Certain political crises give rise to heated debates, sometimes even to forms of control verging on censorship. This was recently the case in France when, a few days after the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, the Ministry of Justice issued a circular prohibiting references to acts of 'resistance' rather than 'terrorism'.What role should a semiotician play in this kind of confrontation, where the issue is how to name an act? The question could certainly be considered from a rhetorical and argumentative point of view, or from a pragmatic one, or in terms of discursive linguistics. But one of the specific features of structural semiotics is that it focuses on the (initially Saussurian) notion of value, both in terms of axiological systems and their translation into ideological discourses.By analysing a number of articles published in the newspaper Le Monde, we will show how the choice of one name rather than another inscribes the named object in an already constituted discursive field, opens up a specific historical perspective and reflects the ideological position of the enunciator. The act of naming is not a simple cognitive operation. It presupposes a polemical field and a distribution of roles, power and legitimacy of violence. In the very act of nomination, the giver of the name attributes certain values to phenomena and hides his power.