2. HATE-FILLED POLITICAL RHETORIC, ATCS, AND THE USA

In recent years, scholarly attention has increasingly focused upon the analysis of ATCs produced by members of extremist groups (Miller Reference Miller2008, Pennebaker Reference Pennebaker2011, Meloy Reference Meloy2014, Schuurman Reference Schuurman2015, Chiluwa Reference Chiluwa2016). Part of the reason for this focus has been the alarming incidence of deadly critical and major incidents perpetrated by offenders inspired in whole or in part by the incendiary rhetoric of charismatic leaders of underground extremist organizations (e.g. the American Nazi Party, Confederate Hammerskins, the KKK). In such cases, the offenders often see themselves as ‘foot soldiers’ in an invisible war (Cacialli Reference Cacialli2010, Meloy et al. Reference Meloy, Mohandie, Knoll and Hoffmann2015). This blind allegiance may not only be given to revered figure-heads of clandestine terrorist organizations. The political leaders of legal, well-established, governmental institutions may also serve as the object of toxic identification, especially when they resort to hate-filled, populist, rhetorical strategies common to extremist organizations. It is the recognition of this potentially lethal development that has led many to raise the warning flag in response to the increasing frequency and severity of inflammatory rhetoric used by mainstream politicians.

For many European observers, the pinnacle of incendiary political speech is the United States. Without doubt, personalized attacks against political opponents have a long, rather ignominious history (Chernow Reference Chernow2017). However, even by US American standards, the acceptable limits of combative political rhetoric were breached during the 2016 presidential election. For many, the crescendo of this political pugilism was reached in the final race between Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican Party newcomer, Donald J. Trump. In September 2016, for example, Hillary Clinton described many of Trump supporters as a ‘basket of deplorables’ made up of people with racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic attitudes (Reilly Reference Reilly2016: paragraph 1). For his own part, the then presidential candidate Trump also made numerous, highly controversial, deeply divisive remarks disparaging ethnoracial and religious minorities, women, immigrants, and members of the LGBT community (Cohen Reference Cohen2017, Silva Reference Silva2018). Although causality is notoriously difficult to establish, the candidates’ verbal animosities seemed to serve as powerful kindling for politically-motivated violence (Dickerson Reference Dickerson2016).

A particularly disturbing case in point occurred on June 14, 2017, when 66-year-old, dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, James Hodgkinson, opened fire during a congressional baseball game in Washington, D.C., critically injuring a police officer and several Republican lawmakers (Britt Reference Britt2017, Person Reference Persons2017, Reuters 2017). Just two months later, in Charlottesville, Virginia, James Fields, a 20-year-old, self-avowed white nationalist, plowed his car into anti-nazi demonstrators, injuring 19 and killing one: 32-year-old civil rights activist, Heather Heyer (ABC News 2017). Although on opposite sides of the political spectrum, both lone-assailants had much in common: pre-existing mental health issues, an obsessive fixation with inflammatory political rhetoric, toxic identification with a mainstream party, and a history of threatening communications (Shear, Goldman & Cochrane Reference Shear, Goldman and Cochrane2017, Sheth Reference Sheth2017).

These highly publicized acts of US domestic terrorism were viewed with considerable concern by Europeans with an eye to their own elections, their worry being that the unusually aggressive rhetorical style of the 2016 US presidential race could detrimentally affect the comportment of European politicians and their societies at-large (Aalberg et al. Reference Aalberg, Esser, Reinemann, Strömbäck and de Vreese2017). Such worries are not unfounded. Aside from the danger that overly acrimonious rhetoric by politicians may help to legitimize intolerance within mainstream society, there is also the risk that it may catalyze future acts of verbal and physical violence (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights 2016). As Anderson-Nathe & Gharabaghi (Reference Anderson-Nathe and Gharabaghi2017:3) state:

Despite these dangers, psycholinguistic research into politically-motivated threatening communications has traditionally concerned itself with the potential risk private citizens pose to political leaders (e.g. Calhoun Reference Calhoun1998, Reference Calhoun2001; Borum et al. Reference Borum, Fein, Vossekuil and Berglund1999; Baumgartner et al. Reference Baumgartner, Scalora and Plank2001; Scalora et al. Reference Scalora, Baumgartner, Callaway, Zimmerman, Hatch-Maillette, Palarea, Krebs, Covell and Washington2002; Meloy, Sheridan & Hoffmann Reference Meloy, Sheridan and Hoffmann2008; Chauvin Reference Chauvin2011; Meloy Reference Meloy2014; Hoffmann, Meloy & Sheridan Reference Hoffmann, Reid Meloy and Sheridan2014). By contrast, the potential impact of high-ranking politicians’ aggressive rhetoric on the threatening communications produced by private citizens has been relatively overlooked. The purpose of this investigation is to help address this oversight.

4. FINDINGS

The ATCs were randomly identified in and collected from 15 different states. In alphabetical order, the states represented in the corpus with the number of ATCs recovered within them is as follows: California (2), Florida (2), Georgia (2), Illinois (1), Iowa (2), Massachusetts (3), Michigan (1), Missouri (1), Nevada (1), New York (2), North Carolina (2), Texas (5), Washington (3), West Virginia (1), and Wisconsin (1). While all of the major regions of the continental US were represented, the South and the Midwest were particularly prevalent. Accounting for 16.13% of the corpus, Texas contributed the largest share of ATCs recovered for this investigation. The bulk of the communications (56.67%) were reported between the 15th and the 18th of November.

Of the ATCs in the corpus, 73.33% made explicit mention of the 2016 US presidential election and/or one of the leading candidates. The most commonly occurring proper noun in the corpus was Trump (e.g. Go TRUMP!, TRUMP COUNTRY!, Trump won!). References to the election were not always this direct, however. Sometimes, they were simple declarations that would only make sense within the post-election context (e.g. We won!).

With regard to the ATC-recipients’ identities, four different minority groups were attacked: (i) racial, ethnic, or national (13.33%); (ii) religious (20.00%); (iii) sexual orientation/gender (40.00%); and (iv) mixed (26.67%), where more than one of the aforementioned characteristics seemed to have been targeted. For example, in one instance, a family of Muslim immigrants from the Sudan was sent an ATC. In this case, it was impossible to discern whether the object of the ATC-sender's negative attention was the family's immigrant status, religion, or both. Overall, however, there seems to have been a good deal of overlap between the hatred expressed for Muslims and foreigners. A closer examination of the ATCs expressing hatred towards a racial, ethnic, or national heritage revealed that 75.00% were anti-immigrant. Moreover, in the subset of ATCs with utterances explicitly attacking a religious grouping, 66.67% were anti-Islamic and 33.33% were anti-Semitic.

It is important to note that in 33.33% of all the cases examined, the ATC targets were not identical to the ATC recipients. In one instance, for example, the same message was sent to all of the residents of a major apartment complex without regard for the individual demographic identities. An extract from this ATC is displayed below:

1. (5) PLEASE DO NOT SELL OR RENT YOUR HOMES TO THEM

   [Muslims, Indians, Blacks, and Jews]

   WE ARE EVERYWHERE AND WATCHING EVERY MOVE

In the first line of extract (5), an explicit direct request is made. According to some theorists, the realization of the request via an imperative as opposed to the more indirect communicative alternative of an interrogative (e.g. Can/Could/Would you please not sell or rent . . .) ‘already constitutes a significant breach of Anglo-American politeness norms’ (Searle Reference Searle1979, Brown & Levinson Reference Brown and Levinson1987, Leech Reference Leech1990). The use of the conventionalized politeness marker PLEASE does little to soften this effect. This initial face-threatening illocutionary act then receives immediate reinforcement in the following line. Note the aspect, tense, and mood utilized in the double declarative: the omnipresence of the message-sender is underscored by the simple present indicative which is used for expressing a constant state of being or a natural law. Along with that, the simple continuous is used for indicating that an action – in this case surveillance – is currently taking place. The cumulative perlocutionary effect is coercion and threat. The fact that the message recipients are asked for compliance does not change this effect. What is key here is that an attempt is made to secure compliance through duress (Trosborg Reference Trosborg1995).

As in the example above, in 76.67% of the cases examined, the ATCs had been hand-delivered rather than mailed via the postal service or electronic means. An examination of the locations where these ATCs had been discovered revealed that the majority (43.3%) had been delivered to the ATC recipients’ homes. Accounting for 26.67% of the sample, the second most common delivery site was the recipients’ cars. This location was followed closely by the recipients’ place of work (23.33%). Finally, 1.3% of the ATCs were left at the recipients’ place of worship. The chi-square tests revealed no significant differences in the delivery locations.

Overall, the ATCs were exceedingly short communications, with the average page length and number of words 1.10 and 61.27, respectively. The shortest communication contained only four words and the longest 1,099 words. In 66.67% of cases, the ACTs were handwritten messages scrawled on scraps of paper. A little less than one-third (30.30%) were prepared using a computer and just over one-quarter (26.67%) contained symbols, imagery, or drawings. The most common image was the swastika.

In keeping with the ‘letter-genre’, 60.00% opened with some form of salutation. However, in contrast to non-threatening written communications, these openers were more often than not pejorative (e.g. Hey Faggot, Hey Dumbass, Hey Looser, Hey). In the three instances where the standard formulaic Dear was employed, it was immediately followed by an insult (e.g. Dear Nigga (As you like to say)). Thus, from the very first line of text, the ATC recipients were confronted with verbal aggression. This combative stance was further reflected in the fact that 16.67% of the messages depicted the target as non-human (e.g. vermin, trash, a disease). However, generally speaking, the message writers preferred profanity over injurious metonymy.

In 59.90% of the ATCs, at least one instance of obscenity was utilized. The selection of vulgarities targeted four aspects of identity: sexual orientation, gender, religion, and ethnoracial identity/association (e.g. bitch, dike, faggot, hymie, nigger, nigger-lover). Aside from their surface face-threatening function, these negative vocatives were commonly used to magnify the underlying perlocutionary function of the ATCs’ primary illocutionary point (PIP). The obscenities accordingly appeared in one of three syntactic positions: (i) integrated within the PIP (25.00%); (ii) framing the PIP, immediately before and/or afterwards (43.75%); and (iii) both within and around the PIP (31.25%). Examples of each appear below:

1. (6) FAggoTs GeT OuT!

2. (7) Get out of our neighborhood NOW

   FAGGOTS!!

3. (8) HEY FAGGOT

   We won, so you better WATCH YOURE bACK. YOU'RE dAys ARE NUMbERd. YOU Will SEE you COCK SUCKER

In extract (6), the directive illocutionary act of ordering gays to leave the country is heightened by the use of the pejorative faggots at the head of the utterance. In (7), the same illocutionary act is performed; however, the perlocutionary boost appears after the directive, in the subsequent line. Extract (8) is a bit more complex. Here, a mutually-reinforcing syntactic chain of three idiomatic expressions with complementary denotative meanings is used. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the first phrase is used to tell someone to be attentive or vigilant. The second is used to say someone will ‘die, fail, or end soon’. Finally, the third is a variant of ‘just (you) wait and see’ and is used to communicate that ‘one is sure that something will happen’. Collectively, this illocutionary chain is meant to warn the target of imminent though non-descript harm. This warning does not appear to serve a benevolent purpose, though, given that it is syntactically framed by face-threatening derogatory references to the target's sexual orientation (i.e. FAGGOT and COCK SUCKER). The perlocutionary effect is therefore more likely to be intimidatory than protective.

As reported above, not all of the ATCs relied on obscenity to bolster their menacing effect. Take, for example, the following excerpt:

1. (9) WE ARE NAHZIIS!!! AND NOW THAT TRUMP IS PRESIDENT WE CAN KILL YOU!!!

