Dangerous Individuals and Groups

In the quantitative portion of this study, the second most frequently occurring sub-category of The Dangerous Others was found to be Dangerous Individuals and Groups. Trump focuses mainly on immigrants as a threat to the people, conflating them with criminal gangs, but also singles out Americans who criticize his policies.

In Trump’s discourse on immigration, the themes of Dangerous Others and Protecting the Fatherland tend to overlap. Trump presents the in-group, us, as victims that need to be protected from the dangerous out-group, them. In the following example from Speech 5, Trump uses strategies of positive self-presentation when describing the police, immigration officials and the victims of crimes and their families and contrasts them with the dangerous others by employing strategies of negative other-presentation.

(81) The other thing that I have to tell you: You have a gang called MS-13. A friend of mine who's a very, very high-level police officer said to me in describing them, “They are the equivalent or worse than al-Qaeda”. I would say that's a bad statement. They don't like to shoot people. They like to cut people. They do things that nobody can believe. These are true animals. We are moving them out of the country by the thousands. By the thousands. And the people moving them out are guess what, a hell of a lot tougher and meaner than they are. But they're on our side.

We're getting them out, MS-13. During my campaign for president, I met with the families of Americans killed by illegal immigrants, many, many families. Including the parents of Sarah Root, a 21-year-old Iowa girl who was killed the day after she graduated from college with a 4.0 GPA. Do you know what that is? To those of you who don't know, that means solid A's straight across, number one student. Thousands of beautiful American lives like Sarah's have been stolen for the simple reason that our government has refused to enforce already existing laws. The media, these people, like to talk about separating families. But the families they never talk about are the American families separated forever from the ones they love because we don't protect our borders and uphold the immigration laws of the United States.

In example (81), Trump constructs contrasting representations of the in-group, us and the out group, them. Trump uses strategies of nomination and strategies of predication to positively represent the in-group with which he aligns himself. He refers to the police officer as a friend of mine in order to align himself with law enforcement officials, and a as a predication strategy uses an adverb and an attributive adjective to emphasize the police officer’s positive features (very, very high level police officer). Next, Trump describes the immigration officials who deport illegal immigrants with the predicative adjectives tougher and meaner, and as an involvement strategy shows his emotional involvement and engages the audience by using the colloquial adverbial phrase hell of a lot. Although the adjectives tougher and meaner carry negative connotations, he uses them as a strategy of positive predication, because the adjectives project strength and power over those he deems dangerous. Finally, Trump turns to the victim and her family. He uses her given name as a strategy of nomination to involve the audience emotionally with her case. Furthermore, he uses her academic success to emphasize her positive attributes and even describing her with the adjective beautiful to signal his own emotional involvement in her case. In addition, Trump employs membership categorization to emphasize that these people belong to our in-group when he uses the phrases American lives and American families, thus implicitly categorizing individuals who are not American as the dangerous others.

In contrast to these positive in-group presentations, Trump uses strategies of negative other-presentation to describe the dangerous others in example (81). This includes dehumanizing language commonly used by authoritarians. Firstly, Trump shares a direct quote from a police officer, who is an authority figure, therefore giving the quote more value. The quote itself equates the MS-13 gang members with the terrorist group that is responsible for the 9/11 attacks and even suggests the gang members are worse than the terrorists. Secondly, Trump chooses verbs that elicit fear when he states that the gang members like to cut people. He also uses a hyperbolic expression, They do things that nobody can believe that is vague enough to let the audience to imagine the worst possible scenario. Thirdly, Trump calls the gang members true animals, a word that explicitly dehumanizes the out-group.

Interestingly, Trump also brings up the media talking about separating families in example (81). At the time of this speech in May 2017, family separation at the Southern border was not an issue discussed in the media. It was not until May 2018 that the then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the Zero Tolerance -policy. It resulted in migrant children being separated from their parents, because, according to the new policy, all adults who crossed the border illegally were criminally prosecuted and detained (Department of Justice 2018). Therefore, this

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remark appears to be a case of preparatory propaganda to pre-emptively delegitimize the media as being biased against the American families and only having concern for the migrant families.

In effect, Trump is setting the desired narrative in the minds of his supporters before the government policy in question was even announced.

In example (81), Trump used the word animals to dehumaize immigrants who commit crimes.

The dehumanizing word choice is a feature of authoritarian discourse and employing this type of language is not uncommon to Trump. In fact, in Speech 10, he talks about the criminal gang MS-13 out his view of the gang by stating

(82) Not only are we defeating these killers, these savage killers, horrible, horrible… You don't even want to say people.

In example (82), he not only does not want to call the human beings associated with gangs as people but also references the gang members with the crimionym killer to highlight the social problems they cause. Furthermore, he adds the predicational adjective savage to emphasize his message that these people are not part of a civilized society but have an animalistic nature.

Trump continues to use fear-stoking and dehumanizing language about the out-group, immigrants, in Speech 6.

