Demagoguery

Last night, blogging was a topic of conversation within the four walls of my living room and a blogfire was ignited in my heart. I like writing and it is all the more special when other people are reading the words I write which, even if not true, I can convince myself of in the blogging world, so here I sit, while the X-Factor final drearily drifts by in the background, resuming my blog. I've had a couple of false starts with ideas for my blog, but I have come back to where it all began by simply writing about words that begin with the letter D simply because my name (Dave) begins with D also. A couple of year ago I notched up 100 entries around this theme.

So, I start with the word demagoguery which is an interesting old word. It means, 'the art and practice of gaining power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions and prejudices of the people'. A lady called Trish Roberts-Miller describes it as a type of propaganda; I guess that when a person or group seeks to gain power, then they have two choices: appeal simply to reason, or make their appeal an emotionally charged affair that gets people's hearts thumping. Surely everyone uses emotional arguments to convince the audience of their point of view, but there is a problem if those emotional arguments lean on likely prejudices that people may already hold, in the process cementing those prejudices deep within the psyche of the people (unless they see through the demogoguery).

Let's imagine that badgers have a ingrained prejudice against foxes (they probably do) and imagine a demogogish owl and a non-demogogish owl are vying for power in the animal kingdom.

Here is what demagogue-owl might say to the assembled badger community:
"Foxes are filthy red vermin that have thieved edible rodents from the your jaws and my beak; we must crush them or risk a winter of famished bellies."

In contrast, here is what the non-demagogue owl might say:
"Here's the facts: we live in a wood with a whole host of different species; there's a shortage of food; there is constant tension between hungry animals. This tension solves nothing - we must work together to create a world where we can coexist peacefully or face a violent world".

Which kind of voice do we hear from the powerful voices in our world?

There are two (I'm sure there are more) potential problems that I feel that we face with demogoguery in Britain. The first is the crazy way in which the political parties engage with each other over issues. David and Ed never say things like, "That's a good idea, I hadn't thought of that" - argument and disagreement seems to be the only way they communicate. Of course, it is important to have debate and I don't suggest that they agree for the sake of agreement, but emotional egotistical argument clouds coherent debate.

Secondly, newspapers seek to exert political power through turning complicated issues such as asylum and immigration into nonsensical emotional arguments. When the Daily Mail has headlines like 'Number of Immigrants living in the UK long terms SOARS by 20% as a quarter of babies are born to foreign mothers', it is seeking an negative emotional reaction from its readers, particularly by capitalising the word 'SOARS' to make this percentage seem dangerous in some way rather than just a simple fact. The fact in itself is not particularly clear anyway, with the article later saying that immigration that year had fallen. Newspapers obviously need to discuss these issues, but it makes me very uncomfortable when I think that some people's negative feelings towards immigrants are cemented further by this kind of emotionalism that treats information as second rate. We're humans and emotions are part of our makeup, but we need to watch out for those that seek to rabble-rouse us into hating foxes.