Hitler and rhetoric

In Burke’s essay “the Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle” he speaks of how Hitler was able to use his agency as a rhetorician in order to persuade a society to participate in one of the largest mass genocides our world has ever seen. Burke speaks of Hitler’s book drawing attention to the many types of rhetoric he used to persuade his audience. He writes about the inherent sexual nature of Hitler’s writings saying that “the masses are feminine, as such they desire to be lead by a dominating male, the male as orator woos them. (Burke, 195)” This made me think back to the first unit of the semester, where we spoke about agency and agent. Specifically, Campbell’s writings on agency in her essay “Agency: Promiscuous and Protean.” In Campbell’s essay she writes about how an individual creates agency when they stand up and speak on behalf of a group. She goes on to write that instead of defining a group through essentialism, we should define them by how they work in relation to external forces.

In many ways I can see Hitler doing this as he writes his text. He spoke for a whole nation and defined the Aryan race in accordance to the Jewish population. They were the “devil” so the Aryan race was the opposite of that. They were good, clean, strong, smart etc.

Furthermore, Hitler was using the Jewish population as a scapegoat. Burke writes that there was a “medical appeal” of the Jewish scapegoat. Burke writes that “the middle class contains, within the mind of each member, a duality. (Burke, 195) he then goes on to write that the German people’s opinion on the Jewish population fluctuated in accordance to the economic state of their country. This once again, works to show how Hitler was attempting to define the Jews. It could almost be looked at in terms of how we use language. In Derrida’s essay “Differance” he writes our ability to define ourselves based on what we are not. The example was given of someone calling your name. You respond because you are conditioned to understand your name, but also because you know you are not another name. So here we see the German people using the Jewish people as a scapegoat and defining them through their differences, compared to their own qualities. They are responsible for the finical hardships, so we are not. They are bad, so we are good, they are the devil, we are working for God. Etc.  

Hitler’s ability to lead masses of people forward and have them stand by him while he encourage racial genocide will always be of interest to those studying language. His rhetorical ability to use his agency by speaking for a society and shaping the Jewish population to be something it was not has a great effect on the way we now view rhetoric’s power.