Talk:Demagogue

Sources

Here are some serious, reliable sources about demagogy/demagogues. I haven't checked them all closely, but I'm listing them because they appear to be scholarly research, not name-calling by opponents. Please add more such sources to this section as you find them. They'll help other editors looking for good material to summarize. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 15:47, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Demagogues in general

Michael Signer. Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy from its Worst Enemies. Palgrave Macmillan (2009).

Modern and thorough. Takes care with definition. Details famous demagogues from history. Explains demagoguery as an inherent weakness of democracy (the traditional view), and proposes an explanation of why the United States has never faced a serious threat from a national-level demagogue. Explains why Bush was not a demagogue, regardless of one's opinion of him as a leader.

Ceaser, James W. (2011). "Demagoguery, Statesmanship, and Presidential Politics". Designing a Polity: America's Constitution in Theory and Practice. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 75–118. ISBN 1442207906.

Scholarly, covers history back to Athens, with emphasis on the U.S. Defines and classifies demagogues.

James Fenimore Cooper. "On Demagogues." (1838).

Careful, four-part definition of "demagogue". Documents the term's ancient origin and its extension in modern times. Still pretty authoritative.

Thoms Streissguth. Hatemongers and Demagogues. The Oliver Press, Inc. (1995).

Eight examples from history: Samuel Parris (witch-hunter), Lyman Beecher (Puritan), Thomas Watson (Populist), William Simmons (KKK), Father Coughlin, Joseph McCarthy, George Lincoln Rockwell (American Nazi), Louis Farrakhan.

Aristotle. Politics.

Ancient survey of democracy and demagogues.

Reinhard Henry Luthin. American Demagogues: Twentieth Century. P. Smith (1959).

Not freely available, but widely cited. Includes Joe McCarthy.

Polybius's Histories and people's commentaries on them: Google Books search

Something in here ought to be thorough.

Basil Montagu. "The Patriot and the Demagogue" (1837).

Not sure if we need to cite it, but certainly we should offer a link to it. It's probably got something quotable, and it mentions some demagogues who might be of interest to describe in the article.

J. Justin Gustainis. "Demagoguery and Political Rhetoric: A Review of the Literature," Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Spring, 1990), pp. 155–161.

A survey of other sources on demagogues, especially their rhetorical techniques.

Cal M. Logue and Howard Dorgan, editors. The Oratory of Southern Demagogues (1981).

A survey of eight demagogues of the southern U.S., by a variety of authors. Includes an overview of demagogues in general.

G.M. Gilbert. "Dictators and Demagogues," Journal of Social Issues, Vol 11(3), 1955, 51-56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1955.tb00330.x

General analysis of demagogues. (Unfortunately behind a paywall.)

Allan Louis Larson. Southern Demagogues: A Study in Charismatic Leadership (1964).

Might have a thorough analysis of defining characteristics of demagogues and how they target and exploit their followers.

Wilma Dykeman. "The Southern Demagogue," The Virginia Quarterly Review, 33.4 (Fall 1957): 558.

Appears to analyze why demagogues were so common in the southern U.S. in the early 20th century. (Behind a paywall.)

Allport, Gordon Willard. The Nature of Prejudice (25th-anniversary edition, 1979). Basic Books.

Includes a chapter on demagogues. Discusses the followers of demagogues as well as their motives and tactics.

Specifically about McCarthy

Richard H. Rovere. [https://books.google.com/books?id=h04T6e77NsMC Senator Joe McCarthy. (1959) This appears to be the definitive work.

Robert Shogan. No Sense of Decency: The Army-McCarthy Hearings: A Demagogue Falls and Television Takes Charge of American Politics. Ivan R. Dee (2009).

Charles Joseph Pruitt. Demagogue McCarthy. University of Oregon. (1967)

William T. Walker. McCarthyism and the Red Scare: A Reference Guide. ABC-CLIO (2011)

Specifically about Donald Trump

As of February, 2019, we don't have consensus that Donald Trump has merited sufficient coverage by authorities knowledgeable about demagogues to merit a mention in the article. As reliable sources accumulate, please list them here, both to help editors judge when it's time to change the consensus and to provide references when the time comes. Not all the references listed here are suited for citing in the article; they're of high quality, but some are useful mainly as leads to other sources or to gauge the level of agreement and interest among authorities. For judging when the coverage is sufficient, please consider the higher standards that Wikipedia requires for information about living persons, especially WP:BLPREMOVE (take care to use high-quality sources; don't argue for your own, first-hand conclusions) and WP:PUBLICFIGURE (there should be a "multitude of reliable published sources").

