A Century Of Populist Demagogues

The renowned historian Ivan T. Berend discusses populist demagoguery through the presentation of eighteen politicians from twelve European countries spanning World War I to the present. Berend defines demagoguery, reflects on its connections with populism, and examines the common features and differences in the demagogues’ programs and language. Mussolini and Hitler, the “model demagogues,” are only briefly discussed, as is the election of Donald Trump in the United States and its impact on Europe. The eighteen detailed portraits include two communists, two fascists, and several right-wing and anti-EU politicians, extending across the full range of demagoguery. The author covers Béla Kun, the leader of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, weaving through Codreanu and Gömbös from the 1930s, on to Stahremberg and Haider in Austria, and then more broadly throughout Europe from Ceaușescu, Milošević, Tuđjman, Izetbegović, Berlusconi, Wilders, to the two Le Pens, Farage, and Boris Johnson, Orbán and the two Kaczyńskis. Each case includes an analysis of the time and place and is illustrated with quotations from the demagogues’ speeches. This book is a warning about the continuing threat of populist demagogues both for their subjects and for history itself. Berend insists on the crucial importance for Europe to understand the reality behind their promises and persuasive language as imperative to impeding their success.

Focused on the emergence of US President Donald Trump, the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, and the recruitment of Islamic State foreign fighters from Western Muslim communities, this book explores the ways in which the decay and corruption of key social institutions has created a vacuum of intellectual and moral guidance for working people and deprived them of hope and an upward social mobility long considered central to the social contract of Western liberal democracy. Examining the exploitation of this vacuum of leadership and opportunity by new demagogues, the author considers two important yet overlooked dimensions of this new populism: the mobilization of both religion and masculinity. By understanding religion as a dynamic social force that can be mobilized for purposes of social solidarity and by appreciating the sociological arguments that hyper-masculinity is caused by social injury, Roose considers how these key social factors have been particularly important in contributing to the emergence of the new demagogues and their followers. Roose identifies the challenges that this poses for Western liberal democracy and argues that states must look beyond identity politics and exclusively rights-based claims and, instead, consider classical conceptions of citizenship.

In September 1740, New England experienced a social earthquake. It arrived not in the form of a great natural disaster or an act of violence, but with the figure of a twenty-year-old preacher. People were abuzz with his stunning oratory, his colorful theatrics, and his almost ungodly sense of power and presence.When George Whitfield arrived in the American colonies, his reputation and growing legend had been built on his brilliant speeches and frightening tirades, and his fame exploded. He demanded his listeners repent their sins and follow the true word of God—his. He had knowledge that only he could unlock for the American people. Whitefield's message also carried a threat, and he brooked no dissent. Whitefield's power over his listeners grew, and New England was in the uproar of a social revolution. This period became known as The Great Awakening, and it would weave its way into the very fabric of what American would eventually become. Soon after Whitefield reached his zenith, things began to fall apart. The puritanical utopia that once seemed so certain vanished like a dream. American Demagogue is the story of this rapid rise and equally steep fall, which would be echoed by authoritarian populists in later centuries and American demagogues yet to come.

A New York Times bestselling historian examines how demagoguery and the populism it inspires—for good and ill—is embedded in the very soul of our nation. In November 1739, the American colonies felt an earthquake. It arrived not in the form of a natural disaster, but with a twenty-five-year-old preacher, George Whitefield. He had come to the New World to tell his listeners to repent their sins and be reborn in Christ, to reject the dead teachings of their unredeemed ministers, and to support his many holy endeavors. It worked: his stunning oratory and colorful theatrics gave him an almost ungodly sense of power over his audience. Overwhelmed with passion, his listeners experienced uplift and ecstasy in their quest for salvation. They also felt a great deal of fear, as his message divided congregations and split Americans into warring sides over God. Eventually, this spiritual uprising would acquire a new name—the Great Awakening—and it would alter the very fabric of American life in ways no one could have ever expected. Whitefield's methods inspired allies and imitators who drove the movement to greater heights—men like Gilbert Tennent, who issued threats against his enemies and imagined hell for those who disagreed with him, and Jonathan Edwards, a thoughtful theologian who nonetheless preached one of the most frightening sermons in history. Ben Franklin, too, played a key role in promoting and profiting by the Awakening, even as he was repelled by certain aspects of it. At the same time, radical new preachers rose up to inspire women and enslaved black Americans to offer their own testimony to God in ways that proved to be threatening to the colonial hierarchy. The Great Awakening peaked and then collapsed, but it had a profound impact in reshaping the American mind. The voices of dissent left the churches and went into the streets, and aimed their rancor at a new target: the ruling power of Great Britain. And so what began as a revolution fought over words and gospel mutated into one fought with riots and violence, until it eventually exploded in to war. This book tells the story of that transformation, and the way a firebrand English preacher incited Americans to rebel against more than a century of tradition, and set a precedent for the kind of galvanizing agitator who is still with us today—the American Demagogue. Though almost three centuries have passed, the themes remain the same—anger, grievance, dissension, self-promotion, and social turmoil—as the tide of populism continues to rise and fall.

