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Email “interview” about demagoguery

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about populism and demagoguery in relation to the American presidential election, but also with the Brexit-vote in Britain. The terms populism and demagoguery are often used interchangeably. What’s the difference between the two? Are they used to describe the same thing, the one being used in a positive sense and the other in a negative?

Initially, a demagogue was simply a leader of the demes, the non-leisured class in democracies in ancient Greece–it was a political designation, like calling someone a Green, or Libertarian. Authors like Plato or Plutarch who were highly critical of democracy used the term negatively (as a Republican would use “Democrat” as a negative term, even a sneer). Plutarch seems to have been the one to make the demagogue v. statesman distinction. For Plutarch, a statesman looks out for his country, but a demagogue looks out for himself. That’s a useless way to try to make the distinction–political figures, even the nastiest (perhaps especially the nastiest), think they’re doing good.

Most people use the term simply to mean “an effective rhetor whose policy agenda I dislike.” It’s often associated with populism, but every effective politician in a democracy has to be populist.

The label demagogue is seemingly used in a negative whenever someone is able to captivate the masses. Does the term demagogue have an inherent element of resentment or distrust of “the people”/”the masses” by the establishment? That is: In a democratic society, shouldn’t the “will of the people” be something positive? Is the labeling someone a demagogue anti-democratic?

Common uses of the term are what rhetoricians call a “devil” term–what George Orwell would have called “double plus ungood.” There’s rarely anything very specific about it, and it’s never used to describe an ingroup political figure. They follow demagogues; we follow states(wo)men.

Some scholars have tried to identify a more precise and useful way to think about demagoguery–they (we) usually identify certain recurrent characteristics: scapegoating, projection, simplifying complicated issues in a binary, authoritarianism, condemning of deliberation and thinking, and policies of purification.

Ypu’ve written: “Demagoguery,” rather than being a specific kind of rhetoric, is simply a term of abuse that people apply to rhetors with whom they disagree.” Is demagoguery inherently negative? Or can it be used in a positive sense? If demagoguery is to captivate “the masses” through emotional appeals, couldn’t the same definition be used for, say, Obamas “hope and change” message in 2008? Does a demagogue always lie?

What I was trying to say there is that’s how it’s often used. And that’s useless.

Demagoguery isn’t inherently damaging. No scholar defines it as captivating the masses through emotional appeals–that’s also a useless definition. (Who doesn’t do that?) If “demagoguery” is going to be a useful term, then we have to distinguish between leaders we think led their followers astray or seriously damaged their communities and ones who opened up opportunities.

My area of scholarship is train wrecks in public deliberation–times when communities came to bad decisions, after a lot of argument, then got feedback that their decisions were wrong, and recommitted. If you look at those times and infer characteristics about the public discourse at the time, then you see the problem is never populism (sometimes it’s very elite discourse), nor is it emotionalism, but scapegoating, projection, and those other characteristics listed above are very important.

Demagogues are more often than not perfectly sincere; while they are inaccurate, they do not intend to lie.

You write in Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Volume 8, Number 3, Fall 2005, pp. 459-476, that “It is notable, however, the extent to which this scholarly project lapsed; journals in rhetoric show few or no articles on the subject since Steven R. Goldzwig’s 1989 piece on Farrakhan.” Why do you think there have been little scholarly interest in demagoguery in recent years? Is it because there have been relatively few demagogues in recent years? If so, why/what is needed for a demagogue to gain support? Do you think there will be an upswing in interest with the recent political climate?

The most common definitions emphasized populism and emotionalism, and those aren’t connected to communities making bad decisions. But a lot of scholars have talked about the issue, just not with that term. Berlet and Lyons use the term “toxic populism;” Niewert talks about “eliminationists;” Kenneth Burke (in a brilliant 1939 analysis of Hitler’s rhetoric) doesn’t use the term demagoguery, but that’s what he’s talking about.

I think the focus on demagogues is part of the problem. Demagoguery tries to reframe all issues as ones of ingroup membership (us v. them); focusing on demagogues means we’re still arguing about identity. Instead, we should be arguing about policy.

I just wanted to clarify one point. You write:

“Demagoguery isn’t inherently damaging”, but also “If “demagoguery” is going to be a useful term, then we have to distinguish between leaders we think led their followers astray or seriously damaged their communities and ones who opened up opportunities.”

I don’t understand how you can square those two. If demagogues are “leaders we think led their followers astray or seriously damaged their communities” doesn’t that mean that it is inherently damaging? Or have I misunderstood you?

