Intro and First Body

             Demagoguery is defined as, “a political leader in a democratic system that appeals to the emotions, fears, prejudices, and ignorance of the classes of society in order to gain power and promote political motives”. Often this strategy is advocated and utilized by populists governments, one of the most popular being Adolf Hitler, however Demagoguery can be found across the political spectrum. Underlying elements of the practice of Demagoguery include polarization, oversimplification, scapegoating, demonizing, double standards, denial, ultra-nationalism, authoritarianism, anti-intellectualism, motivism, and stereotypes. Patricia Roberts Miller is a rhetoric-writing professor at the University of California, Berkeley, a very prestigious and a well-educated woman. She wrote, "Democracy, Demagoguery, and Critical Rhetoric" a well-known article that puts demagoguery discourse and fallacies into different lights. Roberts Miller focuses on the idea of Demagoguery throughout her article, and outlines individual elements. Using Roberts Millers demagoguery discourse elements as laid out by her article, we compare it with NRA executive Vice President's Wayne LaPierre's speech to the public just shortly after the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut to see how some of these discourse elements are embedded in his work. It is clear that this is article is a very emotional piece due to the massacre that occurred just days before, and LaPierre is speaking to notify his audience of parents and the general American public about what can and should be done to prevent further incidents such as Sandy Hook. LaPierre's central claim lies in the question, "If guns are good to protect the president, or a bank...Why is it so bad to have guns to protect our loved ones [our children] as well?" In this paper, I will take Patricia Roberts Miller’s paper and use it as a lens to examine how demagoguery can be embedded into texts, specifically in LaPierre's speech given just after the Sandy Hook tragedy.

            The first element that will be investigated is scapegoating. Scapegoating as defined in Roberts Miller’s paper is “denial through projection”. Essentially scapegoating is conflict spread by focusing hatred or anger towards a specific individual or community. While the scapegoat bears the blame, the scapegoaters feel a sense of righteousness and increased unity, whether the problem is legitimate or not or whether the actual targeted group is innocent or partly responsible (Roberts Miller). Ultimately what Roberts Miller is trying to portray, is that scapegoating is a real issue because it promotes prejudice, stereotyping, and it manipulates people’s minds into thinking the only solution is the entire removal of the group (as seen with Hitler and the Jewish people). Using this definition, we can critique LaPierre’s speech on the Newton Tragedy. LaPierre states that the national media is to blame for tragedies such as Sandy Hook. The national media “rewards them [killers] with wall to wall attention and a sense of identity that they crave-while also provoking others to leave their mark”. He directly scapegoats the media by calling them a “callous, corrupt, and corrupting shadow industry” that not only “portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life” but also promote “an ever-more toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty”. LaPierre is suggesting here that media is entirely at blame for all “deranged genuine monsters” that walk amongst us in society performing such cruel acts like the one observed in Newtown. This argument is valid in the way that yes media plays a huge role, yet it is not the only aspect in this situation. There is how guns are distributed, how they are controlled, the NRA, the government and so much more that could have influence in murders, assassinations, school shootings, and domestic burglary. By demonizing the national media so hard and using them to blame, LaPierre and the entire NRA organization are simply finding someone else to blame beside themselves. This is the definition of scapegoating, and the audience will follow what LaPierre preaches because they just want someone to take all the heat from the Sandy Hook shooting.