I’d always wondered what was the point of Donald Trump’s inane use of nicknames for his political opponents. It always came across as entirely juvenile, just another demonstration of the man’s level of maturity. In 2016, it was “lying Ted,” “sleepy Joe” and “crooked Hillary.” The last was so successful for him that this year he publicly announced that he was moving the nickname over to President Biden, his upcoming opponent. Now we regularly hear that ringing out from Trump or one of his mouthpieces. “Crooked” becomes a first name.
So the intent seemed clear as to why he was doing this, and I dismissed the turns of phrase accordingly. Can the man simply not grow up?
My thinking on this changed recently, after coming across a passage in an otherwise excellent yet non-political essay. The piece is “Consciousness and Linguistic Competency” (Vocate, 1991), and the passage talks about this phenomenon:
A developmental progression similar to that of the individual appears to occur on a cultural level when linguistic competency changes from the oral/aural stage to the literate, or what Ong terms the “script” stage of language development (Ong, 1967). Both Ong and Havelock (1963) note the obvious point that oral cultures are totally dependent on human memory for the retention of knowledge, and assert that mnemonic devices such as themes (the battle, the banquet, the homecoming, etc.) and formulaic expression are typical in the expressions of oral cultures.
One facet of this was that human characterizations also became formulaic, that is, Odysseus is always described as wily Odysseus while Nestor is referred to consistently as wise Nestor and Penelope is constantly labeled as faithful Penelope (Ong, 1967). Ong emphasizes that such characters are ceremonial characters, larger than life, and that such phrasing serves as a mnemonic device similar to the metrical phrasing of “wine-dark sea,” “rosy-fingered dawn,” etc., that one encounters in Homer.
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During Trump’s recent interview with Kristen Welker of NBC News, he called Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “DeSanctimonious” — he never referred to him by his proper name. Similarly, as mentioned before, he regularly calls his opponents “low-energy” (Jeb Bush), “deranged” (Jack Smith), “sleepy” (Joe Biden), “crooked” (Hillary Clinton, but now also Joe Biden in a transfer of sorts of a fundamental trait), and so on.
When Trump uses these nicknames, he is employing what Vocate describes in her passage. He’s turning those people—full, three-dimensional human beings, nuanced and with agency—into “ceremonial characters,” i.e., stock characters. This transforms them into two-dimensional cut-outs, there to serve a role in an overall script. And, in Donald Trump’s world, that script features him as the hero. All others become foils.
These nicknames also serve as mnemonic devices. As such, they are propaganda existing at the conversational level. Because of this familiarity, they enter the consciousness and stick there. They become affixed. This is precisely the danger in repeating these formulations, even in an ironic manner, because the toting of these forms into conversation is what allows them to take up residence and stick.
So we see that fascist propaganda has a dimension that exists at the level of script, as well as at the level of word. It is this propensity to embed or burrow that is a salient feature of this kind of insinuation of fascist ideas in the otherwise naïve (i.e., neutral) listener. Words are an invisible way of getting past defenses; and these constructions serve the same function as the Trojan horse.