When talking stops and yelling starts

Opinion

“Use your words.” Anyone who has had to deal with a toddler tantrum knows the drill — screaming and carrying on, and not always for an obvious reason.

So, use your words. Tell me what is wrong, or what you want. With any luck (and enough repetition of that instruction), the tantrums will stop and more intelligent conversation can take place.

Inarticulate rage does not usually lead anywhere constructive. We need words to state the problem, and to frame its resolution.

Words matter. Without the right words, we can’t even think our thoughts. Words give shape and substance to our ideas, as well as our feelings.

But what happens when the words themselves are the problem? What happens when they are being used to provoke violence, to incite a riot, instead of settling things down?

We have seen too many recent examples of this, especially in American politics. Words have always been political tools in a democracy. But, increasingly, they are being used as existential weapons, intended to change the reality they describe.

If you are told there are no facts, just opinions, then all news potentially becomes “fake.” So if you don’t like what is being said, change the channel or — if you have the power — get rid of the source altogether.

Whether it is assassination or dismissal, it seems that such actions speak louder than words these days. Worse, if a picture is worth a thousand words, think of the pictures we have of masked government agents abducting people at gunpoint from the streets of American cities. Or children being pulled from the rubble of bombed-out apartment buildings in Gaza. Or markets in Ukraine, shattered by Russian missiles on a normal shopping day.

Beyond that tantrum, however, what happens when people don’t listen to your words? When your words are twisted to mean something you never intended to say? How long do you wait to be heard? How long before your rage begins again?

A common word these days is “populism,” the political idea that gains traction when ordinary people feel their needs are ignored by the elites of their society. Throughout history, populism has taken many forms, as leaders have tried to wield the power of the people to gain or to maintain their own position.

Populism requires an engaged population, but not an articulate one. To keep control, a populist leader needs to speak for the people, rather than allowing the people to speak freely for themselves. The people are supposed to echo and support the leader’s message, but not to generate ideas of their own.

Inevitably, it is thus much easier for a populist leader to manage a population that is enraged as well as engaged — as long as they are enraged at someone else. Imagine a population of angry toddlers, not encouraged to use their words, but instead urged to act out their rage and frustration, and you can understand why populism can become so dangerous. Once the mob is unleashed against the “elite” (whatever that word means, in any situation), it becomes difficult or impossible to control.

We have seen two populist revolutions play out over the past 250 years.

The American Revolution of 1776 was led by people wise enough to temper their populist appeal by afterward establishing safeguards — political institutions and laws that set limits to the power any individual could wield.

In contrast, the French Revolution of 1789 devolved into serial murder and chaos, leading to the eventual rule of the charismatic Corsican corporal, Napoleon Bonaparte, and decades of warfare that reshaped Europe in ways that still affect continental politics today.

Various leaders claim to speak (and therefore govern) on behalf of “the people,” but their words often ring hollow when compared to their actions. Populism misused can rapidly degenerate into authoritarianism, relying on brutal methods to maintain control of enraged groups of people that a normal, lawful democracy would never otherwise accept.

I would not be alone in thinking that we are living in dangerous times, in which our own democracy (and democratic freedoms) are under serious threat from many directions. The same populist pressures are here in Canada, as they are down south and in many other countries around the world, and that anger — however misdirected — continues to grow.

It’s not enough to tell people to use their words, however. All of us also need to choose our words, to first engage in conversation instead of merely verbal combat, and to understand the narrative that our words are creating when we interact with younger people.

If oldsters were always right, the world would not have become such a poisonous tangle of violence, injustice, inequality and ecological destruction.

The populist impulse is correct, especially among younger generations, because our future is being shredded by an elite few who feel immune to whatever happens to the rest of us.

But we need to be wary of the easy tyranny of kings.

Peter Denton writes from his home in rural Manitoba.