The Language of Evil

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. In this captivating and revealing book, speechwriter Guy Doza shows how bloodthirsty dictators have seized and maintained power for more than 2,000 years through the skilled use of words and phrases. While Julius Caesar, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini are familiar to modern readers, other tyrants, such as Ranavalona I - the 'Mad Queen of Madagascar' who killed half of her subjects - and Jiang Qing, Chairman Mao's murderous wife, may be less so. Whatever their sex, nationality or era, the 18 men and women in this book earned reputations as expert manipulators. Masters of rhetoric. As well as identifying the energetic wordplay of each, The Language of Evil points out the methods these despots shared, such as the use of flattery by Attila the Hun, Bloody Mary and Napoleon Bonaparte. Or how two violent 20th Century leaders, Zaire's President Mobuto and Iraq's Saddam Hussein, both nurtured their ethos to portray themselves as the father of their respective nations. For irrespective of geography and language, from ancient times to modern, dictators and their allies have consistently reused the same rhetorical patterns. In a 'post-truth' age where simplified messages overpower sophisticated ones, The Language of Evil equips readers to spot the same tricks and techniques being deployed now. Reviews 'The handbook that humanity needs right now - not simply to understand the dangerous rhetoric of demagogues, but how to resist it.' Terry Szuplat, former foreign policy speechwriter for President Barack Obama and author of Say It Well