Month: February 2018

Teacher Neutrality and Fairness in a Culture of Demagoguery

Matt Grossman and David Hopkins, when talking about what they call “the ferocity of today’s political battles,“ point out that our political discourse isn’t primarily policy argumentation:

Democrats and Republicans not only attack each other for subscribing to misguided beliefs about optimal public policy but also regularly question each other’s motives, intelligence, and judgment; suggest their opponents are not making good-faith arguments; and accuse each other of merely doing the bidding of special interests or pandering to popular prejudices. (329)

To the extent that we talk policy, it’s about what advocating or critiquing the policy means about the identity of the rhetor—we don’t argue about whether policies are racist, but whether rhetors are. The foundational cultural logic of too much of our public discourse presumes that all questions can be reduced to the question of the motives of the rhetors, and that question can be settled by determining their in-group.

And I need to begin with an aside about what I’m not arguing in this paper since I’ve found this is such a fraught topic. In addition, and this is fundamental to our challenges as teachers—Arlie Kruglanski, Daniel Kahneman, and others have shown, we tend to reason syllogistically. That is, on meeting a new person, or even reading an argument, our first cognitive task is to categorize the person or argument—to put them in a social group, genre, political or philosophical affiliation. We decide what larger group they’re in, and they deduce that because they’re in That Group, they must believe These Things. They must believe the other things we assume are necessarily connected with being in That Group.

Since a large part of what I’m critiquing is the reduction of all political questions to in-group/out-group membership, it might sound as though I’m advocating some kind of neo-Habermasian public sphere of brains arguing with one another, and I’m not. A public sphere in which identity arguments were prohibited would be not only impossible, I suspect, but irrational—identities are relevant claims. I’m not objecting to arguments about or grounded in identity; I am saying that reducing all questions to ones of social group identity (in which each identity group is presumed to be homogeneous and perfectly constitutive) is vexed. It becomes actively damaging when that reduction is tied to the assumption that only one of those groups (an in-group) is constituted of people of intelligence and goodwill whose views are the only valid bases for public policy.

In other words, when the point of raising the question of identity is because we, as a community, are trying to hand deliberative power over to an individual (or individuals) who embody/ies that homogeneous Real American, Real Slaveholder, Real German, then we’re in a culture of demagoguery. There are other characteristic.

I’ve argued elsewhere that we’re in a culture of demagoguery, by which I mean that there are certain widely-shared premises about politics and public discourse:

    • Every policy/political issue has a single right answer, and all other answers are wrong;
    • That correct answer to any political question is obvious to people of good will and good judgment (that is, to good people);
    • The in-group (us) is good;
    • Therefore, anyone who disagrees with the in-group or tries to get a different policy passed isn’t just mistaken or coming from a different perspective or pointing out things it might be helpful for the in-group to know, but bad, and
    • Deliberation and debate are unnecessary, and compromise is simply making a good policy less good.
    • So, in a perfect world, all policy decisions would be made by the in-group or the person who best represents the in-group’s needs,
    • And, therefore, the ideal political candidates are fanatically loyal to the in-group and will shut or shout down anyone who disagrees.

[By in-group, social psychologists don’t mean the group in power, but the social group of which one is a member. So, for some people, being a dog lover is an in-group, even (or especially) in the midst of a culture in which that identity is marginalized.]

This is not the conventional way of thinking about demagoguery—if you look at a dictionary, it will probably define demagoguery as speech by demagogues (in other words, it reduces the issue to one of identity—a demagogic move).

In common usage, demagoguery is often assumed to be obviously false speech that is completely emotional, untrue, and evidence-free on the part of bad people with bad motives.

That’s a useless definition for various reasons (including that it doesn’t even apply to many of the most notorious demagogues); it’s also actively harmful in that it impedes our ability to identify in-group demagoguery—that is, demagoguery on the part of people we like. And it does so because we can tell ourselves this isn’t demagoguery if:

    • we think we are calm while reading the text, and the text (or rhetor) has a calm tone
    • we believe the claims in the text are true
    • the claims can be supported with evidence
    • we believe the people making the argument are good people
    • we believe they have good motives

One of the things I want to suggest in this talk is that teachers of writing are often unintentionally engaged in reaffirming the premises on which demagoguery operates, and we can do so in two general ways: first, by teaching criteria of “bad argumentation” (or demagoguery or propaganda or whatever devil term is in question) that don’t productively identity the problems of certain kinds of public discourse, thereby giving people a false sense of security—as in the above criteria. We can feel comfortable that we aren’t consuming or producing demagoguery when we are. Second, a lot of writing and especially argumentation textbook appeal to the rational/irrational split, assume a binary in epistemologies (so that one is either a naïve realist or relativist), require that students engage in motivism, and rely on a modernist formalism about what constitutes “good” writing.

For instance, if you look at the criteria for determining demagoguery, you can see the standards often advocated for a “good” argument.

If, as I’ll argue, that isn’t a helpful way to think about demagoguery, then the consequent way of teaching argumentation not only ends up reinforcing demagogic premises about public deliberation, but puts teachers in a really difficult place for talking productively about issues like bias and fairness.

There are other ways that we unintentionally get ourselves into a complicated situation:

    • Teaching writing process as first coming up with the thesis and then doing research
    • Teaching research as finding sources to support one’s point
    • Teaching audience in terms of social groups (e.g., teachers, conservatives, women) and identities (as though those identities are necessarily connected to particular values and beliefs)
    • Reinforcing the notion that rational and irrational are issues of logic versus emotion
    • Teaching bias as something that can and should be determined by identity, and thereby encouraging motivism

It’s important to note is that the above criteria for assessing whether something is demagogic are useless insofar as they’re circular—demagoguery is what THEY do. And a community in which we’re all flinging the accusation of demagoguery like bricks over a wall isn’t one in which we’re going to come to good decisions. We’re still participating in public discourse on the basis of assuming that only our in-group is good and has legitimate policies.

