Demagogues and what we can learn from them
Intresting interview with an evangelical hate-preacher that snapped out of it when someone his community targeted with hatefull rhetoric got murdered.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI6KbE_q4Xk]
Talking about how he used language to demonise and dehumanize fellow human beings. How to use emotions to generate an angry mob. How he convinced himself to believe his own bullshit. And how he considered himself and his movement "moral" by definition. This last part made it unable for him and those that he convinced to see the actual consequences of his own actions and words because everything bad that happened can only be blamed on outside forces.
Oh... And he sees parallels with his own movement and that one that is running the white house today. For obvious reasons.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkYssyr656E]
Just listen and think about it... if you are still able too.
[quote][b]“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.”
[...]
“One of the most constant characteristics of beliefs is their intolerance. The stronger the belief, the greater its intolerance. Men dominated by a certitude cannot tolerate those who do not accept it.”
[...]
“The images evoked by words being independent of their sense, they vary from age to age and from people to people, the formulas remaining identical. Certain transitory images are attached to certain words: the word is merely as it were the button of an electric bell that calls them up.”[/b]
- Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A study of the popular mind[/quote]
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI6KbE_q4Xk]
Talking about how he used language to demonise and dehumanize fellow human beings. How to use emotions to generate an angry mob. How he convinced himself to believe his own bullshit. And how he considered himself and his movement "moral" by definition. This last part made it unable for him and those that he convinced to see the actual consequences of his own actions and words because everything bad that happened can only be blamed on outside forces.
Oh... And he sees parallels with his own movement and that one that is running the white house today. For obvious reasons.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkYssyr656E]
Just listen and think about it... if you are still able too.
[quote][b]“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.”
[...]
“One of the most constant characteristics of beliefs is their intolerance. The stronger the belief, the greater its intolerance. Men dominated by a certitude cannot tolerate those who do not accept it.”
[...]
“The images evoked by words being independent of their sense, they vary from age to age and from people to people, the formulas remaining identical. Certain transitory images are attached to certain words: the word is merely as it were the button of an electric bell that calls them up.”[/b]
- Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A study of the popular mind[/quote]
