Recapturing White Rhetoric For Socialist Agitating

Bruce Lerro

Orientation

Leninist and anarchist shortcomings in relation to rhetoric

A little over three years ago I wrote an article about how bad Mordor Leninists and anarchists are about knowing about, let alone using rhetorical rhetoric. The article is titled Socialist Rhetorical and Dialectical Communication: Overcoming Brainwashing, Propaganda and Entertainment

These areas of bumbling included:

• Initiation engagement
• Holding attention
• Time and timing
• Setting the right atmosphere
• The use of the five canons of rhetoric
• Importance of charisma
• Adjusting to neutral and hostile audiences
• Defining key terms
• Use of Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle
• Appealing to short-term self-interest in the audience
• Making predictions
• Having transition plans
• Distinguishing competitive as opposed to cooperative argumentation

Purpose of this article

The aim of this article is six-fold:

• First, to challenge the negative associations about what rhetoric is so that its techniques can freely be used by all socialists. To do this I contrast “Light” with “Dark” rhetoric across thirteen categories.
• Second, to point out that light rhetoric has been undermined by the use of electronic media beginning in the second half of the 19th century.  I will be referring to Kathleen Jameson’s great book Eloquence in the Electronic Age as I pointed out from a previous article.
• Third, I will point out that at least since the Middle Ages the ruling circles of Europe (whether it be Church, State or capitalists) have used propaganda to influence people. This propaganda has used dark rhetoric for its purposes.
• Fourth, I emphasize the value of light rhetoric further by contrasting it to propaganda.
• Lastly, I show how white rhetoric can be criticized using the “ideological” school of criticism developed by Marxists like Terry Eagleton any Raymond Williams.

Defining rhetoric

Let me begin with a controversial definition of rhetoric. Rhetoric is the systematic and overt study of the process of how speakers influence public to either convince or persuade an audience on a controversial issue. This is done through the use of Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle which consists of logos (facts, reasons), ethos (credible sources) and pathos (use of emotions and imagination). Typically, it is practiced in law courts, political debates (city council meetings, unions, workers co-ops), or scientific conferences.

Conditions of rhetoric

First, the issue in contention must be controversial. If the issue is trite, there won’t be any reason for using rhetoric because the answer is more or less decided. On the other hand, if the issue is outlandish not enough of the audience will be interested in being engaged or curious enough about the outcome. Second, the issues must have an urgency. Both the speaker and the audience are interdependent and no one can walk away. Parties also must have a great deal of commonality so the issue can be resolved, even though they might not admit the commonality at first. The third condition of rhetoric is that risks are accepted. The parties in a rhetorical situation know they can be publicly proven wrong and they may have to alter their claim. The fourth characteristic of rhetoric is that the best solution we come up with is probable.Unlike in formal logic, no certainty is possible. The fifth and last condition of rhetoric is that the power bases used cannot be force, economics, politics or sexual seduction. Only competency, legitimacy or dialectic may be used.

Why is my definition of rhetoric controversial?

Where does rhetoric take place? Usually, rhetoric is dated back to classical Greek civilization. But George Kennedy has shown that cross-culturally rhetoric is much older. I know from my study of social evolution that rhetoric was practiced all the way back to hunting and gathering societies. Recently some feminists have tried to argue that conversations in the interpersonal world or family life should be included. At the other extreme, thanks to mass communication, some rhetoricians have attempted to do rhetorical analysis based on radio, film and television. For purposes of this article, I am avoiding both the micro and macro attempts to apply rhetoric. The reason is because the places that I hope it is used is in public situations. These include city council meetings, union discussions or in workers co-op’s general assemblies

As we know, most of human communication is analogical, not digital and many analogical messages occur below the level of consciousness. When a person convinces or persuades someone unconsciously through body language or utterances not intended, does that count as rhetoric? My definition says it should not. Unconscious body language would fit in the field of influence. Influence is a larger category than rhetoric or persuasion. Rhetoric is a specific type of influence.

What is the range of mediums that should be permissible? I am drawing the line at oral and written. To be sure, the use of the alphabet and the printing press certainly changed oral rhetoric in certain ways, but it is with the medium of mass communication that propaganda overwhelms too many of the original features of rhetoric to be included. It is at this point in history that the field of propaganda begins to merge with or marginalize rhetoric.