This premise—that only the in-group has a legitimate political agenda—has various important premises and consequences:

    • the notion that the true course of action is obvious to good-willed people comes from our cultural tendency to rely on naïve realism (a notion reinforced by public discourse that says the only two possible epistemologies are naïve realism or sloppy solipsistic/relativism);
    • the rational/irrational split: that is, the notion that an argument is rational (unemotional, true, and supported with reasons) or irrational (emotional, untrue, and made by the out-group)
    • the fundamental attribution error (the tendency to attribute different kinds of motives and behaviors on the basis of group membership)

For the next part of the talk, I’m going to go through each of those.

Naïve realism is both an epistemology and ontology—it presumes a Real world entirely external to human cognition or perception (so it’s a foundational ontology) AND that the unmediated perception of that world is easy.

In such an epistemology, the assumption is that we perceive things accurately and then distort those perceptions through the imposition of prejudice or bias. Thus, if you are biased, you can know, because you simply ask yourself if you distorted what you initially perceived—if you are not aware of any distortion, then you can’t possibly be biased.

It is a talking point in some media that you either believe this epistemology (that whether something is right or wrong, true or untrue, is immediately obvious to good people) or else you are a postmodernist, which is a devil term for a sloppy kind of solipsistic relativism—that all beliefs are equally true, there is no right and wrong, and no one has the right to judge anyone else. But those aren’t the only options.

Such a world implies that either there is one right answer to political issues or it’s just a question of what party manages to force its agenda on everyone else—neither of those epistemologies supports democratic deliberation. And neither is accurate for how most of us spend most of our days.

We rely heavily on science, for instance, which is grounded in a foundational ontology, but a skeptical epistemology (with various scientists at various points on a continuum of skepticism about human’s abilities to perceive accurately as individuals or communities, and another continuum about our ability to justify our beliefs—that is, to know whether we know).

So, one thing teachers can do is avoid the false binary of naïve realism or solipsistic relativism, and encourage students to see ourselves as in a place of more and less educated guesses—certainty is a question of degree, not a binary.

The next premise is complicated to explain, and it’s complicated largely because American teaching of argumentation has been unhappily oblivious to the field of argumentation theory.

In formal logic, one can determine whether an argument is logical purely internal by the internal moves. A good argument has certain forms. That works with formal logic, since the arguments are about p and q but, as even Aristotle pointed out, it doesn’t work when you get into the world of politics. Politics, like ethics, is a phronesis, not an episteme.

Informal logic relies on what is happening within a disagreement; it’s about context—the straw man fallacy, for instance, is the dumbing down of an opposition argument. To know if a rhetor has engaged in that fallacy, we have to know what the opposition argument is.

That’s important because it means that it isn’t possible to stay within an informational enclave and judge the rationality of an argument. Being a rational participant in public deliberation doesn’t mean being unemotional—that’s neither possible nor desirable—but it does mean actively seeking out and listening to the best versions of the opposition arguments. It means the opposite of what demagoguery tells us—stop listening to any argument the second you determine it’s an out-group argument—and it also means acknowledging that the out-group is varied enough that there are various arguments that might be made.

Once you start trying to find the best out-group arguments, you quickly determine that there are a lof of non-in-group groups. The whole in-group/out-group binary collapses. We have a tendency to homogenize the out-group, and to treat them as interchangeable, so if we can find one member of the out-group with a stupid argument, we attribute that argument to the whole group.

Rationality isn’t about emotionality or lack thereof; it’s about how an argument works in a disagreement, and it can come down to three rules: first, a rational argument is internally consistent (terms are used consistently, it appeals to premises consistently); second, whatever rules there are apply across groups; third, the issue is up for argument—participants can identify evidence or arguments that would cause them to change their minds. Rational argument is about taking on the responsibilities of argument, and those responsibilities apply equally across groups.

When we rely on in-group/out-group thinking, we apply responsibilities differently.

Good behavior Bad behavior
In-group Internal narratives of causality External narratives of causality
Out-group External narratives of causality Internal narratives of causality

The in-group always has the moral highground, even if doing something we condemn the out-group for doing: when the in-group behaves well, it’s because that’s who we essentially are. If the in-group behaves badly, we were forced, that’s an exception, it wasn’t a true in-group member.

But, if a member of the out-group does something bad, that bad behavior is a sign of their essentially bad nature, and that is the fundamental attribution error.  And that’s the third factor that contributes to demagogic reasoning and discourse.

And these three factors—naïve realism, misunderstanding rationality, and the fundamental attribution error—contribute to very unhelpful ways of thinking about bias, precisely the ones that get teachers into complicated situations.

“Bias” is often assumed to be the necessary consequence of group identity—that is, having a particular group identity necessarily biases us in specific ways , and that makes sense in a culture of demagoguery—all arguments can be reduced to questions of identity because, in this world, it is assumed that identity is constitutive of belief, and that groups are essentially homogeneous.

As I said, demagoguery appeals to the unhappily common notion that the correct course of action is always obvious, even in politics, and that the in-group advocates that obviously correct course of action.

The only criticisms of the in group that is allowed in a culture of demagoguery are to say that members of the in group are not sufficiently passionate or fanatical about in group policy agenda, or have been allowing the outgroup to get away with too much.

Being willing to consider substantive criticism of the policies or premises of the in-group is proof that one is not loyal to the in-group—a member of an out-group, in other words. And, since out-group members have distorted perception, criticism of the in-group is, in and of itself, proof of “bias.”

In a culture of demagoguery, the very act of disagreeing demonstrates that one is too biased for one’s criticisms to be considered.

