Name-calling was a regular feature of recess during my elementary school years. Boys taunted girls, who would yell back, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
This phrase may have been one of the first pieces of misinformation that successfully convinced many in my generation that words don’t take casualties. Today, I am aware of the consequences of language. Words are the weapons of bullies, who inflict their verbal violence far beyond the playground.
Social media has enabled people to torment, tease and persecute those they target. When verbal abuse goes viral, the consequences go far beyond hurt feelings. Phoebe Prince, a 16-year-old student from South Hadley who committed suicide to escape an organized campaign of online and in-person bullying, is one of many murdered by words.
Words have the power to dehumanize people. At the extreme, words can lead to genocide. The Rwandan genocide was fueled by media propaganda that capitalized on stoking fear among Hutus of their Tutsi neighbors, who were referred to over and over again as “cockroaches.” Words were the weapons that convinced Hutus to hack 800,000 Tutsis to death. Hitler, the master of verbal violence, used the tactics of fear to convince Germans that Jewish “vermin” were plotting to take over the world, leading to the murders of 6 million Jews. Imagine what the world might look like today if he had access to social media.
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it … the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state.”
His words are frighteningly relevant today. The president of the United States has tweeted thousands of hateful messages, in an effort to carry out his agenda of white supremacy. His words are efforts to divide Americans based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual preference. And it works!
The constant repetition that he is a victim of a conspiracy by Democrats to remove him from office has convinced Trump’s base, and others as well, that their president is an innocent. According to the Washington Post, as of Oct. 14, Trump has made 14,345 false or misleading claims, an average of 14 lies a day. The global reach of his lies is staggering, thanks to social media.
We live in the age of misinformation in which truth has become completely subjective for many. Trump’s accusations against Joe Biden’s son, his statement that Mexicans are rapists, and that caravans of immigrants are coming to invade our country are easily proven to be lies, but truth is irrelevant.
Trump’s supporters live in an echo chamber where the voices of Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Lindsey Graham substitute propaganda for truth. Echo chambers feed their versions of the truth to most of us. We surround ourselves with news sources that reflect our belief systems, associating with those whose opinions match up with our own.
We log on each day looking for something resembling truth, but don’t know how to assess fact from fiction. Search engines’ algorithms assess us and feed us false information that supports what we believe. Studies have shown that we are prone to believe stories and statements consistent with our beliefs, making us easy prey for propagandists on both sides of the political divide.
The ripple effect of propaganda is staggering. The murderers who killed gay, lesbian, and trans people in Orlando, African-Americans in Charleston, Muslims in Christ Church and Jews in Pittsburgh, were motivated by hate speech, including the words of the supposed “leader of the free world.”
Lies are a powerful tool in the 2020 elections. “Do Nothing Democrats,” is a tweet Trump repeats to convince the electorate that Democrats, preoccupied with impeachment, are ignoring the needs of the American people.
The phrase has caught on. Amazon now sells bumper stickers that say, “Do nothing Democrats are hurting America.” Yet, this year the House has sent dozens of bills to the Senate, where they end up stalled in what has been termed, “the graveyard.”
Just one day ago, the House passed a new voting rights bill, restoring important protections to the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court had removed. The bill, opposed by Republicans, will likely join the others buried in “the graveyard.”
Just one word can have a huge impact on how we think about an issue. The word, “electability,” repeated over and over again in the media, has effectively hypnotized Democrats into believing that only a white male can beat Trump. As a result, not one person of color will be taking the stage at the next Democratic presidential debate.
Without empirical evidence, “electability” has dominated all other factors in the media that determine candidates’ strengths, leaving out the voices of candidates of color and women.
Words can destroy a person. Words can destroy democracy. #Discover the truth and spread it.
Sara Weinberger of Easthampton is a professor emerita of social work and writes a monthly column. She can be reached at columnists@gazettenet.com.