(83) The predators and criminal aliens who poison our communities with drugs and prey on innocent, young people, these beautiful, beautiful, innocent young people will, will find no safe haven anywhere in our country. And you’ve seen the stories about some of these animals. They don’t want to use guns, because it’s too fast and it’s not painful enough. So, they’ll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15, and others, and they slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die.

In this extract Trump uses strategies of nomination and verb choices with negative connotations to present the out-group in an unfavourable way. Firstly, in terms of nomination strategies, he again refers to immigrants as animals but this time calls them also predators – in other words.

animals that hunt other living beings. Furthermore, he uses the discursive strategy of explicit dissimilation when he categorizes immigrants as criminal aliens, a xenonym with an added attributive adjective criminal to emphasize the negative attributes of the out-group. In contrast to the negative nominations of the out-group, Trump describes the in-group with several positive attributive adjectives. He calls them beautiful, innocent and young, repeating these words for emphasis. Secondly, the verb phrases that Trump uses to describe the actions of the out group aim to stoke fear and dehumanize the out group. When he states, They prey on innocent, young people, the verb phrase is intended to dehumanize. The verb prey is used to describe the behaviour predators (a word Trump also used in this example) hunting for game.

Thus, he alludes that the members of the out-group behave like animals, which he stated clearly in example (81) These are true animals. Trump sets the blame over drug problems in the

community solely on the out-group by stating that they poison our communities with drugs.

Poisoning is considered to be an action performed without the consent of the target of the poisoning. However, he ignores the fact that there is also a demand for drugs in the community.

Therefore, the claim that the out-group is poisoning communities ignores the larger issue of drug addiction, and consequently the claim is only meant to stoke fear. In addition, Trump attempts to intimidate the audience by using graphic sentences like They don’t want to use guns, because it’s too fast and it’s not painful enough and they slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die. He is offering the audience a window into the minds of the out-group by using mental processes that describe what the others want, which in this case is to induce excruciating pain. Thus, Trump is representing the out-group as dangerous, because they have a goal to inflict physical harm on the in-group.

Similarly, in Speech 7, Trump depicts immigrants as ruthless criminals.

(84) We are taking the fight to the drug smugglers, human traffickers and the vile criminal cartels like MS-13 who are being thrown out of our country so quickly you can't even count. Just last week I visited Long Island, where MS-13 has brought violence to a once-peaceful and beautiful neighbourhood right where I grew up. We are liberating American communities from the vicious, violent gangs. One by one we're finding the drug dealers, the gang members, the predators, thieves, criminals, and predators and killers, and we're throwing them out of our country.

As a strategy of negative other presentation, Trump propagates a series of crimionyms, which he associates solely on immigrants by using a relative clause, thus creating the impression that all crime in the United States occurs because of immigrants. First, he catalogues those who the law enforcement is targeting by using crimionyms: drug smugglers, human traffickers and the vile criminal cartels like MS-13. Then he uses a relative clause who are being thrown out of our country” to signal that the criminals are not Americans but immigrants from another country.

Secondly, he uses the language of war and membership categorization (liberating American communities) to suggest that these gangs are like a foreign army that has conquered a town and it needs to be liberated. Thirdly, Trump recites another list of crimionyms and adds the dehumanizing word predators. This he repeats twice, and finishes with the sentence, and we're throwing them out of our country, which is in essence a repetition of the idea from the beginning of the excerpt, expressed in the form of the relative clause, that criminals are foreigners.

Trump also characterizes MS-13 in war-like terms in Speech 6, as if it is invading the United States like a foreign army that that has the ability take over entire cities.

(85) We are throwing MS-13 the hell out of here so fast. You know, we’re actually…hard to believe that we’re talking about our great country. We are actually liberating towns and cities. We are liberating. People are screaming from their windows, “Thank you; thank you!” to the border

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patrol…and to General Kelly’s great people that come in and grab the thugs and throw them the hell out. We are liberating our towns, and we are liberating our cities.

In the example, Trump refers to deporting gang members colloquially as throwing [them] the hell out of here. Firstly, he is alluding that all gang members are immigrants, since he suggests that his administration is deporting them. Secondly, because of the verb choice (throw) and the destination (hell), the expression aggressive and graphic, which is a strategy to express his own involvement and engage the audience. In terms of verb selection, Trump uses the verb liberate repeatedly, as if the towns and cities had been under siege by a foreign army. He also uses discourse representation as an involvement strategy to create a vivid picture of liberating towns and cities when he claims that People are screaming from their windows, “Thank you; thank you!”. Also, the fact that he mentions the military rank of his then Director of Homeland Security John Kelly, although, as previously discussed, there are no generals in the Department of Homeland Security, thus adding to the imagery of a military operation against foreign invaders.⁹

In addition to characterizing immigrants as dangerous criminals, Trump positions some American citizens who express dissent in the same sub-category of The Dangerous Others. For instance, in two of the rallies he references African American NFL players who protest against police brutality against African Americans by kneeling during the national anthem. In Speech 9, which was held in Alabama in support for then-senatorial candidate Luther Strange, he discusses the issue as follows.