Good point. If you look at leaders who led their followers astray or seriously damaged communities, you can see that they didn’t do it by some kind of magic rhetoric they cast a spell over a populace. They didn’t do it alone; they had a lot of people who not only followed them, but all of whom were participating the same kind of rhetoric. Demagoguery is damaging when it’s normal political discourse. There’s always going to be someone out there going on and on about how we need to purify our group of this or that kind of person. A community is in trouble when there are lots of people who accept that’s a good way to argue–that we should be trying to figure out who is and isn’t loyal to the ingroup and then we’ll have solved our problems.

Donald Trump is the consequence of normalized demagoguery; not the cause.

Conditions that make persuasion difficult

A lot of people cite studies that show that people can’t be persuaded. As though that should persuade people not to try to persuade others.

That isn’t even the biggest problem with those studies. The studies are often badly designed (no one should be persuaded to change an important belief by being told by one person in a psych experiment that they’re wrong). And the studies aren’t generally designed to keep in mind what the research on persuasion does show–that some conditions make it more difficult to persuade people.

I was going to put together a short handout for students about why the paper they’re writing is so hard (an ethical intervention in one of several possible situations, ranging from arguing against the Sicilian Expedition to arguing for retreating from Stalingrad), and ended up writing up a list of the biggest obstacles.

An opposition (i.e., already come to a decision) audience that has:

- Taken the stance in public (especially if s/he has taken credit for it being a good idea or otherwise explicitly attached her/his ego/worth to the position);
- Suffered for the position, had someone loved suffer, or caused others to suffer (e.g., voted for a policy that caused anyone to be injured)
- Equated the idea/position with core beliefs of his/her culture, religion, political party, or ideology (since disagreement necessarily becomes disloyalty);
- Been persuaded to adopt the position out of fear (especially for existence of the ingroup) or hatred for an outgroup;
- Is committed to authoritarianism and/or naïve realism (equates changing one’s mind with weakness, illness, sin, or impaired masculinity; is actively frightened/angered by assertions of uncertainty or situations that require complex cognitive processes);
- Does not value argumentative “fairness” (insists upon a rhetorical “state of exception” or “entitlement”—aka “double standard”—for his/her ingroup);
- Has a logically closed system (cannot articulate the conditions under which s/he would change her/his mind).

A culture that

- Demonizes or pathologizes disagreement (an “irenic” culture);
- Is an honor culture (what matters is what people say about you, not what is actually true, so you aren’t “wrong” till you admit it);
- Equates refusing to change your mind with privileged values (being “strong,” “knowing your mind,” masculinity) and“changing your mind” with marginalized values (being “weak,” “indecisive,” or impaired masculinity);
- Enhances some group’s claim to rhetorical entitlement (doesn’t insist that the rules of argumentation be applied the same across groups or individuals);
- Has standards of “expertise” that are themselves not up for argument;
- Promotes a fear of change;
- Equates anger and a privileged epistemological stance.

A topic

- That results from disagreement over deep premises;
- About which there is not agreement over standards of evidence;
- That makes people frightened (especially about threats from an outgroup);
- That is complicated and ambiguous;
- That is polarized or controversial, such that people will assume (or incorrectly) infer your affirmative position purely on the basis of any negative case you make (e.g., If you disagree with the proposition that “Big dogs make great pets because they require no training” on the grounds that they do require training, your interlocutor will incorrectly assume that you think [and are arguing] that big dogs do not make great pets);
- That is easily framed as a binary choice between option A (short-term rewards [even if higher long-term costs] or delayed costs [even if much higher]) and option B (delayed rewards [even if much higher] or short-term costs [even if much lower than the long-term costs of option A]).

What Duke Ellington taught me (no, not that Duke Ellington)

I never wanted to own a Dane. I have always loved dogs, big dogs. I think every useful lesson I learned about love was from dogs, dogs who followed me into places they didn’t really want to go, who brought me presents I had to assess in terms of the value of their intention, who managed conflicts (including forgiveness) in a way far healthier than any humans with whom I had contact, and who taught me about being astonished in the wonder of the moment. And who saved my life at moments.

But, I didn’t want a Dane because they have health problems, and they die too young. And then a neighbor found a Dane-mix puppy abandoned at a gas station, and I took him just till we found him a home. Well, all you dog people know how quickly he found a home, but that’s a different story. And he was wonderful, but a bit complicated, and then he saved my ass a few times (including a couple of times that involved the whole I’m not really clear on the “how to identify a rattlesnake” thing but he was, and the “while walking late at night places I shouldn’t have and a man stepped out of the darkness and saw Chester and stepped back”) and he had the best temperament of any dog I’ve ever known, and, well, I was sold on Danes. I named him Chester Burnette.

