The US 2016 presidential campaign is nothing short of Orwellian. A billionaire real estate mogul who’s lived the most privileged of American dreams, able to leverage his birthright wealth into fame and celebrity, is now using the political power of that celebrity to usher in a dark American nightmare he calls “making America great again.” The upside-down world of Donald Trump and his legions of angry supporters are trampling on every fundamental notion of what it is to be an American and indeed what values America stands for. America’s most basic institution, its democracy, is now being questioned and assaulted by a man who talks more like an authoritarian dictator than someone running to be the president of the free world.
It needs to be said that the Trump campaign stands on the shoulders of decades of hate and vitriol from many Republicans, who have comfortably graced the “conservative media” landscape. Conservative talk radio brings in high profits all around the country. Even in liberal areas of the country, conservative radio is a dominant force. It greets us where we are, in our cars and in our homes with highly inflammatory anti-liberal political rhetoric. Leaders like Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell have fed this hate beast for so long, it paved the way for Donald Trump. What Trump has added to the equation is a level of ignorance, cynicism and propaganda that is shocking even to staunch Republican Party conservatives.
Trump and his surrogates, appearing daily on every news program to “balance” coverage, have inundated American media with so much hate and ignorance, so many lies, twisted facts and conspiracy theories, that it feels like America is drowning in a swamp of propaganda. Watching cable news or listening to the radio is genuinely anxiety-producing, and I’m sure mine is not the only blood pressure reading that has risen in this election cycle.
Much has been written on Trump’s bullying bigotry and the deplorable xenophobic, racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant rhetoric from his campaign and supporters. What I’d like to focus on here is some aspects of Trump’s language of propaganda.
A common propaganda technique used by Putin’s Kremlin in Russia as well as in Ukraine and Europe is to put out so many lies that people are simply too overwhelmed and exhausted to see clearly. This technique confuses and obfuscates with information overload and whataboutism, ultimately ending up leaving audiences unable to think critically or make sense of all the chaos before them. The idea is that given so many falsehoods, something will stick, and people will be unable to resist succumbing to at least some portion of the lies. Perhaps a broadcaster or journalist politely swats away one lie, meanwhile 50 more pop up.
Such classic propaganda techniques are enhanced by Trump’s ability to use seemingly ordinary language of “common folks,” creating a divided “us versus them” alternative world, a world based more on perception and opinion than reality. Exploiting America’s culture wars and perceived grievances (like the fake “Obama’s war on Christmas”), Trump uses language to put himself squarely in the good-guy camp of the common people, while the others–liberals, Democrats, elites, government institutions, the media–are the enemies. This may be the most insidious among all his sins, creating a cult of personality which he uses to manipulate common working people’s anxiety and insecurities not only through the use of dog-whistles and code-words. He enhances his dog-whistle rhetoric with simple and simplified working-class colloquial vernacular to strengthen his appeal as he widens divisions. Trump’s “regular guy” “authentic” language and entertainer communication style “resonates” with voters because he talks like them and to them.
Trump arouses his audiences as he takes them down his own fact-free road to an alternative reality, pushing his own alternative “facts” and perceptions, laced with fake information, Orwellian misinformation and downright disinformation, couched in highly-charged language to enhance their effectiveness. His goal is to influence public opinion by building rapport — “working the crowd” with chummy engaging language — as if he is a personal friend of his voters. This draws people in. It’s intoxicating and highly manipulative.
How many times have we heard a Trump surrogate or pundit say, “What Mr. Trump meant was ….” When he says something off the rails or contradictory, we are told “Mr. Trump didn’t mean that.” He meant something else, which they proceed to explain. Trump didn’t really mean that Obama and Clinton created ISIS. He didn’t really mean to disrespect Mr. Khan, the Gold Star family father. He didn’t mean that Russia didn’t invade Ukraine or annex Crimea. He didn’t mean what he said about grabbing women by their private parts. How is it that a man is so praised for straight-talking language when so many people have to explain what his words mean?
This is because of the way Trump uses propaganda language techniques to divide and conquer based on perception and emotion, not reality or facts.