Up until now in all categories I have tried to define rhetoric narrowly as opposed to broadly. But in this last case I would like to define rhetoric more broadly. In all pre-state societies (hunter-gatherers, simple complex horticulture societies and herding societies) rhetoric was used to come to decisions cooperatively.With the rise of agricultural states and social classes cooperative rhetoric was marginalized. At this stage the ruling elites made decisions that were no longer subject to communal debate. The invention of propaganda arose out of the need of the ruling classes to justify why so many people should accept being ruled by so few. But in the time of classical Greece and Rome there were still rulers who propagandized their population. However, rhetoric returned in the form of competitive debates in law courts and in democratic councils. Unfortunately, most of the history of rhetoric has only been presented in the form of competitive debates. It is mostly thanks to feminists that the ancient tradition of cooperative argumentation has returned. So I will argue that rhetoric should be used for both competitive and cooperative goals.

Light Vs Dark Rhetoric

Arousing the audience

“Step right up the Big Top, where seeing is believing. Right over here to the freak show”. This is an example of dark rhetoric in operation. These attention grabbers of dark rhetoric are in the business of creating awe, making thunderstruck or frightening the audience by horror. There is no suspense but plenty of special effects. Whatever their claim, it is hidden and the audience is manipulated to do things without the speaker’s intentions ever being consciously stated

In light rhetoric, attention is drawn in gradually through questions that are within the range of the audience’s curiosity. A light rhetorical speaker has made a study of his audience’s demographics before the speech itself. In dark rhetoric, audiences are considered as all the same – stupid. In light rhetoric audiences are drawn in and suspense is created so the audience does not quite know what the speaker will conclude. The claim is always made explicit to the audience, but the speaker will determine whether it is best to make the claim in the beginning, middle or end of the argument

Quality of reasoning

Dark rhetoricians do not think much of reason or providing evidence. They are notorious for committing reasoning fallacies such as ad hominin (attacking the person), guilt by association, confusing wholes with parts either-or thinking and many faulty appeals to emotions. In white rhetoric speakers are very aware of human fallacies all the way back to Aristotle and do their best to make their arguments be fallacy-free. However, they may still make mistakes but it is not with the intention of tricking the audience

Use of imagination vs fantasy

In light rhetoric, the imagination is used to create reasonable alternative futures that are based on science. The method can be though stories, analogies or vivid imagery. In dark rhetoric, fantasies that are impossible in real life are concocted. Their belief about their audience is that what freedom entails is making impossible things possible. It is an appeal to the unnatural.

Speaker ethos: charisma vs character

In dark rhetoric a speaker with charisma is essential. Dark rhetoric needs a charmer who has the spirit to inspire people. The speaker appeals to what I call the Darwinian unconscious. In other words, speakers who are tall, have a shape that indicates they have good genes (see Evolutionary Psychologyby David Buss), facial symmetry, hair sheen, a sense of theatrics and are articulate and funny. Dark rhetoricians want the audience to be swept away. In light rhetoric, the speaker has to have character. This means the speaker has legitimate authority, has a good reputation, is trustworthy and competent. S/he has to exude good will and be articulate. Humor always helps, but the speaker wants the audience to be grounded, not swept away.

The relationship between the speaker and the message

In dark rhetoric, speakers will be engaged in character assassination. The speaker is enmeshed with the message. A good speaker will be claimed to have a good message and a bad speaker a bad message. In light rhetoric, the speaker and the message will be differentiated. It will be acknowledged that a bad speaker might have a good message and a good speaker might have a weak message.

Competition vs cooperation

In many of the textbooks on argumentation they show people in competitive debates. One book even showed arguers on the verge of a fist fights. But as I pointed about above, rhetoric can be used cooperatively among union members deciding whether or not to strike or participate in a city council meeting while attempting to persuade the city council to oppose a national war. Cooperative argumentation can also be used in a worker’s co-op on deciding what the ratio in salary should be between managers and workers.

