Description
To kill democracy, control the masses and destroy entire nations, dictators have always used the same secret weapon: the unmatched power of the spoken word.Â
In this captivating history of language and power, speechwriter Guy Doza sets out the distinctive wordplay of 18 dictators who have seized and maintained control of states by deftly deploying words and phrases.
He shows how, despite their fearsome reputation, strongmen such as Julius Caesar, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were surprisingly subtle and skillful in their public addresses, while less notorious tyrants (have you heard of Ranavalona I, the ‘Mad Queen of Madagascar’ who killed half of her subjects, or Jiang Qing, Chairman Mao’s murderous wife?) were equally manipulative.
He reveals the rhetorical techniques shared by these despots. How Attila the Hun and Napoleon Bonaparte showered flattery on their troops and deliberately aggrandised their enemies. And how two violent 20th Century leaders, Zaire’s President Mobuto and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, both portrayed themself as the father of their respective nations to nurture their ethos.
For, irrespective of time, geography and language, dictators and their allies have consistently reused the same methods of persuasion. In a ‘post-truth’ age where simplified messages overpower sophisticated ones, The Language of Evil equips readers to spot the same tricks and techniques being deployed now by tomorrow’s dictators.
Reviews
‘The handbook that humanity needs right now _ not simply to understand the dangerous rhetoric of demagogues, but how to resist it.’ – Terry Szuplat, former policy speechwriter for President Barack Obama and author of Say It Well.
‘Whatever happens in the street, the populist mobs have to be fired up first. That’s where words come in. Guy Doza’s Language of Evil is a fascinating analysis of the speechifying that empowers tyranny through the malign careers of eighteen dictators, from Julius Caesar to Saddam Hussein.
‘Gun, clubs, camps and torture chambers come next, but without words to set things going, these despots and their current successors would be nowhere.’
‘Sticks and stones?says the old rhyme. Don’t believe a word of it.’ – Jonathon Green, Lexicographer
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