And, since, in a culture of demagoguery, the out-group is figured as demonic, even listening to an out-group member is risking contamination, so disagreement is itself a sign of the presence of evil that is to be crushed, rather than a point of view that might have value. Giorgio Agamben argues that in a state of exception, groups that claim to honor law do so through not-law; I’m suggesting that we might think about not-logic—that some groups claim that we are in such a state of exception that groups claim to be entirely logical by rejecting logic. It’s not-logic.

Since the premise of democratic deliberation is that disagreement benefits a community, and the premise of a college education is that it prepares students for effective participation in a democratic culture, teachers who want to promote the democratic values of empathy, fairness, and reasoned disagreement can find themselves in a fraught situation.

And it’s a situation about which everyone should be concerned.

We live in a culture in which it is only allowed to condemn them—we are supposed to be in such an existential crisis (the in-group is about to exterminated) that we should not allow in-group criticism. We are in Agamben’s state of exception, in which free speech is honored by silencing people who disagree.

One of the reasons that cultures of demagoguery tend to crash is that they cannot learn from their errors—because they can’t admit that they made errors. Think about German nationalists, none of whom would admit that fear-mongering about encirclement, belief in the redemptive power of war, racism, and a sense of entitlement to European hegemony all contributed to the tragedy that was World War I, and so they ratcheted up fear of encirclement, rhetoric about the redemptive power of war, racism, and assertions of entitlement to European hegemony, and made the same mistake again, with tragic world consequences.

Assuming that criticism of the in-group claims or policies signifies bias ensures that the in-group will keep making the same mistake over and over—it precludes argumentation about means and process. Hitler wasn’t just wrong as to whether Germany was entitled to European hegemony, survival of the fittest, and his incoherent racial policies, he was wrong as to how communities should make decisions—he was wrong about content and process.

As teachers, we aren’t just teaching content; we’re teaching process. But people often assume we’re teaching content—in an authoritarian model of teaching, the teacher pours knowledge into the head of students. We are trying to get students to understand that it’s about metacognition.

Students are inoculated to see us as teaching a sloppy relativism, and trying to force them to adhere to our political agenda—that is, a lot of students listen to media that always equates “out-group” and “biased” and that projects their kind of indoctrination onto everyone else. So, the message is that teachers, who are all Marxists, will force students to repeat Marxist talking points.

One way to try to move students to a more fair analysis of politics if for us to be very clear that we don’t equate “out-group” and “biased” by identifying some out-group texts as good, and some in-group texts as biased. We shouldn’t be engaged in demagoguery. We should model that the world isn’t in-group and out-group, but a lot of people with different perspectives.

There is another way that people reason from identity, and it’s very concerning for people who believe in democracy. A disturbing number of Americans believe that they represent true Americans, and that anyone with a different set of political concerns shouldn’t count. Thus people on various forms of government subsidy are outraged about other people on government subsidy, not because they’re hypocrites, but because they believe that their needs (and the needs of people like them) are legitimate because they embody true Americans. The Ur assumption is that there is a single identity of True American—if we could get people past that, everyone would benefit. But that’s a different talk.

So, government subsidies for corn is the government looking out for true Americans, but government subsidies for solar energy is pandering to special interests—because corn farmers are true Americans, and solar energy people are not. That’s in-group/out-group reasoning.

We need to teach a different way of reasoning.

I’m not advocating what is often called a “liberal” pedagogy, in which all positions offered are treated as equally valid, nor a liberatory pedagogy, in which positions the teacher considers oriented toward genuine critique are privileged, but a fair pedagogy, in which all positions are assessed on the basis of whether they engage the most informed and intelligent opposition positions. It is a classroom in which students have to be fair to opposition positions—that is, holding them to the same standards they hold the in-group arguments—and in which teachers do the same.

Does that mean that every class has to relitigate evolution, or the causes of the Civil War (if you think it wasn’t slavery, read the declarations of causes), or racism? No.

But it does mean that we either begin the class with an open premise that the conversation of the course will be within certain premises (a literature course about slave narratives can begin with the premise that slavery was bad, a physics course can begin with the premise that gravity is a thing) or we set up the parameters of the writing assignments such that students aren’t writing about something we aren’t willing to relitigate.

In other words, “open” assignments are just asking for trouble, and the resulting papers can’t possibly be assessed by the standards of rational-critical argumentation unless the workload is unethical.

“Open” assignment prompts assume one of two things: either the rationality of an argument is entirely internal to a text, or the teacher assessing the argument knows the entire sphere of argumentative possibilities.

The first is indefensible, and the second requires that someone be even more of a political geek than I am, or that the teacher do massive research for every paper. Or, the teacher is engaged in in-group/out-group thinking and believes that out-group arguments are pretty much all the same. Open assignments mean teachers have an extraordinary engagement in political discourse, an unethical workload, or are promoting demagoguery.

And, unless the teacher really does read all the arguments about all the issues, a teacher cannot assess the logic of an argument.

I’m sure I just alienated almost everyone in this room, but I’m going ahead with this argument, because I think it’s important.

A huge part of the problem in rhetoric and composition is that the most popular textbooks of argumentation are cheerfully uninformed by actual scholarship in argumentation theory. For a long time—such as at least since Aristotle—there have been people who have argued that logic operates differently in spheres of inherent uncertainty (such as politics and ethics) and those who insist that logic is universal (Plato appears to have been in this category, but there are arguments about that—after all, he did have Aristotle teaching rhetoric). Logical positivism tried to ground all discourse in formal logic—that is, the notion that a logical argument has a particular form, one that operates universally. So, a specific argument is logical or not regardless of context. The Anglo-analytic tradition treats formal logic as the true logic, and informal logic as just bad formal logic. That’s a fallacy.

