Demagogue
The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies
Ratings1
Average rating5
15
The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies
Ratings1
Average rating5
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.
Reviews with the most likes.
In the age of Donald Trump's run for the White House, this is an important book. While Trump isn't the subject, he might as well be (and the author has been interviewed several times saying that Trump fits the definition of demagogue to a T). But we do meet several of history's demagogues as well as some of the most important thinkers on the subject of democratic constitutionalism, which is seen as the antidote to demagoguery.