When Jim and I were in a position stable enough to have two big dogs, we got Hubert Sumlin. When Chester died, and Hubert almost did, we got George Washington (a Shepherd/ridgeback/black-mouthed cur mix—that story is elsewhere) and then took in a foster (Marquis de Lafayette, also a story told elsewhere). When Hubert died, George and Marquis mourned by not barking at the mail carrier for four days (a pretty significant demonstration of grief).

We worked with a big dog rescue group, and asked to adopt a 9 month old Dane puppy. His life had been pretty rough. Although a purebred, and therefore the owner had spent a lot of money to get him, the puppy was neglected enough to get Animal Control involved. This is unhappily common—people are enamored with a big breed, and decide to get one, and haven’t really thought through what a big breed means.

Sometimes they give them up, and sometimes they stick them in a backyard. Duke’s owner was the latter. Of course, a shithead who buys a big dog and doesn’t actually want to own a big dog hasn’t generally done the work of finding a good breeder (see: shithead) so a rescue Dane is often a mistreated dog with a bad genetic line. And Duke was a dog who was so underfed that he had taken to eating everything in the backyard that wouldn’t kill him. A neighbor had repeatedly reported his situation to Animal Control, who, when Duke was nine months, told the owner he had two choices: hand over the dog, or pay a fine. The owner handed over the dog, and a rescue group got him.

The next part is kind of ugly, but I mean no criticism of the sort of people who engage in rescue. As far as we understand, Duke was brought to a really good home with a whole bunch of Danes, some of whom had only recently been neutered (and maybe some who hadn’t yet?) and a female was brought in. She went into heat, and no one expected that. Duke was restrained, and every male went nuts, and he got mauled. So, for the rest of his life, he flipped his shit if he saw another dog and he was on leash.

We went and picked him up, and then spent the hour-long drive home discussing what to name him. We’d named our previous Danes after blues singers, and he was a fawn, so I suggested Delbert McClinton. It was pointed out that would sound like Dilbert, and Jacob suggested Duke Ellington. You just had to look at that dog and see he was a “Duke.” And, of course, he looked so elegant and intelligent. We didn’t really know that was just a pose. So, we named him Duke Ellington.

George and Marquis were wonderful with him, although, having been alone in a backyard for nine months, Duke knew nothing. He didn’t know how to play, and he would watch the two of them play with a heart-breaking confusion. Eventually, George was indulgent enough to rough-house with Duke, and George, being George, managed Duke well and kept him in line in the backyard, but that was because George was pretty near his weight, and had more skill.

So, George did something extraordinary—he got Duke to understand something entirely new, and it had to do with how to relate to another being. I walked Duke through four doggy obedience classes, but between us, neither George nor I taught Duke how to “play” with someone. George taught him to match aggression. George tried, but never managed to teach Duke what play is, when you rely on limits. The difference between play and aggression is that you let someone else win, you hold back, you laugh when you are threatened. Duke played too rough.

Jim took the three of them to the dog park for over a year before Duke’s inability to understand play resulted in his fetching a little dog, and that was that. Then it was walking the dogs, and Duke’s leash-fear was triggered by seeing another dog. We did all the things that you do under those circumstances, and he did get much better, but it always started with crossing the street when you saw another dog.

Here’s the thing: Duke was dumb.

Everything about him has to start there. He meant well, he was incredibly sweet, he responded to love with love, he was frightened by various things, he tried really hard to do the right thing, but he had trouble when a situation had more than two factors to consider.

[This is a trivial part of the narrative, but he made me a better person.]

When we got Duke, we promptly started doggy kindergarten. He failed. The first task in doggy kindergarten is “watch me.” It really is pretty simple. You take a treat, put it at the dog’s nose, say “Watch me,” and pull the treat toward your nose. The idea is that you teach the dog to look at you when you say that. Duke never learned that. I mean, never. He took doggy kindergarten twice, and he didn’t learn it. And Duke was more treat-oriented than any dog I have ever known. He would pay attention to the treat at his nose, and then lose track of it because ZOMGSOMANYTHINGSATPETSMART!!!11!!!

dukegraduation12_092

He passed doggy kindergarten because the teacher fell in love with him. And, let’s be honest, every person who met him did that. Because Duke.

I don’t know how to explain it. Jacob said that the dumber Duke was, the more I loved him, and he was probably right. But everyone responded that way. [Except for two assholes at the dog park, but whatevs. They owned the dog that Duke fetched. I ran into them later while walking down the street with George (who loved all dogs) and they were whining that they had to stop going to the dog park because everyone hated their dog, so maybe Duke was right?] Duke managed to get out three or four times and wander the neighborhood and people brought him to us as though we had done them a favor by letting them bring him home. There was a little girl I sometimes saw at the bus transfer station, very very early in the morning, who petted his ears and told me about him—he loved her, and we took a few moments with her when we saw her. I like to think he made her obviously complicated day just a little bit better.