Also, that way of approaching argument led to a binary—since it obviously doesn’t work when people are arguing politics, there was a sense of logic either being a dominating and normative smackdown that seemed to make all actual political arguments illogical, or (and therefore) the embrace of the logic of an argument being determined by audience reaction.

In the 1970s, scholars of argumentation made a move that is still not represented in argumentation textbooks: the logic of an argument is determined by its place in a particular kind of conversation.

Were argumentation textbooks informed by argumentation theory, then teachers would asses arguments on this basis:

    1. Freedom rule
      Parties must not prevent each other from advancing standpoints or from casting doubt on standpoints.
    2. Burden of proof rule
      A party that advances a standpoint is obliged to defend it if asked by the other party to do so.
    3. Standpoint rule
      A party’s attack on a standpoint must relate to the standpoint that has indeed been advanced by the other party.
    4. Relevance rule
      A party may defend a standpoint only by advancing argumentation relating to that standpoint.
    5. Unexpressed premise rule
      A party may not deny premise that he or she has left implicit or falsely present something as a premise that has been left unexpressed by the other party.
    6. Starting point rule
      A party may not falsely present a premise as an accepted starting point nor deny a premise representing an accepted starting point.
    7. Argument scheme rule
      A party may not regard a standpoint as conclusively defended if the defense does not take place by means of an appropriate argumentation scheme that is correctly applied.
    8. Validity rule
      A party may only use arguments in its argumentation that are logically valid or capable of being made logically valid by making explicit one or more unexpressed premises.
    9. Closure rule
      A failed defense of a standpoint must result in the party that put forward the standpoint retracting it and a conclusive defense of the standpoint must result in the other party retracting its doubt about the standpoint.
    10. Usage rule
      A party must not use formulations that are insufficiently clear or confusingly ambiguous and a party must interpret the other party’s formulations as carefully and accurately as possible. (Van Eemeren, Grootendorst & Snoeck Henkemans, 2002, pp.182-183—which I got from Wikipedia, meaning that argumentation textbooks are lagging behind Wikipedia)

These rules are anti-demagoguery rules. If people argued by these rules, demagoguery would not be a problem, and demagogues would be strange relatives in your twitter feed that you eventually block because they’re irritating.

But here is the important for teaching, and especially about “open” assignments: A person cannot assess the logic of an argument by these rules without knowing the conversation in which the author is engaged.

So, I’ll say again, unless the teacher really does read all the arguments about all the issues, a teacher cannot assess the logic of an argument.

What I hope I made clear is that fairness across groups is the antidote to demagoguery. Demagoguery says our group is good, our group is threatened with extinction, anything done for our group or by our group is good, and anyone not in our group should be silenced. When people deeply engaged in demagoguery are asked to behave in a world of fairness, they respond with violence (because they know they can’t win if they have to abide by the ten rules listed above).

And that means that teachers should assign topics about which we can model fairness. We should assign paper prompts about which we don’t have a right answer, that aren’t about identity, and on which we can fairly assess the logic.

I spend a lot of time wandering around dark corners of the internet, and I’m a historian of public deliberation, and I’m normally the one to say that this problem is not new, but even I believe that we are in an era in which the very notion of democracy is under attack.

And it all comes down to fairness.

Demagoguery dies when people promoting their in-group talking points have to argue within those ten rules. So, as teachers, we should live by and impose those rules. It isn’t easy, and it’s operating against our culture of demagoguery, but I think it’s the right, the compassionate, fair, inclusive, and rational thing to do. Just to be clear, what I’m saying is that, in a culture of demagoguery, people assess arguments this way:

There is one perspective from which the truth about our situation can be perceived, and it’s the perspective of TRUE [Americans, liberals, conservatives, lefties, environmentalists, squirrel-haters].

So, to determine if an argument is good, you first determine whether the person making the argument is a true [member of the in-group].

To counter that THOSE people aren’t really good isn’t undermining a culture of demagoguery; it’s reinforcing it.

We need to stop arguing about bias; we need to talk about democracy. And democracy is about fairness. It’s about doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. And that should be a value about which all of us can agree.

Hannah Arendt on lying

A bunch of people are sharing something about Hannah Arendt and lying in totalitarian systems. I have a couple of reactions–first, we aren’t in a totalitarian system, as she meant the term. What’s more relevant is what she said about propaganda (in any system), which is that it degrades truth by making people completely cynical. Second, I have a lot of trouble believing that she said fact-checking is just playing their game (for one thing, that isn’t a metaphor she’d use). I can’t think of any place she makes that argument, and it directly contradicts what she says in the essay she published about lying in politics.

Her “Lying in Politics,” originally a review of The Pentagon Papers, published in TNYRB, became a chapter in her wonderful (and underread) Crises of the Republic. Here are some quotes:

“Facts need testimony to be remembered and trustworthy witnesses to be established in order to find a secure dwelling places in the domain of human affairs. From this, it follows that no factual statement can ever be beyond doubt.” (6)

“Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audiences wishes or expects to hear. He has prepared his story for public consumption with a careful eye to making it credible, whereas reality has the disconcerting habit of confronting us with the unexpected, for which we were not prepared.” (7)

“Under normal circumstances the liar is defeated by reality, for which there is no substitute: no matter how large the tissue of falsehood that an experienced liar has to offer, it will never be large enough, even if he enlists the help of computers, to cover the immensity of factuality. The lair, who may get away with any number of single falsehood, will find it impossible to get away with lying on principle.” (7)

In a totalitarian system, the distinguish between truth and falsehood collapses, “truth that can be relied on disappears entirely from public life, and with it the chief stabilizing factor in the ever-changing affairs of men.” (7)

About the political advisers who lied for years about Vietnam: “In spite of their undoubted intelligence–it is manifest in many memos from their pens–they also believed that politics is but a variety of public relations, and they were taken in by all the bizarre psychological premises underlying this belief.” (11)

“What these problem-solvers have in common with down-to-earth liars is the attempt to get rid of facts and the confidence that this should be possible because of the inherent contingency of facts.” (11)

“In order to eliminate Trotsky’s role from the history of the Russian Revolution, it is not enough to kill him and eliminate his name from all Russian records so long as one cannot kill all his contemporaries and wield power over the libraries and archives of all countries of the earth.” (13)

Classical uses of the term demagogue/ry

[I cut this from the book about demagoguery, but other academics might find it interesting.]

