July 30,2024
This month, we delve into a special type of dangerous speech – one that doesn’t attack anyone. Instead, this speech valorizes violence, characterizing it as something honorable and connected to the identity of the in-group.
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June 06,2024
The Dangerous Speech Project and the India Hate Lab have been studying the spread of hateful, inflammatory rhetoric during this year’s elections in the United States and in India. The Indian election, just completed, has taught us quite a bit about such content, and ways to undermine it. Please join the DSP’s Cathy Buerger and Susan Benesch, India Hate Lab’s Raqib Hameed Naik, and distinguished Indian journalist Parth M.N., to listen and ask questions.
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June 03,2024
The Dangerous Speech Project offers recommendations to the Oversight Board on their “River to the Sea” case.
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May 22,2024
“As we remember the Isla Vista victims on the 10-year anniversary of their murders,” writes Alex DiBranco, “it is imperative that we give serious attention to the continued risks of misogynist ideology, speech, and violence.”
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May 20,2024
In pro-Trump forums, when someone “pushes the norm of what is considered acceptable speech” by posting a call to execute judges or other public officials, “and no one questions it, then the norm of what is acceptable may shift,” said Cathy Buerger, who studies inflammatory rhetoric at the nonpartisan Dangerous Speech Project in Washington. Buerger reviewed the violent posts identified by Reuters.
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March 21,2024
Israel’s sluggish delivery of food aid to Gaza is unconscionable: It is tantamount to torturing civilians, and it is turning even longtime friends into appalled critics. But Israel can relieve this needless suffering, without helping Hamas
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February 27,2024
“Companies are regulating human expression more than any government does. And more than any government ever has,” Susan Benesch explained.
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February 12,2024
Susan Benesch and Cathy Buerger for the L.A. Times: Two unrelated facts combined with a lie form a powerful and dangerous piece of misinformation that is spreading virally.
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February 05,2024
This brief cites “The Insidious Creep of Violent Rhetoric”, Executive Director Susan Benesch’s essay for Noema, in which she illustrates that it’s possible to incite violence very effectively without directly calling for it. Her work supports the amicus brief, which explores how the events surrounding the 2020 U.S. election and the violence on January 6, 2021 relate to events that have caused democratic erosion and collapse in other countries.
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January 17,2024
As the U.S. election approaches, there is a growing possibility of intergroup violence along with an increase in dangerous and hateful speech. How can we best respond as peacebuilders? In this hour-long workshop hosted by Peace Through Action USA, Director of Research Cathy Buerger will discuss one possible response to online hatred – counterspeech.
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January 03,2024
Trump‘s recent xenophobic rhetoric is more brazen and explicit. What can be done about it?
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December 07,2023
“Is it actually guarding the election against fraud, or is it guarding the election against a result in which Trump is not declared the winner?”
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November 16,2023
Trump’s remarks exhibit familiar patterns or “hallmarks” of dangerous speech, including ‘threat to group integrity or purity’ which is rhetoric suggesting that the presence of other people is poisonous and must be removed. With the term “vermin” Trump also, of course, dehumanized his political opponents.
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November 14,2023
Even as it has wiped out people with terrible speed and cruelty, the Hamas-Israel war has also dried up moderate public discourse about Jews, Palestinians, and the war itself, more quickly and widely than any other conflict in our lifetimes.
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October 19,2023
The former president has used expressions in recent speeches that are specifically and unmistakably redolent of Nazi rhetoric.
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August 28,2023
The language of the Trump tweet is inflammatory to his followers but ambiguous enough that he can claim it’s harmless. It isn’t. In the four words of his tweet he repeated his false claim that the election was stolen from him, and framed his cause as a righteous war.
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June 15,2023
It’s vital for influential Americans to publicly correct those dangerous lies and others circulating in our body politic. The deliberate gap left by our national law imposes a civic obligation to practice the only peaceful alternative to criminalizing speech that leads to violence: publicly repudiating it.
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December 24,2021
Over and over at political rallies, Donald Trump read the lyrics of a song which he turned into dangerous speech by giving it an entirely new meaning. “The Snake” describes a woman who rescues a half-frozen serpent, only to have it betray her kindness with a lethal bite. Trump frames it as a warning that foreigners pose a mortal threat to Americans.
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May 05,2021
Although Trump remains banned from Facebook and Twitter, Trump-ism is far from gone. The greatest, lasting damage his rhetoric did was not the January 6 riot –- awful as it was — but rather the impression he has left upon so many well-intentioned Americans that he remains a necessary, even God-ordained defender of their faith and values.
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December 14,2020
The 2020 U.S. election was like nothing we’d seen before for many reasons, including disinformation, dangerous speech, and unprecedented fears of election-related violence. Now it’s time to start thinking about the future.
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May 06,2020
We’re seeing a worrisome pattern—that of authority figures capitalizing on the public’s need for guidance and security to spread disinformation, including dangerous speech.
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March 26,2020
“It’s not really hatred that is the most operative emotion regarding dangerous speech, it’s fear. Fear is what makes people turn violently against another group of people more than hatred.”
