by Hugo Mercier
recruited other cities to the rebel ion. Given the standards of the
time, a brutal punishment for such deeds would be expected.
Ironically, the events better illustrate the weakness of the dema-
gogue’s hold. The day after a trireme had been sent to execute
the order, the debate was reopened, and Cleon’s opponent, Di-
odotus, persuaded his fellow Athenians that, for practical rea-
sons, the population should be spared.5 Another trireme was
sent to intercept the first one, which it did successfully. The oli-
garchs were removed and the rest of the population spared.
Not only was Cleon’s charisma too weak to counteract sound
arguments, it also was unable to protect him from ridicule. When
Aristophanes pilloried Cleon in his plays, the crowd was amused,
not angered— the same crowd that Cleon, as a good demagogue,
was supposed to have “entirely at his disposal.”6 Indeed, when
Cleon raised trumped-up charges against Aristophanes, a popu-
lar jury sided with the playwright.
If the people’s support for Cleon was far from unconditional,
it still was, by and large, genuine: after all, the Athenians made
Cleon a general and voted for many of his policies. But his power
was not unearned. Cleon’s economic policies seem to have
benefited the poor majority.7 Cleon’s influence was not due to
extraordinary feats of persuasion but rather to the fact that he
possessed the “true demagogue’s tact of catching the feeling of the
people.”8 Not being an aristocrat, he was free to enact populist
policies, “challeng[ing] the authority of wealth and unexamined
116 ch ap t er 8
tradition.”9 By and large, Cleon’s power ful voice reflected, rather
than guided, the people’s will— for better or worse.
Other demagogues— such as the long line of American
populists, from Wil iam Jennings Bryan to Huey Long— have
relied on the same strategy, gaining po liti cal power not by
manipulating crowds but by championing opinions that were
already popu lar but not well represented by po liti cal leaders.
Even the most infamous of demagogues, Adolf Hitler, fits this
pattern.
Thanks to a wide variety of sources— from diaries to the re-
ports of the Nazi intel igence services— historian Ian Kershaw
has gained an intimate knowledge of German public opinion
under the Nazis.10 In The Hitler Myth, he describes how Hitler
was perceived by ordinary Germans throughout his po liti cal
career, and how he gained, for a time, broad popu lar support.11
For Kershaw, the key to Hitler’s electoral success in 1933 was that
he “embodied an already wel - established, extensive, ideological
consensus.”12 In par tic u lar, Hitler surfed on a wave of virulent
anti- Marxism, a cause he shared with the church and the business
elites.13
From 1927 to 1933, Hitler used innovative campaign strategies,
techniques that have now become commonplace. He flew across
Germany so that he could reach more people. He used loud-
speakers amplifying his voice to make the best of a full rhetori-
cal arsenal. He gave hundreds of speeches to crowds large and
small. Were these efforts successful? A careful study suggests they
weren’t. Po liti cal scientists Peter Selb and Simon Munzert found
that Hitler’s countless speeches “had a negligible impact on the
Nazis’ electoral fortunes.”14
Once he had risen to power, Hitler’s appeal waxed and waned
with economic and military vicissitudes. He gained in popular-
ity among those who benefited from his policies, and with the
d e m a g o g ue s, p r o p he t s, p r e a c he r s 117
general public when painless military victories came in quick suc-
cession.15 As early as 1939, however, as Germans tightened their
belts for the war effort, discontent began to grow.16 After the Nazi
disaster that was the Battle of Sta lin grad, support for Hitler dis-
integrated. People stopped seeing him as an inspirational leader,
and vicious rumors started to circulate.17 Even though it was a
capital crime, from 1943 until his suicide in April 1945, many Ger-
mans were openly critical of Hitler.18
Far from shaping German public opinion, Hitler responded
to it; as Kershaw put it, “More than any other exponent of pro-
paganda, Hitler had an extremely sensitive awareness of the tol-
erance level of the mass of the population.”19 In order to gain
control he had to preach messages that ran against his worldview.
During his rise to power, Hitler downplayed his own anti-
Semitism, barely mentioning it in public speeches, refusing to
sign the appeal for a boycott of Jewish shops.20 Like other dema-
gogues, Hitler was unable to rely on his own powers of persuasion
to influence the masses, but rather played on people’s existing
opinions.21 As we wil see later, the Nazi propaganda machine
as a whole was barely more effective.
Prophets
The power of demagogues to influence the masses has been
widely exaggerated. What about religious figures such as proph-
ets? History suggests prophets are able to whip up crowds into
the kind of fervor that leads to suicidal acts, from self- sacrifices
to doomed crusades. Yet if one steps back for a moment it soon
becomes clear that what matters is the audience’s state of mind
and material conditions, not the prophet’s powers of persuasion.