He ate everything. He never got over having been a starving dog in a yard. There are certain things that are native invasives in Texas—native, but they grow whether or not you want them to, and Duke learned to eat them to keep from starving. We learned that we had to give him some food first thing in the morning before letting him into the backyard or he would eat horseherb till he barfed. In seven years of good treatment, he never learned that we would feed him. I empathize with the principle that it is hard to unlearn early lessons about starvation, so I gave him part of a piece of bread every morning as soon as I got out of bed.

He turned up his nose at roadkill, unless it was really, really nasty. Jim would pull things out of Duke’s mouth that even Jim didn’t want to identify because then he might feel obliged to cut off his hand. The rule of thumb was: if Duke wanted it, you didn’t want to know what it was.

Duke was just Duke. He worried about a lot of things. He was terrified of thunder; eventually he decided that trash trucks were related to thunder—perhaps he was right, I’m not a meteorologist, but I’m obviously not a rhetorician enough to talk him out of that belief, although I tried. He came to believe that busses were not really to be trusted either. Again, I think he was wrong, but I failed to persuade him, so I think we can conclude that either he was right or I suck as a rhetorician. Compliance-gaining has never been my métier, but that’s a fairly lame defense here.

As many people have pointed out, Duke’s worries are not unreasonable concerns: thunder and trash trucks are both pretty untrustworthy. Since George shared his terror of thunderstorms, there were a lot of nights of makeshift beds in closets. The little girl at the transfer station noticed his concern about trash trucks, and she tried to persuade him they were okay, but Duke was unconvinced. He did, however, lick her nose, so that made his disagreement pretty polite. I get weepy when I think about how she’ll respond to knowing that he’s died—Duke was like that. A lot of people loved him.

Early on, we had a horrible weekend (emergency vet visit) when we determined that he had Addison’s. After that, Jim was giving monthly injections, carefully moderating Duke’s steroids, and taking Duke in for various tests. There was also the discovery that Duke was allergic to the rabies vaccination (which resulted in additional work for Jim), and the skin allergy issue which meant one more pill in the morning. Jim cheerfully arranged his life around this dog’s medical needs, loaded a hundred plus-pound dog in and out of the car, and philosophically cleaned up evidence that meds were not quite right. I can’t say enough about what Jim did for Duke.

In other words, this was a complicated dog. On the other hand, he was a really simple dog. He had rules. He wanted to sleep by me. He got confused (he never figured it out) when I moved from one side of the bed to the other, but he did compromise by discovering the dog bed on my (new) side of the bed. He liked chasing squirrels. He liked eating things he found on walks—whether those things were covered in fire ants seemed to him a trivial issue. He didn’t like having a massive Addisonian/allergic reaction, but whatevs.

He kept me in the moment. He loved the moment. This horseherb tastes good; the sun is warm; that water is tasty.

When he was dying from pain, he licked my hand. I think he was, even in tremendous pain, worried that I was unhappy. I was.

He had been limping, on and off, and so Jim took him to the vet. They did whatever x-rays they could do without sedating him (not much). So, they said we need to see a specialist. That appointment was for Monday, February 8th. On February 7th, after a normal walk, Duke ran into the backyard (as he did) to chase squirrels, pivoted on his leg, and went down. And then there was a noise that, Jim and I have agreed, if the Lord is merciful, we will never hear (or remember) again.

Various quick decisions resulted in asking neighbors for help, and getting Duke in the car, a long drive on a windy road, and an emergency vet place that was clear how bad it all was. And, so, we said goodbye to a dog who was in tremendous pain, and needed to leave this world. Any desire for more time came from our desire to want this not to be true, and for him not to be in pain. But, just as Duke had always been the dog to say, this is the moment, so this was the moment.

And, now, we go on without him. Without his eating the wrong things, farting more than you would thing possible, telling us that trash trucks are scary, dragging us out of comfortable beds because he needs to pee or bark at something, pointing out that squirrels are probably awful, drawing attention to the beauteous wonder of a mail carrier, engaging in world-class snuggling, getting confused about parked cars and poles, wandering underfoot while I’m trying to cook, taking up a large part of my side of the bed, and saying those squirrels are BAD. And squirrels. Because squirrels. (And the cardinals are pretty dodgy too.)

Dogs teach you that love, in this moment, is what matters. And they’re right. But what they don’t teach you is what to do when that moment needs to go.

