Language as a Practice: Calling Out the Authoritarian Dialect
As democracies falter and strongman politics resurges globally, ordinary language becomes the front line. This guide offers tools to recognize and resist the creeping normalization of domination.
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This guide is for anyone who wants to push back against manipulative rhetoric—in everyday conversations, online spaces, classrooms, or the public square. This guide focuses on the dominant authoritarian rhetoric trends of recent decades—particularly right-wing populist and nationalist movements. However, authoritarianism can arise from any ideological direction. Recognizing all its forms is essential to defending our shared freedom.
Why Language Matters
Authoritarianism rarely arrives with a marching band; but it does arrive with cheerleaders. It slips in through ordinary speech, with leaders and enablers normalizing violence, framing cruelty as common sense, and dressing domination in words like order, unity, or tradition. Left unchecked, this rhetoric reshapes imagination until the unacceptable begins to feel inevitable.
Cultural resistance means refusing that normalization. If freedom is a practice, then one of our daily practices must be to call authoritarian language what it is: manipulative, dishonest, and dangerous.
As Jason Stanley observes in How Fascism Works, authoritarian movements depend on linguistic manipulation to reshape moral reality—using everyday words to erode empathy and justify cruelty.
Recognizing the pattern is the first act of resistance.
Spotting the Tell-Tale Signs
Authoritarian and fascist speech patterns repeat across eras. Watch for:
Scapegoating and Dehumanization:
Authoritarians maintain power by assigning blame. They target vulnerable groups—immigrants, minorities, journalists, teachers—and depict them as existential threats to public safety or national purity. Language like “illegals,” “vermin,” or “thugs” turns people into symbols, making cruelty sound like self-defense and repression like protection. Dehumanization always precedes dispossession.
False Universals:
Phrases such as “the real people,” “the silent majority,” or “the nation” erase pluralism by implying there is only one legitimate identity or viewpoint. This rhetorical move reframes difference as division and dissent as disloyalty. By defining who counts as “real,” demagogues define who can be safely ignored—or punished.
Threat Inflation:
When every protest becomes a “riot,” and disagreement is called “war,” fear becomes the organizing principle. Authoritarians rely on constant crisis to justify extraordinary measures. The technique transforms civic participation into menace and positions the strongman as the only bulwark against chaos. A frightened public is easier to control than an informed one.
Weaponized Morality:
Appeals to “God’s will,” “family values,” or “patriotism” repackage domination as virtue. By cloaking cruelty in moral language, regimes present obedience as righteousness and resistance as sin. This tactic invites followers to see persecution as moral duty—turning empathy into weakness and authority into faith.
Inversion of Reality:
One of the oldest tricks in the authoritarian playbook is projection. Those who censor, repress, or manipulate insist they are the victims of silencing. They cry “fake news” while spreading propaganda, claim persecution while wielding power. The effect is disorientation—if everyone is accused, no one is accountable.
Historical Flashpoints
Authoritarian language has never been neutral. It has always prepared the ground for control, softening the edges of brutality until repression could pass as routine. History shows how regimes bent everyday words to their will—and how those words became weapons.
Early U.S. rhetoric toward Indigenous nations (late 18th–19th c.)
On the American frontier, government and settlers spoke of “civilizing” and “settling” new lands while displacing the peoples who already lived there. Words like “civilization,” “settlement,” and “removal” turned conquest into benevolence, masking genocide beneath progress. The rhetoric of destiny and divine mission justified expansion westward and reduced Native nations to obstacles to be overcome. (See the Civilization Fund Act (1819) and Indian Removal Act (1830).)
Nazi Germany (1930s–40s)
Across Germany, the rise of fascism rewrote the moral dictionary. Victor Klemperer, a Jewish philologist, chronicled how everyday words became carriers of ideology. Bureaucratic euphemisms like Evakuierung (“evacuation”) replaced deportation, and Sonderbehandlung (“special treatment”) stood for execution—each word polishing atrocity into procedure. Propaganda speeches and headlines softened brutality with administrative calm, numbing citizens to terror. His diary, later published as Lingua Tertii Imperii, remains one of history’s most meticulous maps of linguistic manipulation.
