DEMAGOGUERY. - Demagogy, according to its etymological sense the art of leading the people, has not always had the pejorative meaning that is attributed to it today. In ancient Greece the demagogue was either the eloquent orator or the statesman who knew how to exercise his influence over the people and made himself their leader, as, for example, Pericles. Demagogy receives a wholly negative evaluation in 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 stir up hatred and contempt for the government, or by exploiting the favor of the masses, whose interests they pretend to defend, they tend to establish their own tyranny.
The pejorative sense attributed by Aristotle to demagogy remains today the only one in which the word is understood. It indicates either the action of the agitators of the people, who, blowing on the fire of its passions, aim to rouse it against the existing institutions, or the corrupt forms of democracy, in which dictatorship and popular tyranny take the place of liberty, or the weak and yielding policy that gives in to street movements and tends to satisfy the not always just claims of agitated masses, to the detriment of the more general interests of the community.
Demagogy 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 of orderly political competition. In the various epochs of history there have been many demagogues who left a trace of their work. Often animated by ideological fanaticism and by ideals intensely lived though not always adequate to reality, they dragged the masses behind them, exercising an extraordinary influence on their minds, as, for example, Cola di Rienzo over the Roman plebs. Demagogy has instead become a method for the modern currents of socialism and communism, which use it as a means to unhinge bourgeois institutions and lead the proletariat to dictatorship over public life.