Donald Trump is not a demagogue, but he does engage in demagoguery

There is a conventional understanding of demagogues, represented in dictionary definitions, and much conventional understandings: a demagogue is a person who deliberately misleads the common people through appealing to emotions and prejudices. That isn’t what “demagogue” has always meant, and it’s a useless definition. Explaining why it’s useless is complicated, and arguing why we should focus on demagoguery and not demagogues is also complicated, and that, in a nutshell, is why demagoguery works—thinking about what makes public deliberation effective is complicated, and people don’t like complications. Demagoguery says it’s all simple. Demagoguery says that we don’t have to engage in complicated, contingent, inclusive, and nuanced argumentation—instead, we can just ask who in this argument is good and who is bad, and follow the good people.

Demagoguery, at its base, says that you don’t have to worry about policies; you just worry about identity: is this person a member of the ingroup. If you’ve identified him/her as a member of the ingroup, you’re done. Then, deciding on a candidate becomes a question of who performs ingroup identify more.

So, people who are persuaded by demagoguery never see themselves as following demagoguery—they (we) think the outgroup (that party) is persuaded by demagoguery. We are persuaded by sweet reason. How do we know we’re right? Because we ask ourselves if we’re right. So, if the question is: is this person a demagogue? we are always starting with the wrong question.

If you look at situations in which communities have talked themselves into disastrous decisions (and that happens to be my scholarly area), and then, on getting information that their decision was bad, they recommitted, you see something else entirely. You don’t see a single demagogue leading people astray—you see a culture in which people are not supposed to argue inclusively about the best course of action; you see a culture in which compromise, inclusion, argumentation, and deliberation are rejected as effeminate, weak, and even evil ways of handling decision-making.

I study train wrecks in public deliberation, and I have come to believe that what matters is not whether an individual is a demagogue, but whether we are in a culture of demagoguery. In a culture of demagoguery, if an ingroup belief is that bunnies are good and squirrels are bad, then the entire election process becomes a question of who is more extreme in their support of bunnies and their attacks on squirrels. It doesn’t matter whether the policies about bunnies and squirrels are feasible in terms of costs and benefits, what their long-term consequences are, let alone whether there are any principles of fairness (that is, principles that operate across groups). What matters, in a culture of demagoguery, is whether the ingroup is being privileged.

Ingroup, in this sense, isn’t the most powerful group; it’s your group. Demagoguery works by insisting that your group is threatened with extermination—the situation of the ingroup is so dire that all considerations of fairness, due process, and rational deliberation are off the table. Demagoguery says that your gut feelings about people (whether they’re in your ingroup or not) are all you need to know—you can judge someone’s argument purely on the basis of whether s/he is in the ingroup. If what s/he is saying confirms your fundamental beliefs, s/he is objective; s/he is authentic.

In a culture of demagoguery, all issues are issues of identity.

However, in democracy, identity don’t count for shit.

What matters in democracy is policy. And good policy is hammered out through an inclusive process in which various points of view are considered. Coming to a good decision is not just a question of how loyal you are to the ingroup—it’s about a policy that is feasible, solves the problems, and doesn’t cost more than it benefits the community (all the groups) as a whole over the long term. Democratic deliberation is about uncertainty, contingency, listening, compromising, and looking at things from various perspectives. It’s about acknowledging that no single group has the right answer. And demagoguery is about saying all that can be ignored in favor of whether this person is really, really, really passionate about the ingroup. Demagoguery and democracy are entirely at odds.

Trump’s policies are unreasonable, irrational, implausible, and not even a little bit feasible. And his whole argument is not about those policies—it’s about his identity. His appeal is that he presents himself as the sort of person who, through sheer force of will, will make good things happen—things that are unreasonable, implausible, and not even a little bit feasible. That his policies are irrational is the attraction. And by “irrational” I don’t mean “emotional.” Being emotional and being rational aren’t opposed. Policies fueled by compassion, fear for the future, desire for a good life—that’s how democratic deliberation must work. Emotions must be part of how we argue. Feelings and reason are not opposed—they are integrally connected.

The problem with Trump’s method of argument isn’t that it’s about feelings; it’s about which feelings, and for whom. A basic premise of his method of participating in public discourse is that all the good feelings (compassion, concern) should be reserved for the ingroup, and all the negative feelings (fear, loathing, disgust) are for outgroups. A basic principle of democratic deliberation is that rules apply across groups. A basic principle of demagoguery is that all the good feelings (compassion, concern, affection, respect) apply only within the ingroup, and the outgroup is treated as an inherently adversarial enemy.

Is Trump a demagogue? That’s the wrong question, because it’s still about identity. Does he engage in demagoguery? Hellz yeah.