The Trump Administration and Plato’s Critique of Democracy

Since 2016 it has become somewhat commonplace to hear critics of the Trump administration refer to him as a demagogue. Arguably, there is no better word for it, with the way he has continually appealed to fear and patriotic bravado to mobilize his supporters, while neglecting to give the slightest semblance of an argument in defense of the vast majority of his views. Even for months prior to the election, you could find references to Trump’s demagoguery being made by Time, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and others. With the popularization of terms such as “alternative facts” and “fake news,” there hardly seems room left to hide from this accusation anymore.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Plato kind of warned us this would happen. In The Republic, he critiques the direct democracy that existed in his time, and although this form of government differs in some ways from what we have in America today (or what we had in the past), we may nevertheless find a number of the criticisms are still quite relevant. Democracy understood as the rule of free people governing themselves in their own interests leads, in Plato’s view, to demagogues and tyrants. In their emphasis on freedom and equality, democracies face the problem of corruptibility, and can fall either into anarchy or despotism.