Short-term vs long-term self-interest

Dark rhetoric practitioners use demagoguery. They appeal to the worst in people. They are not above spreading gossip, name dropping and meanness at the expense of the weak. They play to people’s pettiness, prejudices, and myopia. They appeal to people wanting to keep up with the Joneses, as well wishing to be superior to others. They appeal to the audience’s infantile wishes like losing weight while eating whatever they want. Dark rhetoric speakers appeal to the audience’s crude superstitions as well as the desire to take the path of least resistance. Their appeal is to short-term self-interest – pleasure, comfort or acquiring wealth without working for it. On the other hand, in the glow of light rhetoric, speakers appeal to depthful emotions, loving the stranger (agape). Emotional appeals include kindness, generosity, foresight, altruism, heroism and hope. They speak of what is good for humanity in the long-run even when it is less than popular.

Range of audience

Dark rhetors do not go where the audiences are either neutral or hostile because their cheap tricks will not work there. Trump would not do well against an audience who is neutral or hostile because he is not trained as a politician and knows nothing about how to move an audience who is not already a member of the club. Even as smooth a person as Obama, fully trained in rhetoric as a Harvard lawyer, would not do well against an angry working class crowd because his rhetorical tricks such as telling individual stories of Horatio Alger won’t fly. A practitioner of light rhetoric relishes dealing with a hostile audience and knows what it takes to change a hostile audience. Their success is not to move an audience from a hostile to a sympathetic audience, for that is too much to expect. However, they will modestly hope to influence a cynical audience to became skeptical. That is realistic.

How is the audience treated?

Dark rhetoricians treat their audiences as dupes. They will water down a speech to appeal to the lowest common denominator. They will flatter the audience. In light rhetoric, audiences are treated as active participants. The speaker creates a dialectic with the audience giving them some of what they want but also giving them more than they bargained for. In light rhetoric, the very way the audience responds changes the speaker and makes the speaker improvise what they had originally prepared.

Truth as a means to an end or an end in itself?

The standard of truth as an end in itself, regardless of time, place and circumstance is an overly idealist aspiration of Plato. Both Aristotle and the Sophists agreed that striving for the truth was admirable but most of the time it has to be parceled out because audiences are often not mature enough for the whole truth. For the Sophists, what matters in an argument is being effective. Winning them over to taking an action matters more than telling them the truth while getting no cooperation. For the Sophists truth was a means to an end, but most of the time the truth was also effective. Dark rhetoric is much more extreme than anything the Sophists did. Dark rhetoric does not care for the truth. They peddle lies, but the lies may work because there are some lies that people want to hear.

What is the relationship between form and content?

One of the stereotypical criticisms of rhetoric is that it is all fluff, all smoke and mirrors, all bombast. In other words, form without content. The opposite extreme of this is what Plato aspires to. If the content of a subject is true, the form is irrelevant. Light rhetoricians say form and content are dialectically related. When something is true, it should produce good form and good form is grounded in the truth. For example, evolutionary Darwinists have pointed out that what the human species finds beautiful is connected to outdoor scenes where there is water and landscapes of prospect (being able to see while not being seen). This also serves to increase the chances of survival.

What are the most important parts of a speech?

As many of you know, in classical rhetoric there are five cannons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, delivery and memory. In dark rhetoric, all that matters in moving an audience is arrangement of the parts of the argument and style which consists of eloquence, body language and voice tone. In dark rhetoric, the invention part of the argument is irrelevant.  If you have style you can sell anything. In light rhetoric the invention of the argument and the arrangement of the argument is most important. As Aristotle pointed out the invention of a good argument has logos (facts, statistics, reasons) ethos (creditable sources) and pathos (emotion and imagination). Light rhetoricians do care how these reasons are arranged depending on the audience. The other parts of the canon matter, but not as much.

What is the relationship between the reasoning process and taking action or behaving?

In dark rhetoric, rhetors don’t care about changing minds (convincing audiences) because it is too difficult and unnecessary. Dark rhetoric is interested in getting people to do things (persuasion) – buy a product or vote. They don’t care if this happens consciously or unconsciously. In dark rhetoric rhetors think the audiences must be entertained to get them to do anything. In light rhetoric, the speaker is committed to engaging and changing the mind. The rhetor wants to persuade his audience but only after the mind is changed. Entertaining may be a byproduct but is not essential. In my teaching I was often complimented, not just being convincing but being entertaining. I never had this as a goal but it was gravy.