Fascist Italy (1938–43)
In Mussolini’s Italy, language became a stage prop for purity. The magazine La Difesa della Razza (The Defense of Race) wrapped racism in scientific language, teaching readers to see hierarchy as natural law. Words like “purity” and “defense” cast persecution as civic hygiene—rhetoric that prepared citizens to accept exclusion as virtue. The state’s slogans—Credere, Obbedire, Combattere (“Believe, Obey, Fight”)—compressed obedience into a patriotic reflex.
Hungary (2010s–present)
In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s government coined the term “illiberal democracy” to recast the dismantling of checks and balances as patriotic renewal. Independent media and civil society were reframed as elitist obstruction or foreign meddling. The vocabulary of national protection became the scaffolding for institutional capture, proving that democratic words can be hollowed out from within. Through repetition and control of public broadcasters, the regime normalized what it once denied—turning constitutional erosion into a matter of national pride.
Brazil (Bolsonaro era)
Under Jair Bolsonaro, the language of moral cleansing returned to public life. Campaigns against “criminals” and praise for “good citizens” created a moral hierarchy that excused violence. Appeals to “family” and “faith” sanctified authoritarian control, while euphemisms like “order” and “clean-up” hid the blood under the broom. The rhetoric echoed the country’s military dictatorship, fusing nostalgia and fear into a single moral crusade.
United States (post-2016)
In the U.S., the authoritarian dialect re-emerged in populist form. Phrases like “fake news,” “enemy of the people,” and “witch hunt” worked to delegitimize journalists, courts, and watchdogs—recasting accountability as sabotage and dissent as treason. The language of freedom was turned inside out, teaching followers to mistake control for strength and loyalty for truth. Each repetition of the phrase eroded public trust a little further, showing how a democracy can talk itself toward autocracy without ever declaring it.
These rhetorical tactics appear across ideologies. The examples here focus on currently ascendant forms. Each case reminds us: when we lose hold of language, we lose hold of reality.
Modern Echoes of the Past
Authoritarian rhetoric in our own time wears familiar disguises. Each phrase carries a lineage—a historical echo that shapes its present danger. What once signaled defiance of civil rights now masquerades as common sense, and what once whispered exclusion now speaks through mainstream policy.
“Law and order.”
Born in the late 1960s as a coded response to the civil rights movement, this phrase turned racial anxiety into a call for discipline. When Nixon and later Reagan invoked it, they recast protest as chaos and policing as restoration. Today the phrase resurfaces whenever power seeks to silence dissent, transforming civic action into a crime and compliance into virtue.
“States’ rights.”
Once a constitutional argument, “states’ rights” became a euphemism for preserving segregation after Brown v. Board of Education. Strategists like Lee Atwater later admitted how the phrase replaced open racism with bureaucratic respectability. Modern invocations of “local control” often carry the same function—shielding discrimination behind the façade of autonomy.
“Urban” and “inner cities.”
Mid-20th-century politicians used these terms to imply danger without naming race. As television and print news framed Black and Brown neighborhoods as sites of decay, the words became shorthand for moral panic. Today, “urban issues” and “crime in the cities” still signal coded fear, reinforcing stereotypes while disguising structural neglect.
“Globalists” and “international bankers.”
A phrase with roots in antisemitic conspiracy theories, “globalist” paints cosmopolitanism as corruption and cooperation as betrayal. The trope migrated from fascist propaganda into nationalist movements worldwide, where it now blames shadowy elites for economic anxiety and erodes trust in journalism, science, and democracy itself.
“Woke,” “CRT,” and “DEI.”
What began as self-protective awareness in Black communities—“stay woke” or “woke”, was co-opted into a catch-all insult. Combined with academic terms like CRT and DEI, the right weaponized these initials to frame equity as extremism. The effect is exhaustion: to make justice itself sound ideological, and awareness seem suspect.
“Invasion” and “they’re taking our country.”
Nativist movements have recycled this panic for more than a century, portraying migrants as invaders to justify exclusion. Each repetition primes listeners for harsher deterrence and moral indifference to suffering at the border. What was once fringe rhetoric now anchors national campaigns.
