Patricia Roberts-Miller. Rhetoric Society Quarterly. Volume 49, Issue 3, 2019.
One can only hold the masses by habit—or else by force.
~ Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Table Talk (335)
When I was in graduate school, and teaching first-year writing classes that focused on argumentation, a colleague said, “If Hitler hadn’t existed, college argumentation courses would have had to invent him.” His point was simply that it seems impossible to get through a class on rhetoric without Hitler coming up. Hitler is the gold standard of demagoguery, an ideal example of the evil power of evil rhetoric. As Kenneth Burke said, Hitler was “a man who swung a great nation in his wake” (164). Thomas Mann emphasized Hitler’s “gift of oratory [which] is oratory unspeakably inferior in kind, but magnetic enough in its effect on the masses” (31). Albert Speer, after the war, said that when the Gauleiters (regional political officials) visited Hitler, even as late as 1944, “they would be deeply convinced and would never tolerate any doubts” (qtd. in Overy 220). Ferdinand Heim, an imprisoned Nazi general, described Hitler’s “remarkable hypnotic power” (Neitzel 135, emphasis in the original). By this narrative, the Nazis’ genocidal war was singularly (or almost entirely) caused by Hitler’s ability to use his unique rhetorical abilities to get the people of a great nation to support policies they would otherwise never have allowed. Speer explained it as “the absolute rule by one man, surrounded by weaklings” (qtd. in Overy 257).
While scholars agree that Hitler engaged in demagoguery (Ian Kershaw calls him “the greatest demagogue known to history,” Nemesis 780), they also agree that Hitler’s demagoguery was not the cause of genocide. Robert Gellately puts it elegantly: “The very idea of brainwashing a nation of more than 60 million Germans … is so implausible that it should be dismissed out of hand” (259). Hitler was not someone whose unique rhetorical abilities magically persuaded Germans to reject their culture, their history, and their values. The notion of Hitler as master sorcerer was popular after the war, especially promoted by people like Speer who wanted to present themselves as unwilling and naïve victims of Hitler’s rhetorical magic (which he was not). This narrative was also politically useful since it made de-Nazification of Germany—important for Cold War politics—relatively straightforward. If the crimes of Nazism were the consequence of Hitler’s will and rhetoric, then Hitler’s death had already removed the cause.
Thus, it is a mistake to think the disasters of Nazism were singularly caused by the power of Hitler’s demagoguery, but it is equally a mistake to conclude his rhetoric was irrelevant. Hitler did engage in demagoguery, and it was sometimes effective and sometimes not. His demagoguery relied on the same topoi throughout his career: Germany was the real victim, entitled to European hegemony, and blameless for World War I (a war it would have won had it not been for a Jewish/Bolshevik stab in the back); and all of Germany’s economic, social, diplomatic, and military problems could be solved by putting complete faith and power in him. While it’s difficult to make the argument that he persuaded many people on those points—those were all widespread claims made by others before Hitler became well known—there were points on which large numbers of Germans did change their beliefs during his time as chancellor, such as whether genocide was justified, whether a two-front war was winnable, whether the USSR was ally or enemy, and whether various countries could be invaded without starting a war. Observers like William Shirer (a US news correspondent), Josef Goebbels, and the authors of Nazi and anti-Nazi surveillance reports frequently noted that a Hitler speech inspired (or restored) confidence (see Evans, Third Reich at War; Kershaw, End). So, at times Hitler’s rhetoric was effective. But at times his same rhetorical strategies had little or no impact. As Kershaw says about Hitler’s 1944 speeches, “The dictator’s rhetoric, so powerful in ‘sunnier’ periods, had lost its ability to sway the masses” (Nemesis 614, see also 606, 620, 632, 773), even though it had the same topoi and moves.
Paradoxically then, if we are intent on preventing another Hitler, as scholars of rhetoric should be, we should not just focus strictly on Hitler or his rhetorical strategies. Rather, we should ask what made his demagoguery powerful at some times and not powerful other times—why did the same rhetoric sometimes gain compliance and sometimes not?
