Identify and Analyze Issues of Context

In the last paper, we examined demagoguery: how rhetors can seem to provide stability in anxiety-ridden contexts by undermining deliberative discourse, often through punishing outgroups for ingroups’ problems.
For this paper, consider a demagogue who has risen to a position of influence and/or full leadership, and come up with the best possible strategy to defeat the demagogue. For the purposes of this essay, assume that the society in question has a legitimate democratic election system, even if the reality may be more complicated. You may use the same person about whom you wrote the previous paper.
The essential question this paper asks you to explore is as follows: Could an opponent defeat this demagogue in the context in which he or she has arisen, and what rhetorical concepts would determine whether or not that defeat was possible?
Your paper should be organized around rhetorical concepts and strategies at your paragraph level, just as your previous papers have in this class. Discuss those concepts and strategies in terms of how they would work with the demagogue’s audience in the given historical context. Be ruthlessly practical about your strategies, audience, and context. This paper is not about what should work against a demagogue in a rational, ethical context, because a demagogue represents an irrational decision-making process by the audience; rather, this paper is about what could work against a demagogue in the human context in which he or she rose to power.
Successful papers will analyze specific quotations by both the demagogue and those who have challenged him or her.
Provide examples of strategies that others (they can be opponents for leadership or media members) have used. Discuss what has made these strategies effective, ineffective, or even counterproductive. Since you want to be practical about contemporary audiences, a Tweet, for example, counts as a written argument. You can find speeches and interviews on YouTube. You also, however, need to do enough facts-based research to develop some expertise. Be sure you have specific ideas about what facts and/or practical solutions your movement should use and how it should use them. Successful papers will likely cite at least four sources.

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