PoliticalMANIPULATIVE

Name-Calling

What it is

Attaching a bad label to a person, group, or idea so the audience rejects it on the strength of the label rather than by examining evidence — the first of the seven propaganda devices catalogued by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in 1937.

How it works

The device works because labels are processed faster than arguments and carry affect with them. A word like "extremist", "traitor", "radical", "fascist", "socialist", or "vermin" delivers a verdict and an emotion in one step, and the listener's mind fills in the case. The Institute for Propaganda Analysis put name-calling first among its seven devices in the 1937 bulletin "How to Detect Propaganda" because it is the cheapest: it costs nothing to apply, it is nearly impossible to answer without repeating the label, and it shifts the burden onto the target. What separates it from ordinary insult is that it substitutes for argument — the label is offered as the reason. Modern variants include the branded nickname, repeated until it fuses with the name (mere exposure and the illusory-truth effect do the rest), and the suffix label ("-ist", "-phobe", "-denier") deployed to end a conversation rather than to describe a position accurately. The tell is that the label arrives before, or instead of, any specific claim you could check.

Real-world examples

  • •During the U.S. Civil War, Republican newspapers branded anti-war Democrats "Copperheads" after the venomous snake; the label stuck so well that some Peace Democrats adopted it, wearing the copper Liberty-head penny as a badge.
  • •Senator Joseph McCarthy's 1950–1954 campaign relied on "Communist", "pinko", and "fellow traveler" as labels for State Department officials, academics, and Army officers, most of whom were never charged with anything; the Senate censured him in December 1954.
  • •Hillary Clinton's September 2016 description of half of Donald Trump's supporters as a "basket of deplorables" and Trump's branded nicknames ("Crooked Hillary", "Sleepy Joe", "Little Marco") were both name-calling in the IPA sense: verdict-carrying labels repeated in place of argument, one of which the targets adopted as an ironic badge.
  • •Outside the United States, the Nazi press labeled Weimar politicians "November criminals" for the 1918 armistice, Soviet media called dissidents "wreckers" and "rootless cosmopolitans", and in Britain "Tory scum" and "loony left" have served opposite sides since the 1980s.

Ethical guidelines

  • ●A label is legitimate only when it is accurate, defined, and accompanied by the evidence that earns it; "fascist" or "communist" applied to anyone one dislikes drains the word of meaning and insults the victims of the real thing.
  • ●Criticize positions and actions in terms specific enough to be checked; if you cannot state what the person did, you are not criticizing, you are labeling.
  • ●Refuse to circulate nicknames and slurs coined by campaigns, including ones aimed at people you oppose — repetition is what makes the technique work.

How to defend against it

  • ►Translate the label back into a claim: "What specifically did they do or say that makes them a [label]?" If no checkable act follows, the label was the whole argument.
  • ►Name the device out loud ("that is name-calling, not an argument"); Friestad and Wright's Persuasion Knowledge Model finds that recognizing a tactic as a tactic reduces its pull.
  • ►Do not repeat the label when rebutting it; the Debunking Handbook (Lewandowsky et al., 2020) recommends leading with the fact rather than the myth, because each repetition increases familiarity and belief.
  • ►Notice when a label is doing the work of an entire policy debate — "socialist" for a tax proposal, "racist" for a border policy — and ask for the specific provision at issue.

From the Defense Playbook

Superordinate Goals and Structured Contacttakes practice

Reduce hostility between groups by having them work together, as equals, toward a goal that both want and neither can reach alone; mere exposure or exhortation does little, but cooperative contact under the right conditions reliably lowers prejudice.

Foggingtakes practice

Respond to hostile or manipulative criticism by calmly agreeing with whatever in it is true, possible, or reasonable in principle, without defending yourself and without agreeing to change, so the critic has nothing solid to push against.

Negative Inquirytakes practice

Instead of defending yourself against vague or loaded criticism, ask calm, specific questions about what exactly the critic objects to, which turns honest criticism into usable information and leaves manipulative criticism with nothing to stand on.

Every playbook entry states how strong its evidence is and when not to use it. Browse the full playbook.

References

  1. Institute for Propaganda Analysis (1937). How to Detect Propaganda. Propaganda Analysis, 1(2)
    Name-calling as the first of the seven devices, defined as a bad label applied to make people reject an idea without examining evidence.
  2. Lee, A. M., & Lee, E. B. (Eds.) (1939). The Fine Art of Propaganda: A Study of Father Coughlin's Speeches. Harcourt, Brace
    The seven devices applied to a real body of political broadcasting, showing name-calling combined with the other devices.
  3. Friestad, M., & Wright, P. (1994). The Persuasion Knowledge Model: How People Cope with Persuasion Attempts. Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1), 1–31 · link
    Recognizing and naming a persuasion tactic changes how the audience processes it, the basis for the naming defense.
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