Defending Against the Demagogue

Although words are our main tools for thinking about the world, in public life they’re used most relentlessly to keep us from thinking at all. As we discussed last month, demagogues twist language until it no longer helps us track reality but only stirs our emotions. In the mid-20th century, an idiosyncratic thinker named Alfred Korzybski invented a discipline he called general semantics — an attempt at “mental hygiene,” a way to restore the link between words and the world to enable effective thinking. In a climate of weaponized slogans and endless “news,” its core insights feel astonishingly current.

In the 1930s, Korzybski and his followers described a pattern they called the IFD disease: idealization, followed by frustration, ending in disillusionment or despondency. They didn’t have to look far for an illustration. In that decade, Adolf Hitler was converting the genuine hopes of many otherwise decent people into a cult of national redemption, promising to restore an imagined ancestral magnificence. Those hopes, warped by delusions, led many to commit horrific acts.