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In 1939 Kenneth Burke released an astute and foretelling essay analyzing Hitler's Mein Kampf (published only four years prior in 1925) entitled The Rhetoric of Hitler's "Battle." He identifies four main persuasive ornaments Hitler used that explain the communication in which he came to power: inborn dignity, projection device, symbolic rebirth, and commercial use. I use Burke's essay to parallel the development and successes of Hitler's rhetoric with President Trump's rhetoric and media presence in order to encourage using Burke's sheer perceptiveness to foreshadow and protect against similar swindle in United States leadership.
In 1939 Kenneth Burke released an astute and foretelling essay analyzing Hitler's Mein Kampf (published only four years prior in 1925) entitled The Rhetoric of Hitler's "Battle. " Burke guides readers through the work, pointing out rhetorical patterns that divulge Hitler's tactics of persuasion. He concedes Hitler as a powerful orator who uses unification devices to sway audiences, and accurately cautions against the "peace of one voice, amplified by social organizations, with all the others not merely quieted, but given the quietus" (Burke, 1939, p. 220). He identifies four main persuasive ornaments in Hitler's rhetoric that explain the communication in which he came to power: inborn dignity, projection device, symbolic rebirth, and commercial use (Burke, 1939). Burke's essay can be used to parallel the development and successes of Hitler's rhetoric with President Trump's present-day rhetoric and media presence.
For Burke (1939), the most prominent feature of Hitler's unification process was his idea of inborn dignity. Hitler stresses the "natural bom" dignity of man, the "religious and humanistic patterns of thought" typically including all mankind (Burke, 1939, p. 202). Hitler also, however, posits that this dignity is innate only to his own bloodline. Other "races," such as Jews or black people, are innately inferior and belonging to a different bloodline (Burke, 1939). His twisted version of inborn dignity shifts to instead become inborn superiority. His public discourse and private writings on the topic connect this idea under religious terms and folklore. Traditionally, Catholic and Christian traditions trace bloodlines through Hebrew ancestry (Burke, 1939). By denying this lineage and suggesting only one race, Aryanism, was superior and truly deserving of the progression of the German nation, Hitler was able to start the process...