Seeing Language as a Tool of Authoritarianism
I’m going to write a series of posts about things we need to do to fight fascism. They’re part of the same conversation that LOLGOP and I have started to have on video.
Start with this, which is fairly obvious but needs to be said: The right and the left use language as a tool differently. Understanding that is, in my opinion, a crucial step for understanding the asymmetry in the polarization of society and attempting to more effectively combat authoritarianism.
In short, liberals and journalists treat language as transparent, whereas right wingers treat language as utilitarian.
By transparent, I mean that liberals and journalists believe language serves as a way to describe and understand reality. This is, after all, built into the definition of small-l liberalism: that one can understand and describe the world, and using that understanding, engage in rational debates about how best to live in it. One can iteratively test descriptions of the world and policy prescriptions and improve our relationship with the world and each others.
Politicians who accept they live in a liberal (small-l) system are adhering to a system where people with competing visions describe, transparently, what they see in reality or believe it to be, and persuade others that that vision of reality is a better description of reality than their opponent, and that if that vision of reality is true, then it counsels certain actions or policies. This is the cornerstone of a successful legislative body: the shared belief that debate and discussion can result in rational persuasion and through that good policy solutions.
Transparent language is an idea at the heart of democracy.
Our current conception of journalism (which most people, including or perhaps especially journalists, forget arose out of a particular conception of politics, technology, and economy) builds from this. A society professionalizes journalism and pays for it because of a belief that that feedback role — the provision of information more accurate and accessible than rumor or diatribe — helps sustain an orderly society. Once upon a time we believed that the mere act of disclosing corruption and scandal played a pivotal role in defeating it, and certainly some journalists still aspire to do that.
By contrast, right wingers approach language differently. For right wingers (a term I’ve adopted, because “in reality,” the MAGAt right is a departure from a Republican tradition that bought into assumptions about rationality and reality), language is instead a means to impose power, to impose a desired order on society. They are not trying to persuade you that living in an authoritarian hellhole will be better than living in a democracy. They are trying to bring about that helhole by disrupting debate, by policing language, by breaking the tie between language and reality. Utterances are valued not for the fidelity with which they describe the world. Rather, they are valued for the degree to which they help to attain a certain end state in which they accrue more power.
Obviously, this exists on a continuum. There are circumstances, perhaps with their family, perhaps when making backroom deals, where right wingers will use language transparently (though for Trump, even those situations involve motivated language). Liberals and journalists realize that you can use language in certain ways to make its use more effective, a concession that language is never entirely transparent.
But if you don’t adhere to that vision at all — if you believe language is always about accruing power — then not only is the effort to debate about reality futile, but language can be used to disrupt and replace rational discussion, which is one reason right wingers have systematically attacked moderation and disinformation scholarship, to make it harder to disrupt the process of accruing power by disrupting the transparency of language.
This is why the battle over pronouns has been so pitched. For right wingers, gender is a means of structuring society, of enforcing order, of reverting back to a prior hierarchy. Of course, gender is a construct, and particularly for non-binary people, the demand that a person adhere to their sex is a form of control, a denial of the reality of their identity. For some years, liberals tried as a matter of courtesy to use pronouns that a person used for themselves. To enforce a rigid order, right wingers understood they needed to destroy this practice as a means to superpose the power of fixed categories over the complexity of gender.
This dynamic underlies what I keep harping on about Trump’s Truth Social posts. Journalists, whose profession is premised on language being transparent, therefore treat these posts as a collection of words that in some way helps them get to a reality about Trump. Journalists really seem to believe that what Trump says is in some way a reflection of his feelings or his understanding of reality — and, to be fair, he has often fired people via tweet, literally changing reality with that tweet. For Trump, however, every single Truth Social post is an act of power, an act of commanding attention, of renewing polarization in society based on the relationship (either blind affirmation or opposition) one has with that Truth Social post, and often of exploiting the journalistic fetish for words to get them to serve as a vehicle for mindless repetition, which journalists’ entire professionalization otherwise would fight.
This extends even to punditry. Certainly, lefty pundits are focused on describing a motivated vision of reality. Their job is to be persuasive, if not always honest. But right wing pundits more often use their words and appearances as a means to impose an order. That is, they wouldn’t so much attempt to use an appearance to make a persuasive argument, true or not; rather, they would use it to repeat certain language, often doing violence to reality in the process.
This plays out in the interactions I call “Cotton Swabs,” where a news host asks right wingers whether they agree or disagree with some outrageous thing Trump says. Some still try to claim they didn’t see it. But in recent years, right wingers in good standing instead used such questions to disrupt the premise of the question — to speak over the journalist, to repeat key buzzwords, to perform loyalty to Trump’s tribe. Not only didn’t such questions shame a politician into breaking from Trump, but they instead served as opportunities to discredit such questions altogether. Journalists were willingly serving as props in a power play.
But this dynamic also extends to how the left and the right use social media, because left and right imagine using social media for different purposes. One thing that drives the feckless left wing habit of non-stop criticism for Democrats (many of whom are indeed feckless) is a belief that you effect change by persuading someone, and once you persuade someone, they will in turn persuade someone. Even as lefty pundits fill lefty discursive space with repeated efforts to alter the speech and behavior of elected pols (thereby creating the repetition the right uses so well), the right wing exploitation of the discursive environment goes uncontested, with the effect that right wing repetition and ordering language holds sway. Or in opposition, democrats might share their own feelings, honestly describing the emotions that Trump’s abuses elicit. By contrast, right wingers might respond to feeling similar or similarly strong emotions by instead asserting power of the language of the person who elicited the emotion. Democrats describe what ideally should happen. Right wingers ensure every utterance furthers an effort to implement their preferred end state.
