BY Lauren McCutcheon
Nov. 15, 2024
The shouts from the young men through the open windows of an SUV on East Passyunk Avenue filled the unseasonably warm evening after Election Day: “Fuck the left! Fuck the left! Fuck the left!”
In the run-up to the holiday shopping and dining season, this is not exactly the vibe the thriving South Philly Business Improvement District is going for. Also, assuming the shouters repped the non-left, and their candidate just won the election, their rage seems wholly out of place. Aren’t winners supposed to be … happy?
After a moment of consideration, the shouting seemed like maybe post-sports championship madness — politics’ version of flipping a car. Occasionally, overwhelming joy manifests as violence. But turns out, the local incident is far from isolated. Shouting in South Philly was the least of it.
In the 24 hours after the election, hate speech spread on social media, where X saw a 4,600 percent spike of the slogan, “Your body, my choice,” and Facebook videos and TikToks showed middle school-age boys chanting the same to young girls. (“Get back to the kitchen” and “Repeal the 19th” also trended.)
Anonymous texters sent Black Americans — notably, HBCU students and a half dozen Lower Merion middle schoolers — personalized messages instructing them to report to plantations to pick cotton. (The FBI and FCC are investigating the origin of these messages.) Is it a coincidence that racist graffiti appeared on the fence of a home in historically Black Lawnside, NJ the same night as “Fuck the left?”
Maybe. Prolly not.
Why is this happening? And is there anything we can do about it?
After most any ball game, winners and losers shake hands. At best, exceptional athletes, the best of sports — Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka, Jason and Travis Kelce — embrace. At worst, the winners disregard the losers to focus on their own revelry and, for example, lie down in an end zone and make snow angels in green confetti. (We saw you, Swoop.) Without exception, however, a winning team, however, never celebrates by openly mocking the losing team.
Of course, not all election celebrants wreaked havoc on a South Philly boulevard or through their smartphones. Millions of Americans simply high-fived, maybe had a few too many Miller Lites, and kept their lawn signs up. Still, as always, the loudest, angriest voices are the hardest to ignore. And no one in charge seemed to be telling them to stop.
American University sociologist Cynthia Miller-Idriss helms the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University. The post-election spike in hate speech does not surprise her. It’s simply the natural outcome of a hate speech-filled campaign, she told WURB, in an “immediate burst” of “misogyny, racism and anti-immigrant rhetoric.”
Miller-Idriss reminds us that research has long shown that hate speech comes from the top. “Historically, when elected officials — especially at the highest levels of elected officials — use language that is derogatory, demeaning, dehumanizing, it gives permission to people who might harbor those ideas already to express them,” she says. “It also kind of normalizes and legitimizes and mainstreams the use of that language more broadly, and that makes it more likely that people on the fringes take action from it, and that people in their ordinary lives may lash out in violent ways as well.”
Lest you assume one party lays claim to all the mean words, let’s not forget that during the campaign, the Dems did their share of mudslinging. President Biden referred to Trump’s supporters as “garbage;” Harris suggested her opponent was too old and incompetent to serve in office; many Democrats referred to MAGA as “fascists;” and, in an almost charming Midwestern attempt at meanness, former vice presidential candidate Tim Walz called Republicans … “weird.”
Is that the same level of dangerous vitriol as Trump accusing Haitian Americans of eating people’s pets? Maybe not. But neither campaign exactly modeled perfect civility.
Temple Political Science Professor Barbara Ferman agrees. “It’s the legitimation of bad behavior,” she says, “More than that, it’s the celebration. I mean, January 6 now is being portrayed as a love fest — and people died.”
Penn professor and political theorist Jeffrey Green offers an additional explanation: “33 percent of Americans think that Biden lost in 2020,” he says. “Now, we have someone who won the popular and the electoral vote.” There’s a sense, he suggests, among the winning side that they “got rid of the usurper.” So, Trump’s win, to many, is not just a victory — it’s a vindication. And vindication conveys a different, more I-told-you-so, feeling, than a mere win.
