DEMAGOGIA. — D., in its etymological sense of the art of guiding the people, has not always had the pejorative meaning attributed to it today. In ancient Greece, a demagogue was either an eloquent orator or a statesman who knew how to exercise his influence over the people and became their leader, as, for example, Pericles. D. received an entirely negative evaluation from Aristotle, according to whom the degeneration of democracy into oligarchy and tyranny must be attributed to the action of demagogues, who also stand at the origin of revolutions. By exciting the passions of the people against the rich, they arouse hatred and contempt for the government; or, exploiting the favor of the masses, whose interests they pretend to defend, they tend to establish their own tyranny.
The pejorative meaning attributed by Aristotle to d. remains today the only one in which the word is understood. It denotes either the action of agitators of the people, who, fanning the flames of their passions, aim to incite them against the existing institutions; or the corrupt forms of democracy, in which freedom is replaced by dictatorship and popular tyranny; or weak and yielding politics, which gives way to street movements and tends to satisfy the not always just demands of the agitated masses, to the detriment of the more general interests of the community.
D. must not be confused with democracy, although democratic regimes are easily subject to demagogic corruption, particularly among peoples not sufficiently mature to respect the rules governing orderly political competition. In the various epochs of history there have been many demagogues who have left a trace of their activity. Often animated by ideological fanaticism and by ideals intensely lived, though not always suited to reality, they have drawn the masses after them, exercising an extraordinary influence upon their spirit, as, for example, Cola di Rienzo upon the Roman plebs. D. has instead become a method for the modern currents of socialism and communism, which employ it as a means of undermining bourgeois institutions and leading the proletariat to dictatorship over public life.