LOGOS IN THE NEWS: Helio Fred Garcia Quoted in The Washington Post

On Monday, May 25, 2026, Logos Consulting Group president Helio Fred Garcia was quoted in an article published in The Washington Post on the impact incendiary language has on creating the conditions for violence to occur.

The article examines how the increasingly aggressive political speech used by leaders has led to an increase in violence, including against politicians and civic leaders. In this article, Garcia draws from insights from his book Words on Fire: The Power of Incendiary Language and How to Confront It to make sense of the uptick in violence we have seen in the United States in the past several years.

The article reads in part:

"Presidents and the White House have long been the focus of people driven by political grievances, personal instability or emotional volatility. But scholars who study political rhetoric and extremism say the country’s increasingly aggressive political language can make that more likely, even in cases where the perpetrator lacks an ideological motive.

“The tone from the top models expected behavior,” said Helio Fred Garcia, a professor of leadership at New York University and Columbia University who has written a book on Trump’s political rhetoric. “If you create conditions where hate and violence become more acceptable, people are going to act on that. Sometimes it will be supporters. Sometimes it will be opponents.”

Garcia said America’s political discourse has become increasingly combustible and that Trump continues “injecting this tone into public discourse.

Read the full article here.