The deadly consequences of Trump’s gradual and insidious rhetoric

Susan Benesch, founder of the Dangerous Speech Project, pens an op-ed about the dangers of Trump’s rhetoric.

“Dangerous speech is potent precisely because it is gradual, so it’s easy to get inured to the dribbling, like a slow gas leak,” she writes. “The philosopher John Stuart Mill gave a famous but incomplete description of a single speech: a leader encouraging a hungry mob to break into the house of a corn-dealer and help themselves to the food inside. In D.C., the mob helped itself to Nancy Pelosi’s mail and other trophies. But they would never have done that if they had heard only one speech or even just a few.”

Read more in the Philadelphia Inquirer and from the Dangerous Speech Project