President Donald Trump is ready to use his fists to win the nation’s war against Iran. As the military operation enters its sixth month, Trump has been using increasingly personal and physically aggressive terminology to describe how the United States will defeat the country. Most recently, Trump has promised to “beat the f**ing shit out of them,” “smack” and “hit” Iran.
And according to historians, this specific type of language may be a very deliberate method of propaganda.
The fight language Trump uses when discussing Iran is called “glittering generalities,” one of the seven propaganda techniques identified in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis. Under this rhetoric, a leader promises an audience an inflated but imprecise outcome. (Some of the other techniques include name-calling, drawing upon “testimonials” to get respected or hated people to reject or endorse your message, and “plain folks” propaganda, or appearing to be ordinary to win audience’s confidence.)
Trump “is a master of glittering generalities,” said Nick Cull, a historian of propaganda and professor of communication at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Cull cited Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign speech as one famous example where Trump declared: “We are going to win so much you may even get tired of winning.”
