Henry Giroux: The Power of Language in Defying Authoritarianism

Federal agents block people protesting an ICE immigration raid at a farm in California. Under Donald Trump’s leadership, language is weaponized. Immigrants are branded “vermin,” “terrorists” and political opponents denounced as communists to be deported, Henry A. Giroux writes. Mario Tama/Getty Images file photo

Henry A. Giroux

July 19, 2025

Henry A. Giroux holds the McMaster University chaired professorship for scholarship in the public interest.

In an age when authoritarianism is on the rise, when cruelty becomes policy and empathy is dismissed as weakness, language can no longer masquerade as neutral.

It has always been a site of struggle, a weapon, a battlefield, and, potentially, a form of resistance. Across the United States, and increasingly in democratic nations like Canada, we witness the corrosion of language as it becomes a vehicle for lies, hate, and the normalization of authoritarianism.

The late Toni Morrison warned that “oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence.” Today, her insight feels prescient. Under Donald Trump’s leadership, language is weaponized. Immigrants are branded “vermin,” “terrorists” and political opponents denounced as communists to be deported.

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter recently wrote “in response to a speech by Melanie Yazzie, an Indigenous artist and professor, about decolonization, “We didn’t Kill enough Indians.” This is not mere rhetoric; nor is it a performative display of emboldened hatred and historical forgetting, it sets the stage for state-sanctioned repression.

What is at stake is more than civility. It is democracy itself. When language loses meaning and truth is blurred, tyranny thrives. Trump’s discourse is not about persuasion; it is about dehumanization and domination. It functions as statecraft, laying the groundwork for a society where suffering becomes spectacle and repression masquerades as law and order.

Canada is not immune.

While the scale and pace may differ, similar trends are emerging: demonization of immigrants, attacks on academic freedom, and the rise of far-right voices in mainstream media. If we fail to take language seriously as a political force, even stable democracies may slide into danger.

History teaches that fascism does not arrive overnight. It creeps forward under the guise of patriotism, law, and “common sense.” Writing during the Nazi era, Viktor Klemperer, in his seminal work “The Language of the Third Reich,” argued fascist politics begins in the erosion of language.

“Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic,” he wrote. “They are swallowed unnoticed, and then after a little time, the toxic reaction sets in.”

We are living through that toxic reaction.

Trump’s second-term ambitions include mass deportations, unleashing the National Guard as an occupying force, expanding detention camps and attempting to revoke birthright citizenship. His advisers openly boast about cruelty, including racist slurs and violent fantasies directed at vulnerable communities. When cruelty becomes governance, language does more than reflect fascism, it enacts it.

Resistance must begin with reclaiming language. This is not just a call for more accurate reporting, but for a rupture from the deadening vocabularies of authoritarianism and apathy. We need a language that names the horrors without flinching and imagines something better.

The late Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o called language “a site of struggle … A battlefield of ideas.” He argued it can create colonies of the mind but also liberate. It can normalize violence, but also rekindle memory, solidarity, and hope. Language is not merely descriptive; it is prophetic. It can chart futures yet to be born.

The task is to develop a language that pierces the fog of spectacle and disarms the lies of power, that separates truth from propaganda and speaks not only to injustice but to the radical possibilities of a future shaped by hope, struggle, and moral imagination. We must name fascism when we see it, expose the architecture of cruelty and insist on a vocabulary rooted in justice, compassion and resistance.

This is not merely a literary or academic exercise; it is a political and moral imperative. The words we choose, and the silences we permit, will define the memory of this moment and shape the world we leave behind. Language is the canary in the coal mine, warning us that democracy dies without an informed citizenry.

Silence is complicity. But language, wielded with courage and conscience, remains one of our most vital weapons. In these dark times, especially for Canadians, speaking the truth with clarity and conviction is essential. The task is not only to resist but to rethink, reimagine, and fight for a democratic and just future before it slips beyond our grasp.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.thespec.com/opinion/contributors/the-power-of-language-in-defying-authoritarianism/article_5583051a-293c-57fb-8ef4-9675226f8a9c.html