As my graduate school colleague’s point—that if Hitler did not exist, we would have to invent him—indicates, when studying the power of demagoguery, people tend to focus on a prominent political figure whose power comes from a combination of demagogic rhetoric and charismatic leadership. While I will argue that charismatic leadership and demagoguery are deeply entangled, restricting demagogues to figures with those three characteristics (political position, demagogic rhetoric, and a charismatic leadership relationship with followers) troubles our ability to understand causal relationships. The Hitler-as-singular-cause suggests he invented new ways to enchant people, and that’s a popular model for explaining how demagogues succeed. To the contrary, I contend that a person is able to rise to power using a particular set of demagogic topoi and strategies because so many nonpolitical figures are using that same demagoguery (it’s the familiarity that gives the rhetor legitimacy). The familiarity of the rhetoric similarly makes the charismatic leadership relationship more attractive. Demagoguery reduces all policy questions to issues of identity (us vs. them) and motive (loyalty or disloyalty to the in-group) (see Roberts-Miller, Rhetoric). When demagoguery is combined, as it often is, with some kind of outcomes-based ethics or reasoning (such as the just world model or Machiavellianism), then it is just a question of time until a mystical, magical figure emerges—one who is apparently authentically imbued with universally valid judgment who should not be restrained by conventional political norms. That is, the kind of person we conventionally imagine when we think of a demagogue. Thus, scholars of rhetoric should not worry about that individual but about those conditions.
This argument will take three steps: first, I discuss briefly why demagoguery, and not demagogues, matters; second, I argue that when individual demagogues do come to power, it is because they successfully combine demagoguery (which is being used by many people at the same time) and charismatic leadership (which is a way to gain compliance); and third, I argue that charismatic leadership thrives in cultures that advocate outcomes-based ethics. By noting the connection of outcomes-based ethics and charismatic leadership, we can identify conditions that permit, and even cultivate, demagoguery.
Demagogues and Demagoguery
It may seem odd, if not actively contrarian, to insist on the importance of demagoguery rather than demagogues, but critical focus on the individual rhetors has troubling consequences for explaining persuasion. As has been pointed out elsewhere, definitions of demagoguery vary considerably (Gustainis; Roberts-Miller, “Democracy”), it’s not uncommon for the term to be used without any definition at all (e.g., Bosworth), and at least one collection of essays on the topic of demagogues does not rely on any consistent definition (Logue and Dorgan). While definitions vary, there is, as James Darsey has noted, a sort of usual suspects list of demagogues, such as Theodore Bilbo, Father Charles Coughlin, Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy, Gene Talmadge (see, for instance, Luthin or Logue and Dorgan). Scholars tend to focus on individuals conventionally seen as demagogues and then infer a list of shared characteristics (what Luthin calls “marks”). It is not clear, then, whether the label “demagogue” is a claim about rhetorical strategies, political agenda, or personal ethics (with some definitions, such as Luthin’s or Signer’s, including a bit of all three).
That there is a list of usual suspects obscures considerations of why those figures—their rhetorical strategies vary considerably. While Bilbo and Talmadge always race-baited, race-baiting was not particularly important for Long or McCarthy. More important, in terms of their rhetoric, these (mostly Southern) political figures were rarely very different from innumerable other rhetors, political or not, famous or not. It’s an odd realization that figures often listed as demagogues had neither arguments nor rhetorical strategies that made them unique—McCarthy did not invent redbaiting, and it remained powerful long after his fall; the race-baiting behind pro-segregation demagoguery was almost a century old and continued to repeat the same claims (and flawed studies) well into the 1960s (see, especially, Jackson). David Duke’s rhetoric simply rehashes the rhetors he cites; meanwhile, his hash is rehashed everywhere from tweets to Reddit (see Dobratz and Shanks-Meile, especially 231, 247-52). Even Hitler, the “gold standard” of demagogues, was infamously unoriginal in both content and rhetorical strategies (Bendersky 21-25; Gregor 38-40; Kershaw, Hubris 124, 240-50; M. Mann 178; Ullrich 89, 176). Instead of people being moved to antisemitism because of the power of Hitler’s rhetoric, it’s likely people enjoyed Hitler because his antisemitism was familiar and shared. It’s plausible that a particular kind of demagoguery (anti-slavery, pro-segregation, pro-eugenics, pro-internment) persuades people to support political figures and actions precisely because the basic claims are so widespread.