Trump’s use of “rigged” is a perfect example of such manipulation. The “system” is in fact “rigged” but FOR Donald Trump, yet in Orwellian Trump’s “us vs. them” alternative world, he uses the word “rigged” to charge the exact opposite, that everyone is AGAINST him. The notion of “rigged” in itself is laden with feelings of injustice and resentment. Such outrageous and inflammatory language riles up the public and manipulates the media as well. As a result, instead of focusing on substantive issues of how Trump has benefited from a system that has always been rigged in his favor, the media is busily dispelling allegations of voter fraud. In so doing, they repeat the false charges over and over, providing for those primed by Trump to distrust the media, the very snippets of language to confirm his false claims. Meanwhile Trump has expanded his “rigged” concept well beyond the election, to virtually everything–TV networks, online media, traditional press, polls, etc. Everyone’s trying to figure out what he means, to interpret his words, a sure sign that Trump speaks a language aimed at a very specific audience for a specific purpose. And they hear him loud and clear.
It’s no coincidence that Trump often says “I hear you” and “I am your voice.” This is conveying more than that he understands his constituency. Trump builds rapport with voters by literally talking like them, a kind of linguistic surrogate to persuade working people that he understands their problems, their insecurities, their anger. He is on their side and in fact one of them, by his very language. It’s of course absurd on its face that an elite privileged billionaire who’s lived a lavish lifestyle since childhood, who’s defrauded workers and contractors in his business life, who’s abused his power with women in the workplace, would somehow be the voice of working-class Americans. Yet Donald Trump has negotiated this role with many Americans, largely because of his ability to use language to build a kind of rapport with the very people he has exploited all his life, while using propaganda to vilify his opponent as an illegitimate and criminal choice.
Trump is able to manipulate his audience because language is a powerful and often unconscious element of identify. Language identifies who you are and where you come from. Sociolinguists study language patterns including accents, word choice, slang, intonation and the like that send signals to listeners about your age, your social group or groups, your gender, whether you are college-educated, etc. Donald Trump uses a variety of rapport-building patterns and strategies together with marketing techniques, phraseology and hyperbole to sell himself as “one of them” and his fake image that he is a working-class hero. He creates his “in-group” (who are special by virtue of understanding his special language), which simultaneously creates an “out-group”—others, whom he demonizes.
Here’s a sampling of some common Trump phrases and rhetoric that I heard just today.
This is your last chance.You’ve never seen anything like this before.
Believe me, folks.
That I can tell you.
People are fed up with stupidity and weakness.
They’re fed up with ISIS, and all of those things.
There’s nothing like this in the history of this country.
Never before in our history has someone so criminal been able to run for president. It’s absolutely disgraceful that Hillary Clinton got away with email scams and corruption.
I know more than the generals.
Our system is rigged like never before.
The system is corrupt, folks. The system is rigged. It’s a broke, corrupt, rigged system. I’ve been saying this for a long long time.
It’s a horrible, horrible situation. What’s going on? Our leaders are stupid. These are stupid stupid people. And they have no commonsense.
The media is rigged. Don’t believe the New York Times. They are all against me. But they’re really against all of you. They look down on the hardworking people of the country. They’re condescending.
I see you and I hear you. I am your voice. Remember, I was on the other side of this equation for a long time. I know.
I will never ever let you down. I promise I will never let you down.
This is big, bigger than Brexit.
Me me me I. Trump uses “I” statements often as a way to instill both trust and authority. He’s never worked in government or been in the military. Yet he paints a dark world of corruption, injustice and incompetence, and then declares that he knows more than everyone, like a “father knows best,” better than our leaders, experts, generals, etc. In this way he presents himself as a trusting father figure. Recall his “I alone can fix it” line from his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. This language is of course reminiscent of some of the most notorious authoritarian leaders in history, including Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, whose survivors and survivors’ children are mortified by recognizing echoes of their parents and grandparents’ traumatic histories.
