Populism as Dog-Whistle Politics: Anti-Elite Discourse and Sentiments Toward Minority Groups

Abstract

Past research has devoted more attention to the consequences of populism for party politics and democratic governance than to its effects on public attitudes—and particularly, how populist claims interact with nationalism to exacerbate exclusionary beliefs among the public. Using online survey experiments, we examine whether exposure to populism increases out-group antipathy among Democrats and Republicans. In Study 1, we randomly assign respondents to three conditions featuring vignettes based on political speeches: a morally neutral argument, a populist critique of political elites and a morally framed anti-immigration appeal. The results demonstrate that the populist treatment generates lower feeling-thermometer ratings of minority groups than the control condition, but only among Republicans and Trump supporters. Study 2 uses a similar design to evaluate the link between left-wing economic populism and economic nationalism: the populist condition features a critique of economic elites, the nationalist condition blames China for the offshoring of US jobs and the outcome variable measures respondents’ sentiments toward China. Economic nationalism generates increased anti-China sentiment among moderate and conservative Democrats but economic populism does not. Together, these findings suggest that the effects of populism on nationalist antipathies observed in Study 1 are driven by the discursive bundling of anti-elite talk with ethno-nationalism on the political right, which stands in contrast to the decoupling of economic populism from economic nationalism on the left. The former has effectively turned populism into a form of dog-whistle politics among Republicans, and Trump supporters in particular.

Mating Call, Dog Whistle, Trigger: Asymmetric Alignments, Race, and the Use of Reactionary Religious Rhetoric in American Politics

“…In addition, the fundamentally racialized nature of U.S. religion—something previous models of religious rhetoric in politics have largely ignored—makes the documented surge of reactionary Christian nationalist and Islamophobic rhetoric (Hughes 2019, 2020; Neumann and Geary 2019) strategic for accomplishing multiple political goals, ranging from overt appeals to implicit associations. Despite the increasing attention given to White Christian nationalism as a reactionary ideology shaping political values (Braunstein 2021; Davis and Perry 2021; Perry 2022), scholars have yet to develop a framework for understanding how reactionary religious rhetoric with Christian nationalist and Islamophobic elements is deployed as a political strategy and discourse, similar to nationalism or populism (Bonikowski and Zhang 2023; Gidron and Bonikowski 2013).…”

“…This can reduce voter participation when elections are uncompetitive due to districting. But this can also raise the stakes of competitive elections, demanding aggressive campaigning that is often not tied to issues of governance (Bonikowski et al 2022; Bonikowski and Stuhler 2022; Bonikowski and Zhang 2023). Flowing from this, the second stable condition is that voter persuasion in competitive races is heavily tied to identity and emotion, specifically anger and fear (Achen and Bartels 2016; Huddy, Mason, and Aarøe 2015; Tannenbaum et al 2015; Valentino et al 2011; Weber 2013).…”

“…Lastly, growing research in the sociology of religion, political psychology, and social identity supports the idea that certain identities implicitly overlap substantially with others such that reference to one may unconsciously "prime" another (e.g., Albertson 2011Albertson , 2015Bonikowski and Zhang 2023;Devos and Mohamed 2014;Gorski and Perry 2022;Hutchings and Jardina 2009;Johnson, Rowatt, and LaBouff 2010;Perry, Cobb, et al 2022;Perry and Schleifer 2022;Wetts and Willer 2019). This is another use of the dog whistle concept that is best understood as something more cognitive and so implicit that its potential to activate a response can be hidden from the hearers as well (e.g., a trigger word for a hypnotized subject or sleeper agent).…”

“…Reactionary religious rhetoric is thus an exemplar of novel one-sided political strategies reflecting this emerging political reality in the United States and potentially other national contexts experiencing far-right, ethno-religious nationalist movements. A growing body of research suggests reactionary religious appeals can fit within a broader rhetorical oeuvre on the far right, including conspiratorial, populist, nationalist, law-and-order, and nostalgic language (Bond and Neville-Shepard 2021; Bonikowski and Zhang 2023). Yet religious rhetoric also fits a unique niche.…”

“…Although the dog whistle concept has potentially lost some usefulness as it has come to represent a nebulous array of subtle communication tactics (see Bonikowski and Zhang 2023;Haney Lopez 2014;Wetts and Willer 2019), I follow Henderson and McCready (2018) in reconceptualizing the term to be truer to the original metaphor: a signal that goes unheard by some but target audiences consciously hear. Religious dog whistles are appeals to an ethno-religious identity that allow for plausible deniability; yet the intention is consciously recognized by target audiences because of culturally specific knowledge.…”