The Language of Evil

<p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>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. </strong></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>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.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>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.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>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 </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>ethos</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>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 </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The Language of Evil</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> equips readers to spot the same tricks and techniques being used today by tomorrow's would-be dictators.</span></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)><u>Reviews</u></strong></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>'The handbook that humanity needs right now - not simply to understand the dangerous rhetoric of demagogues but how to resist it.' - </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Terry Szuplat former policy speechwriter for President Barack Obama and author of Say It Well.</em></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>'Whatever happens in the street the populist mobs have to be fired up first. That's where words come in. Guy Doza's Language of Evil is a fascinating analysis of the speechifying that empowers tyranny through the malign careers of eighteen dictators from Julius Caesar to Saddam Hussein.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>'Gun clubs camps and torture chambers come next but without words to set things going these despots and their current successors would be nowhere.'</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>'Sticks and stones...says the old rhyme. Don't believe a word of it.' </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>- Jonathon Green Lexicographer</em></p>