Making Sense of Law and Order Rhetoric

There is a phenomenon known as "linguistic intergroup bias" that refers to our tendency to describe the behaviors of people we see as part of our group much more positively, and with more grace, than when describing behaviors of people we don't see as part of our group.

What I think this emphasizes is that each of us brings our own sense of the world to all of the language we read, hear, write, and speak. As a concept, linguistic intergroup bias gives us a way for thinking about language that helps us wonder about the worldview underlying any given author or speaker.

Using this idea, I think we can make a lot better sense of Donald Trump's use of 'law and order' rhetoric.

Those of us educated to believe that a democracy depends on the rule of law hear something very different when 'law and order' is invoked than what Trump intends.

The concept of rule of law depends on three important assumptions: 1) that all citizens of a democracy have equal worth and ought, therefore, to be represented by government equally, 2) law ought to be created and applied with consistency and fairness in accordance with the will of the citizens, assuming that that will doesn't seek to infringe on the rights of a minority, and 3) leaders should be subject to those laws, just like every other citizen, to stop them from taking too much power and degrading possibilities for democratic rule.

If we think this is what Trump is referring to when he invokes law and order, it's going to confuse and confound us. Trump isn't referring to the democratic rule of law principle, and his intended audience is not meant to hear it that way.

The worldview to which Trump is speaking is one in which hierarchy and order are hallmarks of stability and righteousness, one where equality of all people (particularly members of the out-group) and truly representative government is extremely suspect.

This worldview is well-represented in a quote made by Pat Robertson when he was running for president in 1978: "God wants stability. It's better to have a stable government under a crook than turmoil under an honest man."

It would be hard to find evidence that more clearly articulates the worldview to which Trump's 'law and order' rhetoric is speaking.

In this worldview, freedom is conflated with order and stability, and equal representation is a threat to those things.

Law, being associated with the way the in-group believes things ought to be, is often conflated with two things: 1) the language and behaviors of the leader, and 2) the behavior of members who are part of the in-group. Crime and disorder refer to behaviors of out-group members.

In the American context, the imagined in-group of Trump's rhetoric consists of pure white Americans who are being victimized by the impure criminality of those who don't think and behave like them.

The psychology of the righteous victimhood of a pure white race at play here is truly lethal to all of us and goes a long way in explaining why, in March, Trump's Executive Office for Immigration Review began limiting the availability of information about the dangers of COVID-19 to undocumented immigrants held in detention facilities, and, most horrifically, ICE facilities in Georgia have been accused of performing forced hysterectomies. These tools of genocide are seen as methods for mitigating a foreign threat to white purity that has already been victimized enough.

We have to learn to see this sort of language ('law and order' rhetoric in this case) not for what we imagine it ought to mean, but for how it's being employed as propaganda to encourage 'us versus them' thinking and violent behavior.

It is typical that people living in countries that are mobilizing to increase the possibilities of committing widespread and state-sponsored sadistic violence have the capacity to remain entirely unaware of this movement. In large part, I think that's because we have not been educated well enough on how to identify the language of fascist movements, understand the severity of its threat, or respond to It appropriately.

Let's not continue making that mistake.