How populists use the language of us versus them to divide people

In 1939, 15-year-old Berlin Jew Peter Fröhlich and his family fled their homeland, fearing the rampant anti-Semitism that was sweeping their country. After a short stay in Cuba, he arrived safely in the United States in 1941. After becoming an American citizen and changing his name, Peter Gay dedicated his life to understanding the brutal aggression that forced him from his home.

In his magnum opus Cultivating HatredGay writes about how seemingly harmless Victorian cultural activities such as the German tradition mensur (competitive fencing), normalize violence by creating “alibis” that redirect “free-floating fist impulses into socially beneficial energies.”

One such alibi is the Convenient Other. As an “extremely useful alibi for aggression,” the Convenient Other gives “permission to think evil thoughts and perform hostile actions.” These seemingly innocuous alibis, Gay argues, codified the militancy that inspired World Wars I and II. He continues:

The animus has always been the same: be it a nation, a province or a city, be it a religion, a class or a culture – the more a man loved his own, the more he had the right to hate the Other.

As in 20th century Europe, this deadly combination of diametrically opposed emotions – love for us and hatred for their— fuels today’s culture war.

As I wrote recentlyOpportunistic politicians often abuse plural pronouns for political purposes. But although some politicians abuse first-person plural pronouns (We And us) to insincerely build a collective identity, others use their colleagues in the third person (They And their) divide and conquer.

Few political trends make use of this love for us and hatred for their more than populism.

Populist They/Their

Populism is, at best, a vague definition, more impulsive than principled. His supporters find comfort both on the political left (Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and on the right (Donald Trump). For better or worse, populism is growing internationally, reaching significant electoral success in dozens of countries.

Populism thrives on the dichotomy of “us versus them.” us Usually this is “the people” – disenfranchised ordinary people with whom the populist seeks solidarity.

However, the predecessor their is not always clear—and this ambiguity is a feature, not a bug.

An unspecified third party is a convenient front man for the deceitful. IN The Secret Life of PronounsJames Pennebaker shares the results of a study comparing the court records of convicted criminals and those who were later exonerated of their crimes. Those acquitted used more first person singular pronouns (I And to me). Meanwhile, the “truly guilty ones,” Pennebaker notes, used third-person pronouns (They, their, He, sheetc.) more than those rehabilitated “trying to shift the blame from themselves to others.”

Populist inaccuracy They/their provides it with flexibility, making it malleable and applicable to an ever-changing set of purposes. Researchers from Germany’s Friedrich Schiller University Jena are closely monitoring the situation. reviewed The use of pronouns in populist rhetoric. According to their research, populists have a preference for impersonal pronouns such as Theyto avoid specificity, remove responsibility and reduce complexity.

Traditionally, this reductionist worldview is directed against the rich and powerful “elite” – the greedy corporations exploiting the poor on the left, and the globalist cabal undermining cultural homogeneity and national sovereignty on the right.

However, populism also targets other groups, and few can achieve these moving targets better than Donald Trump.

“They will never make America great again”

On June 16, 2015, Trump symbolically descended his tower’s escalator to announce his presidential ambitions. For nearly an hour, then-candidate Trump did what he does best: be a scapegoat. Using nostalgia as a weapon, he lamented that we were once a great nation but now “the American Dream is dead.”

Who killed the American dream? As always, Trump had several suspects.

According to Trump, the likely culprits were foreigners, especially from Mexico (emphasis added):

When Mexico sends its people They They don’t send the best they can. They I’m not sending you away. They I’m not sending you away. They send people who have a lot of problems, and They bringing these problems with you. They bringing drugs. They bringing crime. They rapists. And some, I suppose, are good people.

“They will never make America great again,” Trump concluded.

During this 45-minute speech, Trump used the word They 158 times. By comparison, Trump’s next most frequently used pronouns were You (73 times), This (57) and I (55).

Trump’s repeated tirades against immigrants infamously resurfaced during the last debate. Referring to a now-debunked story about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio, Trump shouted:

They eat dogs. The people who entered They eat cats. They eat domestic animals.

Trump’s bold claim that Haitians eat pets was patently false, but that didn’t stop him from fanning the flames of moral outrage against other marginalized groups.

The Trump campaign has poured millions into attack advertising with not-so-subtle transphobia. One announcement proclaimed: “Kamala’s Agenda They/theirnot you” is an obvious moralizing gesture towards the transgender and non-binary communities.

In the final days of the election, Trump capitalized on this divisive rhetoric by turning his sights on another amorphous target: the “deep state.” “These are bad people,” former president said talking about their political opponents. “We we have a lot of bad people…They for me it is the enemy from within.”

Trump’s ambiguity they/them can scapegoat and dehumanize multiple targets – the deep state, the LGBT community, immigrants, etc. Despite this ambiguity, Trump is sending a clear message: They those who are destroying our country, and We must stop their at any cost. At best, Trump uses a pronoun election tactics and, at worst, dangerous dog whistle.

But Trump didn’t invent the us-versus-them mentality. (Although, if possible, he’ll probably take the credit for it.) Instead, populist pronouns tap into humanity’s worst tribal impulses and nativist instincts.

They are Us

If populism is so dangerous, why is it so attractive? There is no easy answer to this question. However, research shows that people quite naturally fall into the “us versus them” dichotomy.

The “us versus them” worldview once served a vital evolutionary purpose. Skepticism about the unknown is a natural defense mechanism. If pre-modern people had constantly stopped and wondered whether that creature that stared back at them with its stink eye was a predator, humanity would have died out long ago.

Our body’s natural chemistry also encourages this kind of binary thinking. Oxytocin, also known as the “love hormone,” is a natural human hormone that mimics the contractions of the uterus during labor, enhancing our sense of human connection. However, oxytocin also enhances our suspicions of others. This hormonal cocktail of opposite emotions is again love for us and hatred for their— literally flows through our veins.

Moreover, the human brain also rewards such contradictory behavior. Researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University studied The brain activity of college students competing with other students from competing schools. They found that students who showed aggression toward their rivals showed significant activity in the nucleus accumbens and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the brain’s main reward circuitry. This research suggests that this neural pathway, which anticipates, searches for, and evaluates stimuli, plays a “significant role in motivating aggression” toward out-group members.

Even though humans are social animals, they are tragically hardwired into the antisocial binaries that promote today’s toxic political culture.

So, before we condemn the convenient whipping boy (neither Haitian nor Trump), we will have to do a little self-reflection. Understanding the driving forces behind the us versus them paradox—whether it’s manipulative pronouns or human biology—starts with looking in the mirror to find the real enemy within.

Although Adolf Hitler forced his family to flee Germany, Peter Gay also recognized that the violent population – or, in the words of Daniel Goldhagen, “Hitler’s Voluntary Executioners“…gave strength and power to the tyrant. “Hysteria challenged self-control,” Gay writes. – “Obsessive neurosis imitated her.”

In this world of us versus them, we have met the enemy – and They are us.