1. Classical uses of the term demagogue

The term “demagogue” is originally Greek, and it’s conventional to rely on Greek sources in order to ground a definition, often with the assertion that there is a binary between demagogues and statesmen (the distinction made by Plutarch). The treatment of “demagogues” and “demagogy” (a closer translation of the Greek term) in texts prior to Plutarch is more complicated than is often granted, and in ways that point to difficulties with the project of criticizing public discourse—whether the criticism is on rhetorical grounds (that is, about the means), the content (that is, the truth, falsehood, or political agenda), or the intent, character, and/or identity of the speaker (such as whether the rhetors mean well, are good people). Since my own work emphasizes the rhetorical criteria, I should explain what’s troubling about the others, and justify my own use of a classical term.

Initially, demagogue meant a political leader of the demes (or sometimes demos); that is, the smaller landowners. Just how economically bifurcated Athens actually was is still in dispute,[1] but it was certainly seen that way by many at the time. As Ober says, “Athenians viewed their society as divided into two major classes and that the key division was between those who had to work for their living and those who did not” (Mass and Elite 195).  The history of the Athenian constitution, according to Aristotle, was one of political figures increasingly empowering the non-leisured class (demes), sometimes through what has been called income redistribution (such as increasing state pay for jury duty). Figures who argued for policies that benefited that class were often seen as leaders of the demes–that is, demagogues.

Hence, at least partially, the term “demagogue” was a political label, much like our term “populist.”[2] People for whom populism is necessarily bad use the term disparagingly (such as H.L. Mencken) . But, people for whom populism can be good condemn some kinds of populism by attaching a negative adjective; Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyon, for instance, refer to “toxic populism,” not because all kinds of populism are toxic, but because some are. It seems to me that many classical writers have been read as condemning all kinds of populists and populism, and hence as using demagogue as an inherently negative term, when a careful reading suggests they are closer to Berlet and Lyon than they are to Mencken.

Andocides, in Against Alcibiades, condemns Alcibiades not for being a demagogue, but for acting like one (4.27)–that is, pretending to be a champion of the demos, when he really is not. Hyperides, in his attack on Demosthenes, says a demagogue “worthy of the name should be the savior of his country, not a deserter” (Against Demosthenes Fragment 4, column 16b, line 26), suggesting that the term might be used as a term of praise.[3] And, indeed, it was. Isocrates, for instance, praises Theseus and calls him a demagogue (Helen 37); he regularly refers to Pericles as a demagogue (see, for instance, Antidosis 234), and even uses the term in praise (To Nicocles 16, On the Peace 122, Antidosis 234). Like many other writers, Isocrates compares current demagogues to previous ones, criticizing the current ones as worse than those before (see, for example, On the Peace 126). At one point in Aristophanes’ The Knights, one of the slaves explains, “Demagoguery is no longer a job for a man of education and good character, but for the ignorant and disgusting” (The Knights 190). Aristophanes’ “no longer” implies that demagoguery was once a job for a man of education and good character.[4]

Aristophanes may have been joking, and he may always have thought that populists were always low-born and dishonest, but that’s unlikely. Pericles was, in fact, a demagogue, as were Cleisthenes, and Alcibiades—they were leaders of the demes, and they promoted policies, such as extending the franchise and increasing jury pay, that directly benefited the demes at the expense of the wealthy.  So, to say that all classical authors univocally condemned “demagogues” is either to say that the meaning of the word changed over time (from being the term for a political orientation to a rhetorical posture) or that classical authors condemned Pericles, Cleisthenes, Themistocles, and Alcibiades, an implausible claim.

The more plausible explanation is that the term was in flux at the time that Aristophanes was writing. In The Knights, when the two demagogues argue about which is more powerful, the controversy hinges largely on the question of which one is the most passionate lover (erastes) of Demos (a pun on “demos”—the people), a relationship that depends on flattery (735) and bribery; they each boast about robbing the most people and taking the most bribes. They don’t care about what is best for Athens as a whole, nor even what is actually best for Demos, but simply what Demos finds most pleasing in the moment. The chorus says to Demos: “You’re easily led astray: you enjoy being flattered and thoroughly deceived, and every speechmaker (legont) has you gaping. You’ve a mind, but it’s out to lunch” (115-120).  “The fog of war” is particularly useful for keeping Demos “blind” to Paphlagon’s self-aggrandizing policies (800), although Demos can be persuaded even to conduct war badly: “if two politicians were making proposals, one to build long ships and the other to spend the same sum on state pay, the pay man would walk all over the trireme man” (1350).[5]

Aristotle’s discussion of demagogues, and their role in the destruction of democracy, is justifiably famous, but it too is not necessarily an uncomplicated condemnation of populist rhetors. Aristotle argues that unjust policies—ones that put too much power in the hands of the rich—are likely to make a particular kind of demagogue (ones lacking in self-control) let themselves get hired to rouse the demes (Politics 5.9.6, 1304b 35, and 5.8). Out of fear of having their property confiscated, the oligarchs will organize themselves into a revolution, and install a tyranny. The problem, Aristotle says, is that if there are not laws that constrain “the multitude,” then demagogues “always divide the state into two by fighting with the well-to-do” (1310a). If the rich oppress the poor, then the poor will start talking about taking the money of the rich, and the rich will install a tyrant—this narrative doesn’t entirely blame demagogues (nor the poor); as Alan Ryan says, it is a “schematic” understanding of the failure of a democracy.

