“I’ll talk to you the minute you stop killing children,” he proclaims as he closes the door in our faces.
My roommate, a public policy major, has been interning as a campaign assistant for Beryl Brown Piccolantonio, a Democratic candidate for the 4th district in the Ohio House of Representatives. Her role includes around 10 hours of door-knocking a week leading up to the election on November 5th. On Saturday, September 21, I left my dorm and accompanied her for about 3 hours, knocking on doors and informing residents of Piccolantonio’s policies and aspirations.
When I agreed to tag along with my roommate, I expected a peaceful afternoon. I was expecting many people not to answer, and when they did I anticipated a simple and quick conversation about Piccolantonio’s policy positions. I was not expecting, however, to be accused of killing children.
About two hours into our door-knocking, we approached a house on a corner lot with a big garden and screened-in porch. I had been used to giving the same spiel on Piccolantonio’s platform thus far. She has a strong focus on public schools, and restoring integrity in the political process following the election contention of 2020. Her stance on reproductive rights, however, was the focus of conversation with the man who answered the door at this particular home.
“Hello, we are volunteers with the Piccolantonio campaign. Do you mind if we have a moment of your time?” my roommate asked.
“Of course,” he responded. He noticed the Ohio State sticker on my roommate’s water bottle and our conversation began with aspirations for a successful Buckeye football season before we inquired about his voter registration status. He agreed with us on the importance of voting and assured us that he was registered and had been voting in Ohio elections since he was 18. The minute we shifted the conversation towards Piccolantonio’s policies he held up a hand and said, “Don’t bother with that, you won’t catch me voting for a murderer.”
My roommate and I struck speechless for a moment before I politely inquired what, exactly, he meant by that.
He launched into an increasingly tense rant about how the “Demo-rats” were allowing “post-birth abortions” across the nation, and his moral conscience could not allow him to support Piccolantonio because he “knew” that she would allow Ohio to become “lawless” in regards to abortion. My roommate and I, naturally, tried to diffuse the situation, assuring him that no part of Piccolantonio’s agenda was devoted to legalizing the killing of children after birth but he refused to listen, promptly shutting the door after exclaiming that he would only speak to us if “we stopped killing children.”
As we sat in the car after the exchange, I couldn’t help but wonder why he was so adamant that Democrats were killing babies that had already been born. It was then that I realized, almost two weeks prior, on national television, the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, had repeatedly returned to “post-birth abortions” during his debate against the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris.
Jennifer R. Mercieca outlines what she considers weaponized communication in her article “Dangerous Demagogues and Weaponized Communication” as communication that is used in “an aggressive means to gain compliance and avoid accountability” (Mercieca 269). She includes examples such as hate speech, doxing, ignoring contradictory information, and of most import to this story, conspiracy theories (Mercieca 271).
The man who answered the door this afternoon was convinced that every Democrat was conspiring to allow the “execution” of babies after birth, a conspiracy theory that Trump himself referred to in the debate.
There is currently no state in the U.S., democrat-led or otherwise, that allows the execution of babies after birth. If this is the case, why has this become an issue that Trump appears to be running on?
Mercieca would argue that Trump may be attempting to “overwhelm the news cycle” as a way to discredit his Democrat opponent, Kamala Harris (Mercieca 272). She would also argue that Trump is invoking outlandish conspiracy theories as a way to “distort reality” and invoke an emotional response from voters as a way to mobilize them (Mercieca 272).
Even after being fact-checked during the Debate, Trump held fast to his previous assertion that the former Governor of West Virginia called for the execution of newborns. CNN reporter, Meg Tirrel set out to find the origins of this conspiracy theory. She investigated an interview with former Virginian (not West Virginian) Governor Ralph Northam, where he commented on non-viable pregnancies and the opportunity for abortions in the third trimester in these cases (Tirrel). His words generated backlash, and launched the far-right conspiracy that Democrats were in support of “born-alive abortions.”
It is this misrepresentation of Northam’s words, that Trump referenced in the debate and that the man we spoke to took as fact. This encounter, on an otherwise peaceful Saturday afternoon, reminded me of the dangers of misinformation in this election cycle. Trump, as well as other candidates, are using weaponized communication, including conspiracy theories, to discredit opponents on national television. This makes it difficult for voters to be informed going into the November elections. There is a large segment of Ohio, and American, voters that believe Democrats are pushing for after-birth abortions and they are in danger of voting on a false narrative. My conversation this particular Saturday made the negative effects of disinformation tangible, and this election cycle is dangerous if voters don’t know the difference between fact and fiction.
Thank you for sharing your experience of canvassing and how in real time you witnessed the dangers of weaponized communication. I think you made a compelling argument, by drawing on your own encounter with a voter that was misinformed as a result of Trump’s spread of disinformation. It was a powerful example of how polarizing the political climate can be even in smaller elections, and how misinformation can fuel this. Explaining the background of the false theory, made it clear how existing in a media echo chamber can be incredibly harmful for both parties. I was curious to know whether you felt your experience was also connected to affective polarization in the US and despite you all rooting for the Buckeyes, your political beliefs meant you could not hold a conversation? Since you had established rapport, I think your story is especially important as a reminder of how polarization has caused many of the US to completely write off a portion of the country even when there are shared characteristics and values e.g. Ohio State Football. Obviously this is not the same as disagreeing over whether children are being killed, but I do think there is value in considering how pervasive polarization and viewing the “out-group” as the enemy has become. I think that disinformation, especially as social media continues to grow, plays a large role in this as it allows for polarization to grow as the ability to distinguish between real and fake information is harder on these less formal news platforms.