Once people are ready for extreme actions, some prophet will
rise and provide the spark that lights the fire.22
118 ch ap t er 8
In the mid-1850s, Nongqawuse became a power ful seer among
the Xhosa, a pastoral people of South Africa.23 She made gran-
diose prophecies: if the Xhosa obeyed her, “nobody would ever
lead a troubled life. People would get what ever they wanted.
Every thing would be available in abundance. . . . All the people
who have not arms and legs will have them restored, the blind
people will also see, and the old people would become young.”24
Nongqawuse also told of a power ful army that would rise from
the dead to fight off the British invaders. But to make their dreams
come true, the Xhosa had to kill all their cattle and burn all their
crops. Many did so, killing every single one of their cattle and
burning their crops to the roots. Yet only death and famine came
in abundance.
Isn’t that a dreadful example of extreme gullibility and mass
persuasion? The Xhosa had no good reason to trust Nongqa-
wuse, whom nobody knew. She offered no sensible justification
for the actions she urged, and the actions themselves seemed
very costly. To the British observers, Nongqawuse had simply
“play[ed] upon the credulity” of her people.25 This account, how-
ever, omits crucial factors that make sense of the Xhosa’s
be hav ior.
The years 1856–1857 had seen an epidemic of “lungsickness”
wipe out whole herds of cattle.26 In these circumstances, kil ing
the animals and eating them before they got sick starts looking
&
nbsp; like a reasonable option.27 The importance of lungsickness in
driving the cattle kil ing can barely be exaggerated: in areas not
affected by the disease, not a single animal was sacrificed.28 As
historian Jeff Peires, whose research I rely on here, concluded,
“Lungsickness was thus a necessary cause of the Xhosa Cattle-
Killing.”29 To some extent, the same reasoning applies to the
crops that an unusually wet season had rendered susceptible to
blight.
d e m a g o g ue s, p r o p he t s, p r e a c he r s 119
Even in areas affected by lungsickness, people didn’t blindly
obey Nongqawuse. They started by kil ing one or two head of
cattle, honoring a long sacrificial tradition.30 They kept the most
impor tant animals to be sacrificed last.31 When Nongqawuse’s
prophecies failed to materialize, people quickly grew disillu-
sioned.32 In some cases, what drove people to kill their cattle
were the threats of chiefs, neighbors, or even relatives, who had
lost every thing and were looking askance at those who refused
to make their own sacrifice for the supposed common good.33
Peires argues that “the Cattle- Kil ing was a logical and ratio-
nal response, perhaps even an inevitable response, by a nation
driven to desperation by pressures that people today can barely
imagine.”34 Even if this conclusion might be somewhat exagger-
ated, Peires’s research shows that Nongqawuse did not hold any
magical sway over the Xhosa. Instead, the Xhosa who followed
her lead were driven by necessity to extreme actions.
The Cattle- Kil ing movement was also one of contestation, of
near revolt.35 Until then, the Xhosa had tolerated their chiefs
owning most of the cattle, as the chiefs could be relied on to share
when times got tough. But the situation changed when aristo-
crats started sel ing their surplus cattle to British settlers instead
of sharing them in communal feasts.36 This motivated many com-
moners to push for cattle kil ing: not only were the cattle not
theirs, but they couldn’t even serve as “drought insurance” any-
more.37 By contrast, those who benefited from the cattle trade
overwhelmingly opposed the kil ing.38
In this way at least, the Xhosa Cattle- Kil ing episode is typi-
cal of other millenarian movements. Over the centuries, a great
many people have been touched by millenarianism, believing the
end of the world to be nigh, and a much better world to be within
reach. Like the Xhosa, those who shared those beliefs often en-
gaged in seemingly senseless acts, such as the impoverished
120 ch ap t er 8
Christians in Eu rope who followed the injunctions of prophets,
took up the cross, and attempted to take back Jerusalem. Yet their
actions were not the result of mass persuasion, often being led
by more down- to- earth considerations.