Michael Signer. "Donald Trump Wasn't a Textbook Demagogue Until Now." Washington Post, December 2, 2015.

Analysis of precisely why Trump meets the criteria of a demagogue, written by possibly the current leading authority on demagogues.

Patrick Healy and Maggie Haberman. "95,000 Words, Many of Them Ominous, From Donald Trump’s Tongue." New York Times, December 6, 2015.

In-depth analysis, with consultation by experts Jennifer Mercieca and Michael Kazin.

Philip Freeman, Loren J. Samons II, Daniel Schily, Melissa Lane, Jason Brennan, Rafael Piñeiro, Les Drutman. "What History Teaches Us About Demagogues Like The Donald." Zócalo Public Square, June 20, 2016, reprinted in Time Magazine, same date.

Little information specifically about Trump, but illustrates academic consensus that Trump is a demagogue.

Jennifer Mercieca. "The rhetorical brilliance of Trump the demagogue." The Conversation, December 11, 2015.

Somewhat unfocused analysis of Trump's demagoguery. Gives emphasis to logical fallacies rather than crowd-manipulation.

Oliver Hahla, Minjae Kimb, Ezra W. Zuckerman Sivan. "The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth about Political Illegitimacy." Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business, MIT Sloan School of Management, January 10, 2018.

Draws extensively upon Trump as a prototypical example of a "lying demagogue" whose supporters support him even though they know he's lying.

How Democracies Die is a 2018 book by Harvard University political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt about how elected leaders can gradually subvert the democratic process to increase their power. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WinstonSmith01984 (talk • contribs) 13:12, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

I found some other (conflicting) scientific sources about Donald Trump:

* The Rhetoric of Our Celebrity Demagogue says:

Donald Trump is a demagogue. A great number of political and historical commentators have stated as much. Frederic Rich (2016) succinctly lists the actions that justify this assertion: the demagogue obliterated the normal rules of political conduct; he exploits the prejudices and false beliefs of hisn fans, inflaming their passions rather than offering reasoned discussion of the issues; he is wholly intolerant of criticism—to the point of seeking to silence the press; he is not above inciting violence; and he is uninterested in, if not hostile to, the US Constitution and the nation’s laws. Historian Shawn Parry-Giles (2002) defined propaganda as “strategically devised messages that are disseminated to masses of people by an institution for the purpose of generating action benefiting its source” (xxvi). On the first full day of his presidency, the demagogue said he was in “a running war with the media” (White House 2017). Now he marshals the White House’s communication apparatus to disseminate his propaganda—a terrifying prospect for people across the ideological spectrum. Since he can easily distract us from important issues at hand, we must be vigilant (Stanley 2015).

* The Art of Masculine Victimhood: Donald Trump’s Demagoguery says:

Although the press has been willing to label Trump a demagogue, contemporary rhetorical scholars have dismissed or avoided the term, with the exceptions of Patricia Roberts-Miller’s work on demagoguery as the inducement of “in-group” thinking (462), and Josh Gunn’s attention to its psychological aspects. Otherwise, rhetoric scholars infrequently invoke demagoguery. Some treat it as a taken-for-granted concept (see I. Allen; Engels; Jones; O’Gorman). J. Michael Hogan and Dave Tell worry that the study of demagoguery enables scholars to smuggle in their political agendas, presenting political/ideological judgments as objective --PJ Geest (talk) 09:52, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Opinion: Donald Trump Could Write the Book on Talking Like a Demagogue Shafer, Jack. POLITICO, Robert L. Allbritton, 1 June 2020, 6:53 P.M. DonkeyPunchResin (talk) 15:11, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Specifically about Benito Mussolini

Frank Iezzi, "Benito Mussolini, Crowd Psychologist". Quarterly Journal of Speech, 45:2, 166–170 (1959).

Describes Mussolini's methods, sometimes as explained by Mussolini himself.

Edit Request

Change "lowest common denominator" to something more specific. The cited work does not seem to use this phrase, and it is unclear what this is supposed to mean. Does it mean "uneducated"? If so, the text should just say "uneducated". Possibly "it is possible for the people to give that power to someone who uses emotion to appeal to an uneducated segment of the population less swayed by appeals to reason"? I don't have a citation for this specific phrasing and couldn't say if the existing citation supports it. Possibly better to just delete the entire sentence. Browncs (talk) 08:50, 14 February 2024 (UTC)