Alt-signaling (“deep state,” “in the shadows”).
Conspiracy language creates a sense of hidden threat while preserving deniability. By implying unseen enemies within government or media, it trains audiences to distrust any institution not aligned with the speaker. The result is perpetual suspicion—a vacuum where truth itself feels partisan.
Dog whistles operate by hiding in coded speech—granting plausible deniability while activating fear and prejudice. Recognizing and naming these signals breaks their spell.
Populist Mythmaking
Authoritarian projects often lean on nostalgia: the false promise of a simpler, purer past. Whether through slogans like “restoring greatness” or “returning to tradition,” these movements turn memory into a weapon, rewriting history to sanctify exclusion and justify repression. The past becomes a curated illusion, edited to erase diversity and dissent, leaving only a mythic image of homogeneity that power can safely control.
What Research Reveals About Authoritarian Language
We know that terms like “fascist” or “authoritarian” may feel alarming to some. That discomfort is real—but it’s also by design. Authoritarian speech relies on our reluctance to name it.
Social science confirms what lived experience already teaches:
Credible criticism reduces appeal.
When trusted public figures name authoritarian behaviors directly—using clear, evidence-based language—it decreases support for those actors, especially among undecided voters. (Hobolt et al., 2025)
Label manipulation shapes emotion.
The way regimes rename actions—e.g., “war” vs. “special military operation”—influences how the public feels and responds. Euphemisms soften moral reactions and increase passivity. (Zakharov et al., 2024)
Moral framing alters judgment.
People assess identical acts differently depending on the language used. “Looting” vs. “reclaiming” or “stealing” vs. “taking” activates different moral circuits. (Capraro & Vanzo, 2019)
Dog whistles bypass critical thinking.
Implicit racial and authoritarian cues (“urban,” “inner city,” “woke”) are more persuasive than explicit ones, especially among audiences unaware of their biases. (Mendelberg, 2001)
The lesson?
Precision matters. When we name authoritarianism clearly (but not carelessly) we reduce its persuasive power. Avoiding the word doesn’t make it go away. But naming it wisely helps us stay anchored in truth without tipping into panic.
At the same time, naming isn’t risk-free. Strong moral labels can polarize and cause defensive backlash. The key is strategy: credibility, context, and clarity. Some readers may hesitate at labels like fascist or authoritarian—that discomfort is itself part of the cultural conditioning these regimes rely on. Naming precisely, with evidence and care, restores clarity without hysteria.
REACTANCE IS REAL.
Strong moral labels (like “fascist”) can trigger backlash, especially when people feel accused. This psychological reactance, first theorized by Brehm (1966), is common in polarized societies. Strategic framing can mitigate this response.
Assess the Risks Before You Speak
Authoritarian speech is engineered to provoke, and to punish dissent. Calling it out is necessary, but context, safety, and goals matter.
Backlash & Reactance.
People often double down when they feel morally cornered. Strong labels can trigger psychological reactance, especially in audiences already primed by partisan identity. Name clearly, but ground your claim in patterns and facts to reduce reflexive defensiveness.
Online Arenas.
Social feeds reward outrage and enable brigading. Before engaging, assess risk: screenshot and archive first; use block/report tools; avoid dog-piles that escalate harm. If you’re being swarmed, step back. Preserving your voice is part of the work.
Choose the Right Venue.
Public call-outs set community boundaries and disrupt normalization. Private conversations (when safe) can open space for reflection. Ask yourself: is my goal boundary-setting, persuasion, or documentation? Pick the tactic to fit.
Credibility & Tone.
Naming lands best when it’s credible and factual—when insiders speak plainly, or when you tie claims to verifiable evidence. Break euphemisms (“call it war, not operation”), avoid amplifying false frames, and prefer calm moral clarity over performative rage.
Train for Clarity and Safety
Lead with one sentence of truth; name the tactic; close with truth and a concrete value at stake.
If safety is uncertain, disengage or switch to documentation.
When you do name fascism, attach the specific behaviors: scapegoating, dehumanization, threats to pluralism, attacks on truth.
Use These Tools Counter Rhetoric
Before you speak
What’s your goal? Boundary, persuasion, or documentation?