By and large, poor people’s millenarian movements in the Eu-
ro pean Middle Ages were driven by desperation and the hope
for material gains. When the most successful of the poor people’s
crusades reached Jerusalem, their leader cried out to them,
“Where are the poor folk who want property!”39 For historian
Eugen Weber,
The trou ble was that most of these brow- beaten folk were less
interested in the millennium per se than in the extermination
that would precede it: the overthrow of oppressors, the an-
nihilation of clergy and Jews, the end of the rich and fat. Their
ecstasies and eruptions brought not peace but a pickax. From
the twelfth century to the sixteenth and the seventeenth, while
eschatological excitement ran high, crusades turned into mas-
sacres, and spiritual aspirations turned into social and po liti-
cal insurrections.40
Other historians concur: millenarianism, this “religion of the
oppressed,” mostly arises “ under conditions . . . of felt or expe-
rienced crisis—of oppression by a more power ful group, of ex-
treme economic hardship, of fundamental social changes that
leave par tic u lar social strata feeling threatened.”41
Challenging the social order is the quin tes sen tial breaking of
norms; as such, it requires strong justifications. Millenarian be-
liefs provide such justifications: it is fine to wreck things, as the
world is going to end anyway, and something much better will
follow. This is why millenarian beliefs can be found in so many
movements of contestation, across diff er ent cultures. If the best-
known millenarian beliefs are Christian, the idea long predates
d e m a g o g ue s, p r o p he t s, p r e a c he r s 121
the New Testament—it can be found in Jewish or Zoroastrian
texts— and it was developed largely in de pen dently in other
religions such as Buddhism.42 Moreover, Christian mil enarian-
ism has been adapted in a variety of ways by diff er ent popula-
tions, from the Xhosa in South Africa to the Taiping rebels
in China, often in spite of rather than thanks to the efforts of
missionaries.43
Millenarian prophecies are successful whenever and wherever
they are con ve nient. They surface across vastly diff er ent cultures,
when people mount radical contestations of the existing order.
Even secular upheavals have their own versions of millenarian-
ism, with invocations of a golden age the revolution will bring
back after a period of chaos.44 The market for prophecies of doom
is driven by the demands of discontented crowds rather than by
the supply of sly prophets.
Preachers
Prophets may not carry that much influence over the masses, but
what about the religious figures that (mostly) don’t rely on
threats of imminent apocalypse? The cultural success of Bud-
dhism (520 mil ion followers), Chris tian ity (2,420 mil ion fol-
lowers), or Islam (1,800 million followers) suggests that some
preachers have been able to convert vast flocks to their creeds.
And these triumphs are not restricted to centuries- old religions:
the rise of Mormonism in the nineteenth century and the suc-
cess of the New Religious Movements— from Krishnas to
Moonies—in the twentieth show that similar, even if so far
smaller- scale, feats can be repeated with modern audiences.
When considering how one individual’s vision might be com-
municated to mil ions, or even bil ions, of followers, it is hard
not to think that mass conversion must be at play. In the Bible,
122 ch ap t er 8
one of Peter’s sermons is described as having “added that day
about three thousand souls.”45 In the fourth century, historian
Eusebius wrote, “At the first hearing whole multitudes in a body
eagerly embraced in their souls piety towards the Creator of the
universe.”46 Many twentieth- century historians share the view
that exponential religious growth must require “successes en
masse.”47 Similarly, the development of New Religious Move-
ments has worried many observers, who accuse their leaders of
brainwashing new recruits.48
These visions of mass
conversion stem from a misunderstand-
ing of compound interests: a small but regular growth yields
huge amounts over long time periods. If you had invested $1 in
the year 0, to get $2,420 mil ion now ($1 for each Christian on
earth), you would only need a constant yearly interest rate of a
little over 1 percent. According to sociologist Rodney Stark, who
compiled estimates by several historians, the number of Chris-
tians went from around a thousand in 40 CE to 34 mil ion in 350
CE. Even though this was Chris tian ity’s period of most rapid
expansion, the increase only translates into a constant annual
growth rate of 3.5 percent.49 To explain the spectacular rise of
Chris tian ity, from a handful of followers to dozens of mil ion in
three centuries, you only need each Christian to make a couple
of new converts in their lifetime— not exactly mass conversion.
More recent religious movements have generated similar con-
version rates. Stark’s studies of the early Mormon Church
yielded growth rates below 5 percent a year.50 Sociologist Eileen
Barker conducted detailed observations of how new recruits—
often called Moonies, after the founder, Sun Myung Moon—
joined the Unification Church.51 Even though the Unification
Church was one of the most popu lar of the New Religious Move-
ments, its success rate was very low. Among people interested
enough to visit one of the church’s centers, “not one in 200 re-
d e m a g o g ue s, p r o p he t s, p r e a c he r s 123
mained in the movement two years later.”52 Even among those
who went on two- day retreats, “only 5 percent remained full- time
members one year later.”53
Far from preachers managing feats of mass persuasion, re-
ligious conversion is, with few exceptions, driven by strong
preexisting relationships. Friends recruit friends, families
bring other family members into the fold. The beginnings of
the Unification Church in the United States, which have been
studied in detail by Stark and his colleague John Lofland, follow
this pattern. The movement was led by Young Oon Kim, who
after years of trying her best to “win converts through lectures
and press releases”54 had only managed to recruit a dozen
people, good friends of hers and their families. Since this pio-
neering work, the importance— indeed, the quasi necessity—
