Dangerous Demagogues and Weaponized Communication

Abstract

This essay argues that we can usefully separate "heroic demagogues" from "dangerous demagogues" by whether or not the demagogue allows themselves to be held accountable for their words and actions. "Dangerous demagoguery" can be thought of as "weaponized communication" that uses words as weapons to achieve the dangerous demagogue's strategic goals. The essay examines several recent examples of dangerous demagogues using weaponized communication strategies, including conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, President Donald Trump, and Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin. Weaponized communication is a danger in any democracy as it corresponds with democratic erosion.

A wall of incivility? Public discourse and immigration in the 2016 U.S. Primaries

“…While this result might seem counter-intuitive, research on uncivil rhetoric by political elites suggests that candidates are not, themselves, penalized by their base when using such strategies (Herbst, 2010;Mutz, 2015)-even though elite incivility is associated with systemic-level consequences such as reducing policy support, political trust, and out-party favorability (Goovaerts & Marien, 2020;Mutz, 2015;Otto et al, 2020). While we're not focusing on candidate incivility in this paper, the heated tone of Trump's rhetoric in the campaign has been documented by scholars as an outlier in contemporary political discourse (Mercieca, 2019;Stromer-Galley, 2019a). Considering the centrality of immigration to Trump's campaign and the evidence that his rhetoric became more heated than his opponents', it is possible that Trump's base did not penalize his negative campaigning strategies-or, at least, was more tolerant of them, as it is typically the case for challengers (Fridkin & Kenney, 2011).…”

How a lack of truthfulness can undermine democratic representation: The case of post-referendum Brexit discourses

“…Does this rejection mean more and more people do not want or expect politicians to make accurate factual claims that are supported by evidence or expertise? As the status of truthfulness in representative politics has become unnervingly shaky, instances of 'dangerous demagoguery' (Mercieca, 2019) -attempts at discursive manipulation to gain compliance and evade accountabilitydeserve further critical study.…”

The Rise of Presidential Eschatology: Conspiracy Theories, Religion, and the January 6th Insurrection

“…As a narrative expressing racial anxieties, Birtherism took on the veneer of concerns about Constitutionality to fuel a white supremacist backlash against the Obama presidency, arguably leading to the election of the conspiracy theory’s chief proponent, Donald Trump (Howell, 2012; Pham, 2015). Conspiracy theories in this sense function as what Mercieca (2019) called “weaponized communication,” defined as “the strategic use of communication as an instrumental tool and as an aggressive means to gain compliance and avoid accountability” (p. 266). Beyond Birtherism, Trump has relied on many conspiracy theories to destabilize the rules of democratic communication by undermining presumptions of veracity, the norms of institutions, and the communal goal of deliberation (Neville-Shepard, 2019).…”