Demagoguery generally argues for taking deliberative power away from the larger group and investing it in a much smaller group or an individual. In some cases, the demagogue demands that decision-making power be handed to him (usually, but not always, a him), as in the case of Hitler. But, in many cases, demagoguery argues that the audience should do what the rhetor models and trust entirely in someone else. For instance, Goebbels’s speeches were undoubtedly demagoguery, but not in service of his listeners giving power over to him personally; he was always arguing for putting perfect faith in Hitler and the party (Goebbels; see also Evans, Third Reich in Power 122). Matthew Levendusky’s study of partisan media shows it is not primarily oriented toward rhetors using demagoguery to argue for themselves or their policies: “they spend just as much—if not more—time attacking the other” party (34). Such media promotes the belief that “the opposition is not simply wrong, but dangerously so” (32) because they are essentially “duplicitous and corrupt” (34). But such partisan demagoguery is not oriented toward putting the rhetor into political leadership positions; Keith Olbermann, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore, and Ann Coulter (all rhetors who frequently rely on demagoguery) are not arguing for their audience making them political leaders; they are trying to persuade audiences to trust a political party and/or candidates of that party. So, rhetors like Olbermann, Limbaugh, Moore, or Coulter model the stance toward leadership they want their audiences to adopt: reducing all political issues to a binary them (an evil out-group who should be passionately rejected) and us (a good in-group toward whom one should be passionately loyal). If we limit our attention to demagogues trying to promote their own candidacy, we miss that more common kind.
And it is an important kind. John Oddo has shown that Americans were not persuaded to support the Iraq invasion by Colin Powell’s March 2003 UN speech, but by how the US media framed, reframed, and disseminated claims in and about his speech. Autobiographies and memoirs of Nazis often describe being persuaded of the Nazi message, not by Hitler, but by demagoguery on his behalf (by other speakers at Nazi rallies, Nazi newspapers, or even just friends and family members; see, e.g., Abel or Merkl). Even for those who report being deeply moved by Hitler, part of his ethos was constructed by what was said about him by other speakers, especially the ways he was legitimated by political, cultural, and even philosophical elite (e.g., Erickson; Koonz; Sherratt; Steigman-Gall). Hitler’s recurrent topoi (mentioned above) preexisted him. In other words, demagoguery exceeds, and often precedes, individual demagogues.
If our goal as scholars of rhetoric is to prevent state-sponsored violence against an out-group, tyranny, or simply self-destructive political deliberation, then we should not wait until an individual rides the wave of demagoguery to power. We should understand how that wave came to be. I am arguing that, when the individual does ride a wave, it’s because they have managed to combine demagoguery and charismatic leadership.
Charismatic Leadership
Max Weber famously identified three sources of power for a leader: traditional, legal, and charismatic. Charismatic leadership is not just leadership on the part of someone who is charismatic, but, as Weber argued, a relationship that implies a source of power for the leader. In a charismatic leadership situation, people follow because they believe the leader is divinely inspired, almost supernaturally wise and powerful, and singularly capable of leading the in-group out of its despairing situation. Charismatic leadership relies on the vision that such a leader has, and, as even a glance at airport bookstores shows, it is the dominant trend in management. The notion of vision has been, as Dennis Tourish and Naheed Vatcha say, “increasingly stressed in the business world, in a growing volume of largely uncritical practitioner and academic literature” (458). They continue, “The intention is that followers should become highly committed to the leader’s mission, make significant personal sacrifices in the interests of the mission, and perform beyond the call of duty” (458). Jim Collins, who is critical of the concept, refers to “the belief that we need larger-than-life saviors with big personalities to transform companies” as “conventional wisdom” in leadership (22).
