From the earliest colonial inquisitions into Native American land to the lynchings in the Jim Crow south, our society was built upon the lashed backs of others. For every dream made in the so-called promised land, thousands more were crushed under its boot. 

Supposedly, America has grown out of this phase. We are led to believe that times have changed and that we live in an era of civility and equality. 

But in almost every regard, the actions of the modern conservative party beg to differ.

In the heat of the second 2024 presidential debate, former President Donald Trump fumbled against his opponent Vice President Kamala Harris. After lying and insulting his way through arguments on economic and foreign policy, the conversation turns to immigration. The two go back and forth for some time before Trump makes an outrageous, unprompted claim.

“In Springfield (Ohio), they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame,” Trump said.

Overnight, the Haitian citizens of Springfield, Ohio, became the newest names on the Republican party’s ever-expanding hit list. 

In the days to follow, dozens of bomb threats which “used hateful language towards immigrants and Haitians” were called into schools and government buildings, putting Springfield on lockdown. Later, members of the alt-right militia known as the Proud Boys took to the streets and marched, just as fliers spread by a Ku Klux Klan affiliated group began to spread throughout the city, according to PBS. 

Hatred, the plague that it is, infected Springfield, Ohio, and left it reeling. One errant, baseless remark from Trump was all it took for his base to rally against its newly-conjured boogeyman, to spew racism and bigotry without a hint of shame. 

While certainly disturbing, this dramatic progression of events should be anything but shocking to those who have paid attention to the conservative party’s rhetoric over the last eight years. 

Whether they’re depicting Black Lives Matter protesters as thugs and arsonists or claiming transgender women to be sexual predators, many Republicans are no stranger to vilifying the marginalized if it means advancing their political agenda. 

When processed through the machine of conservative rhetoric, immigrants seeking asylum in America become “animals” invading the country. Protesters demanding justice become rampant “terrorists.” Insurgents assaulting the Capitol building become “patriots” defending their freedom. 

To twist the truth in the image of your vision is the unfortunate job of any politician, but it’s an expressly dangerous one in the hands of the party who insists on fighting for what they call cultural integrity, which is really just aggressive nationalism. 

Ferald Bryan, a professor of rhetoric and public communications at NIU, noted this phenomenon is unique to Trump, not to the conservative party as a whole.

“He (Trump) certainly wants conservative votes, and some people are willing,” Bryan said. “Some voters, traditional conservative Republicans, are willing to vote for him. But the fact that a lot of conservative leaders who happen to be Republican are coming out against him, even his former White House staff and most of his former cabinet. So, I’m not completely comfortable personally calling Trump’s position relevant to the traditional conservative position, but I think certainly some traditional conservative Republicans will continue to vote for him.”

While it’s true that Trump’s presidency shifted the party several degrees right, Republican politicians have never been strangers to this inflammatory speech. Democratic politicians, who must appeal to liberals to survive, employ the rhetoric of acceptance, while Republicans employ the rhetoric of the “other.” 

If they don’t think like me, look like me, pray like me, love like me, they are other than me, and those who are other than me are worse than me – this is the mindset that conservative rhetoric promotes. Unorthodoxy in any shape or form is appalling to the conservative, who believes anything that exists out of their narrow framework is somehow wrong or in need of correction.

When rhetoric is used in this way to ostracize others, to draw lines in the sand between the right and wrong ways to live, people begin to think of the ostracized as the enemy. 

This is a tool consistently used by Republican politicians who need their base to be passionate enough to vote. When Trump and his running mate JD Vance conjured up a hoax about cat-eating Haitians in an innocent midwestern town, they weren’t stupidly retelling a story they’d been misled into believing. They were fabricating a lie to further frame immigrants as dangerous in an effort to frighten their base, because a frightened base will do whatever they ask of them. 

If this fright results in real and tangible violence against innocent people, so be it, all that matters is that Trump is in office come January.

One only needs to look at the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection to see the full range of this rhetoric’s effect on display. 

For months during and after the election, Donald Trump lied about a “stolen” race that had violated not just the Constitution, but the trust of the American people. This time, the government itself was the “other.” 

When his supporters took his words in stride and launched an attack on the Capitol, the country caught its first real glimpse of what Trump and his party are capable of doing. They were capable of killing, breaking and burning, all because they were convinced of their righteousness, a righteousness they were manipulated into believing. 

Bryan believes that another violent uprising isn’t out of the question.

“I think if he (Trump) continues to fan the flames, and especially the way he’s trying to set up the blaming of Jews if they don’t vote for him, blaming various groups for not voting for him, and also suggesting that the systems in various states are corrupt and so forth,” Bryan said. “I mean, he is certainly setting up all kinds of appeals, and especially for his supporters to perhaps do violent things if he’s not elected. I think that is a reasonable conclusion given his past history.”

Hate has always had a place in America, and today is no different. The crisis in Springfield will not be the last of its kind.

 As long as conservatives continue to preach their rhetoric of the “other,” the hateful in our society will always have someone to hate.