A demagogue is a tyrant who owes his initial rise to the democratic support of the masses. Huey Long, Hugo Chavez, and Moqtada al-Sadr are all clear examples of this dangerous byproduct of democracy. Demagogue takes a long view of the fight to defend democracy from within, from the brutal general Cleon in ancient Athens, the demagogues who plagued the bloody French Revolution, George W. Bush's naïve democratic experiment in Iraq, and beyond. This compelling narrative weaves stories about some of history's most fascinating figures, including Adolf Hitler, Senator Joe McCarthy, and General Douglas Macarthur, and explains how humanity's urge for liberty can give rise to dark forces that threaten that very freedom. To find the solution to democracy's demagogue problem, the book delves into the stories of four great thinkers who all personally struggled with democracy--Plato, Alexis de Tocqueville, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt.

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Pick What Happens to Democracy When a Demagogue Comes to Power? "It is hard to imagine understanding the Trump presidency and its significance without reading this book.” —Bob Bauer, Former Chief Counsel to President Barack Obama What—and who—is a demagogue? How did America’s Founders envision the presidency? What should a constitutional democracy look like—and how can it be fixed when it appears to be broken? Something is definitely wrong with Donald Trump’s presidency, but what exactly? The extraordinary negative reaction to Trump’s election—by conservative intellectuals, liberals, Democrats, and global leaders alike—goes beyond ordinary partisan and policy disagreements. It reflects genuine fear about the vitality of our constitutional system. The Founders, reaching back to classical precedents, feared that their experiment in mass self-government could produce a demagogue: a charismatic ruler who would gain and hold on to power by manipulating the public rather than by advancing the public good. President Trump, who has played to the mob and attacked institutions from the judiciary to the press, appears to embody these ideas. How can we move past his rhetoric and maintain faith in our great nation? In The Demagogue’s Playbook, acclaimed legal scholar Eric A. Posner offers a blueprint for how America can prevent the rise of another demagogue and protect the features of a democracy that help it thrive—and restore national greatness, for one and all. “Cuts through the hyperbole and hysteria that often distorts assessments of our republic, particularly at this time.” —Alan Taylor, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for History

"Populism, a political movement with anti-elite, authoritarian and nativist tendencies, typically spearheaded by a charismatic leader, is an old phenomenon but also a very new and disturbing one at that. The Populist Temptation is an effort to understand the wellsprings of populist movements and why the threat they pose to mainstream political parties and pluralistic democracy has been more successfully contained in some cases than others"--

Uprisings such as the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street signal a resurgence of populist politics in America, pitting the people against the establishment in a struggle over control of democracy. In the wake of its conservative capture during the Nixon and Reagan eras, and given its increasing ubiquity as a mainstream buzzword of politicians and pundits, democratic theorists and activists have been eager to abandon populism to right-wing demagogues and mega-media spin-doctors. Decades of liberal scholarship have reinforced this shift, turning the term "populism" into a pejorative in academic and public discourse. At best, they conclude that populism encourages an "empty" wish to express a unified popular will beyond the mediating institutions of government; at worst, it has been described as an antidemocratic temperament prone to fomenting backlash against elites and marginalized groups. Populism's Power argues that such routine dismissals of populism reinforce liberalism as the end of democracy. Yet, as long as democracy remains true to its meaning, that is, "rule by the people," democratic theorists and activists must be able to give an account of the people as collective actors. Without such an account of the people's power, democracy's future seems fixed by the institutions of today's neoliberal, managerial states, and not by the always changing demographics of those who live within and across their borders. Laura Grattan looks at how populism cultivates the aspirations of ordinary people to exercise power over their everyday lives and their collective fate. In evaluating competing theories of populism she looks at a range of populist moments, from cultural phenomena such as the Chevrolet ad campaign for "Our Country, Our Truck," to the music of Leonard Cohen, and historical and contemporary populist movements, including nineteenth-century Populism, the Tea Party, broad-based community organizing, and Occupy Wall Street. While she ultimately expresses ambivalence about both populism and democracy, she reopens the idea that grassroots movements--like the insurgent farmers and laborers, New Deal agitators, and Civil Rights and New Left actors of US history--can play a key role in democratizing power and politics in America.