Weber warned that the charismatic leadership relationship is potentially fraught, and necessarily unstable, but popular books, such as Start with Why (Sinek) and First, Break All the Rules (Buckingham and Coffman), ignore Weber’s warnings (as well as the scholarship concerning the close relationship between cults and charismatic leadership). For instance, note the lack of caveats or criticisms in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Management’s entry on charismatic leadership, which describes three stages: first, “sensitivity to the environment”; second, “a sense of strategic vision versus rational or purely tactical goals” with the current situation presented as “intolerable”: third, building followers’ trust in the abilities of the leader, something accomplished “by building TRUST through personal example and RISK TAKING and through unconventional expertise” (Conger 41, emphasis in the original).
It is worth noting that Hitler’s career quite neatly fits this description. In the first step, “sensitivity to the environment,” charismatic leaders have “heightened sensitivity to deficiencies and poorly exploited opportunities in the status quo.” Hitler describes his perception that the Nazi party was a group that could be exploited; and the skill with which he played Hindenburg, von Papen, and the other political figures shows a heightened sensitivity to opportunities. The second stage is formulating and advocating “an idealized, highly aspirational goal,” which is expressed through a rhetoric in which “only the positive features of the future vision and the negative features of the status quo are emphasized” (41). This rhetoric is strengthened through depth of personal conviction demonstrated by “high energy, persistence, unconventional and risky behavior, heroic deeds, and personal sacrifices” (41). Hitler’s speeches were praised for their energy, he (and his supporters) effectively reframed the bungled coup attempt (the Beerhall Putsch) as heroic, he claimed to make personal sacrifices for Germany, and he described a vision of a peaceful Germany restored to the glory and prestige to which it was entitled (see, especially, Ullrich 92-109). In some circumstances, he described a Germany in which out-groups had been eliminated or expelled; in other circumstances (where his eliminationist policies might have been more troubling), he described a pure, clean, and healthy Germany (which his base would understand to mean out-groups were eliminated or expelled). His speeches and writings emphasized himself as completely certain of his destined victory. The third stage is building trust, largely “through personal example and RISK TAKING and through unconventional expertise. [Charismatic leaders] also engage in exemplary acts that are perceived by followers as involving great personal risk, cost, and energy” (Conger 41). That’s an apt description of Hitler’s rise to power, and, perhaps more important, his actions through 1939, when his extraordinarily risky maneuvers (rearmament, violations of agreements, occupations, invasions) were met with no resistance. Thus, if charismatic leadership is good, then Hitler was a good leader, although leadership books rarely make that connection explicit.
Elsewhere I have argued that demagoguery is characterized by displacing all policy argumentation with arguments about identity (Rhetoric). In that context, note that the above description of Hitler describes precisely that displacement—the charismatic leader does not advocate rational or tactical goals, nor does he usually allow, let alone encourage, consideration of any negatives about the “vision.” The same sort of displacement pervades contemporary leadership books. Take, for example, Simon Sinek’s Start with Why, a tremendously popular leadership book. In it, Sinek argues against decision making grounded in rationality (see especially 56-58, 78-79) in favor of dissent-free (“there was no room for those who didn’t believe” 87), “authentic” (by which he means sincere, e.g., 68), “absolute conviction in an ideal bigger than oneself” (134) that magically leads to the gut instincts being right, and then you can provide the evidence:
If you can verbalize the feeling that drove the gut decision, if you can clearly state your WHY, you’ll provide a clear context for those around you to understand why that decision was made. If the decision is consistent with the facts and figures, then those facts and figures serve to reinforce the decision—this is balance. And if the decision flies in the face of all the facts and figures then it will highlight the other factors that need to be considered. (79, emphasis in the original)
In other words, deliberation should be the leader coming to a good decision, and then looking for evidence to support it. The charismatic leader does not advocate rational or tactical goals, debate policies, or let policies emerge from the data. The vision is first.
Followers are supposed to sacrifice themselves for this vision not because they have been persuaded it is practical, ethical, or the best option among many but because it is the one the leader wants, and s/he is the kind of person one should believe—because their commitment to the vision is demonstrated through their persistence, risky behavior, and personal sacrifices. This process is agency by proxy, in which people feel a sense of self-efficacy, although someone else is the agent; they do so because the agent seems to be directed by the same will (Bandura). In addition, this is decision making by proxy. Followers hand over their deliberative powers because the leader seems to be the sort of person who knows what to do and whom followers believe to be motivated by authentic good will toward them.
