OPINION: Insectivization

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As an author, lecturer and China specialist since the 1920s, New York's Edward Hunter is fascinated by words and their meanings, especially as they apply to the conflicts between Communism and the free world. Around 1950 Hunter heard a Chinese friend, talking about the methods of the Red Chinese government, use the phrase hsi nao. Translating it, Hunter introduced a grim word to the cold war vocabulary: "brainwashing." Last week, appearing as a witness before the U.S. Senate's Internal Security Subcommittee, Author (BrainWashing in Red China) Hunter again showed his preoccupation with words, made a sharp point: "We are going to be taken for a ride at the summit if we do not realize that the Communists have a special code language which we must deal with. We've got to specify which dictionary meaning we are using for a whole collection of special words like peace, free world, aggression, and the like—the Communist dictionary or the American." Some definitions in the Communist dictionary:

Peace, to Communists, means "a state of affairs under which there is no opposition to Communism."

Noninterference means "not interfering with Communist expansion. Nasser was mad at Khrushchev because he had promised noninterference in Arab affairs. He shouldn't have been. Khrushchev was using the Soviet meaning."

Aggression means "only violence or interference with Communism. It does not mean interference with the free world."

Commenting on Communist China's massive effort to herd all China's people into communes. Edward Hunter introduced a new word: insectivization. Said he: "They are insectivizing the whole people, making them into the Soviet man, on the level of the spider, or the ant, the Pavlovian concept, unthinkingly obedient to the master or to instinct."