And, for Aristotle, demagoguery is not restricted to the masses; Aristotle has a brief discussion of “oligarchic demagogues” who might be someone pandering to the oligarchs, or might be an oligarch pandering to the masses (Politics VI).[6] The term often associated with Aristotle’s criticism of demagogues is kalox, or flattery, so one might infer that the problem is not that a bad demagogue gets his power from the demos, but that he flatters them in order to get the power. It may be, then, that Aristotle’s criticism of bad demagogues is both political (they destabilize democracy through spending so much money on state pay) and rhetorical (they rely on flattery rather than deliberation).

There are other times in classical texts when it isn’t at all clear what the term demagogue means. For instance, scholars don’t agree just what Callicles’ accusation that Socrates is engaged in demagoguery, in Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, is supposed to convey. Callicles objects to Socrates’ style (which he calls “boisterous” or “hot-headed” [neanieneothai] 482c), so perhaps it’s that Socrates has been using the sort of low-brow style for which the more populist politicians were notorious (Worman’s argument, see 194-5). The problem with this interpretation is that Callicles and Socrates are talking in a relatively small, and very elite, group, and Socrates’ rhetoric—despite Callicles’ claims—is not particularly low-brow. Or, perhaps it’s that Socrates has been “manipulating his audience (in this case young Polus) through the powerful emotion of shame” (Balot 359), except the accusation happens after the exchange with Polus has ended, and Callicles has no apparent problem with emotional appeals.  Since this exchange with Callicles is the point when the dialogue collapses into some fairly heated exchanges—in which various scurrilous accusations are made or implied—it seems to me reasonable that the accusation of demagogue is in the same category of the comparisons to catamites or shitbirds, intended to insult[7]. When Callicles accuses Socrates of being a demagogue, This is perhaps the most common way that the term demagogue is used in contemporary political debate. When Charles Krauthammer or Thomas Sowell called Barack Obama a demagogue, or Ronald Reagan used the term for Tip O’Neill, or Joan Dowlin used it for Reagan, they seem to mean nothing any more precise than a distaste for the rhetor’s political agenda coupled with irritation at the opponent’s rhetorical effectiveness; like Callicles, they’re engaged in making a vague insult.

My point in this discussion of classical uses of the terms “demagogue” and “demagoguery” is partially to show that usage was more varied than sometimes granted, but, more importantly, to note that there have always been tensions in its meaning. One can certainly say that classical authors complain of rhetors who persuaded groups into disastrous courses of action, but it isn’t simple to say just what their complaint was. Was it that the political figure swayed the masses? Or that he did so through bad appeals? That is, is populist rhetoric inherently bad, or just some kinds of rhetorical strategies? Or is the figure himself? Was the distinction between Pericles (conventionally presented as the ideal statesman) and Cleon (conventionally presented as the ur-demagogue) that they argued in different ways, or that Pericles was simply a better person than Cleon? Or, perhaps, was it that Pericles argued for better policies than Cleon?

That is, a definition of demagogue/ry might emphasize one of three points: the moral character of the rhetor (especially intent), the political agenda of the rhetor, or the rhetorical strategies. And, if the determining criterion concerns rhetorical strategies, what, exactly, makes some strategies demagogic—that they are appeals to populism, flattery, appeals to emotion, and/or appeals to greed? Or, as implied in Plato’s Gorgias, that they are untrue?

This same tension—whether the accusation of demagoguery is a claim about form, content, impact, character, or intent—continues in later discussions of demagoguery. Thomas Hobbes’ condemnation of demagoguery is openly anti-populist and anti-emotional; the masses are inherently emotional (and feminine), and democracies fall to demagogues because the masses are incapable of self-control. In 1838, James Fenimore Cooper identified the “peculiar office” of the demagogue as “advanc[ing] his own interests, by affecting a deep devotion to the interests of the people” (99). The demagogue, according to Cooper, not only has bad motives, but bad arguments and strategies, relying on flattery, “appeals to passions and prejudices rather than reason, and is in all respects, a man of intrigue and deception, of sly cunning and management” (100), looking out for a small number of people while claiming to be concerned about the whole. The flatter/chide binary, so important to Socrates’ discussion of ethical versus unethical discourse in Gorgias is echoed in Cooper, who says that the good rhetor “is frank and fearless” and “oftener chides than commends” (100).  Cooper especially emphasizes that the demagogue appeals to prejudice rather than the truth.

Reinhard Luthin, in his 1954 American Demagogues, Twentieth Century, argues that a demagogue is

a politician skilled in oratory, flattery, and invective, evasive in discussing vital issues; promising everything to everybody; appealing to the passions rather than the reason of the public; and arousing racial, religious, and class prejudices–a man whose lust for power without recourse to principle leads him to seek to become a master of the masses. (3)[8]

Charles Lomas’ discussion of demagoguery seems to shift the weight slightly more toward the kind of rhetoric in which a demagogue engages, but the determining characteristics are still in the demagogue: demagoguery is

the process by which skillful speakers and writers seek to influence public opinion by employing the traditional tools of rhetoric with complete indifference to truth. In addition, although demagoguery does not necessarily seek ends contrary to the public interest, its primary motivation is personal gain (165).

Ultimately, then, the most important axis is still the person of the demagogue: to determine if something is demagoguery, one looks to the demagogue, to see if s/he is indifferent to truth, and primarily motivated by personal gain.

