Demagogues are speakers, frequently but not exclusively political, who "gain power and popularity by arousing emotions, passions, and prejudices of the people". As I consider the level of emotion involving our current president I considered the effect of being a demagogue.

When your speaking style involves demagoguing you arouse emotion and passions. A Newsweek editor and write in an interview said the President Obama "is more than a president, more of a god." That's pretty passionate. Another television personality said he gets a tremble in his leg whenever he hears President Obama speak. That's pretty emotional stuff. Passionate even.

Then there are others who detest President Obama. They are a passionate and emotional in their views of the President as are his followers.

Is it inherent that demagogues will raise the same intensity of emotion and passion on the negative side as the positive? I realize most are not in the U.S. and are marginally familiar with our President but I'm sure you have, or have had, demagogues, too.

Some people are immune to demagogues. Why?

Perhaps some people make decisions emotionally--wouldn't it be nice if...--and others make decisions logically--this will work...--and a persn who tries to make decisions logically would be sway less by a demagogue. Perhaps not.

Oprah is a demagogue for sure, and look where its got her.

Is a demogogue just a charmer with confidence and a larger stage than normal? Its best to steer clear of people with charm I've found, there's usually a darker side lurking underneath.

Its a dangerous flaw in we humans that we idolise individuals and are suseptable to the power of oratory, like the man who goes weak at the knees when he hears Obama talking, that must be exactly happened in Germany when Hitler first rose to power. Later people were probably so transfixed by his magnetism that they didn't notice the content of his oratory becoming abnormal.

Couple of points:

1. “Demagogue” is pejorative. We use it to describe somebody who uses oratory to inflame passions and emotions in favour of some cause of which we disapprove. Thus we would call Adolf Hitler a demagogue, but we wouldn’t call Winston Churchill a demagogue, even though both men used emotional oratory to rally support for their respective agendas. In the 1930s, though, Churchill was regularly dismissed as a demagogue by his political opponents.

The result of this is that, when a politician is described as a “demagogue”, this tell us something not only about the politician but about the political stance of the person so describing him.

2. Oratory is involved. The second Bush Administration skilfully inflamed public fears over, and ignorance of, terrorism in order to marshal support for an unrelated invasion of Iraq of highly dubious morality. But even dear George’s warmest admirers wouldn’t regard him as an orator of any great ability, so we don’t consider him a demagogue.

3. My impression is that a demagogue uses his skills to inflame support for a cause, rather than simply to make us love him. A politician who just courts popularity, however oratorically skilful, is not a demagogue. He would, however, be a demagogue if he inflamed support for a particular cause in order to achieve power himself, or because he was genuinely and sincerely committed to that cause.

Bill Clinton, for example, is a skilful orator, and anyone I know who has ever met him, or attended a meeting at which he spoke, has fallen deeply in love with him, at least for at time. But I don’t think that’s enough to make him a demagogue. To become a demagogue he would have to do more than say, in effect, “elect me as President and I will do the best job I can”; he would have to be identified with, and courting support for, a specific programme.

In this sense, US politics doesn’t often produce demagogues, in that elections are mainly about selecting the most appealing candidate, the candidate whose character, judgment and values you trust. Elections are not so much about choosing between fundamentally different political programmes, and candidates rarely win by advocating, e.g., radical monetary reform, or war with Mexico; they win by getting people to trust them. William Jennings Bryan was a true demagogue, I think, his twin causes being bimetallism and racism, but John F Kennedy, not so much, since his oratory was mainly directed at making people feel (a) good about him, and (b) good about themselves.

Is Obama a demagogue? Yes, he’s a good orator and, yes, he gets people to like him, even to admire him passionately and irrationally. But I don’t think that’s quite enough. Perhaps I’m not close enough to US politics, but I don’t see him as whipping up enthusiasm for a particular programme of sufficient significance, unless you count healthcare reform. If you do, and if you oppose his healthcare reforms, then you could argue that he is a demagogue.

I would disagree on President Obama although that wasn't the point of the thread. He goes so far demonizing doctors, insurance companies, corporations, and conservatives that I think he would certainly qualify as a demagogue if you consider it pejorative. That isn't part of the definitions I've read and I don't the nature of the cause significant. For me, it's the lack of real content and the inflaming of passions.

That the word has pejorative notions is definitely part of the Oxford English Dictionary definition. The OED offers two definitions, an obsolete one and a current one. The current one is explicitly said to be pejorative.

1. “In ancient times, a leader of the people; a popular leader or orator who espoused the cause of the people against any other party in the state.” This, of course, is the sense in which the Greeks (from whom we get the term) used it. A demagogue was one who spoke in the assembly on behalf of the people (demos), as opposed to somebody who represented the interest of the oligarch, or a section of them. I think the nearest modern equivalent is something like “populist”.

2. “In bad sense: A leader of a popular faction, or of the mob; a political agitator who appeals to the passions and prejudices of the mob in order to obtain power or further his own interests; an unprincipled or factious popular orator.”

Interesting, there’s nothing in these definitions about “lack of real content”. Nor, I think, is there in ordinary usage. Hitler’s political position had content which was all too depressingly real, but he was still a demagogue.

I'm not so sure that many people are, actually.

I think it's easy to be "immune" to a demagogue if he is advocating policies that you already strongly oppose, or that clash with your existing view and instincts. But it's less easy if he is trying to stir up passion in favour of something that you already believe in, or are prone to believe in.

Look at all the conservatives and nationalists who climbed onto the Hitler bandwagon; they weren't necessarily interested in antisemitism as such, but nor did they react strongly against it, and Hitler's other views about the woes of the nation and how they might be addressed through order, leadership, etc. struck deep chords with them. By contrast, the number of communists and anarchists who embraced Hitler and Nazism was considerably smaller, not because they were immune to passion but because what Hitler said had no appeal for them; it wasn't something they could get passionate about.

I reckon then I'm one of the few lucky ones free from the influence of demagogues. Passion is a different thing.