Demagogy

[jarandhel]

Can anyone recommend a good extended text on demagogy and its methods? Preferably outside of the fictional context, I've already downloaded a pdf of 1984 and several other dystopian novels, so I think I'm set on that front... I'd like more of a scholarly analysis, even possibly something along the lines of a how-to. (How-to's also make very good how-to-recognize and how-to-counters.) I *think* possibly I remember sections of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" dealing with his own approaches to demagogy, and he was undeniably an expert on the subject, so I might have to look for an english translation of that... any others?

Oh, there's that new one too... "Don't think of an elephant", or something like that... that sort of deals with some of what I'm looking for. But for some reason I have a feeling I would be better off looking into older sources, I think this phenomenon was better understood in the past, much like the art of rhetoric itself.

Comments

[rialian.livejournal.com]

===We have Don't Think of an Elephant"....it is really rather good.

[helen99.livejournal.com]

I have one called "American Dynasty": Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush" by Kevin Phillips. Feel free to borrow it while you're here if you want. I also pulled a pile of books on related subjects off the shelf and put them on the coffee table near the couch where you can find them more easily. "Don't Think of an Elephant" is in the stack. That one is particularly interesting because it goes into the language of demagoguery (which is how they control the public mindset).