The Leader Versus the Demagogue

Demagogues usually win. Here’s how not to let them.

History offers a chilling warning. When demagogues begin to rise, more often than not, they do. Quickly, leaders seem outmatched. They do not appear to have to arsenal of skills, tools, and capabilites necessary to combat the demagogues politically, socially, or culturally. The striking result is that when leaders and demagogues clash, leaders usually capitulate before the contest is even over. Sometimes in frustration, sometimes out of fear, sometimes to appease the demagogue, and in the worst case, which is also the usual case, to grovel for power and position from him.

The clear implication is this: leaders do not know how to fight demagogues. It is not entirely their fault. They are ill-equipped, poorly trained, and utterly unmatched.

All of which reveals, should we think clearly, a great lesson about leadership. By studying how demagogues topple would-be leaders, and thinking about what those leaders should have done differently, we can also distill the distinctive qualities that might have led leaders not to fall in the first place.

Those qualities will not be new — for we will discern them by thinking about history. You and I both will, I assure you, be familiar with them — yet probably not masters of them. And so they will be something better than new: timeless.

So let us begin at the beginning.

Why are leaders so ineffectual at fighting demagogues? Fundamentally, demagogues fight leaders with weapons leaders aren’t used to. Leaders fight with daggers — but demagogues fight with catapults and flames. Unused to the arsenal that demagogues bring to the battle, leaders, stunned, confused, unsure, often surrender without even having tried very hard to fight — for they are sure they can see what is coming. That is why leaders surrender and capitulate.

Let me make the tiny theory above concrete.

Demagogues lay three charges against leaders. These charges are utterly unlike what leaders use to fight each other with. They are different not just stylistically — but substantively. The substance of these charges destroys not just leaders’ position: but something far more valuable — their credibility and their character.

Leaders are used to fighting one another with issues of strategy and policy. “My plan”, puffs Leader Smith, “is far better than his!”. “Au contraire”, objects Leader Jones, “His plan does not account for X, Y, and Z. But mine does!”. And so on. The important point to note is this: these are battles in the arena of policy. They are composed of rules and regulations. In government, battles here are composed of proposed legislation. in business, of proposed investment. And so on. But let us also note what such battles are not composed of. Attacks on the moral worth and ethical direction of leaders.

And that is precisely what demagogues attack: the character of leaders — their fundamental moral worth as human beings. You may think, like many do, that their attacks are simplistic. “Leader Jones is a bad person!!”, cries the demagogue. Alas, you are wrong. The attacks of the demagogue are sophisticated, nuanced, and subtle. They do not operate merely on the mind, but on the heart and the spirit. They do not posit merely the childish, easily refuted proposition that leaders are bad (like badly behaved children who may earn their way back into good graces with a little punishment). They contain a proposition far harder to combat, dispel, and discharge: that leaders they are corrupt, fallen, and irredeemable.

And that is merely the beginning. For the most dangerous weapon in the demagogue’s arsenal is this. His charges are true.

Thus, the single most dangerous, lethal, and self-destructive mistake leaders make is to pretend that demagogues may just be ignored because their attacks are beneath response. Because his charges are true, they cannot merely be wishfully ignored. Many a leader has tried, and that is how the even the mightiest have fallen before the sword of a demagogue.

Let us then explore the three charges demagogues level at leaders, to illustrate all the above.

The first thrust the demagogue makes at the leader is betrayal and indifference. “Leader Smith”, cries the demagogue, “has not just betrayed you. He has betrayed you because he is indifferent to you!”.

Leaders rarely make this claim of one another. For the simple reason that it tends to set off arms races neither attacker nor adversary can control. But that is precisely why the demagogue does. For he knows he can follow up this thrust with one more powerful still. Let me first explain why this is such a powerful charge.

It exploits the natural tendencies of leaders for denial.

Leaders are powerful. And power creates incentive for dishonesty, untruth, self-serving. Confronted by a demagogue, leaders — and more importantly — their establishments, who make up a system of power, are likely to deny that anything is wrong altogether. They are likely to turn a blind eye to the very real issues of the people and the nation. It is at that very moment that they have gone further than failure. Now, denying their own failure, they are blind.

Demagogues arise in times of decline. What is truly in decline? Not just empires, nations, societies. But people’s lives. Leaders wish always to claim the opposite: that life is getting better, richer, easier, etc — so they can tout their own success and glory. And so they have a natural tendency to deny what decline truly means. The result, if leaders are not careful, is that in times of decline people feel disrespected, ignored, and betrayed.

The demagogue, on the other hand, empathizes with people’s pain. It is wrong to call him a populist. For it is not just a game: people’s pain is real. Yet he is the only who sees that what is declining is not just abstract numbers, institutions, powers — but people’s lives. When he tells them this, it is as if they have been truly seen, heard, respected for the first time.

It’s hard to overstate just how strong the temptation for denial is amongst leaders. It is a pattern in history, which we have seen time and again. From Caligula in prehistory to Bismarck in modernity to the U.S. in meta-modernity. Leaders of societies in decline tend to deny that very decline. For the simple reason that it indicts their very leadership.

