Josh Hafner

USA TODAY

Words of President-elect Donald Trump’s chief strategist — “turn on the hate” — trended on Twitter Monday, offering something of a Rorschach test for the vitriol increasingly spewed in America’s political landscape.

Trump’s strategist, Stephen Bannon, typed the phrase in a 2014 email discussing Republican leadership, as reported in the Daily Beast. At the time he ran Breitbart News, a website popular among white nationalists.

“Let the grassroots turn on the hate,” Bannon wrote, “because that’s the ONLY thing that will make them do their duty.”

Bannon’s call for hatred resurfaced Monday in a the headline of a New York Times editorial that described the adviser’s appointment as a sign that a “toxic ideology” had found its way into the White House. By the time the phrase crested on Twitter, there seemed to be some confusion over why it was trending and its source.

Trump’s supporters accused his detractors of “turning on the hate” amid days-long protests, some of which involved violence. Those detractors said the hatred lies with supporters of Trump, who in Bannon appointed a man who once called progressive women “a bunch of dykes,” as the Times noted .

On Tuesday, NPR host Steve Inskeep asked a Breitbart editor to explain Bannon's incendiary past. The editor, Joel Pollak, responded by calling NPR's programming "racist."

While both sides continue to volley accusations, experts who study hatred and public discourse say that Bannon’s appointment stands to only worsen Americans’ blame game until real listening can occur.

Gordana Rabrenovic, a sociologist, serves as a director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University. She co-authored the book, Why We Hate, and said the violent protests and racially charged hate crimes unfolding since Trump’s election provide an all-too-easy, if unfruitful, answer to Americans’ frustrations.

“Hate and intimidation is meant to silence people, which can push people away from this public discourse about how we’re going to solve our really challenging questions we save as a nation and world,” she said.

“But we won’t face them by blaming particular groups of people. Although that’s the easiest way: You don’t have to put forth a particular solution as long as you blame people.”

And the high-level White House appointment of a figure like Bannon can only hamper public discourse, said Timothy Shaffer, a researcher with the National Institute for Civil Discourse.

The fringe ideas that Bannon peddled at Breitbart don’t represent most Trump supporters, Shaffer noted, and many didn’t know who he was until this week. But that hasn’t stopped accusations of white nationalism from being hurled at Trump’s supporters, he said — a guilt by association that has to stop.

“This conflation becomes a real obstacle for public dialogue and discussion,” said Shaffer, who teaches communications studies at Kansas State University.

Equally important, he added, is for Republicans not on board with Bannon to say so.

“The people I grew up with, in my hometown in Ohio, who voted for Trump for reasons not aligned with Bannon’s rhetoric, those Republicans need to be able to step up and say something,” he said.

“You’ve exercised your right to vote. But these seemingly intensified elements need to be stood up to.”

Trump strategist Bannon spent tumultuous time at Biosphere 2 in Arizona