Gauging demagoguery

British historian Niall Ferguson wrote a revealing and flawed piece about demagoguery for yesterday's Washington Post. As per usual when mainstream commentators talk about this topic, Ferguson seems to mean by "demagogues" "those popular leaders who are enemies of the United States." He names (also as per usual) Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hassan Nasrallah, linking all these political figures together with ominous references to historical nightmares like Hitler. No attempt is made to analyze allies of the U.S. who might rightly be considered demagogues (does the popular, free press-curbing, xenophobic-towards-Georgia Putin not come close to counting?), and he certainly doesn't consider the question of whether America's leaders are "demagogic" in any way. (Yet when this does come up in political debate, the finger is almost always pointed at John Edwards, seemingly because he dares to talk about poor people and inequality. See here, here, here, here, and most recently here. This will be pertinent later.)

There are further problems with Ferguson's argument besides omission, the foremost being that he never sufficiently defines what exactly "demagoguery" is. We are to understand that demagogues (a) "demonize the arch-enemy," (b) "yell slogans," are (c) "messianic," (d) are "maverick speechmakers," and (e) "promise radical measures." In order that we might distinguish demagogues from your everyday politician, I think we should eliminate (a), (b), (c), and (d) since they are either common to all politicos, are vague, or are simply meaningless. (Is Evo Morales really "messianic"? How could we measure this quality?) That leaves us then with (e). And honestly, I think this really is the factor that has historically pinned political leaders with the "demagogue" label. In other words, the accusation of "demagogue" is a pointedly class-based strategy. The catch, of course, is that the ruling elite rarely frames the matter in such explicit terms, but instead appeals to the status quo as the "best for society as a whole." Those who would dare to disturb the political universe by favoring the poor are "factional," "reckless," or "appealing to the baser impulses of the public." (This last formulation is Ferguson's. For "baser impulses," as they have manifested themselves throughout history, we should understand, I suppose, "not starving," "being able to vote," "receiving an education," "freedom to organize," and "living on more than $2 a day." Isn't it just scandalous what the plebs are asking for this week?)

This trend goes back to antiquity, specifically Thucydides, although he rarely uses the term "demagogos" explicitly. The whole matter is actually quite confusing, because there is in the first place a distinction to be made between "popular" leaders and "aristocratic" leaders. In the first camp we might place Cleisthenes, the chief institutor of the Athenian democracy in 508 BCE, Ephialtes, who was assassinated, and Pericles. In the latter camp belong the general Kimon, Thucydides the politician (not the same as the author), and later on the members of the oligarchic coup known as the Thirty Tyrants, Plato's relatives Critias and Charmides among them. However, a second meaning also develops, according to which those popular leaders who "flatter" the demos are the true (pejorative) demagogues. This is Thucydides' portrait of the orator Cleon, and Plato's depiction of just about anyone who is not a philosopher. We can pretty confidently dismiss most of Plato's charges as simple aristocratic bias, but Thucydides complicates things greatly, mostly because he tends to praise one "demagogue," Pericles, while condemning another, Cleon, even though there was probably not much difference between them in policy, only in skill. (This prejudice has plagued Cleon's reputation, and that of almost every popular leader after Pericles, throughout the history of classical scholarship.)

To get back to Ferguson, it's interesting that he should choose Alcibiades as the "best known" Greek demagogue, citing his enthusiasm for the disastrous Sicilian expedition. In fact, Alcibiades' strategy broke with that of Pericles, the quintessential popular leader, who had advised the Athenians before his death not to expand their empire during the Peloponnesian War. In addition, once the expedition was launched, Alcibiades was charged in absentia for the mutilation of the herms, which was seen as an act of symbolic violence by an aristocrat against the demos. So Alcibiades' status as a "demagogue" remains totally unclear. Pericles is the more obvious candidate, but again historical prejudice tends to prevent us from besmirching his record.

In Roman times, there were similarly class-based political distinctions, namely between the optimates (the "best"--the aristocracy) and the populares. Here our historical record is even more tilted in favor of the elite. We are supposed to understand that populares such as the Gracchi brothers were vicious rabble-rousers, when in fact they simply proposed redistributive land measures (there are those "radical measures" again). For this they were murdered. In this instance, Ferguson is just absolutely wrong in describing Cicero as a demagogue. Although Cicero did not come from a patrician family, he was a dyed-in-the-wool aristocrat. He sometimes played the part of the popularis when delivering public speeches, but when push came to shove he strongly favored the elite.

Not only has Ferguson fudged these historical allusions, but he can't even stick to what is apparently his working definition of a demagogue, a leader who favors the poor with "radical measures." For example, his most frightening example, Hitler, was primarily opposed by German Social Democrats and Communists, who are about as "demagogic" as you can get according to a class-based definition. Also, it's ironic that he should peg fascist leaders like Hitler and Mussolini with the label, but then blatantly ignore Franco, who was supported by the landed elite, the clergy, and all the most reactionary elements of Spanish society. I also see no way in which one can claim both Hitler and Trotsky as demagogues using the same criteria. Right after he mentions Trotsky, Ferguson says, "Success meant power for the demagogue, and persecution for his targets." Trotsky, the perpetual exile, would probably be amused by a portrait that so inaccurately conforms to historical reality.

There are further complications. Ferguson would like to make Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad parallel, but it's difficult to blow off Nasrallah's anti-Israeli rhetoric as mere bloviating since Israel, you know, occupied his country for 18 years. And when the United States is supplying Israel with the weaponry to attack Lebanon, is he supposed to just play nice towards us? This does not excuse the extreme anti-Semitism that flows from Hezbollah, but it does place their opposition in some historical context outside of mere demagoguery.

Ferguson is also unable to talk away the strength of leftist politics, try as he might. Going back to the class-based presumptions about demagoguery, time and time again Ferguson says things like "[poor people] are more likely to lose confidence in the political status quo [read: capitalism]," "personal freedom [read: capitalism] is all too often the demagogue's first victim," and "as the boom years of the industrial age gave way to deflation and depression, demagogues turned against liberalism [read: capitalism]." Fortunately, Ferguson wants to say, the poor tend to return to the fold when their leaders can't live up to their promises: "They often find it harder to deliver on election pledges than to deliver election speeches." However, he then admits that Evo Morales was just last week able to push through a "radical land reform bill." And if leftist/demagogic leaders quickly fall out of favor, then why does Chavez keep getting elected (by landslides) in free and fair elections?

These are just a few of the problems involved in Ferguson's analysis. It's obviously class-based, yet it wants to subsume all morally detestable views under its purview (I guess this is what the Marxists mean when they talk about the material basis of ideology). It very noticeably refuses to turn the knife on itself, in Nietzsche's phrase. And it ultimately explains nothing about very disconnected political movements. Do I think that we have much to be wary of concerning Ahmadinejad? Absolutely. Do I feel the same about Chavez, especially with reference to some tenuous "demagogic" connection between the two? Absolutely not. Chavez might win elections in part because of scapegoating of the United States, but this isn't the only reason for his popularity. Meanwhile, Republicans kept control of the U.S. government for the past five years thanks to fearful gesturing towards some vague "terrorist" enemy, which it turns out is whomever we happen not to like, in addition to the grossest sort of reactionary attitude towards gays and God. And if populist leftists like Chavez and Morales are "demagogues," then I guess that makes us "plousiogogues," flatterers of the most obscenely wealthy. But of course, a word like "plousiogogue" doesn't exist, because control of society by the wealthy has been so commonplace throughout human history as to be taken for granted.