I’m not, here, suggesting that lefties abandon their faith in the ability to describe a reality. For now, I’m suggesting lefties (and, even more so, journalists) need to be aware of the ways in which their speech makes them easy props for a power play.
When you speak on social media, are you saying or are you doing?
One way language is used to impose power is to use loaded labels to describe people. One way to fight that use of language is to challenge the meaning of the label. For example, if I were to interview Trump or one of his minions I might ask something like the following:
Me: As you know, recently in New York Mamdani won the democratic primary. You are not a big of fan of his. In fact you called him a communist. We hear terms like communist and socialist thrown around a lot these days. Help my viewers/readers out: What is communism?
Trump: Deflect — e.g., like they had in the Soviet Union
Me: Yes, but actually what is communism?
Trump: More deflect
Me: So, if you don’t know what term communism means, why are you using it?
Trump: I do know what it means.
Me: Oh good, so what is communism?
Trump: Anger, deflection, …
Me: I’ve heard you describe people as socialists. Do you know what *that* term means?
I think that would help take some of the power out of the use of those labels. Then, if anyone else tried to use one of those labels, journalists should say, “Trump (or whoever) was not able to say what that term means. Can you define it?”
If someone was prepared and actually came with an accurate definition of one of those terms, I would then ask, “So, how is Mamdani a communist?” Or, whichever other person they had labeled a communist or socialist or whatever.
See you wouldn’t even get to the deflection part. He would turn and attack you for asking.
It might be more effective to say, “How can you accuse Mamdani of being a communist when you’re the one who demanded Congress add 5 trillion to the deficit so you could pay off your donors?”
I like your question. But if he attacked me for asking mine, I would still respond by asking, “So, you don’t know what communism is but you are using the word?”
This is the Golden Dream of cracking the Invisibility shield protecting voters from having to understand, justify Trump support. There’s no evidence it does anything other than give Trump an opportunity to exercise power and set the terms, his terms. It’s a beautiful dream but only that.
I really like how you have made the distinction here between language of transparency and language for power. And I appreciate how this site functions on the language of transparency. In that spirit, I will attempt to persuade you why my question might be more effective.
I like the construction of your question above, but I don’t think it would be effective for a few reasons. 1) Honestly, I don’t think Trump would understand it. So, he would not be able to answer it. 2) Instead, because I think he will feel like it is a strong criticism of him, he would be even more likely to attack the questioner. 3) And once he avoided the question, I don’t think the question will stick in other people’s minds. I think a simpler question like, “Can you define communism” will be remembered better along with his non-answer.
I tried to reduce the likelihood of Trump attacking me by cushioning my question with the language “help my viewers/readers out.” But he could certainly view it as a nasty question. If he did, I would hope he would respond in the same way he has previously by telling me it was a nasty question and asking where I was from. If he asks where I was from it means he has stopped talking for a second, and I can respond by saying, “So, if you don’t know what the term communism means, why are you using it?” instead of giving my name or affiliation.
If nothing else, people will remember that question. If we had competent media, the next question Trump would be asked would be, “How do you define communism?” But we know that won’t happen.
Perhaps neither of us have it right.
I’ve used this question with people like Charles Gasparino, when he attacks Mamdani. And it pisses the shit out of him. But in that case I keep doubling down. One theory I have is that it’s better to expose Trump’s enablers rather than Trump himself, because the ask is lower.
Responding to EW, the ask seems lower because Trump is using his native speech and view of the world. Many of his followers have adopted his view and speech, but are speaking a second language. They need to concentrate more to use it, which disruption possible.
I don’t believe asking questions is an effective tactic when dealing with right wingers. The underlying assumption is that they will/should play by the unwritten rules of your game (which involve sincere consideration of your questions and logical, related responses).
The right wing’s game is “I win, you lose.” whose rules don’t allow for a respectful, cooperative interaction.
Ever since *rump’s first term; I have been aghast at how obscenely slick and confident his many enablers are while shamelessly spewing an endless stream of lies with smiles and empty eyes no matter who tries to call them out.
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This is an interesting angle and one the left needs to spend more time and focus on. Noem Chomsky and others have proposed that it’s not ones thinking that impacts the language they use, but rather it’s the language itself that determines or limits the thoughts that occur. I wonder how much impact phrases like “stone cold liar” like Newsome used for a minute and renaming Alligator Alcatraz from its almost Disney-like moniker to a more accurate name (a Florida concentration camp) would have on swaying public opinion for some on the right.
The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.
— Leonard Wittgenstein (Austrian Philosopher: 1899 – 1951).
I am not sure what he means by that. But I do know that we can move people with words carefully chosen—words to describe how we see the world and how we feel about it; words used to convince others to see and feel about it the way we do: Alligator Alcatraz (as irony); Bukele’s Buchenwald (as trajedy). If only.
But I struggle–feel more angry, defenseless–when others use seemingly reasonable words, that are nothing but (as I see it) rhetorical bludgeons. In a notable recent example, Mike Johnson, regarding the Big Bill said: “We can’t make everyone 100% happy. It’s impossible.” As if.
