Renaming Controversies and Authoritarian Tactics

At a press conference on Tuesday, Donald Trump signaled that things are about to get very, very ugly. He wouldn’t rule out using military force to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal. He celebrated the idea that his threats to jail Mark Zuckerberg might have caused Zuckerberg to surrender to him. And Trump vowed to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. We talked to Jennifer Mercieca, a professor of rhetoric who writes about fascist tropes. She explains how Trump is attempting to acclimate Americans to expansionist nationalism and naked threats to jail people without cause to force them into line, and why that bodes so badly about what’s coming. Listen to this episode here.

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