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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCan Americans Stop a Demagogue?
https://prospect.org/politics/can-american-stop-a-demagogue/Can Americans Stop a Demagogue?
Roberts-Miller: When demagoguery gets drawn back, its because people say that this is too much. And typically its in-group: McCarthy got called out by fellow Republicans. Thats what finally put an end to what he was doing. Roosevelt got called out by fellow Democrats when he was really trying to pack the Supreme Court and do something that was extraordinarily authoritarian and very anti-democratic. The words have to get to a point that, that in-group people will call him out.
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Roberts-Miller: Its a kind where you dont know if theyre kidding or not. Im kind of fascinated by the way that humor works in demagoguery because for one thing, as I said, it gives, it enables people to be unaccountable. I crawl around dark corners on the internet and argue with jerks and they do that all the time, you know, and the second that they get called out and you, and you prove that beyond reasonable doubt, they are completely and totally fabricating information, thats when theyll say jokes on you. I was kidding. But the, so its always a kick-down humor.
The humor is always jokes on you. Thats what Hitler did. If you listen to some of his speeches, the audience is laughing. And one of the most famous is a 1939 speech about Roosevelt, in response to Roosevelts attempt to bring peace and to find some way to kind of resolve things.
The audience is laughing the whole time and its completely that kind of satire. With Hitler he said very clearly, very early on in Mein Kampf exactly what he was going to do. And people didnt take it seriously because they thought it was that kind of hyperbole in which he often engaged. And hyperbole has also a way of evading, enabling you to evade any kind of accountability.
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Can Americans Stop a Demagogue? (Original Post)
bucolic_frolic
Feb 2020
OP
delisen
(6,039 posts)1. Insight is useful. Thank you
ck4829
(34,974 posts)2. Can? YES. Willing to? Want to? Think they should? Too concerned they will make a "scene"?
There's the rub.
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)3. Americans set the standard in anti-demagoguery. Remember the Revolutionary War? We broke
new ground then but now we know our duty and the way to achieve our goals.