A great deal that has happened this past year has shaken and disturbed me. Much of it culminated this week when the terroristic insurrectionists stormed the Capitol. I was shocked and appalled, but not surprised. I’m still so nonplussed that I’m unable to respond publicly in words at a personal or emotional level. Maybe later or in private. It is easier for me, at least for now, to process this at a theoretical level in terms of what it reveals about the nature of democracies and demagogues. And I can’t promise that wiser thinkers than me have point the following observation long ago.
Photo: Tyler Merbler
Demagogues pose a long-recognized danger to democracies. Recently, Jason Stanley and others have discussed it, though recognition of this danger goes back at least to Plato. Demagogues, using the power of rhetoric and propaganda, can sway the masses, irrationally convincing them to abandon democratic ideals and even democracy itself. The demagogue takes people participating in and supportive of democracy and turns them against it to support the demagogue instead. The demagogue does this by exploiting democracy’s embrace of freedom of speech.
This danger has been well explored, and I have nothing to add to it here. This week, however, it has seemed to me that there is a second danger posed by demagogues. Democracies at least almost always have some citizens eligible to participate in the democratic process who nevertheless do not.1 These individuals feel disenfranchised, even if they legally are allowed to vote. They believe no political party or any politician actually cares about them or those like them. They believe they are being passed over, looked over, and forgotten. So they don’t participate in the democratic process.
The second danger of the demagogue is that he will activate this group of the body politic, people with no prior loyalty to any political party, ideals, or values. They become loyal to him. This is different from the first danger, where the demagogue takes those already participating and turns them against democracy.
It is important to distinguish these problems for several reasons. One has to do with how to respond to the rise of a demagogue. Because of the demagogue’s use of propaganda to appeal to emotion over reason, responding to the first danger has an obvious counter and reason for hope. Given enough time, those that previously supported democratic ideals may be convinced through reason and cooling of emotions to abandon a demagogue and renew their support for democracy. They can be won back. The demagogue’s spell can be broken.
The formerly effectively disenfranchised–the source of the second danger of a demagogue–pose a different challenge. They are loyal to the demagogue and have no prior loyalty to which they can be persuaded to return. They feel little to no loyalty to the democracy they believe had little to no loyalty to them. Time and reason will do far less to tamp down this danger.
A second reason for distinguishing these differences has to do with the precursors to the rise of a demagogue. Plato and Stanley see the first danger as a background condition of democracy, an eternal danger ever-present and baked into the nature of democracy. By allowing free speech, democracy allows for demagogues.
The second danger is not omnipresent. It may be that all democracies effectively disenfranchise some of their citizens because the needs of all cannot always be satisfied, because there will always be some whose values are antithetical to democracy and equality, or because there will always be some lacking the desire or disposition to engage in democratic processes requiring time and careful reasoning. But perhaps not; maybe a democratic nation-state could maintain full participation of its citizens. Regardless, the amount of the citizenry that feel disenfranchised and abandoned can and does vary over time. The more people in a democratic society that feel even voting isn’t worth their time because none of the politicians care and nothing will change for the better regardless of who wins, the greater the second demagogic danger is for that society. It means there are more people primed to be loyal to a demagogue instead of the democracy. So, the percentage of a population that regularly do not vote is a warning sign for a democracy.2
While I need to examine more data to make this case in detail, I contend that this warning light has been flashing in this American democracy for a while now. Donald Trump activated multitudes of voters that felt ignored for years and haven’t voted for Democrats or Republicans in many elections, if ever. Thus, many are loyal to him, not to the Republican party, not to Republican values of small government and lower taxes on the rich, and not to American democracy.3
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1 This is to say nothing of those lawfully but immorally excluded from democratic participation; that is a failure of a particular democracy itself without a demagogue.
2 This is different from citizens that technically a have a right to vote but who nevertheless are widely and commonly prevented from voting by other laws, policies, and practices. Twentieth and Twenty-first century Jim Crow laws that inhibit minority voters do not pertain to this demagogic danger to democracy and are not this kind of warning sign. They are a massive and deeply troubling warning sign of a very different problem in a democracy.
3 This post is not intended as a piece of apologetics for all or even some of these formerly disaffected, now fiercely loyal Trump voters. When their feelings of disenfranchisement stem from white supremacy that is no longer tolerated, the appropriate response is NOT to tolerate white supremacy. If white supremacy is a significant factor driving widespread feelings of disenfranchisement, then white supremacy must be addressed directly; we must try to remove it not only from law and policy, but hearts and minds as well.