by James B. Greenberg, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Founding Editor of the Journal of Political Ecology, and past president of the Political Ecology Society - https://substack.com/@jamesbgreenberg
[As noted on the preceding post, I find Greenberg's anthropological analyses insightful and instructive (especially the two I have reproduced here on this blogpost). Whether or not you fully agree, I commend his posts to you for sharpening your own analyses. - jnj]
The War of Words: Trump’s Assault on Truth and Belonging
In authoritarian movements, speech is not just communication—it’s strategy. Trump’s language doesn’t just reflect division; it creates it, framing enemies, rewriting truth, and purging the boundaries.
We’ve often been told to ignore what Trump says and watch what he does. It’s a familiar bit of advice—practical, even cynical—but dangerously incomplete. Because with Trump, language is not just talk. It’s a form of action. His words don’t simply reflect his thinking; they shape political reality. They frame enemies, test boundaries, and preempt resistance.
In any authoritarian movement, language plays a central role. It doesn’t merely accompany violence—it prepares the ground for it. It legitimizes, incites, and conceals. Words are not secondary to power. They are part of how power works.
Trump’s language—his limited vocabulary, his framing devices, his repeated use of slurs—is more than performance. It is political strategy. A means of defining who belongs, who threatens, and who must be removed. It marks out targets, inflames loyalty, and lowers the threshold for repression.
As an anthropologist, I’ve studied how language defines social boundaries—who is considered inside the moral community and who is placed outside of it. Trump’s rhetoric functions that way. He doesn’t engage in debate; he assigns labels. Once labeled, people and institutions become easier to dismiss, discredit, or attack. What begins as language becomes the rationale for action—firing civil servants, banning books, rewriting curricula, deporting migrants, criminalizing dissent.
Trump speaks not to explain but to polarize. He positions disagreement as betrayal. He reframes dissent as a threat.
From the outset, he has used a narrow set of inflammatory terms to stigmatize perceived enemies. Immigrants were called “rapists,” “criminals,” and “invaders.” Journalists became “enemies of the people.” Judges were labeled “corrupt.” Universities that teach critical thinking are cast as “anti-American.” Over time, these labels have expanded to include Democrats, liberals, and even Republicans unwilling to show personal loyalty.
Words like socialist, radical, globalist, and fascist have lost specific meaning. They are now used interchangeably as political weapons. What starts as accusation becomes category. Once someone is placed in that category, punishment becomes not just permissible, but expected.
None of this is spontaneous. Trump recycles a core set of terms—disloyal, un-American, rigged, corrupt, treasonous—and applies them not just to individuals, but entire institutions. In anthropological terms, this is a form of moral boundary work. The goal is to separate “the people” from their supposed enemies and reduce politics to loyalty tests.
Language like this works slowly but decisively. Slurs become slogans. Slogans become categories. Categories become policy. And policies become acts of exclusion and repression—loyalty oaths, purges, surveillance, mass deportation.
In authoritarian systems, the groundwork is often linguistic. Words come first. They establish who can be harmed and why. They simplify complex realities into threats. They shift the burden of proof from accuser to accused. They make violence thinkable.
Trump’s pattern is consistent: stigmatize, isolate, then punish. First it was immigrants. Then Muslims. Then journalists. Judges. Professors. Now it’s universities, political opponents, and even Republican officials who refuse to fall in line. What we’re seeing is not just a politics of insult—it’s the language architecture of a purge.
Trump understands the power of framing. If critics are redefined as traitors, silencing them appears patriotic. If dissent is recast as subversion, repression becomes self-defense. If the meanings of freedom, loyalty, and truth are bent far enough, democratic norms collapse from within while retaining their names.
This is scapegoating with structure. It displaces responsibility onto vulnerable groups while reinforcing the authority of those in power. But Trump goes further—he institutionalizes it. His rallies function not just as political events, but as spectacles of blame and reaffirmation. Public enemies are named. Loyalty is measured. And symbolic violence is rehearsed.
The deeper threat is not just Trump’s language, but the erosion of the norms that once held it in check. Democracy depends on more than laws—it depends on shared understandings of fairness, truth, and restraint. When those are undermined, language becomes a means of domination, not communication.
This is not a debate over policy. It’s an attack on the foundations of democratic culture—on complexity, critical thought, and pluralism. The institutions that protect these values—universities, courts, the press—are being systematically undermined by repetition and stigma.
Trump’s words are not random. They’re calibrated. They measure public tolerance, identify targets, and shape what comes next. And what comes next—if unchecked—won’t be metaphor. It will be lived experience. In law. In policy. In the daily lives of those marked as enemies.
Repetition is not a flaw in this system—it’s a feature. The constant stream of accusation wears down resistance. It encourages passivity. It replaces dialogue with reflex.
This is why we cannot treat Trump’s rhetoric as background noise. It is a signal. A scaffolding for political transformation. It is already changing how millions of Americans think about who belongs and who does not—about what democracy is, and what it is for.
Authoritarian turns rarely begin with laws. They begin with language. When certain people become unspeakable, it becomes easier to make them disappear.
Trump has told us what he plans to do. He is telling us still. We just need to take him seriously—and listen carefully.
Selected Readings
Cohen, Stanley. States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001.
Klemperer, Victor. The Language of the Third Reich: LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii. London: Athol Books, 2002.
Lakoff, George. Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004.
Mbembe, Achille. Necropolitics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019.
Stanley, Jason. How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. New York: Random House, 2018.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
Wodak, Ruth. The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. London: SAGE, 2015.
