Category Archives: Uncategorized

“We have trained ourselves to think of justice as equivalent to authority, power, and obedience. It’s no surprise, then, that people who appear obedient are treated differently than their ‘disobedient’ counterparts. It’s a rhetorical problem that produces a violent reaction.” Read the rest at: https://theglobepost.com/2021/03/03/capitol-coup-rhetoric/

“I have spent more than five years studying fascist rhetoric and demagoguery and in particular the relationship between truth and facts in fascist regimes. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, one of the main lessons I’ve learned is that facts and truth have a very uneasy relationship in fascism – but I have also learned that fascist rhetoric reliesContinue reading “Public Seminar: Trump Lied His Way In and Is Lying His Way Out: What 20th-Century Fascists Can Teach Us about the Need for Truth in the 21st-Century (Dec. 10, 2020)”

“People can understand what’s going on if they know to look. If you think of memes as sophisticated methods of communication, with different messages communicated in different contexts, you probably won’t uncover a Russian plot. But you’ll be more aware of what people are trying to persuade you to believe — what appetites they’re creatingContinue reading “Arc Digital: “Shitposting for Fun and Profit: Memes, Rhetoric, and Russian Trolls” (Oct. 7, 2020)”

“Civil or not, democracy is designed to let people argue their differences out and come to a compromise that serves the good of the whole. In other words: Disagreement, conflict and argument are a feature of democracy, not a bug.” Read the rest at: https://thefulcrum.us/big-picture/civil-discourse

“If news organizations really want to understand what’s happening in campaign communications and help their consumers understand it, too, they’d do well to back off fact-checking. Instead, they should learn to focus on what feelings and passions are being stimulated and what values and beliefs that can help potential voters understand.” Read the rest at:Continue reading “The Hill: Checking Facts is the Wrong Way to Understand Political Persuasion (Sept. 1, 2020)”

“I talk with my friend and colleague, Ryan, about his work on fascism research, distinctions between fact and truth, and the role rhetoric has in our political and social spheres, this and occasional references to the set up of his office, where we chat, (before shelter-in-place)in San Jose, California.” Listen to the rest at: https://soundcloud.com/passyourpassionpodcast/episode-18-ryan-on-fascism-research-truth-and-rhetoric

In 1953, famed political philosopher and Jewish-German exile, Leo Strauss, coined a term to describe a trope that he increasingly saw circulating in public discourse: reductio ad Hilterum. Reductio ad Hitlerum is a fallacy used in arguments to discredit anything that can be associated with or compared to Hitler. Hitler liked dogs? Then liking dogsContinue reading “No, You’re Hitler!: A History and a Proposal”

Noted flim-flam artists and doctors of low repute — including Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil — have recently been trotted out by right-wing media outlets to bemoan Coronavirus social distancing directives as “worse than the disease.” Likewise, small groups of radical, right-wing extremists — funded by the same astroturf groups that quietly funded the TeaContinue reading “Nazi Science: Coronavirus Edition”

I recently published an academic article, “Using Democracy Against Itself: Demagogic Rhetoric as an Attack on Democratic Institutions,” where I wrote about “extreme democracy” as a form of demagoguery (The abstract is here. If you want to read the whole thing, get in touch). Specifically, I argued that a consistent—perhaps defining—characteristic of demagoguery is thatContinue reading “Demagoguery and the Dangers of “Extreme Democracy””

Beginning as early as 2009, a series of memes began circulating on social media that were intended to demonstrate in comical ways the lack of interest or care someone felt on a particular day or about a particular issue. Colloquially, they’re the “Look at all the fucks I give” memes, with the unmistakable implication thatContinue reading “Maybe Let’s Leave “I Don’t Care” to the Fascists, Yeah?”