(86) Luther and I, and everyone in this big arena, are united by the same great American values We’re proud of our country. We respect our flag. Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners when somebody disrespects our flag to say, “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now! Out, he's fired! He's fired!" You know, some owner is going to do that. He's going to say, “That guy that disrespects our flag, he's fired”. And that owner, they don't know it, they don't know it, they're friends of mine, many of them, they don't know it, they'll be the most popular person for a week, they'll be the most popular person in this country because that's a total disrespect of our heritage.

First, Trump defines the in-group by spelling out what unites all the people attending the rally:

patriotic values. According to Trump, those great American values include being proud of our country and respecting our flag. The possessive pronoun our defines the country and the flag belonging only to those who are one of us, people who attend the rally, people who support Trump. Thus, the implication is that if you do not abide by those values you are not one of us, not one of Trump’s Americans. Second, he moves directly to describe what he would want to

9 Since this speech, Trump has frequently used similar language of siege and liberation, but no government agency has been able to provide evidence of such conditions in any of the cities where MS-13 operates (Valverde 2018).

happen to those who disrespect our flag, the out-group. As an involvement strategy, Trump uses discourse representation, posing a rhetorical question to the audience: Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners when somebody disrespects our flag to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now! Out, he's fired! He's fired!’. Trump evokes his catchphrase from his days as a reality star on the TV-show The Apprentice, “He’s fired!”. By animatedly re-enacting his role as the decisive leader, Trump emphasises his involvement in the issue, and the aggressive tone of the catchphrase increases the desired effect. Furthermore, by using the pejorative son of a bitch, Trump introduces a dehumanizing aspect in describing the mainly African American athletes who choose to protest by taking the knee, since the word bitch refers to a female dog. Together with the dehumanizing pejorative, the fact that Trump specifically mentions the owners, mainly white men who own predominantly African American players, it is possible that Trump is drawing a dog-whistle-like parallel between owning slaves and NFL ownership: When Trump employs dehumanizing language when he suggests the owners fire the dissenting players, he is asserting supremacy. Furthermore, Trump uses the word heritage, when he claims that kneeling during the National Anthem is total disrespect of our heritage.

According to Atkinson (2018: 309), Vincent Law, an editor on a prominent white supremacist site altright.com, has used the word heritage in connection with protesting the removal of Confederate monuments in Charlottesville as defending “White Heritage” and standing up for

“your history, your race and your way of life”. In fact, Trump references the issue of removal of confederate monuments in the previous speech, Speech 8, They're trying to take away our culture. They are trying to take away our history. The phrasing Trump uses is strikingly similar to the language of a white supremacist. Whether or not Trump is aware of these connotations, the fringe elements of the alt-right may interpret these assertions as affirmations of their ideology.

Trump also alleges physical threat of violence from other Americans to his supporters. In Speech 8, Trump is discussing security and the rule of law, but digresses to remembrances of past rallies during his presidential campaign in which there were violent altercations with protestors.

(87) When this started at the beginning, they used to send in thugs. They had -- our people are tougher than them, so it wasn't always very good for them. But they'd send in thugs, and our people would protect themselves, and then you'd go home, and you'd watch this violence. Let me tell you, see this room? You've got people outside, but not very many. But see this room? You're safe in this room. You're very safe in this room. It's a big room.

Trump uses two referential strategies of negative other-presentation. Firstly, Trump creates a faceless enemy with the discursive strategy of collectivisation by using the pronoun they as the

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entity who actively used to send in thugs. Secondly, Trump again employs the crimionym thugs to describe the protestors in his rallies, making their actions seem illegal. On the other hand, Trump references the attendees in the rallies as our people, aligning himself with the in-group with the pronoun our and frames their involvement in the altercations as self-defence, by using the verb phrase would protect themselves. Also, in as a strategy of positive self-presentation, Trump uses the predicative adjective tougher. Previously, I have argued that Trump has uses the adjective tough to describe law-enforcement officials and his supporters (see sections 7.2.3 and 7.4.1) in a manner that suggests he associates it with the ability to endure pain, not with perseverance or tenacity. In this instance Trump clearly states, our people are tougher than them, so it wasn’t always very good for them, alluding that the others suffered injuries, which further supports my argument.

entity who actively used to send in thugs. Secondly, Trump again employs the crimionym thugs to describe the protestors in his rallies, making their actions seem illegal. On the other hand, Trump references the attendees in the rallies as our people, aligning himself with the in-group with the pronoun our and frames their involvement in the altercations as self-defence, by using the verb phrase would protect themselves. Also, in as a strategy of positive self-presentation, Trump uses the predicative adjective tougher. Previously, I have argued that Trump has uses the adjective tough to describe law-enforcement officials and his supporters (see sections 7.2.3 and 7.4.1) in a manner that suggests he associates it with the ability to endure pain, not with perseverance or tenacity. In this instance Trump clearly states, our people are tougher than them, so it wasn’t always very good for them, alluding that the others suffered injuries, which further supports my argument.