Therefore: the fundamental adversary of a leader confronted by a demagogue isn’t the demagogue. It is himself. He must resist the easy temptations of denial, self-serving, half-truths.

The only way to combat the allegation of callous indifference is honesty. If a leaders denies how bad things are, he strengthens the demagogue’s case with every proclamation. This is precisely what the US establishment mistakenly did with Donald Trump. It kept proclaiming recovery, while the reality was grim stagnation — and the result was a jeering demagogue who said: “I told you so!! See! They don’t care about you enough even to tell the truth!!”

Let us try to see this another way. Demagoguery actually serves a valuable and necessary purpose in society. It is an acute vital sign that a society is riven by stagnation, decline, that things are going badly wrong. Though the demagogue posits neither the correct solution to nor causes of decline, he does do something valuable: he validates not just that it exists, but that leaders are ignoring it.

Therefore. The worst thing that a leader may do is dismiss demagoguery as mere fiction, groundless, baseless, meritless. Stagnation is like a cancer. Not just in the moral sense that it is undesirable. But in the truer sense that if left unchecked and untreated it will ravage and ruin the body politic. This is the great and grave truth the demagogue tells.

Leaders who ignore it, deny it, or hope for that great truth to simply go away have already lost to demagogues — they just don’t know it yet.

The second thrust that the demagogue hurls at the leader is anti-competence. “Leader Jones”, cries the demagogue, “is not just incompetent. No! Even an incompetent can be trained, educated, policed. Leader Jones is anti-competent! He is good at bad things: he excels at precisely the things which have harmed you the most”.

What might these things be? Let’s use the example of modern America. Its leaders are excellent at…lobbying, horse-trading, obstructionism, fundraising. And that is precisely what Trump and Sanders attack them with.

It is a subtle charge that’s difficult to combat. Incompetence is easy to dispel: you can prove it by trumpeting a track record. By anti-competence places leaders in competence traps. They are right at the wrong things, good at bad things. They are excellent…at harm, plunder, hurt. How to dispel such a charge? If you deny it, you strengthen the claim. If you attempt to refute it, you merely open space for the demagogue to twist the knife.

The only way to reverse the charge of anti-competence is humility. To seek forgiveness for one’s wrongs. Why is that so — and why is it powerful? Because the demagogue’s primary sleight of hand is to frame the leader as irredeemable: someone who is not just bad, but so corrupted that they are beyond salvation. They are not just fit to be a leader — they never were, will be, and cannot be.

When a leader has the humility to apologize, he suddenly contradicts this logic. But if a leader does not apologize, he only confirms it — and thus, stabs himself in the back.

Alas, leaders are not known for their humility. They are not history’s great apologians. When they do have the humility to acknowledge their own mistakes it is rarely heartfelt, sincere, or authentic. The apologies of history’s leaders are few and far between — and even those we do read, from Brutus to Nixon to Bush, are often instrumental, calculated, self-serving. Leaders, in other words, are guilty of the all too human sins of vanity and pride.

It is precisely that tendency for pride that a demagogue exploits. It is as if demagogues know, by calculation or by instinct, that leaders will almost never seek forgiveness, admit their errors, call for redress. And that by failing to do so, they will confirm in the people’s minds that the demagogue is right: their leaders are not just bad, but irredeemably corrupt.

Let me try and make this point as clear as I can, because it is crucial. Bad actors may be good people who respond to poor incentives. If someone tempts you with a great deal of money, you may forsake your higher moral principles and values . And yet, you may be forgiven for it, after having made good a punishment. That is, incentives may temporarily corrupt otherwise good people. But that is not the charge that demagogues make of leaders. Their claim is precisely the opposite: no incentive can redeem leaders. They are not good people gone temporarily bad, who must be punished. They are bad people pretending to be good — and no punishment can deter, persuade, stop, or prevent them from doing harm.

“You are wrong!”, says Leader Smith to the sneering demagogue, “I needed to spend sixty percent of my time fundraising. I needed to compromise the people’s well being. I needed to be absent from my seat in Congress to raise the funds. I needed to gum up the works or else. I did it all for the people!!”

“You see?”, the demagogue roars. “It is just as I said! He thinks up is down, and bad is good!! He is not just corrupt — he is irredeemable!”

“You are right”, says Leader Jones to the sneering demagogue, “We failed the people. This system may stymy us — but we have also given up on fixing it. It is our fault. The people’s anger is righteous, justified, and worthy. I am sorry — not just for it, but to it.”

The demagogue is silent. The heat has suddenly gone out of his charges. The anger has gone out of the people. The demagogue is confused, off-balance, unsure.

Why? The leader has disproven the demagogue’s claim. Let us see it clearly. The demagogue’s claim was not just that the leader failed — but that he could not even see his failure, so corrupt was he. But through humility, the leader has proven his moral worth.

The principle is so vital that I will restate it. The demagogue claims that the leader is irredeemably corrupt. The only way that the leader can demonstrate his moral worth is not with plans, projections, ad campaigns, or petty insults — but by showing that he is redeemable. He must apologize — or else he confirms the demagogue’s very logic.