Obviously, this is a profoundly antidemocratic way to think about a community, and it should be no surprise that research on organizations like Enron shows reliance on charismatic leadership. According to Dennis Tourish and Naheed Vatcha, Enron exemplifies
the downsides of charismatic leadership, a compelling and totalistic vision, intellectual stimulation aimed at transforming employees’ goals while subordinating their ethical sense to the needs of the corporation, individual consideration designed to shape behavior, and the promotion of a culture which was increasingly maintained by punitive means. (475)
Dissent was silenced, unethical practices were normalized, and the risks of behaviors were minimized and ignored.
Moreover, in cases like Enron’s, charismatic leadership does not work without punishment (even Sinek unironically notes that charismatic leaders fire people who do not follow). That punishment was, and is, necessary means charismatic leadership does not magically turn followers into mindless zombies incapable of ethical or intellectual agency. Followers choose to follow. David Cesarani’s work on the notorious desk-murderer Adolf Eichmann, for instance, insists Eichmann was not a mindless automaton. He could have asked for a transfer, but he did not because after a brief moment of moral discomfort, “he conducted himself with complete commitment to the task in hand, rising to a pitch of fevered exertion. Either Eichmann wanted to kill Jews or he didn’t care if they perished” (367).
In scholarship on the Holocaust, the notion that Hitler was a magic man who seduced Germans with his rhetoric and charm is, justifiably, condemned as a shabby excuse for the substantial German enthusiasm for and participation in genocide. Hitler and his supporters were in a relationship of charismatic leadership, but, as Richard Evans says, “The overwhelming majority of adults, whose minds and beliefs had been formed before the onset of the Third Reich, kept their own values more or less intact; sometimes they overlapped strongly with the Nazis, sometimes they did not” (Third Reich in Power 709). Charismatic leadership does not remove anyone’s ability to judge or choose, but it can seem to absolve us of responsibility for those choices and judgments (a point made by Erich Fromm). And it certainly frees us from the hard and boring work of deliberating. People choose to follow a charismatic leader because it’s attractive.
Charismatic Leadership and Outcome-Based Ethics
Charismatic leadership is especially attractive under certain circumstances. One of those is when any version of what might be called outcomes-based ethics is dominant. Various ways of assessing acts or policies rely entirely on the outcome (often the immediate outcome), such as the belief that the market only and always rewards the “best” product, company, or industry (the myth of the rational market); might makes right; prosperity gospel; survival of the fittest; or the just world model. In such a system, that a policy (or leader) has gotten us a desirable outcome is taken to mean the policy, leader, and decision-making process must have been right. Outcomes-based ethics and the “just world model” are closely related. The just world model presumes that the world immediately and obviously rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior, so people with good things did something to merit them, and people who are suffering did something to bring that suffering on. This is a world subject to perfect individual control: if you want good things, be a good person, and do the right things. It is also a world subject to sheer will or strong enough faith. Furthermore, if a process or choice leads to success, it must have been a good one—thus, an action or process is determined to have been good (meaning both ethical and pragmatic) based on the outcome (thereby confusing random chance and earned luck). Thus, for instance, Hitler’s popularity rose in 1933-39 because he seemed to be succeeding, and, even after the war, many Germans insisted things were great until the war started (a consistent theme in Milton Mayer’s interviews), not seeing the war and serial genocides as the logical consequence and even telos of Hitler’s policies.
A culture slouches toward demagoguery when the dominant models of decision making truncate deliberation, and that is what outcomes-based methods of assessment do. Since “ethical,” “effective,” and “successful” are imagined to be interchangeable, all that matters is if people are getting what they want in the moment. If people like the current outcomes, there is no point in deliberation about whether the course of action up until now was good. Milton Friedman famously argued that success in economics is proof of expert and rational judgment (see, especially, 21-22), and that, in the words of Jeff Madrick, “the assumptions of an economic model need not be justified” (92). It’s this kind of thinking that means economists and pundits continually fail to recognize bubbles, since, at least while the bubble is expanding, the myth of the perfectly rational marketplace means it is not a bubble. Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff summarize what they call the “this-time-is-different syndrome” as “rooted in the firmly held belief that financial crises are things that happen to other people in other countries at other times; crises do not happen to us, here and now” (1, 15). To admit people might be profiting from unethical or destructive practices, or that profit might be short term, would be to say the dominant economic system is unjust, which would trouble the just world model.