This text utilizes the aforementioned prototypical argument structure [If you X, then I will Y] with one key difference. The condition upon which threatened negative action will take place is not predicated upon the target's future compliance with a demand made by the ATC sender. Instead, the condition has already been fulfilled by an event beyond the target's individual control (i.e. the result of the presidential election). It is upon this basis that the declaration is made: We can kill you!!! The choice in modality is critical here. Had the message utilized the future indicative (i.e. ‘We will kill you!!!’), a far higher degree of speaker intention and volition would have been communicated. By using the modal auxiliary can, ability and permissibility are emphasized instead. In other words, now that there has been a change in government and Donald Trump has been elected president, the speaker and those of his/her ilk (i.e. WE) are now free to kill the target of the message.

Note here that the explicit predicate kill is used rather than an indirect figure of speech that merely hints at a potential physical threat to life. This lexical choice lends more credence to the inference that the intended illocutionary point is to intimidate. Of course, one could argue that the purpose of the utterance was not to frighten but to forewarn. What undermines this alternative interpretation is the preceding three-word predicate nominative construction (WE ARE NAHZIIS!!!). In this concise statement, the ATC sender proclaims membership in a modern-day, violent, right-wing extremist group in the United States that takes its inspiration from the National Socialists of Europe, who, after the political ascendancy of Adolf Hitler were allowed to kill millions. By historical extension, the threatening perlocutionary effect of the utterance now . . . we can kill you!!! is effectively bolstered.

The ATC from which this text was extracted was not alone in making historical allusions to National Socialism. In the following excerpt taken from a different ATC, the same linguistic boosting strategy is used:

1. (10) You muslims are a vile and filthy people. Your mothers are whores and your fathers are dogs. You are evil. But, your day of reckoning has arrived. There's a new Sherriff in town - - President Donald Trump. He's going to cleanse America and make it Shine again. And, he's going to start with you muslims. He's going to do to you muslims what Hitler did to the jews. You muslims would be wise to pack your bags and get out of Dodge

After a series of personalized negative assertions about the target's family and religious heritage, the ATC goes on to ‘recite the circumstances under which the transaction is to be effected’ (Austin Reference Austin1955:7). As before, the condition for the portended negative event is described as already having been met by Donald Trump's election. The US American idiom ‘There's a new Sheriff in town’ harkens back to Hollywood Westerns in which righteous town citizens are terrorized by a gang of outlaws while corrupt officials turn a blind eye. The turning point comes when a new sheriff, typically an outsider, arrives in Dodge, the quintessential US American wild West town. The newcomer then single-handedly restores law and order. In (9), the then political outsider Donald Trump is cast in this role as savior: hence the Biblical allusion to the ‘day of reckoning’. However, in (10), the new justice forecast is not one of peace and tranquility. The protagonist is instead presented as cleansing America of Muslims who are depicted as vile and filthy. Since the introduction of the euphemism ‘ethnic cleansing’ during the Balkans Wars, this predicate is strongly associated with genocide. This connotation is immediately reinforced with the two predictions: (i) he's [Trump is] going to start with you muslims; and (ii) He's going to do to you muslims what Hitler did to the jews.

Once again, tense, aspect, and modality are key here: the use of the future indicative present progressive is commonly used in US American English to express personal purpose, aim, or intention (Alexander Reference Alexander1989), and in this case, that express intention is the repeat annihilation of a religious minority. As Austin reminds, the use of the third person singular as opposed to first person singular in the agentive role does not automatically undermine the performative nature of the utterance – threat in this case. The action of the performer must not, Austin cautions, be ‘wrongly cast into a purely grammatical mould’ (Austin Reference Austin1955:60). Following this logic, Donald Trump is a passepartout for the politically like-minded, including the ATC sender. It is against this exposition that the final act of advising the target to get out of Dodge must be analyzed. The final locution operates similarly to the familiar coercive conditional threat [You had better (not) X, or else Y]. When [Y] involves the sender taking actions that will result in the receiver's murder, the perlocutionary effect is not one of advisement but threat. Here again, much can be learned about the speech act by attending to the embedded sociocultural and historical references.

