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Claudia Brower
Scott Bruner
RWS 200
7 March 2017
Displays of Demagogic Techniques
Demagoguery is found in several occasions, but a lot of the time, the audience does not
notice the seduction it provokes. Patricia Roberts-Miller, a professor at University of California
Berkeley, composed an article discussing the characteristics of demagoguery and how rhetoric
comes into play. She analyses well known public figures, such as Hitler, to prove that
demagogues say things they do not necessarily mean or follow through with, in order to gain
popularity. Miller creates her own definition of demagoguery as “polarizing propaganda that
motivates members of an ingroup to hate or scapegoat an outgroup(s)” (462). In other words,
public figures relay messages towards a specific group of people who relate to his beliefs, and
force them to turn against those who do not stand for what he stands for wholeheartedly. She
then comes out with a related text, that goes into further detail of the demagogic techniques and
how she defines them.
Within the movie, the Hunger Games, the main creator of the games, President Snow,
shows clear signs of a demagogue through his speeches. He proves characteristics of a
demagogue when he is speaking directly one on one with Katniss, and then again when he is
presenting a speech for hundreds of people under his command. He speaks to them, showing he
has power over them, in hopes to keep their support and obliterate the acts of rebellion. After
reading Roberts-Miller’s texts about demagoguery, she gave me a better understanding of how to
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identify the different characteristics that public figures implement in their speeches to make them
sound more appealing. I was able to identify that President Snow applied scapegoating,
polarization, and dehumanization in order to gain popularity and trust of the people, without
them understanding it was a trap.
Roberts-Miller describes the scapegoat as “someone who puts all of the blame of their
responsibilities for a situation”(4). I understand it as someone who causes destruction to their ego
and finds someone who can easily be believed to take the fault, in order to preserve their own
name. There is a scene in MockingJay where President Snow meets with Katniss to apologize for
her sister’s death. He puts the blame of Primrose’s death on Coin, president of district 13,
because she was the one who set off the bombs that initially killed Prim, along with others.
Saying he does not have any reason for killing helpless children, contradicts his original idea of
creating the Hunger Games in the first place which was designed to kill off all innocent
participants but one. He creates sympathy for himself, stating that because he was not quick to
catch Coin’s plan, and for that his own guards turned against him. Because he is omitting the
blame for his own initial actions and creating the Hunger Games, he is shifting the burden of
proof onto Coin. This allows him to keep the trust of his people without them understanding that
his original plan deals with the fact that he is killing innocent children. He does not look like the
bad guy for his wrong doings. This rhetorical fallacy of shifting the burden of proof, is proven
because Katniss accuses Snow of killing her sister, when he declares that he had no intentions of
killing an innocent child; forcing the accusation of killing the pure onto Coin.
She also writes about how polarization is the act of dividing a diverse range of things to
opposite poles. What I took from this, is that the speaker separates two groups and defines one as
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an ingroup and the other as an outgroup and they have no relation to each other whatsoever.
President Snow proclaims that there have been a few “radicals” who have gone against the way
things work within the districts and capitol. He states that those who have been destructive are
not standing for what they have promised to stand for, proposing that those who do not stand
with us, stand against us. He states that those who are not standing with him and the capitol, have
a misunderstanding of the way they have survived until now. Threatening those who continue to
stand against him, he punishes those who have already done so by executing them publicly;
showing that President Snow will not tolerate those who stand against his words and the contract
they have signed.
Miller defines dehumanization as denying the basic humanity of some group. Taking
away from this, I believe dehumanization is when someone treats his or her audience as animals,
forgetting they are actually are human and carry human characteristic traits. Because he is the
creator of the Hunger Games, President Snow dehumanizes the people of the districts by forcing
them to act as animals and fight till the death. Those who participate in the games are chosen
from a “reaping”, which compares the people to harvests gathered, putting a negative
connotation on the idea that they are cut from their homeland and taken away for someone else’s
enjoyment. Then they are placed in front of a group of people, forced to act as show dogs,
parading their talents in hopes to gain sponsors for when they are in battle. When they are
actually in the games, they are placed in a cage, forced to fight till the death because there can
only be one winner; turning against those who are even on their own team. President Snow
claims that this is all intended to show that the capitol is and always will be in charge, further the
idea that he is dehumanizing everyone by putting them below him and his peers of the capitol.
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All of this dehumanizing is hidden by the fact that it is not explicitly stated that they are treated
like animals, but it is implied within the way they are treated. He does this in order to show
authority and dominance over the people of the districts, the same as an owner to a dog would.
Overall, it is easily proven that President Snow from The Hunger Games displays
multiple characteristics of demagogic techniques. Snow puts the blame of killing innocent
children on someone else, explains that those who do not stand with him and his beliefs in that
the capitol is in charge are radicals and stand against him, and then he forces humans to fight
within a cage till death as if they were animals. This means that President Snow tricked the
people of the districts into think he was a “good guy” and cared for them, when in reality he only
cared for his own well being. It is possible for people to argue the fact that he did not perform
demagogic techniques and that he did care for the wellness of others, but then I can argue back
that those people have most likely not read Patricia Roberts-Miller’s text, the ​Characteristics of
Demagoguery. After reading that article, it is very easy to point out President Snow’s tactics and
how he manipulated his words and actions to seem fair. Demagogues have the capability to
persuade an audience to believe their words without having supportive evidence to back it up.
They depend on rhetoric to make them sound more appealing than they truly are, but because
they are capable of achieving that without solid evidence, for that I believe they are genius. And
President Snow was able to slip under the radar with his techniques, and for that I believe he is a
genius too. Although President Snow is a fictional character, he is yet another example of the
true power demagogues can hold in the world. Although I believe Demagoguery can be used for
a good cause, President Snow uses its strategies to strip a large population from their freedom.
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Although his character is not a reality, humans should still recognize his demagogic techniques
as a threat and form of manipulation.
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Works Cited
“Mockingjay- Part 1 Execution scene.” ​Youtube. Uploaded by ZedTv, 25 February 2015,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnmCShbY_rc
“Mockingjay- Part 2 Katniss visits Snow Scene.” ​Youtube. uploaded by ZedTv, 10 March 2016,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl4Gl33R1vg
Roberts-Miller, Patricia. "Democracy, Demagoguery, and Critical Rhetoric." ​Rhetoric & Public
Affairs 8.3 (2005): 459-76. Print.