Despite varying understandings of who or what a demagogue is or what a demagogue does, it is little surprise that demagoguery has long occupied rhetoricians, who are of course also interested in persuasion, argument, politics, public speech, affect, emotion, ethics, deliberative discourse, and essentially all the other realms of rhetorical action touched by the demagogue. Still, after more than two and a half millennia of deliberation on the matter, rhetoricians are still grappling with demagoguery-how to define it, how to identify who engages in it, how to explain its rhetorical character and effects, how to resist it, and how to reverse it, or if it's even possible to do so. The essays in this issue advance that effort in a time when demagoguery is once again on the rise.

Historiography Ryan Skinnell[H]istories of our tradition are rhetorical acts, the products of the historian's own cultural milieu.Narratives . . . of our tradition are governed by the historian's commitment to a system of beliefs nourished in the present. However "faithful" it may presume to be to historical events, an account of the past inevitably endorses a specific set of valuations, defends a particular set of social, political and economic relations, and advocates a specific direction for contemporary society (175). Takis This tropological "broadening imperative" is closely linked to historiographical theories of "revisionary history," which James Berlin, an early proponent, defined as "the search for the excluded other…exploring the margins, examining the supplement-the excluded and silenced-and giving it voice" ("Octalog" 35). If history is conventionally written by victors,Berlin entreats historians to attend to the vanquished ("History" 146). Revisionary history cuts across disciplines and incorporates complex, and sometimes competing, goals. But at its core, revisionary history focuses on broadening the field's vision by searching for people, movements, or methods excluded from canonical histories. By broadening the field's vision of what can be considered "rhetorical," revisionary historians have made significant interventions in the history of rhetoric. They have participated in, and often spearheaded, the re(dis)covery of non-male, non-white, non-Western, non-normative, non-privileged, and more recently, non-human, historical actors. 3 Small historical steps and giant disciplinary leaps notwithstanding, however, this essay is not a catalogue of revisionary successes. In fact, "rhetoricians on the moon" is a generative symbol because it comprises conflicting notions of (space) exploration. On one hand, the inexhaustible supply of research subjects suggested by unreachable horizons is exciting; on Who Cares if Rhetoricians Landed on the Moon? 3 the other hand, "broadening" threatens to become the grounds on which revisionary historiography exists rather than a tropological appeal for developing perspective(s).The latter is the argument I intend to make-as a result of rhetorical studies' changing political and intellectual conditions over the past three decades, "broadening" is no longer necessarily connected to the search for critical perspectives around which it developed. ByronHawk makes a similar point when he claims that, "revisionary history has given way to bureaucratic mandate (retrieve the excluded)" (110). Apropos Hawk, I contend that the majority of contemporary revisionary histories are not "revisionary" in Berlin's critical sense of the term because historians connect the broadening imperative to the disciplinary project of developing a more "complete" historical picture. Consequently, contemporary revisionary histories are often pitched toward reinforcing the field's beliefs instead of critically examining them. Revisionary historiography has therefore come to serve preservative, regula...

Using embodied rhetoric, scholars have emphasized the need for reading bodies ethically (Johnson et al. 2015). As well, scholars use embodied rhetoric copyrighted material, not for distribution

he aspirants to tyranny are either the principalmen of the state, who in democracies are demagogues and in oligarchies members of ruling houses, or those who hold great offices, and have a long tenure of them. ~ Aristotle, The Politics Politicians who emerge from democratic practices can then work to undo democratic institutions. This was true in the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as during the spread of communism in the 1940s, and indeed in the new wave of authoritarian regime changes of the 21st century. Indeed, absent a truly decisive revolution, which is a rare event, a regime change depends upon such people-regime changers-emerging in one system and transforming it into another. ~ Timothy Snyder, "Donald Trump and the New Dawn of Tyranny"

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