Also, Green points out that Philadelphia Trump voters have grown in numbers. Trump won 15 percent of the Philadelphia vote in 2016, 18 percent in 2020 and 20 percent in 2024. Trump supporters feel more empowered to voice the same kind of grievance and anger — especially in neighborhoods like South Philly, where militants came out in 2020 to protect the Pennsport Target during the George Floyd protests.
But all three academics offer glimmers of hope on how we can live together better.
Obviously, the general public can’t do much about what elected officials in high office say — except vote for leaders who speak differently next time. But that doesn’t mean we can’t reduce the misinformation that fuels hate speech among the general public. And by “we,” I mean “chatbots.”
Among the endless reporting about how technology — especially AI — has radicalized our kid cousins, bro-y brothers, wayward aunts and next-door neighbors, this September, MIT and Cornell University released a remarkable study. The schools enlisted 2,190 conspiracy theory-holding Americans in three-round conversations with a chatbot that used bespoke language to communicate facts contrary to what the participants thought was accurate. The result: “The treatment reduced participants’ belief in their chosen conspiracy theory by 20 percent on average” for two months.
This, to those of us who’ve interacted with conspiracy theory holders, is quite a result. But why does Great Uncle Bob believe a computer program’s word over that of his favorite niece? Miller-Idriss says, “If I had to guess, my hypothesis is that it has to do with the fact that humans carry a lot of judgment, which can communicate and create shame, and the chatbots don’t do that. They don’t judge.”
Interesting, right? Doesn’t exactly assist with your upcoming Thanksgiving plans, but something to think about.
Give yourself a break from social media, which has rendered its users less attentive, less patient and more emotional than ever. Many of Ferman’s students voted for the first time in 2016, when apps and platforms were perfecting the art of addicting users. They’re not surprised by the hate speech; they’re accustomed to how it works. “A lot of studies show what keeps us coming back [to social media sites] — is anger,” she says, “If I own one of these sites, I might be nonpartisan, but I have to make money, so I want people coming back. If anger is what brings them back, that’s what I’m going to do.”
A week ago, Ardmore therapist Jaime Zuckerman advised anyone feeling election anxiety to remove their most-visited social apps from home screens, and limit scrolling two twice a day.
Of course, you can’t make others take time offline to chill out. But you can take it for yourself, and challenge people close to you who seem inexplicably mad to do the same. Use that deliciously non-addictive time to appreciate complexity, to realize that not everything has a quick and easy solution, and to learn a little patience. “A lot of people fail to understand that certain problems take a long time to work on,” says Furman, “Issues of immigration, for example, are incredibly complicated, whether you are for immigration or against it.”
Ferman suggests picking up a copy of Rev. William Barber’s book The Third Reconstruction, where the author and civil rights activist suggests finding solace and community at faith-based institutions. “If you look at Christianity, Judaism and Islam, at the root of these religions are justice, fairness and decency,” she says. Barber has spent years building community through church, using faith as a starting point in a longer conversation.
This, says Ferman, is not a short-term solution. But if you find the right faith community fit, you can find healing in the longer term.
Not into organized religion? Find an apolitical effort you can get behind. Take an art class. Plant a garden. Clean a street. “It’s a way for people to meet each other and see the humanity in each other,” says Ferman.
“Back in the day, before all this technology, that’s what community organizing was about,” she says, “You just start talking about the basic issues, the day-to-day issues, and you realize all of a sudden, we have all this in common. And then you can start to have the tougher conversations, the productive conversations.”
It’s a small-scale solution. And it’s certainly not hi-tech, like an MIT chatbot. But, she says, in the long run, it works.
Green conjectures that in Philly neighborhoods with higher, more visible, more vocal Republican presence — neighborhoods that used to vote almost uniformly Democratic to rep their unions, for example — residents who previously seemed to agree on politics now need to learn to agree … to disagree.
“The last many decades have been a relatively peaceful time for so many people,” he says, “and now, that seems to be continuing to go in the opposite direction.” Cities are trending less blue, more purple. Even 30 percent of Manhattan voted for Trump.
Here in Philly, politically divided blocks might need to look outside the city — Bucks County, say — to learn to live together harmoniously. This, says Green, “is a new-ish problem, a different urban political landscape … And the suburbs don’t have block parties.”
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