2. Justin Gustainis’ summary of scholarship on demagoguery includes rhetor, content, and strategies. He says

The work of those who have studied what is normally called demagoguery leads to the conclusion that the demagogue is a person who possess at least three characteristics: he is motivated by self-interest, he evinces little concern for the truth, and he is an opportunist. (156).

He also discusses the axis of rhetorical strategy; the demagogue, in order to develop “his own power, influence, and popular acclaim,” (157) uses recurrent rhetorical strategies: inflation of racial hatred (157), identification (especially as a “common man” 158), representation of himself as the savior willing to take “drastic action” (158), personalized appeal, oversimplification, emotional appeals, specious argumentation, ad hominem attacks, anti-intellectualism, and political pageantry (158-160).

More recently, Michael Signer’s Demagogue relies on the demagogue/statesman distinction, using Cooper’s definition in order to emphasize four characteristics:

(1) They fashion themselves as a man or woman of the common people, as opposed to the elites; (2) their politics depends on a powerful, visceral connection with the people that dramatically transcends ordinary political popularity; (3) they manipulate this connection, and the raging popularity it affords, for their own benefit and ambition; and (4) they threaten or outright break the established rules of conduct, institutions, and even the law. (35)

Signer’s definition, like Luthin’s, mixes consideration of motive (the third criterion), rhetoric (the first and second), and political agenda (the fourth), and explicitly makes demagoguery a populist discourse.

P.M. Carpenter’s definition, on the other hand, is almost exclusively rhetorical, arguing that the demagogue is identified by “extensive use of unidimensionality” (“simplistic solutions offered in answer to complex sociopolitical questions, one-sided expositions intended to exclude rather than expand democratic public debate “) and scapegoating. Whereas many scholars of demagoguery emphasize the person (so the determination is made largely by the motives, psychology, and strategies of the person, whose discourse is then named demagoguery), Carpenter reverses the emphasis. Instead of demagoguery being what demagogues do, demagogues are people who engage in demagoguery. The “intended to exclude” suggests, however, at least some speculation as to the motives of the rhetor; presumably, a rhetor who significantly, but sincerely, simplified a situation would not be engaged in demagoguery.

And another set of scholars don’t use the term “demagoguery,” but are clearly talking about a similar phenomenon. Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyon’s discussion of “right-wing populism” identifies many of the rhetors and movements often associated with demagoguery in America—Father Charles Coughlin, pro-segregationists, white nationalism. They identify several characteristics that mix rhetorical and political criteria: producerism, demonization and scapegoating, conspiracism, apocalyptic narratives, and a right-wing political agenda (see especially 6-15). Kenneth Burke’s “Rhetoric of Hitler’s ‘Battle’” similarly discusses Hitler’s psychology to speculate on the sources of Hitler’s anti-Semitism, but otherwise uses psychological concepts to explain why Hitler’s rhetorical strategies would have been so effective with the German people; Burke also has some astute points about how the Nazis strategically used violence in their meetings (which might be more the policy axis than rhetoric), but he is mostly concerned with rhetorical tactics, such as shifting materialization/spiritualization, projection, scapegoating, narratives of symbolic rebirth, unification through division, and the non-economic explanations of economic phenomena.

David Neiwert uses the term “eliminationist” rather than demagogue, and he too connects the rhetoric and the politics—the trend he studies is “the positing of elimination as the solution to political disagreement” (7). Neiwert argues that this rhetoric has policy consequences, and tends toward fascism (what he calls “para-fascist”); hence, Neiwert’s primary emphasis is on the rhetoric and policy. Like Burke, Neiwert discusses psychology, but it isn’t part of the criteria for determining whether the rhetoric is eliminationist.

My argument is that this last strategy is the most useful. Trying to distinguish demagogues from statesmen on the basis of good v. bad intent is almost certainly wrong. While some rhetors notorious for demagoguery do seem to have adopted a racist and hate-mongering discourse out of a cunning estimation of the most effective route to power—Michael Mann says that “Milosevic was only opportunistically a nationalist” (Mann, Dark Side 369; see also 424)—it’s also clear that many of them were quite sincere. Cleon, for instance—one of the earlier examples of demagogues—may well have believed that the policy of genocide would genuinely benefit Athens; there’s no good reason to think he didn’t. Theodore Bilbo was sincerely committed to segregation, quite likely did believe that lynching was a useful form of social control, and was so committed to his hateful policy of repatriation that he continued to advocate it when a savvier politician would have recognized the political costs and toned it down, relied more on dog whistles, or kept the racist rhetoric for non-recorded performances.[9] Hitler was sincerely anti-Semitic, as were many of the architects and even foot-soldiers in the Holocaust; Hitler’s sincerity is most powerfully demonstrated in his actions toward the end of the war when he sacrificed military outcomes to keep the genocide as effective as possible; it’s plausible that some of his otherwise inexplicable decisions in regard to Stalingrad make sense in the context of someone who believed that Aryan forces would necessarily triumph over “inferior” races, regardless of the practical challenges. That Hitler would take time out of strategy meetings to lecture his generals on the racial makeup of troops suggests he was sincere (see, for instance, his meetings with his generals regarding Stalingrad, Hitler and His Generals). Roger Griffin says that Hitler “thus seem seriously to have seen himself as heralding a new phase of human civilization based on the racial-nationalist rebirth of the German people” (101).

It is wishful thinking to believe that people advocated repressive and eliminationist policies are only looking out for themselves. This belief suggests that people who do bad things are aware that the things they are doing are bad; we want to believe that Hitler knew that the Holocaust was cruel, and that he knew he was hurting Germany; we want to believe that McCarthy knew he was lying about the number of communists and the degree of infiltration; we’d like to think that Bilbo secretly knew that segregation and lynching were wrong.[10] However, despite what we might wish, they almost certainly believed that they were doing the right thing. Thus, if we try to identify “demagogues” as people who are motivated by self-interest rather than public interest, we are in the murky area of determining what people really believe, and we end up with a list that doesn’t include major advocates of genocide.

