It's a fatuous claim, anyway. History is full of examples of everything going to hell (partly) because polarizing rhetoric has entrenched hatred on all sides. I can reel off examples where sometime powerful groups end up on fire, on gallows, in gulags, etc.
I've been looking at some of the derogatory rhetoric directed towards Marie-Antoinette ("putain autrichienne"). She was hardly oppressed, but the rhetoric mattered a great deal.
