Fukus, an acronym largely absent in our media.

Why – or rather how – do certain words (nouns, compounds, acronyms) or groups of words (expressions, phrases) become widespread whereas others do not?

Of course, this is no existential matter to me or to anybody else I would suspect, but seeing the acronym ‘fukus’ (France-the UK-the United States) yesterday in an article of Vanessa Beeley (whose perspective on Syria runs counter to the narrative disseminated in nearly every major news outlet that I know of here in western Europe) which was published by RT.com on 31^st December¹ got me wondering as to why this interesting coinage had failed to gain much currency since I came across it for the first time in late December 2015 and then again in September 2016².

So how do new words (or expressions) gain acceptance and eventually make it into the dictionary? I suppose the process works as follows: a new word is either invented or picked up by what I would define as a key ‘cultural opinion leader’ (a famous journalist or news/radio presenter, a best-selling author or even a movie star) and then gets passed on to the general public via the reverse funnel (or, maybe even more aptly, the watering can) that the mass media have come to function as in our information-driven societies. Add to this humans’ seemingly natural tendency to copy each other (which is why I tend to think of humans as ‘mimetic beings’) and it does not take extremely long in our age of ‘viral’ dissemination of ‘prêt-à-porter’ slogans, fads, clichés, etc. for certain newly coined words or phrases to become part of our lexicon.

However, this has failed to work in this manner for the acronym ‘fukus’, for which I see two reasons. The first is that this coinage sounds very bawdy and therefore it probably makes the speaker sound foolish by the same token because of the double entendre – unless ‘fukus’ is pronounced /fju:kʌs/, as is the standard pronunciation of the pronouns ‘few’ and ‘us’. The second reason is that any (political) acronym that does not comply with the official storyline of ‘western’ powers when it comes to matters of geopolitics is unlikely to be used much by our mass media – which are anything but independent, especially those funded by governments or belonging to multinational conglomerates listed on the NYSE, the LSE or on any other stock exchange.

As for my opinion on the matter, I agree that ‘fukus’ is a little awkward because of the phonetic ambiguity and the bawdiness of the pun. Nevertheless, this acronym now seems to be as relevant as ever given President Trump’s recent Syria pull-out announcement³, as it clearly points the finger at three of the main powers responsible for nearly a decade of bloodshed and destruction in Syria, namely France, the United Kingdom and the USA – now probably in this order of involvement. Of course, the other important protagonists located in the Middle East, in North Africa, in the Gulf region and in the Eurasia region are absent, but one could well argue that ‘the longer the acronym, the more difficult it is to find one easy to remember’. Yet this would not explain why, say, ‘civets’ (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa) did not prove as successful as ‘brics’ (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) or ‘piigs’ (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain), to limit ourselves to financial English acronyms. To conclude, I suppose that everything does not always boil down to matters of taste – even when it comes to acronyms...

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1) Vanessa Beeley’s use of ‘fukus’ in a recent article:
Christmas colours light up a diverse Syria as peace & stability return – and the West barely noticed
[...]
This fierce belief in a secular heritage has been the life-force of the Syrian resistance against the FUKUS military adventurism and Gulf State, Turkish and Israeli sponsorship of extremism in the region.
[...]
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/447856-christmas-syria-west-media/

2) My own encounter with the acronym ‘fukus’:
https://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/gaddafi-dead-a-man-dies-a-legend-is-born-and-the-rape-of-africa-by-neo-colonial-fukus-begins/

About nine months later:
[a comment by Dr Gideon Polya posted on] https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/john-pilger-world-war-democracy
http://www.sandipanonline.com/2012/11/

[The journalist Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey, of Pravda.Ru and whose name was mentioned in the previous link, does indeed seem to like the acronym...]
http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/columnists/27-09-2016/135706-pig_headed_arrogance-0/
http://english.pravda.ru/world/africa/23-09-2011/119133-libya_terrorists-0
http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/columnists/31-01-2012/120372-arms_kids-0/
http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/columnists/21-10-2011/119409-gaddafi_stage-0/
http://www.pravdareport.com/world/africa/23-09-2011/119133-libya_terrorists-0/

3) Some links (taken from RT.com) about the USA’s withdrawal from Syria:
‘We give them $4.5bn a year’: Israel will still be ‘good’ after US withdrawal from Syria – Trump
Published time: 27 Dec, 2018 05:03
Edited time: 27 Dec, 2018 09:28
https://www.rt.com/news/447484-trump-billions-israel-aid-syria/

Trump’s transactional troop pullout from Syria could blow up
Finian Cunningham
Published time: 25 Dec, 2018 17:16
Edited time: 25 Dec, 2018 17:16
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/447386-syria-pullout-turkey-israel/

Trump says anyone else but himself would be media’s ‘hero’ for Syria withdrawal
Published time: 23 Dec, 2018 06:24
Edited time: 23 Dec, 2018 10:56
https://www.rt.com/usa/447237-trump-hero-media-syria/