A demagogue, or rabble-rouser, is a political leader in a democracy who gains popularity by arousing the common people against elites, especially through oratory that whips up the passions of crowds, appealing to emotion by scapegoating out-groups, exaggerating dangers to stoke fears, lying for emotional effect, or other rhetoric that tends to drown out reasoned deliberation and encourage fanatical popularity. Demagogues overturn established norms of political conduct, or promise or threaten to do so.
José Clemente Orozco's painting The Demagogue
Adolf Hitler in 1927, rehearsing his oratorical gestures; photo by Heinrich Hoffmann, Bundesarchiv
Huey Long, governor of Louisiana
Senator Joseph McCarthy, an American demagogue
A commoner, also known as the common man, commoners, the common people or the masses, was in earlier use an ordinary person in a community or nation who did not have any significant social status, especially a member of neither royalty, nobility, nor any part of the aristocracy. Depending on culture and period, other elevated persons may have had higher social status in their own right, or were regarded as commoners if lacking an aristocratic background.
A Medieval French manuscript illustration depicting the three estates: clergy (oratores), nobles (bellatores), and commoners (laboratores).
US Vice President Henry A. Wallace proclaimed the "arrival of the century of the common man" in a 1942 speech broadcast nationwide in the United States.