"Twitzkrieg"
« previous post | next post »
Jeffrey Lewis, "Donald Trump Threatened North Korea After Completely Imaginary Negotiations", Foreign Policy 10/3/2017:
Over the weekend, a story emerged that the United States was in some sort of talks with North Korea, followed in quick succession by a series of tweets from U.S. President Donald Trump rejecting any sort of diplomatic engagement with North Korea.
One small problem: There never were any such talks.
This particular episode in the months-long twitzkrieg between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump is a parable about how bad reporting can create its own facts, leading gullible readers to act out of false information or contrived narratives. And if one of those gullible readers happens to be the president of the United States, watch out.
FP's link on twitzkrieg leads to Anu Garg's A.Word.A.Day page for sitzkrieg, itself a play on blitzkrieg ("lightning war") used to describe the situation between Britain and France's 9/1939 declaration of war on Germany and the start of actual hostilities in 5/1940.
Here's hoping that the analogy is even more imperfect than it seems to be.
Ben Hemmens said,
October 5, 2017 @ 10:03 am
Interestingly, "phony war" will do almost as well for either sitz- or twitzkrieg.
[Eugene Volokh] Blitzkrieg to sitzkrieg to twitzkrieg – Ben Lee said,
October 5, 2017 @ 11:02 am
[…] Professor Mark Liberman (Language Log) points to a line in a a Foreign Policy article by Jeffrey Lewis, referring to "the months-long twitzkrieg between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump." As Liberman notes, there's also the fairly well-known "sitzkrieg, itself a play on blitzkrieg ('lighting war') used to describe the situation between Britain and France's 9/1939 declaration of war on Germany and the start of actual hostilities in 5/1940." […]
Employment Law Advocates | Blitzkrieg to sitzkrieg to twitzkrieg said,
October 5, 2017 @ 2:37 pm
[…] Professor Mark Liberman (Language Log) points to a line in a a Foreign Policy article by Jeffrey Lewis, referring to “the months-long twitzkrieg between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump.” As Liberman notes, there’s also the fairly well-known “sitzkrieg, itself a play on blitzkrieg (‘lighting war’) used to describe the situation between Britain and France’s 9/1939 declaration of war on Germany and the start of actual hostilities in 5/1940.” […]
People Law | Blitzkrieg to sitzkrieg to twitzkrieg said,
October 5, 2017 @ 2:49 pm
[…] Professor Mark Liberman (Language Log) indicate a line in a a Foreign Policy article by Jeffrey Lewis, describing "the months-long twitzkrieg in between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump." As Liberman notes, there's likewise the relatively widely known "sitzkrieg, itself a play on blitzkrieg (' lighting war') utilized to explain the circumstance in between Britain and France's 9/1939 statement of war on Germany and the start of real hostilities in 5/1940" […]
Yuval said,
October 5, 2017 @ 2:55 pm
With a more sophisticated leadership around we just might have been able to witness a witskrieg.
Marshall Geisser Law | Blitzkrieg to sitzkrieg to twitzkrieg said,
October 5, 2017 @ 2:58 pm
[…] Professor Mark Liberman (Language Log) points to a line in a a Foreign Policy article by Jeffrey Lewis, referring to “the months-long twitzkrieg between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump.” As Liberman notes, there’s also the fairly well-known “sitzkrieg, itself a play on blitzkrieg (‘lighting war’) used to describe the situation between Britain and France’s 9/1939 declaration of war on Germany and the start of actual hostilities in 5/1940.” […]
Daniel Scott Lawrence | Blitzkrieg to sitzkrieg to twitzkrieg said,
October 5, 2017 @ 2:59 pm
[…] Professor Mark Liberman (Language Log) points to a line in a a Foreign Policy article by Jeffrey Lewis, referring to “the months-long twitzkrieg between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump.” As Liberman notes, there’s also the fairly well-known “sitzkrieg, itself a play on blitzkrieg (‘lighting war’) used to describe the situation between Britain and France’s 9/1939 declaration of war on Germany and the start of actual hostilities in 5/1940.” […]
Vancouver Law Firm | Blitzkrieg to sitzkrieg to twitzkrieg said,
October 5, 2017 @ 3:01 pm
[…] Professor Mark Liberman (Language Log) points to a line in a a Foreign Policy article by Jeffrey Lewis, referring to “the months-long twitzkrieg between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump.” As Liberman notes, there’s also the fairly well-known “sitzkrieg, itself a play on blitzkrieg (‘lighting war’) used to describe the situation between Britain and France’s 9/1939 declaration of war on Germany and the start of actual hostilities in 5/1940.” […]
Lawyers Planet | Blitzkrieg to sitzkrieg to twitzkrieg said,
October 5, 2017 @ 3:09 pm
[…] Professor Mark Liberman (Language Log) points to a line in a a Foreign Policy article by Jeffrey Lewis, referring to “the months-long twitzkrieg between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump.” As Liberman notes, there’s also the fairly well-known “sitzkrieg, itself a play on blitzkrieg (‘lighting war’) used to describe the situation between Britain and France’s 9/1939 declaration of war on Germany and the start of actual hostilities in 5/1940.” […]
Pendant said,
October 5, 2017 @ 3:14 pm
lightning war not war of the lamps…
Pendant said,
October 5, 2017 @ 3:16 pm
Ah, has been corrected already! But the lighting war sounded like fun.
[(myl) Hijinks in junior high school drama club, no doubt.]
David Marjanović said,
October 5, 2017 @ 4:18 pm
Instead, we're getting a Witzkrieg, "joke war", between two twits.
(…Yes, related: once upon a time, all jokes in German were the height of wit. Or the other way around perhaps.)
MikeA said,
October 5, 2017 @ 8:41 pm
But were they translated in pieces in guaranteed humor-free facilities?
Whatever Law | Sitz Blitz Witz said,
October 7, 2017 @ 2:05 am
Your contra-spam curmudgeons are having a day off?
Andrew Usher said,
October 8, 2017 @ 8:38 am
Yeah, what is with these kind of spam comments? Who or what posts them – I can't believe all these other blogs have their own bot to spam their blog.
Hg said,
October 8, 2017 @ 10:51 pm
All those blogs that are getting linked have a common theme: law.
So, the various "different" blogs are probably all just machine generated spam which link in turn to the actual target website. The point of the spam is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). The links from a real, legitimate site with decent traffic (Language Log) is supposed to boost the legitimacy and ranking of the spam blogs. Those spam blogs will all be linking to the same target law firm. Those links are supposed to make the target law firm rise in the Google or Bing ranks when people search for "Vancouver law firm" or whatever. So I expect it's one, single not posting ALL the links.
That said, linkspam is so common in blog comments that I suspect both Google and Microsoft have probably built rules into their ranking engines which rate comment links much, much lower than links in the actual content of the Language Log posts.