Tyrants seize control of states and empires with military hardware such as swords and guns, but their armoury contains another forceful weapon: language.
In this entertaining and revealing history, professional speechwriter Guy Doza charts how some of the most bloodthirsty and energetic dictators grabbed and maintained power through their skilled use of words.

The Language of Evil features 18 men and women – emperors, kings and queens, and politicians – including the archetypal despots Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Others are more recent rulers from across the world: the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, India’s Indira Gandhi, and President Mobutu, the kleptomaniac ruler of Zaire.

Whatever their sex or nationality or reputation, each was a master manipulator.

Even the warriors of the Middle Ages, mighty men such as Chinggis Khan and Attila the Hun, glorified for their violence, delivered eloquent heartfelt speeches to their friends and soldiers. Women, whether the power behind the throne or rulers themselves, gave thundering battle speeches, issued mighty edicts and made logically twisted addresses to break democracies.  

Wu Zetian, the first and Empress of China, used the rule of three and a form of repetition known as epistrophe to make bloodcurdling threats. Eva Perón, the First Lady of Argentina, managed to plant the fear of an unknown enemy in the mind of her beloved compañeros.
Like many of his fellow dictators, Napoleon was a master of flattery. The Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and his chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels deployed supposed logic (logos) to convince the German people that the blame for their problems lay with an entirely innocent people. 

As well as identifying the techniques favoured by each dictator, The Language of Evil identifies the common strands between them. Throughout history, across different languages and irrespective of time and place, dictators and their allies have consistently reused the same rhetorical patterns.

In a ‘post-truth’ age where simplified messages overpower sophisticated ones, we still risk falling for the same tricks. The solution is simple, argues Doza, who writes speeches for politicians of all hues. We must arm ourselves with the ability to expose faulty logic and to argue back – with skill and precision. By knowing and heeding the past.