Sophists are our guide for white rhetoric, not Plato

Going back to the Greeks, Plato was mostly the enemy of rhetoric and thought for the most part the only kind of rhetoric was dark. Aristotle, as usual, occupied a middle position. On one hand he was a very serious formal logician but on the other hand he appreciated rhetoric and even categorized the most common mistakes using rhetoric. Contrary to Plato the rhetoric of the Sophists was middle tone or sometimes even white rhetoric. Plato, with his insistence on Truth regardless of time, place and circumstance gave rhetoric a bad name while  throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Please see my table for a summary of light and dark rhetoric.

Table 1 Light vs Dark Rhetoric

The Decline of Rhetoric in the Electronic Age

Fame vs Celebrity: Movies, Music Sports and Politics, I discussed the impact electronic media has on the formation of celebrities as it applied to politics. It was in this age that we can see the decline of rhetoric as applied to politics.

Oration in Yankeedom before the electronic age

In politics before the electronic age, Yankee politicians boarded trains and gave speeches in the hot sun for 90 minutes to two hours. The public walked for miles to hear these speeches. These orators wrote their own speeches and went through all five of the canons of rhetoric. They defined their terms and they were loaded with evidence which they arranged carefully in an order that might be conductive to the audience. They laid out all possible positions in an argument to the audience the way a lawyer builds a case before his speech.  The speaker was well-rounded and had command of the great speeches of the past, using poetry at times to make his point. His entire speech was committed to memory. These orators did not have to account to the public for problems in their personal lives. After all, this was politics. Their use of pathos was episodic and used to strike fear at times. They were well trained to create images from words. Lastly, for these politicians their party and their program came first. There was no cult of personality.

Oration in Yankeedom during the electronic age of television

For the most part, the use of electronic media, especially television, had a debilitating impact on political rhetoric. The number of outdoor speeches declined as the politician was followed by television cameras inside the studios. The public now had to make much less effort to hear a speech as they could now watch it on television. For various reasons, over the years the attention span of the public got shorter and shorter in part because there was a lot to see on television and also because the pace of life quickened. The owners of television networks were not willing to give a presidential speech 90-minutes to two hours of air time. The speeches of candidates got shorter, often less than thirty minutes.  Gone were the parts of the argument such as defining key terms and presenting 3-5 views on a subject. Argument sides was flattened to two sides. Providing massive evidence to support a claim cost too much time and committing the speech to memory were no longer necessary. Their speech could be read off cue cards.

The political candidates no longer wrote their own speeches and the content of the speech changed as well. Since it was the nuclear family that gravitated towards television, the speeches themselves were more conversational and homier as the expectation that politicians had to appeal to women in a way they did not have to do in pre-electronic age politics. This is because woman had household responsibilities that would make travelling for hours to hear speeches less likely. The speakers continued to speak about their party but they allowed their personal opinion or personal stories to creep in. Gone was the poetry and the memorization of historical events.

Summing up the last two sections, we suspect that socialists are critical of rhetoric because they think all rhetoric is dark rhetoric and all political rhetoric is what was on TV. These are good reasons to be skeptical or even cynical.

Dark Rhetoric in the Service of Propaganda

Defining propaganda

Let me begin this section with a qualification. The fact that rhetoric became weaker in the electronic age does not mean it turned into dark rhetoric. What I want to ask and answer now is what is the relationship between rhetoric and propaganda? From my article Socialist Rhetorical and DialecticalCommunications: Overcoming Brainwashing, Propaganda and Entertainment “Paraphrasing Jowett and O’Donnell’s book Propaganda and Persuasion, propaganda is the deliberate, systematic and often covert attempt by institutional elites to control perceptions, emotions and behavior cognitions. Who are they controlling? Millions of people through mass media while censoring, hiding, restricting, distorting or exaggerating the claims and evidence of their opposition. Propaganda can be white, gray, or black. Propaganda can be easily found during political election campaigns, inaugural speeches, religious recruiting, news reporting, film and, some say, sports”.