Amazing how effortlessly he made people 100% pissed off – and does not give a damn.
Your point about the right exploiting the discursive space of the left is spot on, and reminds me of a historian I admire- Roy Casagranda, who dissects why and how language changes in one of his lectures, with interesting an interesting discussion concerning accuracy vs. precision. The right so easily remodels language to support their end game. Frequent examples are the mocking of ‘woke’ and Critical Race Theory, knowing that will generally remain uncontested.
[Moderator’s note: see your comment today at 09:19 AM ET. /~Rayne]
My degree is in sociolinguistics, and if I were to oversimplify the discipline it would be that all utterances exist to either display power or offer affinity.
The details of *how* you do that (word choice, use of dialect or register, etc) are the things you have to study. But at the end of the day, it is all about power vs affinity.
So how you choose to use language will reflect your intention to pursue either power or affinity.
I like the way the Beatles said it:
“One thing I can tell you is you got to be free.
Come together…”
Freedom is about granting to others
what we wish for ourselves.
Is “decency” about ripping a mother away from her nursing child? Is “public safety” about assaulting and imprisoning a father of three Marines while he is mowing lawns for a living? Is “law and order” about pardoning hundreds who assaulted Capitol officers on January 6th? And is “freedom” really about imprisoning people who disagree with you? Concentrated, widespread attention on redefining co-opted terms could go a long way towards convincing people how the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Actually, I think the particular road to hell you’re describing is paved with *bad*–even evil–intentions, but you are correct in recognizing how they are cloaked as ones we tend to consider good, like “law and order.”
The right has devoted considerable time and money over decades to patenting phrases designed to con voters into voting against their interests. If “trickle-down economics” didn’t work, maybe “job creators” will persuade you to let us raid your taxes for our tax breaks.
Remember “death panels”? Stephen Miller should rightfully be pictured as the figure of Death itself. Yet it was arguably his rhetoric of “criminal immigrants” (along with Elon’s money) that got Trump elected. It is all lies, but they are lies polished to a gemlike perfection. Repeated incessantly in the cesspool of X and Fox, they performed exactly as intended.
Wow, this was very interesting, and I feel it should be taken seriously as the beginning of something. Maybe it takes someone with a PhD in comparative literature to come up with this analysis. But aside from the advantage of understanding the situation accurately (thanks to the usage of language transparently), what should be the strategy to fight back most effectively?
Being a scientist, I note one similarity here. Transparent language is a vehicle for information, much like DNA is a the substrate that keep the genetic code of all species. If you learn about the central hypothesis of molecular biology (from DNA triplet codons to mRNA to translation of protein by connecting amino acids on the ribosome), the system appears beautifully ordered, and design to preserve critical evolved structures. But the analogy of language and DNA helps me go further. The highjacking of the language as a goal-oriented tool by the far right is akin to a virus occurring in the system. A virus is not as such a true living organism (it cannot translate its own proteins for example). It is a disruptor that injects itself into the beautifully ordered system to derail it. Biology finds it logic in large numbers. Most non-virus species do not become annihilated by a virus (though individual creatures do die). The reason is that over time they have developed defense mechanism, the immune system kicks in to fight back. How does it fight back? By recognizing the pieces of proteins that “do not belong” (the anti gene), and then amplifying the production of fighting devices (anti body) to relentlessly stop those disruptor in its track.
Where does this lead us? I am a naturalized US citizen, so I did not grow up here with many of sacred cows of US culture. I for one think that the first amendment (freedom of speech) was written a long time ago when people communicated with each other at human scale. But the sacred aura granted to the first amendment is used today as a cover to enable all sorts of abuses. In terms of money (Citizens United), it is now such that any amount of money spent is supposed to be taken as an expression of free speech. This is garbage and a lie. Furthermore, insanely disruptive misinformation is going around freely (the kids are being killed in the basement of the pizzeria, drink bleach, there are jewish lasers starting the forest fires).
Yet, according to the first amendement dogma, any usage of language must be treated equally the public space. Any system that seeks to regulate how language is being used is automatically treated as some authoritarian wet dream that must be rejected. Even left-wing pundits reflexively endorse the unquestionable idea that freedom of speech must always be preserved no matter what, being inherently essential for democracy. This is not entirely accurate in fact. Even in American society, speech and language are often regulated to ensure a better orderly outcome. In a court of justice for example, not every utterance of the prosecutor, lawyers, witnesses are acceptable. Some evidences are not admissible, period. In scientific debate, arguments for or against a hypothesis must be laid out in a certain logical way. To be allowed to participate to a scientific debate implies that one abide by the constructive rules of that debate (goodbye RFK).
So I conclude by wondering what would an “immune system” against language used as a means to impose a desired order on society?
A really interesting model, the virus. Disinformation scholars have done some work to immunize people rather than correct people.
Fascinating metaphor Your virus analogy triggered another idea: transparent language communicates information, but also insight and arguments, often trying to articulate the inchoate. By rendering experiences into *original* words*, the kind we grope for as we speak or type, we inherently drag whatever we are trying to express into the realm of rationality–language’s first realm.
The rightwing provocations EW describes have the opposite intent and effect. Those bits of unmediated language (“Hoax!”, “Witch Hunt!”, “Drilll baby, drill!”) are not intended to communicate information or ideas. Their sole purpose is to trigger emotion, hits of rage or euphoria or euphoric rage that recipients become addicted to as they seek ever more dire ways to “own the libs.”
