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What is a demagogue? According to the encyclopedia, a demagogue is a politician skilled in oratory, flattery, and invective, evasive in discussing vital issues, promising everything to everybody, appealing to the passions rather than the reason of the public, and arousing racial, religious, and class prejudices.
History tells us that personal liberty is most often the demagogue’s first victim, particularly when popular sentiment is whipped up against some internal or foreign enemy. In other words, liberty and demagogos cannot coexist. The ancient Greek word "demagogos" means simply a spokesman for the people or, more pejoratively, a leader of the mob. “Modern usage implies rhetorical gifts and the ability to arouse an audience, usually with the promise of radical change.”
We have been warned of three kinds of people: charlatans, demagogues, and politicians. And, more often than not, someone will rise up who is all three of these characters wrapped into one. Our liberty is the most precious possession. Many will aim to rob us of it and, by so doing, add to their own power, while trying to force us to become robots. We need to be vigilant and guard our liberty with our very lives.
Desperate situations spawn desperate measures. Not having learned the lessons of history, many people will turn to charlatans, demagogues, and politicians with dire consequences. Just a few old and recent cases of this tragic misstep should warn us not to be victimized in the future by frauds.
From the primitive land of the Arabian Peninsula of over 14 centuries ago rose Muhammad, an illiterate hired hand of a rich widow Khadija, claiming that he was the bearer of a perfect life prescription from God—the Quran. He claimed humanity could do no better than to follow its precepts as well as to emulate Muhammad’s own life example for a guarantee of bliss and salvation. In exchange for this, people must embrace Islam—surrender—by surrendering their Liberty to Muhammad.
Question: Why would the All-Wise Lord choose an illiterate desert-dweller, of all the people in the world, to be his messenger? Why choose a man who couldn’t read or write, a man who, over the course of 20 years, claimed to be receiving periodic revelations from God and had to rely on others who could write to jot down his recollections? These recollections were recorded as the word-for-word literal utterances and commandments of God. Furthermore, a dozen versions of the book of Allah, the Quran, turned up and a fallible Caliph selected one of them and had the rest burned. Burning books has ever since been a companion to Islam’s mission.
To this day, in places where Islam rules, many books are banned, newspapers and magazines are systematically either censored or shut down, and other non-print media are methodically blocked. Then liberty, deeply cherished by democracies, is replaced by submission—unquestioning obedience and adherence to the dictates and precepts of the all-knowing and all-wise Allah.
In no time at all, the savages of Arabia, allured by the win-win promise of Muhammad—you kill you get the booty from your victims in this world—you get killed and your abode will be the unimaginably glorious sensuous paradise of Allah—sword-in-hand, sallied forth to lands near and far.
From the “civilized” land of Germany rose a syphilitic lout who called on the German people to surrender their liberty to him in exchange for a surefire solution to all their economic and social ills. He successfully portrayed the Jews as the main cause of the nation’s suffering. Before long, the masses of gullible easy-solution seekers formed long lines in towns and villages of the land, tripping over each other in eagerness to surrender their liberty to the savior Fuhrer.
The German people blindly subscribed to the Nazi’s promises of economic revival, restoration of German pride, and the establishment of supremacy for the Aryan race. In a blink, hordes of rabid Brown Shirts fanned the length and the breadth of the land hunting the Jews. The fire of anti-Jew mania quickly expanded to devour Gypsies, non-Christians in general, the physically or mentally handicapped, the homosexuals and more.
The genocidal Hitler found it expedient to overlook some of the “despicable” Semitic people—the Arabs—by affording the Grand Mufti of Palestine, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a fellow Jew-hater, a most effusive welcome to Germany. To fool a majority of the people for a considerable period might be fatal. Hitler needed only a few years to ruin Germany.
There is hardly a need to document the horrors of the Nazi episode here, where a charlatan managed to hoodwink a nation, rob the people of their liberty and cause so much death and destruction.
