Former president Donald Trump’s supporters in Congress have found that vilifying tweets and speeches has helped to rally voters, The New York Times reported. The pro-Trump rhetoric has far outpaced other Republicans and Democrats in fueling polarization in America.
Inflammatory words underscore the extent to which polarizing rhetoric is now entrenched among Republicans in the House of Representatives.
This is especially true among those who voted against certifying the victory of President Joe Biden.
New research by the New York Times looked into the partisan language over the past 10 years.
The analysis of tweets, Facebook ads, newsletters and congressional speeches — more than 3.7 million items in all — relied largely on natural language processing, a technique that uses software to extract information from large amounts of text.
The analysis tallied words that were linked in academic research to divisive political content, as well as those identified by linguists and computer scientists to be used in polarizing ways — “fascist” and “socialist,” for example, “far right” and “far left.”
Republicans ratchet up such rhetoric since Trump took office, according to the analysis.
Since the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, Republicans on average have used divisive words and phrases more than twice as often as Democrats in their tweets. They have used divisive words six times as often in emails to constituents.
At the forefront of this polarization are Republicans who voted to reject the Electoral College results that cemented Trump’s defeat last year.
A recent investigation revealed how those lawmakers helped engrave the myth of a stolen election in party orthodoxy.
The latest analysis shows that the language of the 139 objecting members is markedly more hostile than that of other Republicans and Democrats. In their telling, those who oppose them not only are wrong about certain policies but also hate their country.
The analysis found that in the current Congress, representatives who fought certifying the election used polarizing language on Twitter about 55 percent more often than other Republicans, and nearly triple the rate of Democrats.
Objectors referred to their opponents as “socialist” in more than 1,800 tweets, more than twice as often as other Republicans. Democrats called the other side “fascist” about 80 times.
In the first years since the Trump presidency, Democrats spoke typically in a more outraged way than Republicans on Twitter and in constituent emails.
But Republicans have otherwise completely eclipsed Democrats. Republicans more than quadrupled their use of divisive rhetoric since the early 2010s in the Congressional Record.
Political scientists at New York University reviewed and corroborated The Times’s findings and said the results underscored a broad shift in Republican rhetoric.
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