*by original I do not mean Faulkner or Toni Morrison, just specific to oneself.
Once, upon being falsely accused of something by an administrator who had heard it from a supervisor, I stated my case and explained why the accusation was false and how the situation had been distorted.
Upon hearing my explanation, the administrator immediately stated, “That’s a serious accusation you’re making about the supervisor.” From the tone of that statement I could tell the administrator was exercising a power play against me. It was used to induce fear and shame in me. It implied that I should not have represented my truth.
It was alarming to me. But, fortunately, I had a strong survival instinct and enough wits about me to turn the conversation and language around by replying, “Yes, it is serious. That’s exactly why I’m so concerned about it. And I think other people should be concerned about it, too.”
The administrator was momentarily speechless. No comeback. And that pretty much ended that conversation. I can’t say that I really made any progress there, but I did demonstrate that I was not going to be a pushover. And, in the big picture of what eventually transpired, I was the one who finally prevailed.
So, I fully support the need to pay attention to the manipulation and power plays that are so rampant in the way right wingers use language. Being prepared for this can only make things better, not worse. I look forward to future posts about this.
Thank you for this article on language. How language is used is indeed important, and you are right to note that the Right Wing is all about who has the power. What the left has failed to grasp is that order and even hierarchy is vital. The world is so chaotic sometimes, that we need to find some order to go on. Religion has filled that need for many for a long time. For many people especially organized religion has failed by its leaders treatment of children and abuse of women. For the Democratic Party inclusion has led to a perception of lack of leadership. I know this is overstatement, but we need to understand the culture if we are going to win elections. I am old, so I remember the before times when women had no meaningful jobs or elective offices. Are we going to go backward to find some order in this world? I hope not, but I despair sometimes when I see the collapse of support for trans people. Yes, they do not fit in our concept of the an orderly world, but many people do not and find acceptance.
You may have unconsciously spelled out one difference between the right and left: the need for hierarchy versus flat organizational structures. The lack of open public discussion about hierarchical versus flat organizations may shape perception by its absence.
The perception of a lack of leadership may also spell out another problem — this one may be on *you*. How have you come to the conclusion there is no leadership in the Democratic Party? Are you uncomfortable with the concept of many leaders sharing power? Or that leadership belongs to those who show up and do the work without plaudits?
Furthermore, can you acknowledge the possibility media and its use of language plays a key role in these perceptions?
The Democratic Party has many leaders within it. Rayne, you present what I believe is the central reason for the widespread false perception that it lacks leadership: the media. The Beltway media, especially, has yet to evolve from its tunnel-vision focus on traditional “leadership” roles: president, VP, SecDef, House Speaker. You’d hardly know the ranking members of key committees exist if you only followed the MSM.
Democrats have tried to live their values, specifically in terms of “looking like the country they lead.” Most DC reporters, white men themselves, feel more comfortable approaching guys who look like their dads. This a big part of why demonization of “The Squad” (all serious legislators) continues, unabated by serious revision by “serious” press.
Let’s face it: Democrats are easier to blame, for all the reasons Marcy elucidates and more. To engage seriously in arguing your case is to invite counter-arguments, including in the so-called liberal press–the same NYT that could not bring itself to demand that Trump quit the campaign.
This is a yoooge part of why I keep trying to bat back all the arguments here about how the current catasprophe can and should be averted by the party out of power.
The impression I have of the Democratic leadership is that they’re terrified of the future. They don’t look at AOC and Mamdani and see the next generation. They see annihilation, and the idea of making a real power-play, like walking out of the Senate so there’s not a quorum, in order to prevent the total destruction of our way of life is as far beyond them as color to a blind person. Add to that the possibility that some of the Democratic leaderships ideal’s of equality for LGBTQ-folk, minorities or women is as much performative as real and suddenly there’s real trouble on the opposite side of Trump.
On one hand, the Democratic leadership is terrified of the very people who could save them, while on the other they don’t really understand/oppose the murderous intentions of the other party. It’s a unique and complete shitshow.
Interesting, and am looking forward to the rest of the series. But I do think that
“Journalists really seem to believe that what Trump says is in some way a reflection of his feelings or his understanding of reality …”
is letting many journalists off way too easy.
It is Journalism 101 that if source X tells you, a journalist, that they think Y or want Z, they are telling you that
because they want you to tell it to your readers, or, if it’s on background, because they want you to believe it so that it will affect your future coverage.
The Mags Habs style of access journalism is predicated on being an unmediated conveyer of this cr*p,
and those who engage in it should not be considered journalists.
THIS
Most of them can’t even honestly report what he says in answer to questions.
Agreed. And people on the other side are terrified of calling this out!
I’ve been immersing myself in Anat Shenker-Osorio’s website and interview appearances (particularly with Anand Giridharadas on The Ink), and trying to figure out for myself a way to talk about these issues in regular conversation with independents, Trump-lite people etc., but also avoid getting bogged down in what my grandma used to call “Tis-Taint-Tis-Taint” discussions. Anat’s website, ASO Communications, has numerous messaging guidelines that substitute functionally EFFECTIVE messaging (that operates on the subconscious as well as the conscious mind) and follows a basic structure of: a “WE” statement that focuses on on what we are for, as opposed to what we are against, using real-
world language wherever possible (“No matter our age, race, or background, we all believe kids should be able to grow to their full potential”), then a “villain” statement (“But a minority of millionaires and their paid-for politicians want to steal from our kids’ futures to lower their taxes”) and ending with an action statement (“By joining together across race and zip code, we can rewrite the rules to ensure every school has the engaging materials and up-to-date approaches, healthy meals and emotional supports to set kids up to be all that they dream.”)