What was the relationship between rhetoric and propaganda before mass communication?

As a reminder, there was propaganda in Yankeedom all the way back to the plantation owners since all ruling classes need to justify their dominant existence some way. But before mass communication propaganda and rhetoric existed side by side. Surely the ruling classes of the 17th-19th centuries knew about rhetoric but the lack of access to mass communication made their power limited to the use of monumental architecture and warmed-over religious symbology. More importantly, it was still possible for lawyers and writers to use rhetoric not directly connected to ruling class propaganda. After the electronic age this changed.

The impact of Black Rhetoric on mass propaganda

Before beginning this section, I want to clarify the difference between White and Black propaganda. White propaganda presents facts, but it twists the interpretation of facts in its favor. White propaganda works well because it doesn’t draw attention to itself. Black Rhetoric is used when elites are in trouble. It makes up facts because its impact on the subject population is failing. Black Rhetoric of aweing and making people thunderstruck or feeling horrible, using special effects while never stating its claim works beautifully with black propaganda. Black propaganda has the same bad quality of reasoning as Black Rhetoric and is guilty of the same kind of fallacies. While the Black Rhetoric technique of creating fantasies that may be impossible in real life may not be used in black political propaganda, it could be used in entertaining black propaganda such as Walt Disney productions. Both white and black propaganda benefit from having speakers who have charisma. Black political propaganda is right at home with the Black Rhetoric technique of character assassination.

In Dark Rhetoric there are only winners and losers, determined by competition. This fits very well with the part of capitalist propaganda that promotes competition between capitalists as the only way an economy can be run. The entertainment division of propaganda such as reality television programs works very well with the worst superficial and petty side of the population and their short-term and infantile hopes. The limitations Black Rhetoric has to a sympathetic audience does not apply to propaganda because propaganda has to attempt to reach the entire population even those who are cynical because it has to control them. While advertising propaganda is used to treat people as dupes just as propagandists do, advertising that comes off the internet treats people as having specialized needs.

The impact of mass propaganda on Black Rhetoric

Mass propaganda explodes black rhetoric on the scale at which Black Rhetoric can be produced, the times it can be made available to people as well as the number of people it can reach. Black rhetoricians can hide their identity because its sources are elite institutions in which they will be well-protected. Black rhetoricians are much better able to time when their message gets out because it has mass media coordination. While Black Rhetoric is not usually linked to a mythology or ideology under the wing of propaganda it could be harnessed to make it even more powerful. Propaganda has power bases that are linked to political parties, economic systems well beyond the solitary reach of a typical black rhetorician, whether it be a side show barker or used car dealer. The control of some of information flow is less with propaganda than in Black Rhetoric because the Black Rhetoric loses the feedback from performing for a public audience. In Table 2, all the categories beginning with the place of controversy, propaganda doesn’t amplify Black Rhetoric. It just supports it.

                    Table 2 Light Rhetoric vs Propaganda

Left-wing Ideological Criticism of White Rhetoric

What is Marxian ideological criticism of rhetoric?

The field of White Rhetoric makes a separation between communication theory on one hand and politics and economics on the other. Marxians do not accept this separation. Marxian ideological criticism analyzes rhetorical communication messages for their obvious and subtle moves to control relationships in political and economic ways. It examines rhetorical situations and acts for the way in which they can be linked to material conditions of society, like technology, economics or politics. Marxian ideological criticism is bold. For some it is too bold. It claims that all other approaches: liberal, conservative or fascist can be explained by it. It claims that other schools of rhetorical approaches themselves are ideological.