Saying that demagogues are people who engage in certain kinds of policies also limits the definition to the point that it is useless. While it’s hard to imagine an argument for genocide that isn’t demagoguery, some arguments for war involve scapegoating, and some don’t. Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party rhetoric, while almost always populist and vehement, do not always rely on scapegoating, nor on evasion of policy arguments (in other words, there is demagoguery in both, but also much discourse that doesn’t fit most definitions); Charles Coughlin’s arguments for New Deal policies were demagoguery, but I haven’t found any of FDR’s arguments that fit the definitions provided by Burke, Neiwert, or my own. There isn’t a necessary connection between policy and rhetoric (with the possible exception of genocide—I can’t imagine a non-demagogic argument for genocide).

[1] Scholars continue to debate just how poor everyone else was; see especially Chapter Five as well as 127-131 in Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens. J.K. Davies explains, the material conditions (especially poor soil) meant that a “middle” class was nowhere a power force (24; see also Aristotle Politics 1295b 23); instead, there was a leisured class (plousioi or ploutos) and everyone else, and there was considerable pressure to abolish or to render more widely accessible formal political or cultic privileges and to extend downwards, to the rest of the descent-group, the applicability and appropriateness of aristocratic life-styles and values. The form of government which such pressure created when successful was  being called ‘democracy’ by the 440s if not earlier, while its converse, the preservation or re-establishment of control of the state by an aristocratic or wealthy minority, came to be called ‘rule by the few’, ‘oligarchy’.” (Democracy and Classical Greece 25)

[2] Demosthenes uses it simply to mean a leader of the people (see, for instance, Against Aristogeiton II 4).

[3] Lane’s claim that “None of the historians, playwrights, and orators of classical Athens relied upon a perjorative term for demagogue in developing their analyses of bad political leadership” (180) seems to me slightly overstated—they seem aware that there is a perjorative connotation possible. It seems to me similar to how writers might currently use words like feminist, liberal, or progressive. But, certainly, I agree with Lane that they do not use the term in an exclusively perjorative way. Lane credits Plutarch with the demagogue/statesman distinction as we have inherited it—that is, thinking it was present in earlier writers (192).

[4] Although several scholars share this reading (Dover 69, note 1; Lane 185) it’s possible, of course, that Aristophanes is making fun of the tendency that demagogues have to accuse one another of demagoguery, and we’re not to take this comment seriously at all. Still, his criticism of demagogues is their tendency to rely on flattery—that is, not who they are, but their rhetorical strategies.

[5] Aristotle mentions a specific instance of this kind of situation in Rhodes: “the demagogues used to provide pay for public services, and also to hinder the payment of money owed to the naval captains” (Politics 1304b 30).

[6] That Aristotle could refer to “oligarchic demagogues” suggests that the term had shifted meanings between the time of Isocrates and Aristotle, and it no longer signified a leader of the demes.

[7] Lane argues that Plato invented the statesman/demagogue dichotomy, and, in Thaetetus, coined the term demagogue as an entirely perjorative one (190). “The Origins of the Statesman/Demagogue Distinction in and after Ancient Athens.” Journal of the History of Ideas, 73(2), April 2012: 179-200.

[8] Luthin comes up with his set of characteristics through a series of case studies of famous demagogues (James M. Curley, Theodore Bilbo, William Hale Thompson, William Murray, Frank Hague, Mr. and Mrs. James Ferguson, Vito Marcantonio, Huey Long), inferring their shared characteristics or, as he says, “marks.” Luthin, like Gustainis, emphasizes the motives of the demagogue, but also the political agenda (the demagogue often tries to control media, interferes with education), and rhetorical strategies (anti-intellectualism, emotional appeals, race- or religion-baiting). So, while more toward the rhetor (demagogue) axis, there is also considerable discussion of policy, and rhetorical strategy.

Cal Logue and Howard Dorgan’s 1981 collection of essays on southern demagogues doesn’t rely on a single definition of “demagogue,” although the editors infer a set of characteristics emphasized in the various chapters: personal arrogance, reliance on vague promises, use of a “domineering discourse” that “tended to stifle any constructive exchange of ideas, often clogging communicative channels with emotional platitudes and dictatorial directives, and frequently intimidating persons who possessed alternative views” (10-11).

There are, of course, other ways of using the term “demagogue,” to mean simply, “a political figure whose popularity upsets me.” This is perhaps the most common way that the term demagogue is used in contemporary political debate. When Charles Krauthammer or Thomas Sowell called Barack Obama a demagogue, or Ronald Reagan used the term for Tip O’Neill, or Joan Dowlin used it for Reagan, they seem to mean nothing any more precise than a distaste for the rhetor’s political agenda coupled with irritation at their rhetorical effectiveness. While scholars of rhetoric rarely use the term this way, scholars in other fields sometimes do.

[9] In fact, his biographer Chester Morgan argues that Bilbo did not engage in deliberate race-baiting until the very end of his life and career, and was therefore not a demagogue, because his racism was perfectly sincere (234-6).

[10] Ultimately, I’m not sure what any of the people traditionally identified as demagogues did or did not believe–they tend to be fairly adept at speaking to a particular audience, and have a highly malleable sense of reality. There is reasonably good evidence to suggest that some of the most famous ones had personality disorders and/or health conditions closely connected to delusional thinking; it’s distinctly possible, if they had narcissistic personality disorder or borderline personality disorder, that they were perfectly capable of sincerely believing contradictory propositions.