As far as I can see her website messaging guides are geared more toward advocacy organizations than to the way real people speak to each other, but it’s a useful model to have in mind.
I’d also recommend Mehdi Hasan’s book, “How to Win Every Argument,” with the caveat that you can “win” an argument rhetorically but still leave everyone’s priors firmly in place, which is less than ideal.
Apparently Anat will be doing an online talk for Indivisible on July 21 called “Messaging for Solidarity – Race Class Narrative with Anat Shenker-Osorio” that is open for registration, and you better believe I’ll be there. (attempt to insert a bot-proof link have failed, but the Indivisible page should let you find it) (PS I do NOT get a toaster if enough folks sign up for the presentation, it’s just that the fact that Anat and her company have won elections around the globe while expensive Democratic messaging consultants have been losing them domestically, makes her perspective of great value now. )
Marcy’s frequent injunctions to prioritize action over fruitless whinging can start with language too, hopefully as above.
Given that right wingers have turned language into violence, ,yeah, some kind of messaging is action (necessary but not sufficient for activism).
Back during Trump 1 I would, rarely, flip over to Fox and see what they were saying about the daily news. I could only stomach it for about a minute, but I noticed something you hit on very clearly in the post. On Fox, a MAGAite would answer very succinctly and calmly to any question asked. The same person, when discussing the same topic on CNN, would be frenetic and drone on, not letting the moderator get in a single word. MAGA uses language as a cudgel, a weapon to hit you over the head with.
I’m convinced that’s by design. A few moderators have started trying to rein them in, but not very successfully. Maybe they should start compiling reels of their answers on Fox, play them side-by-side with their own interview and ask them to explain the tactic. Sometimes the only way to fight a fire is with your own fire.
Anthropologist Joe Henrich writes in his superb book “The Secret of Our Success” that language can be a powerful tool, but ONLY if most people tell the truth most of the time. Failing that, it’s basically worthless.
Thus I’ve remarked for years that Trump’s incessant lying is a deliberate attempt to destroy the usefulness of language. After all, it’s the only tool that his enemies in the media have with which to go after him—and his goal is to rob them of it.
This of course comports with the observation that the purpose of propaganda is not to convince people to believe your version of the truth, but to convince them that the whole concept of “objective truth” is a chimera. One story is as good as the next; who can really say?
The rightwing project to “destroy the usefulness of language,” as you put it, has a much longer history than Trump’s political career. His success derives from his propensity to lie instrumentally, which (along with his celebrity and charisma) dovetailed beautifully with that project–in fact accelerating it rapidly toward the threshold where words lose all meaning. The example I always think of is when Trump started calling his 2024 Democratic opponents “Fascists,” thereby neutering that word as applied to himself.
While Trump didn’t invent this, he may be its demented apotheosis. You might be interested in David Brock’s (now ancient) book The Republican Noise Machine, a survivor’s history of this propaganda project. For the contemporary aspects, I always recommend Steve Benen’s Ministry of Truth–also invaluable for those who want the facts on their side when attempting to persuade.
For those interested, here are a couple of lengthy but fascinating reviews of the Henrich book Rob Lewis mentions:
Book Review: The Secret Of Our Success | Slate Star Codex – Scott Alexander
“Historically, Reason has been the villain of the human narrative, a corrosive force that tempts people away from adaptive behavior towards choices that “sounded good at the time”.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret-of-our-success/
REVIEW: The Secret of Our Success, by Joseph Henrich – Jane Psmith
https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-the-secret-of-our-success
One thing we can do to oppose this is to do everything we can to make sure that people who lie pay the price. A politician’s or commentators options should be to either tell the truth or shut up. And this relates to how opposition groups react to such things, and seeking better strategies for hurting news organizations who platform liars is a big deal.
EW, thank you for exploring this. I never considered the differences with “intent” in using language.
Ginevra diBenci: I agree that “language (“Hoax!”, “Witch Hunt!”, “Drilll baby, drill!”) are not intended to communicate information or ideas. Their sole purpose is to trigger emotion.”
I also think that being willingly emotional, by embracing and repeating such phrases, provides a comfort of being in a group (the out-group?) and allows the person the permission to not take responsibility for critically thinking.
Since imagery often accompanies journalism, I wonder if liberals and right wingers also see imagery differently? For example, the magnification of a small embryo / fetus to poster board size for emotional impact, while calling it a “child”, ignores facts while ramping-up emotions.
If the liberals could also effectively use utilitarian language and imagery , would this level the playing field or would it create a place and time where each political camp only hears the reverb of its own language?
Manipulated imagery is definitely involved. See the pics of blacks where their skin is darkened, or people from the Middle easte where their skin is darkened or their nose made more prominent. It isn’t as obvious as people think it would be.
In a study published about 20 years ago, the psychologist authors described finding exactly what you asked about, depressed Chris. Subjects who self-identified as politically conservative reacted to distasteful images with significantly higher levels of physiological disgust/aversion than liberals did to the same images. The overall conclusion was that “tolerance” may not be solely a matter of philosophy, but rather predestined (to some degree) by involuntary bodily reactions.
