`
In 1939, a 15-year-old Jewish Berliner, Peter Fröhlich, and his family fled their homeland, fearing the virulent antisemitism taking over their country. After a brief stay in Cuba, he safely arrived in the United States in 1941. Upon becoming an American citizen and changing his name, Peter Gay dedicated his life to understanding the violent aggression that forced him to leave his home.
In his magnum opus, The Cultivation of Hatred, Gay writes about how seemingly innocuous Victorian cultural activities, such as the German tradition of mensur (competitive fencing), normalize violence by crafting âalibisâ that divert âfree-floating pugilistic impulses into socially profitable energies.â
One such alibi is the âConvenient Other.â As âan immensely serviceable alibi for aggression,â the Convenient Other grants âpermission to think angry thoughts and commit hostile acts.â These seemingly harmless alibis, Gay argues, systematized the bellicosity that inspired World War I and World War II. He continues:
The animus was always the same: whether nation, province, or city, whether religion, class, or cultureâthe more one loved oneâs own, the more one was entitled to hate the Other.
As it did in 20th-century Europe, this lethal combination of diametrically opposed emotionsâlove of us and hatred of themâfuels todayâs culture war.
As I wrote recently, opportunistic politicians often abuse plural pronouns for political purposes. But while some politicians abuse first-person plural pronouns (we and us) to insincerely build a collective identity, others use their third-person counterparts (they and them) to divide and conquer.
Few political trends leverage this love of us and hatred of them more than populism.
The Populist They/Them
Populism is, at best, a loosely defined termâmore impulsive than principled. Its practitioners find solace in both the political left (Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and right (Donald Trump). For better or worse, populism is on the rise internationally, achieving significant electoral success in dozens of countries.
Populism thrives in an us-versus-them dichotomy. The us is typically âthe peopleââthe disempowered everyday folk with whom the populist seeks solidarity.
However, the antecedent to them isnât always clearâand this ambiguity is a feature, not a bug.
A vague third person is a convenient strawman for the deceitful. In The Secret Life of Pronouns, James Pennebaker shares findings from a study comparing the court transcripts of convicted felons and those later exonerated of their crimes. The exonerated used more first-person singular pronouns (I and me). Meanwhile, the âtruly guilty,â Pennebaker notes, used third-person pronouns (they, them, he, she, etc.) more than the exonerated, âtrying to shift the blame away from themselves onto others.â
The imprecision of the populist they/them enables its flexibility, making it malleable and applicable to an ever-changing array of targets. Researchers from Germanyâs Friedrich Schiller University Jena closely examined pronoun usage in populist rhetoric. According to their study, populists favor impersonal pronouns, such as they, to avoid specificity, absolve responsibility, and reduce complexity.
Traditionally, this reductionist worldview rails against a wealthy and powerful âeliteââgreedy corporations exploiting the poor on the left and a globalist cabal undermining cultural homogeneity and national sovereignty on the right.
However, populism also sets its sights on other groupsâand few are better at hitting these moving targets than Donald Trump.
âThey Will Never Make America Great Againâ
On June 16, 2015, Trump iconically descended his towerâs escalators to announce his presidential ambitions. For nearly an hour, then-candidate Trump did what he does best: scapegoat. With weaponized nostalgia, he lamented how we were once a great nation, but now the âAmerican Dream is dead.â
Who killed the American Dream? As always, Trump had a few suspects.
According to Trump, foreigners, especially those from Mexico, were a likely culprit (emphasis added):
When Mexico sends its people, theyâre not sending their best. Theyâre not sending you. Theyâre not sending you. Theyâre sending people that have lots of problems, and theyâre bringing those problems with us. Theyâre bringing drugs. Theyâre bringing crime. Theyâre rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
âThey will never make America great again,â Trump concluded.
During this 45-minute address, Trump used the word they 158 times. Comparatively, Trumpâs next most-used pronouns were you (73 times), it (57), and I (55).
Trumpâs repeated tirades against immigrants infamously reappeared during the most recent debate. Citing the now-debunked story of Haitian immigrants eating household pets in Ohio, Trump shouted:
Theyâre eating the dogs. The people that came in, theyâre eating the cats. Theyâre eating the pets.
Trumpâs audacious claim about pet-eating Haitians was demonstrably false, but that didnât stop him from fanning the flames of moral outrage toward other marginalized groups.
Trumpâs campaign has dumped millions into attack ads with not-so-subtle transphobia. One ad proclaimed, âKamalaâs agenda is they/them, not youââan obvious wag of his moralistic finger at the transgender and nonbinary communities.
In the closing days of the election, Trump has leaned into this divisive rhetoric by setting his crosshairs on another amorphous target: the âdeep state.â âThese are bad people,â the former president said when referring to his political opponents. âWe have a lot of bad peopleâŠThey are, to me, the enemy from within.â
Trumpâs ambiguous they/them can aptly scapegoat and dehumanize multiple targetsâthe âdeep state,â the LGBTQ community, immigrants, etc. Despite this ambiguity, Trump sends a clear message: They are whoâs destroying our country, and we must stop them at all costs. Trumpâs pronoun usage is, at best, an electioneering tactic and, at worst, a virulent dog whistle.
But Trump didnât invent this us-versus-them mentality. (Though, if given the opportunity, heâd probably take credit for it.) Instead, populist pronouns tap into humanityâs worst tribalistic impulses and nativist instincts.
They are Us
If populism is so dangerous, why is it so appealing? This question doesnât have an easy answer. However, research suggests that human beings come about the us-versus-them dichotomy quite naturally.
The us-versus-them worldview once served a vital evolutionary purpose. Skepticism of the unknown is a natural defense mechanism. If premodern humans continuously paused and pondered whether that thing over there giving them the stink eye was a predator, humanity would have been extinct long ago.
Our bodyâs natural chemistry also compels this binary thinking. Oxytocinâalso known as the âlove hormoneââis a natural human hormone that simulates uterine contractions during childbirth, enhancing our feelings of human bonding. However, oxytocin also intensifies our suspicions of others. This hormonal cocktail of antithetical emotionsâagain, the love for us and hatred of themâliterally courses through our veins.
Moreover, the human brain rewards this contradictory behavior, too. Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University studied the brain activity of college students competing against other students
Source link