Hyperbole, repetition, superlatives. Notice also Trump’s use of hyperbole and repetition. These are linguistic strategies that hammer messages home, leading the audience to think what they’re hearing are their only possible options. In other words, you must trust what Trump is telling you because things are so dire that the sky is about to fall. Trump repeats and tweets “This is your last chance,” a phrase a car salesman uses when he tries to close a deal with a customer so they don’t walk away. This language creates a stress response, and is anxiety-inducing, trapping the listener to buy into a sense of false impending disaster.
Colloquial extremes. Further building on the psychological agitation is Trump’s use of extremes like “fed up,” “rigged,” “disaster” and repeating them often. There’s something powerful and engaging when someone speaks so resolutely and audacious, using words that many don’t use in polite company. We don’t think of American English as having a literary language that is all that different from colloquial language, as in French, for example, but of course we do. It’s natural for people to write differently from how they talk, and to use language differently in different settings. We talk in a house of worship differently from a classroom or a boardroom or a bar. We speak differently to our family at home than we do with our bosses at work.
Some of this is rooted in a generalized private and public distinction. But Trump’s characteristic rule-breaking style also breaks language conventions, and that gets a rise from people. He uses a crass, in-your-face confrontational style of speaking, which includes insults, name-calling, even accusations of criminality, all of which feels jarring precisely because we are witnesses to the breaking of conventions as we are listening to him. And those who are present at Trump rallies feel this even more strongly, as confirmed by many journalists and writers who have described their experiences as witnesses to the extremely agitated crowds.
Attacking people with a characterization like “stupid” or “crooked” also gets an emotional rise out of people, precisely because ad hominem slurs and smears are rarely said openly in public. And certainly not on a national stage or in a political campaign.
To be sure Trump has debased political discourse. It’s unsettling and worrisome thinking about where all the agitation and anger goes after the election is over. It’s more than likely Donald Trump will not be president, thankfully, but the important question is, what will the agitated people he now commands do to the country they purport to love so much? A new TrumpTV news network looks to be a likely reality on the horizon, with an extreme alt-right bent. Right-wing media like Fox News and talk radio figureheads like Rush Limbaugh will also continue their agitation of the electorate. The media will continue to be attacked, government will continue to be demoralized, and the first woman president will be delegitimized as was the first African-American president.
What will we do? What will you do? Putin and Russia will continue foreign pressure and agitation. But Americans never anticipated that the same kind of propaganda techniques would take hold in the United States, “land of the free and home of the brave.”
The 2016 election has exposed a brave new world of gaping holes in traditional journalism as well as news presentation and analysis. How will the media and importantly the cable TV networks respond to these vulnerabilities? Will CNN continue to have talking heads spew unchallenged lies on their panels? Or will pro-Trump talking heads Jeffrey Lord, Corey Lewandowski and Kayleigh McEnany and their false balance fade into the background? Will there be a government or NGO responses to push for more accuracy and responsibility in media?
In this teachable moment, it’s important to recognize that America’s great democracy, a beacon of hope to so many in other parts of the world, is an experiment and is not a guarantee. Democracy cannot survive too much ignorance, as former Supreme Court Justice David Souter said ominously in a 2012 interview. I would add, given what we know of Russian meddling and Trump’s financial and PR ties and of course his unsubtle Putin bromance, that we are too easily kept ignorant through propaganda. And so we must be vigilant in calling out not only the obvious dissemination of lies, distortions and mind-numbing conspiracies. We must also recognize the more subtle propaganda techniques and language patterns used so skillfully by Trump and his campaign to manipulate Americans into following an Orwellian candidate down his rigged rabbit hole.
Related:
- Wondering how Trump could happen? Look to Russia
- Russian opposition journalist: Trump threat to entire world order, as well as America itself
- Ukrainian politicians denounce Trump’s readiness to legitimize Putin’s Crimean anschluss
- Trump is Putin’s ‘most useful idiot’ because he believes what he says, Piontkovsky says
- Anti-Americanism is ‘cult of Putin’s Russia’ with all the consequences thereof, Pastukhov says
- The globalization of Putinism
- Russian propaganda meddling in US election: RT calls Hillary Clinton the new Joseph McCarthy
- Moscow set to exploit its infiltration of US politics long after November
- Why Americans fall for Kremlin propaganda
- 15-point checklist of Putin regime’s propaganda techniques
