Cambridge Speechwriter

A few weeks ago I looked at Malenkov’s use of statistics and then on how he threatened the USA with nuclear war. 

Statistics are often used as evidence – sometimes more menacingly than others. This is part of the rhetorical branch of logos (the use of logic). 

While Malenkov used statistics to gloat of an apparent Soviet success, other speakers have used statistics as a form of fear mongering.

In his notorious Rivers of Blood speech in 1968, Enoch Powell used statistics on the number of immigrants to strike fear into his audience. 

In an attack on Britain’s immigrant population, Powell said…

In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General’s Office. There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population.

To the kind of people who fear immigrants, this would have struck worry into their tiny racist hearts.

In my upcoming book The Language of Evil, there are a number of examples of villainous speakers using statistics of outsiders in sinister ways. The scariest example is probably from a speech given by Adolf Hitler himself, in which he said… 

For this is what they [the other nations] say, “We are not in a position to take in the Jews.” Yet in these empires there are not 10 people to the square kilometre. While Germany, with her 135 inhabitants to the square kilometre, is supposed to have room for them!

Of course, Hitler’s comments are completely wrong. is logically false to assume that a high population density is necessarily a bad thing. Also, data for a few years before his speech show that only 0.075% of the Germany population was Jewish. 

For further context, according to the 2020 census, New York’s population density is 11,236 people per square kilometre. According to data from 2023, Germany’s current population density is 236 people per square kilometre. 

Both examples looked at in this blogpost used population statistics as a tool for fear. 

The Nazis are known for having systematically applied rhetoric to their speeches. There will be two chapters in my upcoming book The Language of Evil which further unpack the way that the Nazis used rhetoric. 

Next week’s blog post will look at how a Nazi slip up in a speech almost led to one of the biggest confessions of World War Two.