Demagogues have been a serious problem in democracies for
millennia. Those who practice equal self-rule in rural
settings have known for centuries that many party politicians do not fight
for democracy but for their narrow party interests. So they keep their distance
when political party hacks come to town right before elections. In ancient
Athenian democracy, social elites like Plato and Aristotle feared democracy
because it surely
threatens the wealth and privilege of ruling elites (and their advisors,
such as Aristotle).
The ancient Greeks also feared demagogues. By not limiting
their own ambitions for power and authority, the demagogue was criticized in
Athenian democracy for hubris,
the failure to limit their narrow, personal interests. The honest
orator works to transform the will of the citizens to serve the best
interests of the political body. The demagogue fails to regulate the self and
serves only his own interests.
This problem in the U.S. did not begin with Donald Trump.
Republican Party success in the early twenty-first century at limiting access
to the ballot box undermined democratic ideals, such as equality and objective
reason. In his award-winning analysis of methods used by demagogues in liberal
democracies, How
Propoganda Works (2016), Yale University philosopher Jason Stanley
focuses on Republican success at appealing to voter fears despite the absence
of voter fraud. Fear short circuits reason, and is a favorite weapon of
demagogues.
This type of demagogue is particularly deceptive in
electoral democracies. Liberal governments prohibit propaganda, and they do not
train their citizens to track and reject demagoguery, so citizens generally do
not recognize deceptive speech (or Twitter)
as a threat that undermines democratic practices.
Using fear is not a partisan problem. Demagogues using fear
in the War on Terror may be found in the both major political parties in the
U.S. Both President Bush of the Republican Party and President Obama of the
Democratic Party wielded fear in their campaigns against terrorism. Party
leaders have done the same in England, France, Spain, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen,
and other electoral democracies that are actively involved in the War on
Terror.
Fear itself is not a threat to democracy. The use of fear to
weaken democratic practices is what threatens democracies, according to
Stanley’s How
Propoganda Works.
So wartime is particularly risky for democracies. War is
when security may seem more important than democratic principles. In these
times the balancing of security with basic rights, security with equality, security
with open debate, and other balancing acts central to liberal democracy can
easily collapse. And in The
Forever War, as one senior official called it, means that the War on Terror
will continue to be a long-term threat to liberal democracy.
The collapse of openness in democracy and the turn towards
authoritarian rule is also a long-standing problem for democracies. Some have
argued that the struggle between openness and authoritarianism, democracy’s
Other, is the central conflict of democratic practices. Others have argued that the
battle of openness to difference against the closure of centralized
authoritarianism is the central struggle for democracy for the United States in
the twenty-first century.
There are many ways to defend democracy in an age of
demagogues. As a long-established problem, much work has been devoted to
fighting their deception, their power, and their speech. We can draw on these
resources in the U.S. and other sites where democracy is overrun by demagogues.
There is much work to do.
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