couple of times, went to jail. Nobody has ever killed him; they are afraid to kill him. He is a great public speaker in a slightly arcane way, such that when he says something, he simply says it -- and you know that it is not rhetoric in the sense that it is distanced from people's reality. It has an impact. GB Can one be a great public speaker in a non-democratic context? JRS No, not in a dictatorship. GB Was Hitler a great public speaker? JRS No, I think not. I do not speak German, but I watched very carefully Leni Riefenstahl's work on him. I never have really understood why it is not obligatory that all university students -- in fact, all high school students -- should have to sit carefully through the full version of Triumph of the Will . If one wants to understand democracy, rhetoric, populism, modern advertising and cheating, much of it is born in Triumph of the Will . A great deal of what Hitler and his people were using is now the meat and potatoes of the advertising industry -- indeed, the meat and potatoes of a great deal of bad rhetoric. They invented the stuff about the personal stories because, of course, they were supported by the working class. GB So this is the 'egoization' of rhetoric? JRS It is about producing rhetoric that has nothing to do with reality. Populism has always existed: that is what Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is