Every campaign Trump has run has distinguished itself by a void where policy positions (the stuff of rational argument) used to dominate, supplanted by naked appeals a limited range of emotions: “Build the Wall!”, Ban all Muslims, stop “the invasion,” “they’re eating the cats and dogs”–those emotions typically reducible to fear, anger, self-righteous aggression, and of course adoration of Trump himself.
First, trigger. Then, channel. The manipulation works with images even more directly than words, but images need interpreting by an authority. Trump hates pets, but he was more than willing to evoke the image of them being slaughtered to trigger rage at immigrants–the ultimate message.
WRT the question at the end of Marcy’s post: “When you speak on social media, are you saying or are you doing?”
It depends not (only) on the speaker, but (also) on the listener. When the audience takes my saying as action (and re-acts correspondingly), it IS action.
That’s what happened during Trump’s first term. In the beginning, his announcements via tweet were taken as such: pure announcements. I don’t remember when it happened, but quite soon the media began reporting about his tweets as if they were already the action itself, encouraging him to govern more and more by tweet alone (to hell with any procedure or process required by law for, e.g., dismissal of officials).
Seems way too late for this to have an impact. Reminds me of the neocon who said something on the lines of: and while you’re studying that, we’ll act again.
To stop a bullet you have to be in front of it.
Neither transparent nor utilitarian.
I spent quite a few years going to the brown bag lunches with big name journos at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. You could talk directly to people you might know by byline or as a TV talking head in a small seminar room that sat, maybe, 30 people. And ask them uncomfortable questions.
What I learned is that journalists often not only can’t see the forest for the trees they often also can’t see the trees for the leaves. For instance, focusing on one word or statement and driving it into the ground while missing the larger point and wider context. So Trmp says “Shylock” and people focus on that word, whether he meant as an anti-Semitic slur (or as a borrowing from his Mafia friends, a take I haven’t seen but then I haven’t really looked), whether it is hypocrisy (useless, as we know shamelessness is an authoritarian superpower), whether it connotes something deeper… Such discussion takes time and oxygen from more pressing issues all the time because we focus on the leaves, on one word or one statement or misstatement, and never get to talk about the trees or the forest at all.
Trump says “Shylock” out of one side of his mouth, while out of the other side, bludgeons Harvard, Cal and Columbia, etc., for supporting anti-Semitic demonstrations to the detriment of the Jewish students. He may be an idiot, but his old fixer was Roy Cohen. I can bet you he called him a Shylock to his face.
The demeaning term Trmp might have used with Roy Cohn was “shyster” instead of “shylock.” I doubt he would say it to Cohn’s face though as he would probably have taken offense.
However, Trmp did say, “The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” He might have called them shylocks, just not in the presence of his Mafia friends to avoid offense there as well.
What lessons are to be learned wrt to how the media handles scandals, say, such as Hunter’s laptop? In hindsight, how might that topic have been handled better my the media, in both the immediate aftermath and in the ensuing years so that false narratives “hold sway”?
I’ve not commented previously (I expect I’ll violate a rule and be reprimanded harshly). I’m doing so in my excitement about Dr. Wheeler’s focus on democratic (transparent) vs. authoritarian (utilitarian) speech. During the Reagan administration, as an itinerant reader of the Frankfurt School, I happened on Jürgen Habermas’s rules of democratic discourse. His rules align closely with what Dr. Wheeler terms “transparency.”
I comment to extend Dr. Wheeler’s observation in one respect. Dr. Wheeler notes: “Our current conception of journalism” builds from the notion that “[t]ransparent language is … at the heart of democracy.” Indeed, all the forms in which our civic discourse is administered to us assume democratic (transparent) speech. A journalist or reporter rarely may state a fact. Rather, he or she must quote other persons stating facts. Each quote, each word of the participants in any Sunday show or on any pundit panel, is offered, implicitly, as competing transparent speech in the collective endeavor to arrive at a view of reality and decide on the collective act that it recommends. In other words, our conventional modes of civic discourse launder GOP utilitarian speech and commend it to us as transparent speech. For that part of the citizenry that consists of people with decent basic values, but who don’t think too hard or critically about political matters (probably 60% of folks), this imprimatur is sufficient for them to assume the words of those representing the GOP have truth content, and to keep the GOP a respectable choice. The Right knows this, and has exploited it every hour of the day for decades.
Two ways in which the media can act with integrity. One, cease printing quotes from those on the Right, attending their press conferences, or having them on their shows. Democratic discourse rests on rules, and the Right isn’t following them. So they don’t get to participate. Or better, keep reporting the words and the tweets, and including the folks on the panels, but explicitly treat what they say as utilitarian speech. Don’t consider the words as though they have truth content. Rather, question the speaker about, and examine for the reader or viewer, what the speaker is seeking to achieve by them. Anthropologists don’t seek to translate the howls of primates they’re observing, they assess them as, e.g., dominance displays. The sounds uttered by those on the Right should be treated similarly.
I wonder if Lakoff’s “truth sandwich” approach can be used to tackle right-wing speech whether lies or not.
You did fine for your first comment, just be sure to use the same username and email address on all future comments. Welcome to emptywheel.
Thank you, Rayne.