Paradoxically, then, the just world model contributes to injustice by persuading people that victims of injustice deserve it. Peter Glick argues, “Once the Nazis were in a position of power and started to persecute the Jews, even passive German bystanders were more likely to accept Nazi ideology, believing that the Jews must have done something to warrant their ill-treatment” (137). Ervin Staub makes the same point about bystanders in genocides more generally: “Just-world thinking will lead them to see victims as deserving their own fate, and devalue them” (24). Even more disturbing, belief in a just world enables perpetrators of violence to rationalize their own violence: “Assuming that the world is just, and that people who suffer must have brought the fate on themselves by their actions or character, ironically, perpetrators are likely to devalue people they have themselves harmed” (22).
In short, within the just world model (or within a culture in which the rhetoric of the just world model is dominant), as long as the in-group is getting their desired outcome, then ethical, political, or pragmatic criticism of the processes, policies, or even people who got us here is disallowed.
For the rest of this essay, I want to argue that obsession with charismatic leadership is the natural consequence of outcomes-based ethics. But first I want to emphasize that it was outcomes-based ethics that considerably helped Hitler (and fueled his own ideology, in the form of survival of the fittest). Hitler’s rhetoric was important—Kershaw refers to him as “the masterly demagogue whose power base had rested in no small measure on his unrivalled ability to play on the expectations and resentments of the people” (Nemesis 420)—but it was not the only factor. His path to the Chancellorship was through backroom deals and illegal legislative maneuvers (see Evans, Coming 333-54; Kershaw, Hubris 462-68; Ullrich 437-39). Michael Mann argues, “Nazis were able to seize power because a shrewd leadership was able to mobilize three essential power resources: the activism and violence of Nazi militants …, the votes of one-third of the German electorate, and the ambivalence of German elites concerning Weimar democracy” (177). Conservatives, especially religious conservatives, underestimated Hitler, thought he could be controlled, and believed he was better than the only other alternative: Bolshevism (because of Social Democrats’ liberal social policies, many conservatives considered the Social Democrats to be Bolshevik). As Kershaw says, “Hitler’s immense popularity had been attained during the 1930s through successes” (Nemesis 421). Hitler’s popularity rose after he took over the chancellorship because so many Germans liked the outcomes they were getting, and his rhetoric framed the events in pleasing ways. Catholics and Protestants liked the socially conservative legislation he passed, many people liked Hitler’s foreign policy, which Mann aptly describes as “aggression but without war” (178), the military and militarists liked his rebuilding of the Germany military (see Citino, especially 281, and Stone), and even the judiciary capitulated (for more on Hitler’s support, see Gellately). Hitler does not simply exemplify the dangers of his kind of toxic populist rhetoric but the dangers of outcomes-based ethics.
Charismatic leadership is closely connected to the just world model and outcomes-based ethics, and the just world model is a rhetoric that severely limits what can be argued. And, therefore, promoting the rhetoric of charismatic leadership as the only or best kind of leadership means a culture of demagoguery will eventually find a demagogue. If we want to prevent the disaster, instead of looking for that individual, we should undermine the obsession with charismatic leadership and the normalization of demagoguery.