What’s the venue? Public (set norms) or private (shift minds)?
Am I safe? If unsure, document first and disengage.
1) Spot and Name the Tactic
Description: Identify the rhetorical move (scapegoating, dehumanization, threat inflation) instead of arguing your whole worldview.
Purpose: Slow the spread of manipulative framing and re-establish shared norms.
When to use: Public or mixed spaces where escalation risks derailing the point; first response to coded language.
Steps:
Name the tactic (“That’s scapegoating”).
Name the harm it does (“It blames a whole community”).
Name the norm you’re defending (“We keep critiques factual here”).
Say it like this: “That’s dehumanizing language—reducing people to a threat. We don’t do that here.”
Practice drill: Take one headline or quote and rewrite it without the tactic while keeping the core claim testable.
Pitfalls & Safety: Don’t stack multiple diagnoses at once. Keep tone steady; invite specifics if they have evidence.
2) Call Out Behavior with Precision
Description: Call out the behavior as fascist/authoritarian when a clear line has been crossed.
Purpose: Draw a public boundary and stop normalization.
When to use: Public forums where silence equals permission; patterns meet historical criteria (dehumanization, anti-pluralism, attacks on truth).
Steps:
State the line crossed (“That’s fascist rhetoric”).
Ground it in specifics (“It calls for [X] and harms [Y]”).
Reset the norm (“We reject that here”).
Say it like this: “That’s a fascist talking point because it dehumanizes migrants and attacks a free press. That crosses our line.”
Practice drill: Draft your personal boundary statement, then practice delivery with a trusted peer until it’s clear and concise.
Pitfalls & Safety: Label the behavior, not the person’s permanent identity. Say it once with clarity; don’t get dragged into insult tennis.
3) Use a ‘Truth Sandwich’ to Disarm Misinformation
Description: Replace a false frame with an accurate claim anchored in shared values.
Purpose: Prevent repetition of the lie from becoming the dominant narrative.
When to use: A misleading claim or euphemism is steering the conversation.
Steps:
Truth: lead with a verified claim and value.
Lie: name the falsehood briefly.
Truth + value: restate the accurate claim with one specific supporting point.
Say it like this: “Immigrants strengthen our communities. The claim that they ‘steal jobs’ is a lie. Evidence shows immigration grows employment and local economies.”
Practice drill: Build two Truth Sandwiches from statements you’ve heard this week; keep the lie portion shorter than the truth portions.
Pitfalls & Safety: Don’t repeat the lie more than once. Avoid link-dumping; one clear fact beats a list.
4) Shift the Conversation Toward Freedom
Description: Move the conversation from fear/control to freedom/dignity and effective solutions.
Purpose: Replace panic narratives with a freedom-centered path to the goal people actually care about.
When to use: You see “crackdown,” “order,” or “invasion” stories crowding out real solutions.
Steps:
Name the real goal (safety, fairness, dignity).
Offer a freedom-aligned route (community investment, due process, pluralism).
Give one action or policy example that embodies it.
Say it like this: “Safety doesn’t come from crackdowns; it comes from strong communities—violence prevention, mental-health responders, and neighbors who know each other.”
Practice drill: Rewrite one fear-based headline into a freedom-based headline, then add a single concrete action beneath it.
Pitfalls & Safety: Don’t accept the opponent’s premise. Replace it; don’t rebut it line-by-line.
5) Speak Together
Description: Coordinating your speech with others brings clarity and echoes louder than propaganda.
Purpose: Build shared skills, reduce isolation, and model norms in public.
When to use: Ongoing; especially during volatile news cycles or coordinated disinformation pushes.
Steps:
Invite a small number (1-3) trusted friends to work with you.
Pick one text/clip with authoritarian language and mark the tactics used together.
Draft a single clear response the group can adapt.
Establish safety protocols (archiving, reporting, de-escalation) and decide when and where to post.
Share your work with others and invite them to form their own small group.
Say it like this: “We reject dehumanizing language. Here are the facts and the values at stake…”
Practice drill: Run a monthly decode session: one example, one shared doc, one new line, decide when and where to post.
