Kenneth Burke's Hitler Essay

Burke’s main point here is to analyze the way that Hitler thought during this time period in order to understand the techniques that Hitler used to persuade the German population. Burke ultimately addressed these problems to let his audience know and be aware of these problems so that they do not happen within the United States today. Burke states that Hitler uses the same pattern of ideas over and over again throughout his book; the Aryan constructive race and the Jewish destructive race. The exigence that was brought forth here were the problems that Germany was facing at the time. Hitler responded to this exigence by finding a scapegoat for the problems, a scapegoat that became the Jewish population. Hitler used rhetoric is words and also in images. Hitler’s rhetoric persuaded everyone in reverse of what is actual morally correct. He twisted ideas to get people to believe that was he is saying is actually right. He used things such as blood lines and God, things that people could relate with. Hitler believed that the Aryan race was elevated above all else. The Jewish must be destroyed in order for the Aryan’s to succeed and move forward in their movement. Burke says that if one can hand over its problems to an outside source then ultimately you can battle that outside source instead of causing trouble within. This is exactly what Hitler did. Hitler chose to pawn off the problems in Germany on the Jewish population, the lower class, so that Germany could unify and battle the Jewish population all together. After all, Hitler was trying to unify the German people to reach a goal, a goal that could be reached by the German nation standing up against the so called “evil” that Hitler deemed the Jewish. It seemed logical to Hitler at the time to blame the middle and lower class for the mistakes which ultimately were in his hands. Another way in which Hitler promoted this was by somewhat hiding the problems of German finance by attacking the Jewish finance, creating a notion that German finance was under control. Burke states the fact about the rhetorical device of repetition that Hitler used. Hitler constantly used repetition through slogans to reach the public and get it ingrained in their head. This brought the German population completely under his control and to do what he wanted them to do.

            A major propaganda that that is in the media today is the battle between two cell phone companies, Verizon and AT&T. These two companies are constantly coming out with commercials that put down one another. The exigence here is cell phone area coverage. Verizon deals with this exigence in their commercials by constantly repeat the slogan that “There is a map for that.” Verizon’s aim is to persuade people that they have the most coverage out of any cell phone company, especially AT&T. The audience is anyone who has a cell phone and are with a specific company or looking to switch to a better company. These commercials would appeal to the public because society is always looking for the best “bang for your buck.”