To cement their control, authoritarian leaders have to claim and empty the meaning out of terms such as “peace”, “compassion”, and “empathy”, just as they do when they label other people “fascists”, “radical Marxists”, “tyrants”, “terrorists” or “antisemites” – a trend spotted, for example, by Professor Timothy Snyder and Professor Noam Chomsky.

Listen, for example, to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration address on 20 January, where he declared the dawn of a “golden age” for America, with him as “a peacemaker and a unifier”. A peacemaker? The weeks following the inauguration have shown his administration’s escalating erosion of social justice, democratic processes and global peace. How can language be misused so badly? We analysed Trump’s inauguration address to see how authoritarianism is imposed through language and to learn how to resist it.

Throughout the language of the address, Trump tries to position himself as the sole moral authority with a focus on corporate, industrial and technological dominance. One strategy he uses is to present this vision as non-contestable. Statements of bare assertion — “And above all, China is operating the Panama Canal, and we didn’t give it to China. We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back” — are non-negotiable declarations intended to create new moral orders and realities.

Assertions also invoke themes of pride and transformation in superlatives, a typical feature of Trump rhetoric: statements are framed as either completely positive — ”We will again build the strongest military the world has ever seen” — or utterly negative, as in ”Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponised to persecute political opponents”. This linguistic choice obscures any nuance in what are very complex issues and compels his audience to identify with him (“we”, “our”), giving them no option for critical understanding and no opportunity to respond with empathy and develop compassionate responses to the rights of marginalised groups.

For the groups bombarded by this language, both in regions such as the occupied Palestinian territories and Central America, but paradoxically also those at home, for example for the American-born children of migrants and for gender-diverse citizens, Trump’s dominant moral principle of “America first” shapes a framework for international relations that justifies occupation, dehumanisation, and systemic violence. This framework is presented through recurrent themes of a dangerous other (“millions and millions of criminal aliens”) and with promises that American sovereignty “will be reclaimed”. This nationalistic rhetoric appears blind to empathy — the process of hearing and understanding the feelings and experiences of others — and, instead, fosters division and exclusion at the expense of global co-operation, compassion for those in need, and peace.

Empathy opens our hearts and minds to the pain of others for the survival for all. Social cohesion is built not through imposing power but through compassion and its fostering of democratic values and international legal frameworks such as the Geneva Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, through an “interdependent ethos” where individuals derive well-being from improving others’ lives.

Trump’s address redefines “peace” as a product of American superiority and “unity” as the adoration of the rest of the world: “America will reclaim its rightful place as the greatest, most powerful, most respected nation in the world, inspiring the awe and admiration of the entire world”. This formulation is radically different from an understanding of peace as mutual understanding and non-violence, of “positive peace” encompassing not only the absence of violence but also the presence of justice, equality and social harmony, which requires us globally to tackle economic disparities, racial injustices and human rights violations.

”They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelenskyy by a Ukrainian Pétain at the beck and call of Putin”. – Claude Malhuret speaking to the French Senate on 4 March.

An analysis of Trump’s 2025 address highlights the deep contradictions between the moral values he espouses and his political and strategic actions that prioritise America’s corporate and material interests over the collective well-being of humanity. Positioning America as globally dominant, exceptional, insular and self-serving risks fracturing international alliances, stifling meaningful discourse and undermining global efforts to address inequality, violence and human rights. It is evident, however, that many people refuse to be stifled.

From world leaders, to prominent American citizens, journalists and ordinary citizens who value peace and social justice, people are speaking up, restating their commitment to the values of peace, compassion and empathy, and calling for a more humane and just approach to leadership. Prior to the inauguration of President Trump, the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, wrote a letter to him calling for compassion and serious dialogue to resolve their countries’ differences.

In response to Trump’s address, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, the Right Reverend Marion Budde, altered the sermon she was preaching the next day: “I found myself thinking, there’s a fourth thing we need for unity in this country – we need mercy. We need compassion. We need empathy. And after listening to the president on Monday, I thought, I wasn’t going to just speak of it in general terms.”

No matter what our depth of influence, we must see through Trump’s strategic misappropriation of words like “peacemaker” and “unifier”, and recognise his rhetoric for what it is: the words of a self-serving, moral deviant recklessly driving for his needs through threats, intimidation, coercion, and dehumanisation at the expense of millions of others. We all need to speak up against this and for global justice and peace, urgently.