Demagoguery and Democracy Part 2: Defining Demagoguery and Defending Democracy

Rhetorical Leadership

00:00 Defining demagoguery
04:00 Why Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt were not demagogues
10:30 Case Study: Earl Warren's demagogic argument about Japanese Internment
12:20 Threat perception and demagoguery/ "The Flight 93 Election"
14:40 Signs and evidence of threats
15:45 Demagoguery in the gay marriage debate
17:30 Demagoguery as "algae in a pond" allegory
18:30 How Trump out-competed other demagogues
21:20 Trump as a large Salomon Asch experiment on the nation
23:30 How dishonest media give demagogues the cover to flip
24:45 Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio as a case study in demagogue/demagogic culture
29:30 How media revolutions coincide with the rise of demagogues
30:45 The solution: we have to stop buying demagoguery
31:50 What inspired this book
33:00 Lesser and greater demagogues
34:10 In-group policing as a parry against demagogues (McCarthyism/Birchers)
36:10 The extremism of the current GOP base and the "ends justify any means" argument
37:20 The need for leadership and a reckoning to defeat demagoguery
39:30 Why "suspending democratic norms" is a one-way street
40:35 Rejecting "our" demagogues
42:15 Institutional remedies for demagoguery
43:20 Two-party systems and us/them rhetoric
44:45 How demagogues create us/them in multi-party systems
45:15 Gerrymandering, safe seats, and partisan extremism
46:05 What can WE do?
46:15 1. Make demagoguery less profitable/successful
46:52 2. Not argue with those who repeat demagoguery, but engage with them
49:18 3. Argue with those who repeat demagoguery, but stick to the issue at hand
50:25 4. Actively support democratic deliberation
51:00 Don't take your democratic freedoms for granted
52:19 Never-Trump Republicans and cross-party coalitions for democratic norms
56:00 Democracy is fragile and needs our commitment
56:45 Remembering the lessons of WWII and demagoguery
1:00:00 "Purifying" our public sphere is not a solution
1:00:50 Creating a culture "parry" for the thrust of demagoguery
1:01:48 How important should politics be in our lives?
1:03:20 Paul Woodruff's democratic values of "harmony" and "reverence"
1:04:30 Learning to get along