Rudy Giuliani's speech at the GOP Convention.Taken from C-SPAN
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s speech to the Republican National Convention serves as the epitome of the rhetoric of fear in the modern GOP. I know, the convention happened almost two months ago, but if you have a chance to watch any portion at all of the above clip, I encourage you to do so. At the least, it might provide you with some enlightening entertainment. Mayor Giuliani’s speech is completely evocative of the power of fear, and the fact that it was on the first night of the convention serves further indication that the entire convention was fully intended to be centered upon fear.
Giuliani seemingly opens his speech with a traditional opening appealing to his and Donald Trump’s home state – New York. However, literally one sentence later, the mood flips completely. Giuliani proclaims that “the vast majority of Americans today do not feel safe.” To make sure that you get the full brunt of his message, Giuliani, of course, uses repetition to provide examples: “They fear for their children. They fear for themselves. They fear for our police officers, who are being targeted with a target on their back.” This last sentence seems to be a bit obvious in terms of its intended strategy – “targeted with a target on their back.” Saying police officers are being targeted is quite simply not enough – the repetition of target in targeted with targets on their backs is apparently supposed to make you visualize a large bull’s eye on every officer’s back. So, within the first minute of his speech, Giuliani has already repeated the word fear three times and is extremely concerned about targeted targets. This speech clearly isn’t going to be optimistic.
For the interests of time, I won’t do an extended rhetorical analysis of the rest of the speech – that is what my Rhetoric 270 course is for. However, certain other elements of the speech are extremely notable. First, take note of Giuliani’s style of speech and body language. As he gets increasingly frustrated as the speech progresses, Giuliani increasingly sounds (and looks) like a drill. He. Speaks. Like. This. Nearly. No. Fluency. At. All. And look at his hand gestures! Nearly every single gesture is a judo chop – an aggressive, up and down flailing of his arms that resembles as though he’s literally beating points into his audience. Now, I don’t know about you, but my speech class in high school didn’t teach me to speak like this. This reminds me much more so of an impassioned middle schooler having a temper tantrum.
To make matters worse, I’m certain that Giuliani has had literally decades of training in public speaking. For instance, take a look at the speech below. Giuliani is renowned because of how he and his administration responded to the attacks of September 11, 2001. And his style of speech there couldn’t be more different – he was seeking unity, inspiration, and courage for a very demoralized audience. Thus, Giuliani certainly has the potential to be a very eloquent speaker – it’s just that, at the GOP Convention, he simply chose not to.
In my mind, this should raise some alarm bells to his audience. Why is he speaking so immaturely? Why does he look and sound like a drill, chanting themes of fear over and over again? Because apparently, this is the sort of message that the GOP believes audiences want. The stage is set for fear literally on the first major address on the first night of the entire convention. The Republican Party wants to scare you shitless so that you vote for them.
This strategy appears to be at least marginally effective at successfully empowering a group of people – namely, the Republican Party base. However, I’m not sure yet how successful this strategy will be at appealing to independents and potential swing voters. The other side – and trust me, the Democratic speeches warrant a special article in and of themselves – prides itself on being symbolic of a more inclusive and optimistic America. Through past experience, optimism frequently tends to win out over apocalyptic rhetoric, but we’ll see how this shapes out in November. For my bit, at least, I’m not going to be scared shitless in order to vote for somebody.
