ABSTRACT
The language that citizens and residents use in public discourse, and the way in which they deliver arguments and defend some policies over others, matter. In democratic states, in the normal course of events, citizens and residents will disagree about the best way forward, and via a range of public and political media, raise questions and concerns, in dialogue with others, about how to proceed fairly amidst this disagreement. The commitment to vigorous yet respectful deliberation among equals is a key norm in democratic states and serves to protect and support the trust relations among citizens and residents from diverse backgrounds. The central contention of this chapter is that the rhetoric deployed by a large number of so-called populist parties and their leaders, especially those that adopt anti-immigration positions, is undermining commitment to the norm of respectful deliberation; a norm which is itself deeply connected to the principle of equality that underpins democracies. In particular, I shall demonstrate, populist parties and their leaders ignore the norms of respectful speech in ways that threaten the trust on which diverse democracies rely.
