The Language of Evil - Guy Doza

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. In this captivating history of language and power, speechwriter Guy Doza sets out how dictators have seized and maintained control of states through their mastery of oratory. He shows how, despite their fearsome reputation, strongmen such as Julius Caesar, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were surprisingly subtle and skillful in their speeches. Less notorious female tyrants (have you heard of Ranavalona I, the ‘Mad Queen of Madagascar’ who killed half of her subjects, or Chairman Mao’s murderous wife Jiang Qing?) were differently but equally manipulative. As well as revealing the wordplay of each of 18 despots, Doza analyses the rhetorical techniques they shared. 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, portrayed themselves as the father of their respective nations to nurture their ethos. For, irrespective of time, geography and language, dictators and their allies consistently reuse 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 used today by tomorrow’s would-be dictators. Reviews ''The handb
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