that President Trump is Hitler, that he’s going to cancel future elections and that the democratic experiment in America is essentially over because of him.

Personally if I had predicted the end of democracy only to see it keep going messily along I would retire into silent obscurity.

If I had said that my opponents were all Hitler and then not just once but many times people started taking shots at them — including twice at President Trump — I would probably dial it down a bit.

Yet it seems that people like Newsom don’t agree with that, and it seems that they won’t stop.

Even though they must now understand the stakes.

But just consider the fact that as well as all the acts of violence described above the radical rhetoric of our time led another man last week to shoot up an ABC affiliate in Sacramento.

So we have attacks on politicians, journalists, activists, ICE agents and more and still the “They’re all Hitler” crowd are going to keep going?

Fine.

We should notice them and hold them accountable at the ballot box.

Perhaps also stressing the growing amount of blood that they are getting on their hands.