The third thrust that demagogues aim at leaders is the killing blow. It is the charge of blindness. The leader, the demagogue claims, is not merely deaf to people’s cries, nor numb to the nation’s suffering, nor dumb before the people like an ox — he is like a blind man in a dark ravine. He does not even know he is in the darkness. How can he find his way out? How can anyone following him hope to see daylight ever again?

The charge of blindness is the most subtle and devastating of all the demagogue’s attacks. It goes like this.

“Leader Jones is not just blind to your suffering, your pain, your fall from prosperity, your decline. If he cannot see that, what else can he not see? He is also blind to tomorrow’s!”

Perhaps the difference is so subtle that you do not see it yet.

The fundamental job of a leader is to dream. And then to offer that dream to the people, like a gift that they may share in, self-create, realize. Aleader who cannot dream is like a bird with no wings. But that is precisely what the demagogue makes him. For the demagogue says not just that society is broken, that things are shattered the way they are today — but that the dream is.

Let me make this concrete. The American establishment still defends, tooth and nail, the American Dream. It is possible, they say, to get ahead through hard work, to save and live well, to educate one’s children, to make the most of one’s self by being a moral person.

And yet the more they defend it, the more room there is for demagogues to rise. For it is not just you and who know, but elementary statistics which prove, that demagogues are telling the truth when they say that the above isn’t possible. That the dream is broken.

Therefore, demagogues are able to level the charge of blindness at them. If they are wrong about the death of the dream, how can they dream a better one? A demagogue like Donald Trump offers his own version of the dream. It is the same, essentially, as every demagogue’s. The people’s land for the people, walls to keep the invaders out, a chicken in every pot, etcetera. It is a dream that contradicts all of the above. It says: no, people cannot make the most of themselves anymore. They need help. They need protection, safety, security. I will offer it to them. I am strong.

The demagogue’s dream is a nightmare. It is not a vision of a fairer, freer, more prosperous society. And I will discuss precisely why in the next essay. Here, let me note the vital principle. Whether or not it is a nightmare, it is still a vision that he can offer to people. Instead of merely defending the same old broken dream. That is a futile task, a fools’ errand — and the demagogue knows it.

Thus, again, the demagogue plays a necessary and vital role in society. He is like a pain signal coursing through the body politic, telling the brain: the dream is over!! Wake up!! You will be blind if you sleepwalk through life!! But the brain can only sense it if stops trying desperately gritting its teeth and pretending there is no injury in the first place.

The demagogue is dangerous not because what he says is false — but because it is true. His greatest weapon is the charge is blindness to the death of the dream. Every society has a dream of a better tomorrow. It is made up of foundational myths, like “work hard and you will prosper!!”, which may not be wholly true — but offer general guidance that does hold value. The demagogue reveals that these myths have ossified into fairy tales: they are now falser than they are true, more fiction that fact, and the people can no longer take guidance from them.

And the unfortunate truth is that is all that is necessary to cause most leaders to capitulate. Why? Because someone must have killed the dream. Dreams don’t die by themselves, sans natural calamities and unforeseen catastrophes. Their death is the work of men, not the gods. So who killed the dream? Isn’t it obvious, shrugs the demagogue. The very leaders who are irredeemably corrupt in the first place. Who else killed the dream?

He might complicate his story, here and there. Perhaps corrupt leaders allowed foreign invaders in, and they killed the dream. Perhaps they handed the people’s bread to the rich, and thus starved the dream. Or maybe leaders sold the dream to shrewd, ruthless moneychangers, who rent it back now to the starving people — at a price. There may be many villains in the story of the death of the dream. The dream’s assassin may be someone the people do not know well. But he is just an instrument. The dream’s truest enemy, it’s great foe, is the leader. That is the essence of the charge of blindness.

The charge is powerful because it is true. In times of decline, the leader who defends a broken dream is the enemy of a better one.

This killing blow cuts at the very heart of leadership. If a leader cannot offer people a vision, a dream, then he has no power at all. No moral, spiritual, cultural, or social power. True, he may be able to use all the instruments of his office — but for what purpose? He will be ever more strongly resisted from both the bottom and the top.

The way to combat the charge of blindness is vision: to offer the people a new dream. A dream is not merely a policy, a plan, a procedure. It is more like a new social contract, composed of new rights, obligations, and privileges. A dream is a vision for human potential. Leaders exist to maximize human potential — and their dream for organizations, whether societies or corporations, is how they will lead each and every one of their followers to realize their fullest potential. The fundamental job of a leader is dreaming, and a leader who cannot or will not dream will not long be a leader.

Humility, honesty, vision. These are the three timeless qualities of a true leader, who can fight off demagogues. You and I have both heard of them before. They are not new. Yet we can easily see how rare they are in history. For leaders face powerful incentives and even stronger pressure to fail at them, to ignore them, and to deny them. And that is exactly why so many leaders are revealed, in the end, as not the real thing at all.

Umair
London
March 2016