Differance in Hitler's Rhetoric

Jacques Derrida's concept of differance comes from the idea that the meaning of words is grounded in their difference from other words. The signification of words is not innate knowledge to us. Rather, we learn and create meaning for words by knowing what they don’t mean. Hitler created a definition of his Aryan nation in much the same way. Kenneth Burke argues that Hitler, especially through the symbol of the common enemy and the idea of inborn dignity, creates the same kind of antithesis between the superior and the inferior—that is, between the Aryan race and all others. In this way, Hitler created a rhetorical argument that defined their Aryan nation by what they were not. In other words, they came to know who they were by first knowing who they were not.

Both Burke and Derrida spend some time emphasizing the fact that meaning is created through binaries. For Derrida, texts all have a diacritical nature. That is, they can be read to have different, binary meanings. For Burke, Hitler created binary opposites by making a clear distinction between Aryans and Jews, Gypsies, Blacks, etc.

One of the tropes that Burke focuses on in his “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ‘Battle’” is the idea of the common enemy. Hitler worked to unify his nation by creating a clear line between the Aryan race and the Jews (among others). He did this largely with scapegoating tactics—that is, by placing the blame for many of Germany’s troubles on the shoulders of the Jews. This included things like attributing their economic troubles to Jewish moneylenders. By using these people as scapegoats, he was able to turn them into the symbol of everything evil and unite the Aryan people against them.

Another idea that helped Hitler to create this distinction was the idea of inborn dignity. By emphasizing existing prejudices and putting Aryans up on a pedestal, Hitler was able to create a national ideal which he then used as a measuring stick for all other people. This further enforced the antithesis of the ‘superior’ Aryans and the ‘inferior’ Jews. 

Burke also pointed out the idea of a projection device—by establishing the Jewish people as scapegoats on whom to place the blame for everything that was going wrong in Germany, Hitler was able to make a vague or even nonexistent threat hit closer to home. The ‘common enemy’ became personal and tangible, rather than hypothetical. By separating the Aryan race from others, Hitler created in the minds of his followers the binaries of superior and inferior, nationalist and terrorist, comrade and enemy. Even if they had little else in common, the Hitler’s superior, nationalist comrades (at least, as long as they thought of themselves in this way) could define themselves and be united by what they were not: the inferior enemy.

In the same way Derrida deconstructs texts to dismantle what we have come to see as natural (as we discussed on Tuesday), Hitler used rhetoric in an attempt to dismantle a culture with more than one race. Derrida argued that signification derives from the differences among signs, just as Hitler created signification for the Aryan race by way of its differences from other races. As we discussed on Tuesday, we know that a green light means what it does because both a red light and a handshake mean something different. While Derrida was talking about the meanings or definitions of words,  Hitler, according to Burke, used rhetoric to create a definition for an entire nation of people; For Hitler, being Aryan meant, first and foremost, not being Jewish.

-Jessica Gonzalez