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A clear-eyed guide to demagoguery - and how we can defeat it What is demagoguery Some demagogues are easy to spot: They rise to power through pandering, charisma, and prejudice. But, as professor Patricia Roberts-Miller explains, a demagogue is anyone who reduces all questions to us vs. them.Why is it dangerous Demagoguery is democracy's greatest threat. It erodes rational debate, so that intelligent policymaking grinds to a halt. The idea that we never fall for it - that all the blame lies with them - is equally dangerous.How can we stop it Demagogues follow predictable patterns in what they say and do to gain power. The key to resisting demagoguery is to name it when you see it - and to know where it leads.



About the Author

Patricia Roberts-Miller

Patricia Roberts-Miller is Professor of Rhetoric and Writing and Director of the University Writing Center at the University of Texas at Austin. A scholar of train wrecks in public deliberation, she is fascinated with times that communities took a lot of time and a lot of talk to persuade themselves to follow a course of action that they later regretted, and which was far from necessary in the moment--Athens and Sparta going to war, the Sicilian Expedition, the 17th century New England Puritan commitment to violence against Friends and other "heretics," slavery, segregation, eugenics, the Holocaust, Japanese "internment" (really race-based mass incarceration) , Hitler's refusal to order a retreat from Stalingrad, LBJ's escalation of the Vietnam conflict in 1965, the Iraq invasion, current homophobic rhetoric, and others.Despite those areas of scholarship and teaching, she is a cheerful person, with many dogs, cats, and even an owl who regularly nests in a backyard owl box.My blog is here: patriciarobertsmiller.com



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