White Rhetoric takes place in a hegemonic capitalist society

Liberal rhetoric operates in a system of capitalist hegemony. Hegemony is the process by which the ruling class gained the willing consent of subordinate groups without the use of force, coercion or bribery. Furthermore, once hegemony is attained it must be reproduced. It is here that White Rhetoric is either part of the problem or a small part of a socialist solution. The goal of the Marxist rhetoric critic is to identify rhetorical acts that legitimate the hegemonic views of the ruling or upper classes. Most Marxist rhetoric has focused on studying mass media – film and TV because of their mass impact on working class life. Our criticism is ideological as it evaluates rhetorical activity in order to discover how the powerful vested interests in a society benefit from policies

The class basis of White Rhetoric 

Just a reminder that the purpose of this article is to capture white rhetoric for socialists. So it is the traditions of white rhetoric that I attempt to win over though it also must be criticized. Marxist Ideology criticism claims that mainstream rhetoric appeals to middle class and upper middle-class audiences and they generally exclude working class people. This is due to the liberal origins of debating in politics and law. Without necessarily hoping to white rhetoric can create false consciousness in the working class. On top of this we have to face that working class people are complicit in their own subjugation (class-in-itself).

Questions to use in the analysis of white rhetorical situations

• Consider all four variables of criticism in the analysis: source-message-environment-critic
• What is the historical, social, political and economic context in which the rhetorical situation or act exists?
• How might the rhetorical situation or act reflect the ideology of the dominant class?
• Does it articulate the ideology directly? In what ways does it legitimize support or sustain it in some way?
• What evidence of the subjugation or exploitation of the working class does the rhetorical situation or act not show?
• In what ways, consciously or unconsciously, does the rhetorical situation or act divide the working class in order to fragment it?
• How might the rhetorical situation or act attempt to create an imaginary unity into the hegemonic ideology?
• Are there any rhetorical acts which demonstrate class conflict favorable to the working class?
• Where is the ideology in the criticism of the other rhetorical approaches to the text?

These questions involve a “critique” that is more than interpretation or evaluation. It is judgment relative to the liberation from the grips of false consciousness of the working class and empowerment, changes in social action and personal identity.

The shortcomings of Marxian ideological rhetorical criticism

Ideological criticism is not unique to Marxists. Ideological criticism can come from conservatives as well. The weaknesses of ideological criticism is that we assume we already know how the world really works. For example, time and again capitalists have survived economic crises that Marxists swore would be the last one. Secondly, doing ideological criticism also creates a danger of becoming paranoid and believing rhetorical forces have intended harm when many of the results of circumstances are unintentional. Third, Marxist critics have known to be reductionist, thinking that every single White Rhetoric artifact can be reduced to an ideological criticism. Fourth, the socialist commitment can lead to a lack of objectivity in evaluating White Rhetoric produced by various liberal rhetoricians. Fifth, it fails to consider the ruling classes are not always conscious, cynical manipulators. They may be themselves imprisoned by the same false consciousness. The constant image of hooded puppeteers twisting and turning the masses at will does not do justice to the subtleties of power and control. Finally, the will of the individual tends to get lost in the shuffle of economics and politics structures. The counter to the individualism in a capitalist society is not to ignore the individual but to identify their social identity not just as a product, but as a co-producer. Fortunately, the work of Terry Eagleton, Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall in cultural studies has addressed some of these criticisms.

Conclusion

My article began experientially with a list of thirteen ways in which anarchists and Leninists fail to use basic rhetorical skills. In part 2 I’ve explained the left’s lack of interest in rhetoric as originating from the bad reputation the field of rhetoric has. To counter this I compared Light to Dark Rhetoric across fifteen categories and claimed that Light Rhetoric can be successfully implemented by socialists. Then I discussed the weakening of White Rhetoric which came about with the electronic age, especially television.

All rhetoric traditions black or white have not been very sensitive to the existence of propaganda and how it interacts with rhetoric. In the service of clarifying this, I differentiate the interaction between rhetoric and propaganda before and after mass communication. I show how black rhetoric techniques are amplified when they have propaganda to support it. Further, I show how propaganda can  benefit from the knowledge of Black Rhetoric techniques.

I close my article by defending the use of White Rhetoric by socialists provided it can withstand Marxian ideological criticism. This includes an awareness that all rhetoric takes place in a capitalist society riddled by class struggles. Nine questions are provided for Marxians to use in criticizing White Rhetoric. I suggest the work of Terry Eagleton and Raymond Williams in carrying out Marxian rhetorical criticism and I close with six criticisms of the Marxian ideological school of rhetorical criticism.