Our media is good at doing somethings, offering perspective and history is not one of them. There is a lot of talk about demagogues, fear and hatred in our country these days, I thought I would wade in a bit, given my passion for being odd, one of those people writing and thinking on the fringes of power.
I leave it to you to decide who you are going to vote for this November, I was drawn this week to think about and research the spectacular history of demagogues and democracy. I have read some surprising and fascinating things, I wanted to share them. Demagogues and democracies have been involved with each other for at least 25 centuries.
Some democracies have survived them, some have not.
The first recorded demagogue was the Greek Populist Leader Cleon, who persuaded his fellow Athenians to kill every man and woman in the city of Mytilene as punishment for a failed revolt.
Aristotle wrote of that particular demagogue: “He was the first who shouted on the public platform, who used abusive language, and who spoke with his cloak girt around him, while all the others used to speak in proper dress and manner.” The word itself comes from the Greeks, it actually means “leader of the people,” or the leader of a mob.
In modern times, the term has taken on a different meaning.
Wikipedia defines a demagogue as “a rabble-rouser or leader in a democracy who gains popularity by exploiting prejudice and ignorance among the common people, whipping up the passions of the crowd and shutting down reasoned deliberation.”
Demagogues are by no means new to democracies, since democratic cultures allow everyone to run for office and vote. Today, populist political figures on the left and the right are gaining power and popularity all over the world, a response to mass immigration and globalization, which has made many promises and shattered many lives. Very old and sometimes troubling questions about demagogues are being asked again. They are not being raised or answered on the websites or cable news channels so many people watch.
(I appreciated a recent Time Magazine piece on What History Teaches Us About Demagogues. You won’t hear about this on cable news.)
One theory offered by political scientists is that it seems the average citizen has less and less of a voice in governing, and that wealthy corporations and political elites have taken their power from them. Their leaders have failed to keep their promises. They are angry, and for demagogues, that is the perfect bait.
Loren Simmons, Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University, argues that in a democratic environment, demagogues simply cannot be avoided. If you love democracy, then you must accept that demagogues are as much a part of the process as voting. They are, Simmons writes, one of the natural outcomes of a form of government that depends on elections. The most rational citizens can hope for is that a majority of the participating electorate will identity the demagogue as such and reject his or her message.
She says there is one simple test that will allow voters to identity a demagogue: “If the world leader promises to give, restore, provide, insure, or enhance a country but never asks the citizens to sacrifice, pay, serve, or simply work, then this leader is a potential demagogue.”
Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton and Franklin, the designers of our democracy, feared demagogues as well as the ignorant mobs they often arouse, so our system is riddled with checks and balances – three separate branches of government, all chosen in different ways at different times. Demagogues in our country face innumerable roadblocks. H.L. Mencken made a career out of ridiculing demagogues, he says they inevitably fail when popular adulation goes to their heads and they actually try to govern.
Daniel Scily, one of the founders of Democracy International, says a demagogue is first and foremost a talented and popular speaker. It is usually the narcissistically damaged entertainers who become political performers, he writes. They often win elections, but they are incapable of actually governing.
Princeton Professor of Politics Melissa Lane writes that while the term “demagogue” has come to be a synonym for a certain kind of bad leader, the pejorative association originated in part in a certain kind of elitism. In Ancient Greece, the demagogue came to be seen as someone rising to power with the support of the “common people,” who were looked down upon as the uneducated many by the elite few.
Elites have always denigrated the demagogue, she has written, as insincere. The demagogue is said to be someone who only pretends to serve the interests of the many. “Hence the thought that his or her real aim is to exploit the common people’s fear and anger to advance his or her own interests.”
It is certainly true that almost every elite in America – corporate interests, Wall Street, the entrenched political class, mainstream media, academics, educated voters – has come to see Donald Trump as a demagogue exploiting the fears of ignorant people while seeking to advance his own power and interests. Something for me to think about. It is not difficult to see why Trump supporters see a vast conspiracy against their candidate.
Dr. Rafael Pineiro, an acclaimed student of democracy teaches at the Catholic University of Uruguay. “When democracy fulfills its promises, citizens do not need to turn to demagogues for solutions; they are just the product of the really bad ones.” Citizen’s alienation and disenchantment with politics breeds demagoguery, he writes. Demagogues appear when political parties or the institutional resources of government are not capable of delivering. When politics becomes meaningless for a portion of the electorate, the opportunity for demagoguery arises.
I thought this was powerful and thought-provoking writing. And it helped me to understand what is happening, rather than just argue about it on Facebook.
I won’t vote for Mr. Trump for many reasons, but it would be a mistake to overlook the protests and rage of so many citizens, many of whom have seen democracy fail to fulfill its promises to them. They have been left behind and forgotten and misled, and they are a fertile breeding ground for demagogues, especially one more mature and disciplined than Donald Trump.
In a well-functioning democracy, writes Jason Brennan of Georgetown University, elites and the people keep each other in check. In the best scenarios, the elites restrain the worst impulses of the people and keep them from implementing dumb or dangerous polices, policies the people support only because they are poorly informed.
In return, the people keep the elites from simply running the government to their own advantage at the expense of every one else. “Many supporters of democracy decry the power of elites,” he writes, “but they should be careful what they wish for. Donald Trump is what happens when the people get what we want.”
It’s useful to think about demagogues and hear intelligent people talk about them and their history. I believe we are, in fact, seeing the rise of a demagogue in Donald Trump, I also believe his rise is a cautionary tale for us democracy lovers. His followers are angry, in many cases justly so, even if they seem ill-informed and bigoted at times. This is not something new, it is actually 25 centuries old, at least. I respect the idea that democracies need demagogues, they are part of a process that reminds us that government needs to work for all of the people, not just a few.
One problem the Greeks did not have is modern media – cable news and social media. It is a new kind of immediate transmitter of fear, anger and misinformation. Sooner or later, we will all have to face up to its fearsome destructive capabilities as well as its miraculous gifts.