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Rhetoric and Demagoguery
One of Library Journal's Top 20 Best-Selling Language Titles of 2019
In a culture of profit-driven media, demagoguery is a savvy short-term rhetorical strategy. Once it becomes the norm, individuals are more likely to employ it and, in that way, increase its power by making it seem the only way of disagreeing with or about others. When that happens, arguments about policy are replaced by arguments about identity—and criticism is met with accusations that the critic has the wrong identity (weak, treacherous, membership in an out-group) or the wrong feelings (uncaring, heartless).
Patricia Roberts-Miller proposes a definition of demagoguery based on her study of groups and cultures that have talked themselves into disastrously bad decisions. She argues for seeing demagoguery as a way for people to participate in public discourse, and not necessarily as populist or heavily emotional. Demagoguery, she contends, depoliticizes political argument by making all issues into questions of identity. She broaches complicated questions about its effectiveness at persuasion, proposes a new set of criteria, and shows how demagoguery plays out in regard to individuals not conventionally seen as demagogues.
Roberts-Miller looks at the discursive similarities among the Holocaust in early twentieth-century Germany, the justification of slavery in the antebellum South, the internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II, and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, among others. She examines demagoguery among powerful politicians and jurists (Earl Warren, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) as well as more conventional populists (Theodore Bilbo, two-time governor of Mississippi; E. S. Cox, cofounder of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America). She also looks at notorious demagogues (Athenian rhetor Cleon, Ann Coulter) and lesser-known public figures (William Hak-Shing Tam, Gene Simmons).
In a culture of profit-driven media, demagoguery is a savvy short-term rhetorical strategy. Once it becomes the norm, individuals are more likely to employ it and, in that way, increase its power by making it seem the only way of disagreeing with or about others. When that happens, arguments about policy are replaced by arguments about identity—and criticism is met with accusations that the critic has the wrong identity (weak, treacherous, membership in an out-group) or the wrong feelings (uncaring, heartless).
Patricia Roberts-Miller proposes a definition of demagoguery based on her study of groups and cultures that have talked themselves into disastrously bad decisions. She argues for seeing demagoguery as a way for people to participate in public discourse, and not necessarily as populist or heavily emotional. Demagoguery, she contends, depoliticizes political argument by making all issues into questions of identity. She broaches complicated questions about its effectiveness at persuasion, proposes a new set of criteria, and shows how demagoguery plays out in regard to individuals not conventionally seen as demagogues.
Roberts-Miller looks at the discursive similarities among the Holocaust in early twentieth-century Germany, the justification of slavery in the antebellum South, the internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II, and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, among others. She examines demagoguery among powerful politicians and jurists (Earl Warren, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) as well as more conventional populists (Theodore Bilbo, two-time governor of Mississippi; E. S. Cox, cofounder of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America). She also looks at notorious demagogues (Athenian rhetor Cleon, Ann Coulter) and lesser-known public figures (William Hak-Shing Tam, Gene Simmons).
260 pages, Paperback
Published February 5, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 24, 2023
I'm embarrassed that it took me as long as it did to finish this book, between COVID and moving and having two babies. But it's a good one.
Roberts-Miller breaks with the traditional definitions of what "demagoguery" is, because usually people make the sloppy ethical definition of saying, "demagoguery is what demagogues do" and then define demagogues as these mustache-twirlers who know they are misleading people into dangerous ideas. Actually, most so-called demagogues, including Hitler, were very sincere in their terrible ideas and thought they were leading people to great ideas.
Instead, Roberts-Miller implicates us all into demagoguery--we are all able to be seduced by it and we all sometimes engage in it. Her theory of demagoguery involves three stases: who is the "out group," how bad is it to be out-group, and what should be done to/about them? We engage in demagoguery when we talk about "us" as infallible and "them" as always suspect. Demagoguery shuts down public discourse, because if it's always about in-group and out-group, there is nothing else to say. The out-group's words will always be poisoned at the well for being out-group.
While it's easy to see this in the big stories of demagoguery (Hitler again some easily to mind), there are cases of demagoguery where no one gets killed or disenfranchised. An example Roberts-Miller brings up with her students is PETA's casual bashing of snake owners in a statement about snakes crossing state lines. Snake owners are not going to be discriminated against because of this bit demagoguery, and they probably won't even read the screed. However, it may contribute to an underlining of "us vs them" in the in-group. They feel the battle lines are drawn and they are on the side of right.
What's great about this book is that we aren't immune to demagoguery's appeal, so now we are beholden to think a little more carefully about what we're arguing or agreeing with and why. As Roberts-Miller points out, this doesn't mean radical relativism, but just recognizing that groups aren't monolithic and unchangeable.
I'd still recommend the little book version for casual reading, but this could be a great textbook for a masters-level course on argumentation.
Roberts-Miller breaks with the traditional definitions of what "demagoguery" is, because usually people make the sloppy ethical definition of saying, "demagoguery is what demagogues do" and then define demagogues as these mustache-twirlers who know they are misleading people into dangerous ideas. Actually, most so-called demagogues, including Hitler, were very sincere in their terrible ideas and thought they were leading people to great ideas.
Instead, Roberts-Miller implicates us all into demagoguery--we are all able to be seduced by it and we all sometimes engage in it. Her theory of demagoguery involves three stases: who is the "out group," how bad is it to be out-group, and what should be done to/about them? We engage in demagoguery when we talk about "us" as infallible and "them" as always suspect. Demagoguery shuts down public discourse, because if it's always about in-group and out-group, there is nothing else to say. The out-group's words will always be poisoned at the well for being out-group.
While it's easy to see this in the big stories of demagoguery (Hitler again some easily to mind), there are cases of demagoguery where no one gets killed or disenfranchised. An example Roberts-Miller brings up with her students is PETA's casual bashing of snake owners in a statement about snakes crossing state lines. Snake owners are not going to be discriminated against because of this bit demagoguery, and they probably won't even read the screed. However, it may contribute to an underlining of "us vs them" in the in-group. They feel the battle lines are drawn and they are on the side of right.
What's great about this book is that we aren't immune to demagoguery's appeal, so now we are beholden to think a little more carefully about what we're arguing or agreeing with and why. As Roberts-Miller points out, this doesn't mean radical relativism, but just recognizing that groups aren't monolithic and unchangeable.
I'd still recommend the little book version for casual reading, but this could be a great textbook for a masters-level course on argumentation.
July 13, 2020
We love to talk about demagogues, but rarely demagoguery. As Patricia Roberts-Miller points out, a lot of the existing scholarship focuses on the motives of demagogues and condemns them as emotional, populist, master manipulators of the masses--a frequently elitist bias! She offers a very insightful redefinition of demagoguery as a discourse ("a polarizing discourse that promises stability, certainty, and escape from the responsibilities of rhetoric through framing public policy in terms of the degree to which...the out-group should be punished and scapegoated for the current problem of the in-group"), rather than an attribute of individual persons. Painstakingly reasoned and persuasively argued.
February 10, 2021
Really an excellent academic study of rhetorical demagoguery, which Roberts-Miller recasts as not confined to the stylistic positioning of certain disdainful individuals, but rather as a public discourse which eschews reasoned, deliberative debate in favor of reductive and binarizing illogic. An incisive look at specific instances of demagoguery across America's long 20th century (with a brief detour into ancient Greece); and a motivating impetus to sharpen one's own insistence on good-faith engagement in argumentation.
January 3, 2021
Smart, clear-eyed, incisive look at what constitutes demagoguery and what consequence emerge when this approach to argumentation is wielded. Used this book as a text in a graduate seminar and it was very well-received.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews