Semantic Inflation

Semantic Inflation is the phenomenon experienced by words intended to represent extremes where overuse reduces their significance until references to those extremes have to be raised even higher in order to recreate the same emotional strength.

Examples

Heavy-handed immigration enforcement that harms people might once have been described as unethical, but later as authoritarian, then evil, then fascist, until in 2026 it is often described as "genocide and ethnic cleansing".

Anonymous @YourAnonCentral

ICE? Not just Trump’s fault and it has never actually worked beyond being a US ran criminal organization committing genocide and ethnic cleansing.

You can’t reform evil, you need to abolish that, initiate an inquiry and arrest everyone who participated since day one. #3E #goodvsevil

Jan 29, 2026

Another example is a description of Deflock as a 'terroristic organization' by Garrett Langley, CEO of Flock Safety.

I think there are really two groups of activists. On one hand, you have organizations like the ACLU and the EFF, which take an above-board approach to fighting for their point of view. Thankfully, we live in a democratic, capitalistic country where we can fight these issues in court. I have a lot of respect for those groups because they engage in reasonable debate and follow the law. On the other hand, there are organizations like Deflock, which I would characterize as terroristic. Their primary motivation is chaos. They are closer to Antifa than to anything else, and I think that’s unfortunate, because we don’t want chaos—or at least, I don’t want chaos.

— Garrett Langley, Flock Safety, Forbes Interview