After reading Burke's Rhetoric Of Hitler's "Battle", I have come to realize one thing...that Adolf hitler was a rhetorical genius.
While reading this text, there are many things that are brought up; many of these are blatantly the entire base of Hitler's ability to construct the Nazi empire. He did this through speech, moral and obligation. But really, he just used fantastic rhetorical construction. "an important ingredient of unity in the Middle Ages was the symbol of a common enemy, the Prince of Evil himself. Men who can unite on nothing else can unite on the basis of a foe shred by all. Hitler himself states this case very succinctly." (Burke, 195.) This is what made the Nazi army/following/cult what it was. It was the believed notion that unity of the world was necessary for the greater good, and that the Jews with all their hate stood in the way. Hitler not only imposed this ideology among his followers, he actually changed the way that they thought, he changed the way that they did things everyday, through speech, through rhetoric. He was able to construct such a perfect combination of speech that people were virtually defenseless against it. I am not saying that this worked on everyone, obviously it did not, but the people that followed him were drilled with the idea of unity.
The text reads, "it was Lueger's Christian-Social Party in Vienna that taught Hitler the tactics of tying up a program of social betterment with an anti-Semitic "unifier."" (Burke, 202.) I believe that it is this idea of unity that really captures the grace of the speech that was used. Hitler, according to Burke, Four different things that built his rhetorical backbone. these are, "Inborn dignity, Projection device, Symbolic rebirth and Commercial Use." (Burke, 203.) Burke states that because of these things that Hitlers influence was mad. I agree, but I am more fascinated with the Projection Device ideal. According to Burke, the projection device was, "The "curative" process that comes with the ability to hand over one's ills to a scapegoat, thereby getting purification by dissociation." (Burke, 202.) This is the key to his operation inside of the four keys. By making people believe that Jewish people had something wrong with them, and that they needed to be "cured." His words constructed this horrible image of the Jewish people and that they were beings filled with hate and that they, along with blacks, were supposed to be the entire obstacle that was preventing them from the Unity that they sought to achieve. This is genius, these people, perceived these thoughts, but the words themselves gave the thoughts to the people. It is a cycle in which is "recycling" off of each other. The creator is the created and the created is the creator.
Hey Brian,
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that I agree with this statement as well, as hard as it is to admit it, but Hitler was a rhetorical genius and master of the use of language. Language is language because it ties meaning to words and utterances, whether it be a positive connotation or a negative one (Baktin taught us this). Hitler was able to use language for bad, in his eyes, it was used for good. Although Baktin and Burke and all the other language theorists would look for a deeper meaning, I have to admit that I think an important aspect of language is how language is always successful in some way, even if it is also failing. I know this sounds like it is a basic, but I think that the speaker determines the degree in which language works or does not work based off of his performance. I guess the point I am trying to make, is that rhetoric makes language what it is, and how effective language is, is determined by how persuasive the language is (or how well the language conveys whatever meaning its purpose is to convey, i.e. Hitler convincing everyone to kill the Jews).
I think the reason Hitler was so successful was because of how effective (to him) his language was in creating reality. We have to admit that Hitler was successful because of the end result: he wanted total genocide of the Jews and he got that from his language and performance. However, to us who are sane and know what Hitler was speaking was immoral and horrible, we would still have to admit that his language was successful in its purpose, because it created a reality that Hitler wanted it to create. If language creates the reality it aims to create, it is successful.
When you mentioned the “curative” process that Burke mentioned (202) and how this explains why Hitler was so successful (because he “cured” people by convincing them the Jews had something wrong with them and thus needed to be killed off if they wanted to achieve Unity), and how the people perceived these thoughts but the words gave the thoughts to the people, I literally felt as if my theory that I just presented was accurate. Hitler was speaking about some very horrible things but yet he was able to be successful. The people began to believe his language based off how he spoke it, and the process of language and thoughts kind of reminded me of the Sender-Receiver idea in Communication. Senders speak messages to receivers who in turn perceive it, and their perceptions are influenced by the world around them. These people were convinced of a world (by Hitler) that needed to eliminate Jews, even though they knew how immoral it was, just by his words. His language was able to persuade countries full of people to abandon their morals and change their ways. That is exactly what I believe makes language successful (despite how horrible the language is).
-Alex Dishman
I find your comment about recycling interesting. Hitler's words gave thoughts to the people and thoughts give way to words. It made me think of the popular questions among language theorists: what comes first, the thought or the word? Does language create our reality or does our reality create language? Is life an imitation of art or art an imitation of life? In this case with Hitler, he has created a prejudice within a group of people with his words. Language created their reality. They became part of a discourse community because of a common enemy - the Jews. This widespread anti-semitism did not exist before there was talk about it. Most people did not sit around secretly hating Jews. They were trained to think that they hated Jews through the words of Adolf Hitler. You are right, he was a rhetorical genius. Anyone who can use language alone to move an entire country into military action is nothing less than genius.
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