“No profanity.”
That is the one rule spelled out on an indication in Lance Walker’s barbershop in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, the place political dialogue between purchasers can get heated.
Three weeks earlier than the election, on Oct. 14, 2024, I watched as Walker interviewed Michele Jansen, a conservative native discuss present host, and Don Marritz, a liberal authorized support legal professional additionally residing in Pennsylvania, in his podcast studio.
Jansen and Marritz mentioned the difficulties that they had confronted within the previous months as they struggled to draft a doc referred to as Declaration Rejecting Political Violence. Finally, greater than 250 group leaders and residents in Franklin and Adams counties in Pennsylvania signed on.
This effort – a part of a mission centered on stopping political violence run by the nonprofit group City Rural Motion, or UR Motion – nearly fell aside over an argument over together with the phrase “insurrection.”
Certainly, phrases have grow to be contentious on the American political panorama. They flip dinner conversations into battlefields. And so they present politicians with gas to stoke the flames of polarization.
An anthropologist, I’ve lengthy studied worldwide political violence and its prevention. Extra just lately, I’ve executed associated analysis within the U.S. that resulted in a 2021 ebook, “It Can Happen Here.”
Now I’m learning poisonous polarization within the U.S. and methods to cut back it. I’ve attended Make America Nice Once more occasions and spoken to voters who supported Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.
I’ve additionally noticed the work of teams resembling UR Motion that attempt to bridge political divides.
Throughout this analysis, I’ve discovered that some phrases are sometimes understood in another way by these on reverse sides of the political aisle. Because of this, misunderstandings create stress and typically provoke anger.
Turning into conscious of how and why sure phrases upset these with completely different political beliefs, then, is a key step in decreasing polarization. Listed here are 5 that may set off Trump supporters and additional isolate them from liberal People.
Trump supporters react whereas watching the election outcomes on Nov. 5, 2024, in West Palm Seashore, Fla.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Photos
‘Incitement’ and ‘insurrection’
The suggestion that Trump incited an rebellion on Jan. 6, 2021, on the U.S. Capitol sparked the combat over the wording of the political violence denunciation.
Jansen later defined to me that she was involved about widespread accusations that Trump incited violence on the U.S. Capitol – and that, extra broadly, “people on the right are more targeted as hateful and using hate speech.”
Chad Collie, one other conservative member of the UR Motion declaration staff, instructed me in an interview that Trump supporters “take offense” when the phrases “incitement” and “insurrection” are used to explain Trump’s Jan. 6 rally. Of their view, he added, Trump’s rally close to the White Home was a largely peaceable “protest” hijacked by a small variety of violent individuals who stormed the Capitol.
Extra broadly, many Trump voters consider that the president-elect is the sufferer of “lawfare,” which means efforts to unjustly use legal guidelines to assault political opponents.
As proof, some Trump supporters level to the defeat of each of his impeachments and varied prison court docket circumstances introduced in opposition to Trump, most of which have been paused or dismissed after he gained the 2024 election.
Wokeness triggers like ‘they-them’ and ‘equity’
“Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
Assault advertisements that function phrases like this don’t essentially win elections.
However gender id was a nonstop speaking level on the dozen or so MAGA occasions I attended forward of the election. Audio system there always mocked using nonbinary pronouns and blasted the “radical left” for “transgender insanity.” This “insanity,” of their view, consists of points resembling transgender folks utilizing bogs that match their gender id and collaborating in sports activities competitions.
The phrase “equity” – together with associated phrases resembling “diversity,” “critical race theory,” “social justice,” “privilege” and “DEI,” quick for “diversity, equity and inclusion” – may anger a Trump supporter.
They affiliate these phrases with a “woke” and even “communist” agenda that they suppose the “radical left” is attempting to impose on them.
Whereas some folks suppose that these phrases converse to efforts to acknowledge that teams of marginalized folks, together with folks of shade and girls, have lengthy confronted discrimination, many Trump supporters suppose that associated “woke” insurance policies threaten their free speech and particular person and household rights.
A Trump supporter attends a marketing campaign rally on Nov. 2, 2024, in Greensboro, N.C.
Alex Brandon/AP
‘Racist’
Trump supporters had been referred to as “deplorables” by former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016.
However my interviews and observations present that no phrase, not even “fascist,” stings Trump supporters as a lot as being referred to as a “racist,” an accusation that’s extensively used in opposition to them.
As Matt Schlapp, the pinnacle of the conservative group Conservative Political Motion Committee, which runs the annual CPAC convention, laments in a ebook, “There is no way to escape its putrid stink.” The “racist” label, Schlapp explains from expertise, shames, stigmatizes and makes an individual afraid to talk.
Extra broadly, using “racist” and associated phrases performs into many Trump voters’ perceptions and anger that Democrats are elitist liberals who they suppose look down upon and even hate them.
Trump and Republican influencers steadily play on this resentment. Trump, for instance, wore an orange and yellow security vest as he sat in a rubbish truck after Biden referred to them as “garbage.”
Trump’s supporters quickly began carrying vests and even rubbish luggage to his preelection occasions to point out their help for Trump.
Nobody, nonetheless, wore a shirt to a Trump rally emblazoned with the phrase “racist.”
Phrases are like bees
America’s political division is intertwined with how language – typically a single phrase – may be understood in another way by liberals and conservatives and set off a unfavorable response.
This actuality has coverage implications.
For instance, when Philanthropy for Energetic Civic Engagement, a company searching for to boost civic and democratic life, examined perceptions of civic phrases beginning in 2019, they discovered that utilizing sure works resembling “equity” is usually perceived as “liberal and college educated.” Their survey discovered that conservatives view phrases resembling “diversity,” “social justice,” “racial equity” and “activism” rather more negatively than liberals.
These findings have led organizations that attempt to lower political polarization within the U.S. to switch their messaging and extra usually use phrases resembling “unity,” “citizens” and “liberty,” which the civics language examine discovered appeals to each liberals and conservatives.
Phrases don’t simply provoke, then. They will additionally present a path ahead.
Because the saying goes, “Words are like bees; some create honey, but others leave a sting.”