A Culture of Demagoguery (UPPER DUBLIN LIBRARY)

According to Merriam-Webster, “A demagogue is a political leader who gains power by appealing to popular prejudices, emotions, and fears rather than using rational argument.” Patricia Roberts-Miller, a retired professor of rhetoric and communications at the University of Texas has spent 20 years studying demagogues, their methods, accomplishments, and failures. She discusses some of the main points of her 2017 book, Demagoguery and Democracy on a PBS “Open Mind” episode, 12/11/2019. Watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TjqM9AeaMA. (It runs 27 minutes.)

Roberts-Miller offers a broader definition: “A demagogue is anyone who reduces all questions to us vs. them.” She points out that all successful demagogues are authoritarians but all authoritarians are not demagogues. Recently Roberts-Miller has been warning that Donald Trump may be one of the most dangerous demagogues in modern history, but she acknowledges that his supporters often view his style as authentic, direct communication that challenges an entrenched establishment, rather than as demagoguery.

Do you agree or disagree with these statements made by Roberts-Miller:

• Donald Trump is a dangerous demagogue.
• “Demagoguery de-politicizes politics in that it says we don't have to argue policies and can just rouse ourselves to new levels of commitment to us and purify our community or nation of them.”
• “Demagoguery happens because it’s more pleasurable to get ourselves all worked up about some other group than it is to deliberate with them.”
• “Demagoguery is about saying we are never wrong; they are. If we made a mistake, they are to blame; we are always in touch with what is true and right."
• To a demagogue, “there is no such thing as a complicated problem; there are just people trying to complicate things. Even listening to them is a kind of betrayal. All we need to do is what we all know to be the right thing. And it’s very, very pleasurable. It tells us we’re good, and they’re bad, that we were right all along, and that we don’t need to think about things carefully or admit we’re uncertain. It provides clarity.”
• Democracy, on the other hand “is about disagreement, uncertainty, complexity, and making mistakes. It’s about having to listen to arguments you think are obviously completely wrong.”
• “Democracy is about being angry with other people, and their being angry with you. It’s about it all taking much longer to get something passed than you think reasonable.
• “Democracy is about having to listen, and compromise, and it’s about being wrong (and admitting it). It’s about guessing—because the world is complicated—the best course of action, and trying to look at things from various perspectives, and letting people with those various perspectives participate in the conversation.”
• “Democracy is hard; demagoguery is easy.”