I’m not sure Lakoff’s “truth sandwich” is apt for the phenomenon I’m referencing. It’s a form of fact-checking, and I don’t think fact-checking is a sound response to utilitarian speech. Conceptually, to refer to a GOP “mouth-noise” (thank you, David Wise, nice term) as a lie is to imply that it is transparent speech. The word “lie” only has meaning in the realm of reality describing; in utilitarian speech, the terms “truth” and “lie” have no salience. And, sandwiching the mouth-noise between truth statements asks the reader/listener to compare the statements and judge which better conforms to reality. This, too, implies that the mouth-noise is an attempt to describe reality, i.e., transparent speech. And switching from the conceptual to the tactical, the truth sandwich contributes to amplifying the mouth-noise in the public discourse space where, loosed from its origins, it will be taken by the uncritical perceiver to be transparent speech. Better to respond by dismissing the words as nonsense, noting that the speaker knows and doesn’t care that they are nonsense, and that this is what the GOP does because they think we’re all idiots, and turning to take a look at what sort of deceit the speaker is trying to put over on us.
It’s the Trump Algorithm, i.e., “What mouth-noise can I make to benefit myself or hurt my enemies?” To fight it, don’t look for meaning (it has none), just expose the purpose. Amplify that, not the words.
WRT language, I did find it striking that in the “justification” of the tax and spending bill that just passed, I never saw or heard the standard “tax breaks for the wealthy trickle down and create jobs” garbage of the last forty-five years. The artifice of helping the so-called middle class was absent. Most media has failed to notice that it was a naked wealth transfer without the lies of the past.
The Trump admin sent around an e-mail to everybody with a Social Security account literally 30 minutes after the bill passed. It was basically a politicized propaganda e-mail claiming with the passage of this bill, “90% of Social Security recipients” no longer will have to pay federal income tax on Social Security earnings”.
This is a misrepresentation. Federal income tax still applies to SS payments, as ever before. What this bill does is allow up to a $6000 deduction from SS payments from federal income tax. And this provision expires at the end of 2028, so it’s a short-lived tip of the hat to seniors. Still they couldn’t be straight and give the actual info to people to whom it affects…
My wife received this e-mail and she stopped me in the middle of our evening TV watching the other night and asked if I had received the same e-mail and whether I thought it was a Russian phishing operation. I looked at it for several minutes and said that it sure looked strange but probably was an outgrowth of DOGE meddling. It was pure Trumpian propaganda and kind of made me gag! I see now that it really is Trump propaganda.
When I got it, last week (it came in Thursday night), I unsubscribed and then deleted it. I don’t need self-congratulatory messages that are lies top to bottom.
My synopsis would be that the Enlightenment itself is a stake here, and because one side simply doesn’t believe in Enlightenment values anymore, it makes them slippery as an eel to those of us who reflexively “follow the rules” the Enlightenment laid out for us all to use. It’s a conundrum to me.
George Lakoff observed that Conservatives are able to think through complex causation, but they don’t, they default to simple morality. It’s really the thesis of Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, that we have two different modes of thinking, fast System 1, which is intuition and slow System 2, deliberate reasoning. System 2 uses words as logical symbols and requires some precision of definition. System 1 uses words to trigger associations and emotions. It’s how they get to tax cuts are good, cutting the deficit is good, so tax cuts and deficit reduction feel good and therefore intuitively go together. System 2 ~= reason, System 1 ~= faith.
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As a philologist, I think about language a lot. I have always been particularly fascinated by the way language can be used to conceal as much as to reveal.
Your analysis is, as always, Marcy, spot on. Reading it made me think about the interplay of the right’s “utilitarian” language and Trump’s incessant and unabashed lying. His lies are as much about discourse domination as they are about disinformation. A quick example would be the lie about Haitians eating pets. That polluted the airways for days until the next lie came along. Trump was in control.
This was a good read, thank you. It was also depressing as hell. I’m sorry if this comment sounds simplistic, but I’m going to say it anyway.
If your hope is to make the great unwashed pay more attention to language, then you’re going to have to speak their language; at least the vernacular. I live out here in the hinterlands, among them; I’m not so different from them. I barely graduated HS, I’ve been a farmer all of my life, I hunt, I drive a pickup truck. I know them. And what I know is, language is an identifier. As long as I don’t speak, I’m invisible. The second I open my mouth I am identified, by the language that I use, as the enemy. You’re right about them understanding power; they just can’t verbalize how they know it. You/we have to speak to it differently when we’re talking to them. They wouldn’t know a pronoun from a proverb if you hit them upside the head with it. None of them watch MTP and they sure as hell don’t listen to, “Wait, Wait, don’t tell me”.
Some will watch Fox, but most don’t. All of their news, their world-view, comes from the FB cesspool and a like-minded, chain-letter existence. The educated portion of the right wing knows this better than anyone; they cultivate it. Speaking to those people does nothing. Finding a way through to the masses of trump supporters, through language, is vital; and we’re doing a terrible job of it.
This is fascinating, Allagashed. I too live among the enormo-pickup-truck set, and can “fit in” —until I open my mouth.
Telling these folks that they’ve been duped will just anger them. I feel like it’s better messaging to tell them that Trump & MAGA have BETRAYED them.
“Trump ain’t worth your loyalty” will resonate better than “YOU fell for Trump”.
In the Catturd Deficit Ball of Thread, Emptywheel pontificating the full extent of Stephen Miller’s influence over the last 10 years, even considering if he was part of the 2016 crew w Don Jr , Microchip, weev, Laura Southern, and Mackey, and also influenced Elon’s 2022 decision to purchase Twitter.
Interesting consideration. Miller has puzzled me, how a Jewish boy from LA has a connection to the alt-right, which is known for antisemitism.
Breitbart is a perfect representation. Posting 11/17/15, with a photo including Andrew Breitbart and Netanyahu, the article “Breitbart News Network: Born in the USA, Conceived in Israel”.
Message: despite the white supremacy and antisemitism we are associated with, we are an asset to Israel’s national security.
https://web.archive.org/web/20181101134720/https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2015/11/17/breitbart-news-network-born-in-the-usa-conceived-in-israel/
3/5/15 – 6/27/16: This was during the time period where Stephen Miller was giving Breitbart directives on what to cover.
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/stephen-millers-affinity-white-nationalism-revealed-leaked-emails/
1/25/16: Miller joins Trump campaign
I don’t recall Miller being associated or discussing Zionism or foreign policy regarding Israel, but this article makes clear that is a priority for his mentor, David Horowitz, so likely Miller.
This August 2020 article about Miller is a helpful read, and I look forward to reading the book it’s adapted from.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/01/stephen-miller-david-horowitz-mentor-389933
Certainly makes me wonder whether Miller is a political warfare asset involving using alt-right to achieve Israeli national security objectives.
Miller has been a white nationalist since he was in HS. His family has basically disowned him.
“We the People”
What a beautiful expression of the ideals of democracy and the American experiment.
Of course, when written into the Constitution’s preamble, We meant white male landowners. But over the centuries We has generally grown more inclusive and expansive.
No longer. Trump, Congress and the Supreme Court are perversely imposing a great narrowing of We.
This is a relatively transparent aspect of the MAGAt right’s utilitarian language. And the new We seems pretty happy about it.
I don’t always agree with you.
And I don’t always have the time, energy, what-have-you to ascertain your meaning, fully and accurately.
And I don’t always have the wisdom to tell the difference.
But this post is gold. May it help many more eyes to see:
Without the meta, cognition can only get a person so far.
It takes a shrewd form of situational awareness to develop a functional theory of the behemoth. Short of that there can be no coherent strategy to defeat it, or even to choose in a meaningful sense any of the terms upon which to engage it.
I’m still thinking about this post. Really gets into your brain and under the skin.
I thought about this when reading about the attempted ICE/Natl Guard take-over in LA’s McArthur Park yesterday. Read a lot of MS-13 this, MS-13 that. (But if they wanted to catch that kind of activity they need to do their take-over at night because like most of America’s city parks, day time activities are completely different from night time activities. Better pics and video in the daytime though.). RWs are excellent with descriptive modifiers that are quick and easy to absorb, and they change them effortlessly as needed. For example- when the threat of the evil and perverted “homosexual” lost its oomph to cause fear (because we came out and people realized their homo family, neighbor, coworker is not evil and perverted) so they said to fear the “not garden variety” homosexuals, then they fine-tuned it to “militant homosexuals” as being the ones to fear. Same is happening with undocumented immigrants- firsts it’s “illegal immigrants’ but then enough people have realized their coworkers, neighbors, etc are illegal but they’re not evil or scary. So then it becomes ’criminal Immigrants’ are evil and to be feared but enough people see the non-criminal are getting wrapped up in that label too. So they change to “MS-13.” I know here in LA we’ve got lots of bad players from other gangs and just people acting independently to do bad things but the RW’s have branded everybody “MS-13” until the RW need to re-brand them again if MS-13 ever loses its oomph..
What can Dems learn from this? Modifying descriptors are super and quickly effective. Like instead of just “oligarchs”. It would be effective to use a descriptor like “destructive oligarchs.” So people can think ‘I like the oligarchs like Bezos and Elon but I hate those ‘destructive oligarchs’ and the Dems are going to go after them.’
As a resident of L.A., I don’t believe their claims about MacArthur Park. It’s in an area that’s full of immigrants, because it’s older and has a lot of cheaper housing and a lot of stores, plus adequate public transportation. (We went there from work a couple of times, to eat at Langer’s, a well-known deli that’s right across from the southeast corner of the park.)
What I’ve been wondering about this whole MacArthur Park scenario is – these are federal forces. Do they bring horses with them? Where are they getting the horses from – borrowing from the LAPD?
CBP would have horses, because a lot of the areas where they work are short on roads.
Makes sense. But they have to park the horse trailers somewhere, and have some local stables to use before the horses are “working”, I would think…
@Matt___B
So would the sheriffs and the LAPD, both of which have mounted units. Could stable some at Griffith Park, I suppose.
PJ – you are right:
Where are lapd horses kept?
Griffith Park
Situated at 3934 Rigali Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90039, the Los Angeles Police Department Mounted Platoon is adjacent to the expansive Griffith Park, making it an ideal location for diverse training opportunities for both officers and horses.
Regarding destroying usefulness of language today’s Boston Globe piece on streaming “Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny,” part of PBS’s “American Masters” series, includes these quotes, “Totalitarianism,” Arendt wrote, “replaces all first-rate talents with crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” and “If everybody always lies to you the consequence is not that you believe the lies but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. And the people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up ts mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”