One very American instantiation of outcomes-based ethics is the myth of the rational market. The basic argument is that individuals (or corporations) should look out entirely for their own best interest, and the fierce competition will result in the best products, rational prices, acceptable levels of unemployment, and generally the best possible quality of life. That myth—or at least the part of it that says the only concern in the market should be profit—creates a rhetorical, motivational quandary. Increasingly, employees are expected to behave with more than mere compliance—to work more than 40 hours a week, to sacrifice health and homelife, more than for which they will be compensated, at least in the short run. The ideal employee gives more to the corporation than she gets back in monetary compensation—the ideal employee values loyalty more than is fiscally rational. But this is not a symmetric relationship—the corporation is not expected to value loyalty to employees more than its fiscal bottom line. Business pundits always justify businesses cracking open pension funds, firing people, minimizing benefits, and other practices on the grounds that a business should make decisions on purely economic grounds—but businesses do not want employees reasoning the same way.
That asymmetric ethical relationship creates rhetorical instability. Imagine a corporation that says the best employee is the one who bills the most hours or sells the most units, regardless of whether the client really required that many hours or the customer needed that many units. If incentives are such that anything short of breaking the law and getting caught is allowed, if it’s okay to falsify your timesheet to get more money out of customers, then on what grounds is it not okay to falsify your expenses to get more money out of your corporation? It’s the same problem with a culture—if maximizing your share of goods is the major ethical dictum, then on what grounds should you obey the law? Only if you are likely to get caught, if obeying the law directly benefits you, or if the costs of disobeying are higher than the benefits of law-breaking. Needless to say, that results in a chaotic culture.
In order to restrain the chaos, there are two closely related methods that cultures or communities of outcome-based ethics can try: first, appeal to in-group/out-group ethics, thereby mobilizing in-group identification to create loyalty to the in-group; and second, get that in-group loyalty attached to a particular person (i.e., charismatic leadership). In other words, and this is the important part, they can attempt to replace the cultural strength provided by fairness with the power of in-group loyalty. It is possible sometimes to get that level of commitment to a group (e.g., we will not cheat our corporation because marketing is our in-group, and stealing would be disloyal to that group). That is what both political parties try to do at their conventions, with mixed success. But it is unlikely for a corporation to get people to identify with the corporation (especially in a world in which a dominant message is that employers do not have to be loyal to employees past the point of profitability). The strategy more likely to work is to get identification with the leader of the corporation or with individual managers.
The rhetoric of the charismatic leadership model becomes dominant because it is necessitated by the problem of how to motivate people when fairness across groups is precluded by the dominance of outcomes-based ethics. The rhetoric of charismatic leadership resolves a rhetorical problem by circumventing policy argumentation. Ultimately, charismatic leadership is a relationship, and it’s an asymmetric one. This relationship is not an invitation for everyone in the corporation or community to contribute to decision making; it is not one in which all employees are asked to do whatever they think is right—it’s hoping for a system in which people believe so much in the leader that they do whatever s/he says, and that they try to please the leader at all times by doing more than is required. Further, despite the cultural dicta of “every man for himself,” followers have to believe this leader is genuinely looking out for them—that the leader is not behaving rationally but out of passionate loyalty to people like them. The charismatic leader is a winner, and pure faith in that leader will result in followers being part of the winning team.
Before I conclude, I need to clear up what may seem like a contradictory argument: I have said charismatic leadership seems attractive when the situation is presented as life or death for the in-group and when the situation is improving. And that is the odd dissonance that charismatic leadership manages, as does demagoguery: while desperate situations can make charismatic leadership and demagoguery attractive choices, so can good situations. The important factor is not really how genuinely bad a situation is; it’s about whether people believe all policy issues should be reduced to a zero-sum model of in-group/out-group relations in which we need to determine which charismatic leader will best protect and promote the interests of the in-group.
If things go well, it’s proof the leader is good; if things go badly, then it’s proof they need the leader. The rhetoric of outcomes-based ethics (survival of the fittest, the miracle of the market, the just world model) when combined with demagoguery says the in-group faces an all-or-nothing situation in which we will either triumph or be exterminated, and triumph is guaranteed if we (the true members of the in-group) all have a fanatical commitment to the in-group’s triumph. And it says that we can know our fanatical commitment to rhetors who embody the in-group is correct if we are getting the policy outcomes we believe are good. We do not have to worry about how they get those outcomes. But in a democracy, this is a fundamental problem. Democracy is undermined by how as much as by what. And fanatical commitment to the in-group, even if it initially gets good outcomes, is not a good how.