Pitfalls & Safety: Avoid dog-piles and quote-tweet brigades. One reply per person. Document harassment; disengage if swarmed.
When resistance speaks in chorus, authoritarian speech loses its echo. Hope is the quiet frequency beneath that chorus—the reminder that clarity can still cut through noise.
The Sound of Silence
Silence serves the autocrat.
Silence is not a cloak of protection.
Silence is permission.
Every unchecked phrase of dehumanization moves the line of what is thinkable. Yet even here, there is a way forward: we can choose to speak, to question, to hold each other accountable.
Freedom if refined with words because language doesn’t just describe the world; it shapes it. Let’s choose words that defend freedom, not fear.
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Books and zines for cultural resistance.
Sources
Klemperer, Victor. Lingua Tertii Imperii: Notizbuch eines Philologen / The Language of the Third Reich: LTI — Lingua Tertii Imperii. London: Bloomsbury, 1999 (original 1947).
Close, ground-level account by a German philologist documenting linguistic shifts, euphemisms, and propagandistic turns in Nazi German; essential for tracing how regime language normalizes exclusionary and dehumanizing practices.La Difesa della Razza (digitized run). Milan: 1938–1943.
Primary-source run of an explicitly racist fascist periodical produced under Mussolini; valuable for visual and textual examples of state-sponsored racial discourse and pseudo-scientific legitimation.Stanley, Jason. How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. New York: Random House, 2018.
Contemporary theoretical synthesis identifying recurring rhetorical, institutional, and ideological mechanisms used by fascist movements to manufacture in-group/out-group dynamics and erode liberal democratic norms.Hobolt, Sara, et al. “Countering Authoritarian Behavior in Democracies”. Political Behavior, 2025.
Comparative, empirically oriented analysis of how democracies can resist authoritarian tactics through institutional design, civil society mobilization, and strategic messaging; offers policy-relevant prescriptions grounded in recent cross-national data.Capraro, Valerio, and Andrea Vanzo. “The Power of Moral Words”. arXiv preprint, January 2019.
Experimental and computational study showing that moralized language shifts behavior and choices in economic games and political messaging, demonstrating how lexical choices amplify normative commitments.Alt-signaling: Fascistic Communication and the Power of Subterranean Style — Fieldsights. Cultural Anthropology Fieldsights, 2020.
Ethnographic and discursive essay tracing how fringe online and cultural styles communicate exclusionary politics indirectly through aesthetics, coded vocabulary, and performative signaling.Mendelberg, Tali. The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Empirical and experimental exploration of how political campaigns use implicit racial appeals and framing to influence voters while evading explicit norms against racism; foundational on coded political messaging.Oxford University Press Blog. “Dogwhistles: 10 Examples of Disguised Messages”. Oxford University Press Blog, 2024.
Accessible primer cataloguing contemporary examples of dogwhistle rhetoric, useful for identifying modern coded appeals and for pedagogical use.Lee Atwater interview (1981) — coverage and transcript. The Nation (archive).
Candid description of strategic message testing aimed at racialized voter blocs; often cited to illustrate tactical use of coded racial language in American electoral politics.Lakoff, George. The ALL NEW Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2014.
Practical manual on political framing and cognitive linguistics; introduces the “truth sandwich” and framing techniques aimed at inoculating public discourse against misleading or manipulative claims.Brehm, Jack W. A Theory of Psychological Reactance. New York: Academic Press, 1966.
Foundational psychological theory explaining how perceived threats to freedom provoke countervailing attitudes and behaviors; relevant for understanding backlash dynamics when persuasion is perceived as coercive.Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Boston: Beacon Press, 2014.
Reframes U.S. history through Indigenous perspectives, documenting settler colonialism, dispossession, and state violence; indispensable for contextualizing racialized narratives and state power in North American history.Scheppele, Kim Lane. “Autocratic Legalism”. University of Chicago Law Review 85, no. 2 (2018): 545–89.
Legal-theoretical account of how authoritarian regimes use the law’s forms and procedures to create the facade of legality while hollowing out democratic constraints; critical for linking rhetorical, institutional, and legal tactics used by autocrats.