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March 20,2020
Intentionally associating COVID-19 with Asian communities encourages cruel and ignorant stigmatizing, and distracts people from reliable information about the disease.
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October 22,2019
WNYC’s award-winning show On the Media featured DSP Executive Director Susan Benesch in its October 11, 2019 show on speech in the United States.
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September 10,2019
When people describe government policy as evil or even criminal, and then others attack facilities where the policy is carried out, is that Dangerous Speech?
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May 07,2019
Governments, internet companies, and civil society organizations attempting to prevent the spread of violent white supremacist ideas – and killings – must consider the radicalizing capacity of fear and threat, instead of focusing exclusively on hate speech.
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February 22,2019
“The fact that he was so much influenced by Breivik reminds us this is not only a domestic American phenomenon or problem, that these sorts of people find each other and influence each other across international borders.”
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September 20,2018
The Alt-Right’s recent stumbles may look bad for their activists – but their ideas are making headway in the US’ most prominent platforms.
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August 23,2018
President Donald Trump has routinely used dehumanizing rhetoric, like “dog” and “animal,” to describe people – especially people of color. These words must not be brushed off; they bear the weight of centuries of racist horror.
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July 12,2018
The window of acceptable politics in America has widened to include what was once unthinkable. White supremacists have taken advantage across the country.
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June 19,2018
By referring to immigrants who “pour into and infest our Country,” President Trump has invoked a malevolent vocabulary – one which has striking similarities to rhetoric which has preceded episodes of intergroup violence.
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April 09,2018
DSP Executive Director Susan Benesch, J. Nathan Matias of Princeton University, and several other independent researchers launched a collaborative study with Twitter to test whether awareness of the rules affects user behavior.
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March 08,2018
Dr. Anna Szilagyi describes how dehumanizing rhetoric – a key hallmark of Dangerous Speech – affects our thoughts and perceptions, making violence more acceptable.
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January 24,2018
This six-minute introductory video explains Dangerous Speech and its five elements, with historical and contemporary examples from around the world.
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December 22,2017
President Trump’s hateful and increasingly dangerous rhetoric has now targeted legal immigrants, describing diversity visa recipients as “the worst of the worst.”
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December 11,2017
On Thursday, the U.S. government may gut “net neutrality”: the rules that prohibit Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from interfering with…
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December 10,2017
This video highlights the impact that gender-based online harassment has on women’s ability to participate in political and public life, which has implications for their ability to resist or counter Dangerous Speech.
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November 29,2017
Sadly, it’s not new that Donald Trump vilified a group of people with spurious claims from a terrible source: today,…
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November 09,2017
Guest blogger Dr. Anna Szilagyi describes how politicians including Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump portray the term “political correctness” as…
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August 17,2017
In Charlottesville, Americans watched barriers to Dangerous Speech go down in broad daylight, in the middle of a city, as extremists waved swastikas and chanted hateful slogans. Some people are taking matters into their own hands, reaching out to masses of others to identify and punish marchers in the ‘Unite the Right’ rally, but online shaming often goes too far, reaching into a person’s offline life to inflict punishment
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June 07,2017
Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins called for “radicalised Islamic suspects” to be hunted down and killed in a Facebook post. He repeatedly used the phrase “kill them all.” This is Dangerous Speech, and it is unacceptable.
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February 23,2017
Update 2/27/2017: Another incident of vandalism at a Jewish cemetery occurred yesterday, this time at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia. Clean-up…
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February 10,2017
Since U.S. government leaders are failing to denounce xenophobia – and even promoting it by depicting foreigners as dangerous threats…
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January 25,2017
Now that Donald Trump is president, he has an even greater responsibility to denounce hateful speech and violence: some of…
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December 29,2016
An American neo-Nazi is planning an armed march against “a vicious, evil race of hate-filled psychopaths” – Jews – through Whitefish, Montana in two weeks. It is the latest step in an antisemitic campaign led by Andrew Anglin, founder of the website The Daily Stormer. Anglin chose Whitefish because the family of another far-right activist, Richard Spencer, has been under pressure from local residents including some Jews.
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December 20,2016
At the Dangerous Speech Project, we are often asked whether President-elect Donald Trump’s remarks constitute Dangerous Speech. Since the United…
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October 25,2016
This Washington Post article profiles Susan Benesch, director of the Dangerous Speech Project, and explains our work.
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October 14,2016
This guide offers recommendations for those who wish to engage in counterspeech online, based on the findings of our two year study of hateful speech and counterspeech on Twitter.
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October 14,2016
This report from our two year study of hateful speech and counterspeech on Twitter reviews existing literature on counterspeech, examines cases of counterspeech through the vector in which it was delivered, and develops a taxonomy of counterspeech strategies.
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September 29,2016
Much of the world is transfixed at present by Donald Trump’s often insulting and provocative language. But like any speech, it can only be fully understood in context – which now includes remarks more belligerent and shocking than Trump’s, from his supporters who have shouted “Kill her” and “Build the wall – kill them all” at recent Trump rallies, and from other elected officials such as governors of U.S. states.
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