It is unthinkable that an ancient nation—Iran—with a distinguished history, allowed a high order demagogue, Ayatollah Khomeini, to rally the people against the Shah with promises of rule for the people and justice for all. The long-suffering Iranians of all strata readily surrendered their liberty to the turbaned bigot and his gang of murdering sycophants.
In Iran, wishful thinking people saw the “holy man of Allah” as an answer to prayer. The fanatic Muslims perceived him as the one who would revive the flagging fortunes of the faith of Muhammad and pave the way for the much-anticipated advent of the Saheb-ul-Zaman (the Lord of the Age.) The secularists hoped for freedom from the Shah’s dictatorship. Religious and ethnic minorities dreamed of a time when unscrupulous power brokers would no longer victimize them.
Gullibility was not limited to the Iranians who swelled the ranks of the fraud. On the other side of the world, the President of the United States of America—the Lusting in the heart Carter—saw Khomeini as a saint and a savior. Carter provided the crucial support to the man whose greatest claim to the rank of the Grand Ayatollah was his lengthy dissertation on matters concerning sexual intercourse with animals.
No sooner had this fraud of Allah ascended to power than the Iranians of all strata began to pay the price – tens of thousands with their lives – for the folly of letting the three-in-one Ayatollah make decisions for them, the three-in-one that we had been warned about.
For over thirty years the Iranian people have been paying for the tragedy that has befallen them. And that’s not where it ends. Khomeinism is the fire that is spreading beyond the borders of Iran. Khomeinism is a recent violent version of Islam’s Shiism. Islam means surrender. Surrender to the will and dictates of Allah as revealed by Mohammad.
A true Muslim does not and cannot believe in liberty. Everything is up to Allah, so says Mohammad. Everything that a Muslim does is contingent upon the will and decree of Allah. It is for this reason that the phrase Ensha-Allah (Allah willing) always accompanies any promise or commitment that a believer makes. By embracing Muhammad as the unerring and eternal emissary of Allah, a Muslim surrenders his liberty to decide for himself.
The Muslims’ surrender of liberty is not merely a matter of personal choice. The Muslims, having abandoned their most precious rights, are out to make all non-Muslims also do so, by hook or crook. It is said that misery loves company. And the type of misery that Islam has visited on the Muslims and the Islamic lands is a rapidly spreading plague that must be resisted by all who cherish their God-given Liberty.
In the land of the free and home of the brave, a prince charming rose up in the person of Barrack Hussein Obama, promising “A Change We Can Believe In.” Waves of the populace sang the song with him, “Yes We Can.” The skill to arouse the public to frenzy does not make one a worthy leader, nor should one automatically assume that his policies will equal prosperity or liberty.
In a climate of insanity, the people of the land called America, having been deceived by a depiction of a fair and caring socialistic idea that would exalt itself as their protector and provider, chose a charismatic, soft speaking “prophet" as their savior, and some people even called him “The Messiah.” He emerged from the fog with a message that had no meaning, yet he was able to hypnotize people by telling them he was sent to save us from ourselves. Never mind his lack of experience, his questionable ethics and integrity, his humongous ego, and his past association with evil doers, for he will save us with hope and change.
Many Americans forgot that anyone who claims special privileges and status for himself, makes outlandish promises and threats, pits one people against another, fits the bill of three-in-one. The most dangerous person of all is anyone who persuades you to give up your liberty in exchange for your security. And we all have heard the cliché “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.”
The lesson is clear. Beware of the demagogue who will use your emotions to further his political ambition. Undoubtedly, he serves as the greatest threat to our liberty. He paves the way for the advancement of totalitarianism and our liberty will assuredly be among the very first victims of demagoguery as soon as he assumes power.
Amil Imani is an Iranian-born American citizen and pro-democracy activist residing in the United States of America. Imani is a columnist, literary translator, novelist and an essayist who has been writing and speaking out for the struggling people of his native land, Iran. He and his family escaped Iran after the radical Islamic revolution.