In the ATC corpus, 20.00% explicitly mentioned National Socialism. The other equally common reference was US American Slavery. An excellent example is found in (11):

1. (11) Now that our man TRUMP is elected and republicans own both the senate and the house – time to organize tar & feather VIGILANTE SQUADS and go arrest & torture those deviant university leaders spouting off all this Diversity Garbage.

The beginning of (11) is familiar: the condition upon which the menacing augury is predicated is said to have been fulfilled by the election results. The message then proclaims that the time has come for retribution. The agent of this action, the VIGILANTE SQUADS, is pre- and post-modified by the adjectival and verbal couplets tar & feather and arrest & torture. This syntactic mirroring helps to build a historical bridge between the past and the present calls to arms. In the US American Reconstruction Era (c. 1863–1877), for example, the KKK used tar-and-feathering in its lynching rituals to punish individuals deemed to have trespassed the lines of racial segregation (Harris Reference Harris1995). The targets of this vigilantism were carefully selected to maximize public warnings against challenging the ideology of White Supremacy (Russell-Brown Reference Russell-Brown2009). In much the same way, the grammatical and political object singled out for vigilantism in extract (11) are also community leaders: academicians. More specifically, the designated targets are those deviant university leaders who are progressively spreading or spouting off Diversity Garbage.

The ATC from which (11) was excerpted was randomly distributed across a US university campus. The meaning intended and taken no doubt shifted with the recipient. For like-minded readers on campus, the illocutionary act performed by the triple imperative to organize, arrest, and torture may have been a command to take action. The accompanying perlocutionary effect may then have been one of persuading, convincing, or inciting. For receivers who either identified as or sympathized with the projected targets, the very same locution may have a different perlocutionary effect: intimidation and threat. Thus, as stated before, the interpretation of the speech act depends upon the relationship of the message sender and recipient.

Across the entire corpus, an examination of those ATCs containing some form of linguistic threat (be it direct, veiled, specified, or unspecified) revealed that 93.33% had been articulated without linguistic equivocation or hesitation. This finding was highly significant (χ² (1) = 22.54, p ≤ .001). Nevertheless, only 10.00% contained details which would tend to indicate that the threat made was feasible or imminent. This set of findings might relate to the next. Despite the fact that 69.97% of the ATCs had been deposited on the recipients’ private property, only 43.33% of the cases showed clear evidence of a prior relationship or contact between the sender and the receiver. In one such case, the ATC sender revealed that he/she had once been an admiring high school student of the recipient and was deeply disappointed by the recipient's anti-Trump postings. This identity cue was a-typical for the corpus, however. As a general rule, prior sender–receiver contacts were indirectly (and most probably inadvertently) revealed. For example, occasionally ATCs contained private information about the recipient that could only have been known by someone in his/her immediate social circle (e.g. intimate details about the recipient's private routine or use of a private nickname). However, as a group, the ATCs contained very little detailed information about the recipients. Even basic information such as the ATC-target's personal name was statistically significant in its absence (χ² (1) = 10.8, p ≤ .05).

These results are congruent with the finding that a statistically significant minority of the ATCs made mention of an interpersonal motivation for the communication (e.g. financial recompense (13.33%), revenge (6.67%), or obvious personal fixation on the specific ATC recipient (6.67%)). Instead, the primary motivation for selecting the ATC receiver seemed to have been the ATC-senders’ desire to vent their hatred towards a particular group. Be that as it may, relatively few of the ATCs warned of a future contact (30.00%) or gave concrete evidence of preparation for a future violent act (6.67%). Both of these features were statistically significant in their absence: (χ² (1) = 22.54, p ≤ .001) and (χ² (1) = 4.8, p ≤ .05), respectively. After issuing the intended threat(s) or insult(s), most of the ATCs (63.33%) abruptly ended. An examination of those ATCs that did include closings yielded one final interesting finding: 26.67% were signed as if the ATC had been composed by a large group (e.g. America!, Trump Country, Trump Nation, and The World). This hyperbolic autonymy seems to have served the double purpose of simultaneously inflating the relational power of the ATC senders while minimizing that of their targets.