Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (2010) is a Japanese visual novel game, a form of digital interactive fiction. Its premise is violent: the teenage protagonist wakes up in a sealed school building and is informed by Monokuma, a sadistic robotic bear, that to escape the confines of the school they must murder one of their classmates and successfully escape detection. Several murders committed by other classmates occur in sequential game segments, following which the main action sequences unfold in the form of ‘class trials’. During the trial, the player must defend themself and convince their classmates of the true murderer’s identity through word-based minigames. Here in the courtroom, rhetoric is their only weapon. The word ‘rhetoric’ originates from the ancient Greek ‘rhetor’, which means orator or public speaker; subsequently the form ‘rhetoric’ came to mean the ‘art of the orator’ or the ‘art of persuasion’. The term gained prominence during the 5th and 4th centuries BCE to describe the work of a new profession, the Sophists, a class of itinerant educators who taught oratory skills. The demand for these skills was driven by the economic flourishing of certain Greek city states, particularly Athens, which gave rise to a new society in which ‘every citizen could, and was generally expected to, aspire to some public function’1 — hence the need to learn the art of persuasion.The Greek philosophers Plato (428–348 BCE) and Aristotle (384–322 BCE) held opposing views on the ethics of rhetoric. Aristotle considered rhetoric essential for educating youth and fostering a civilised society. Plato, however, argued that when a speaker’s perception of truth is distorted by subjectivity or misinformation, then their ability to spread harmful falsehoods is amplified by the use of rhetoric.2In Danganropa rhetoric is fundamental to the class-trial segment, which unfolds as a series of minigames (as stated above), including Non-stop Debate, Panic Talk Action, Argument Armament, and Debate Scrum. In these minigames, players either target specific words in their opponents’ speeches to disprove their arguments, or construct their own defence by logically piecing together words or phrases. For example, in Non-Stop Debate, the words spoken by classmates appear on screen, requiring the player to identify logical fallacies or misinformation and select the claim they wish to refute in real-time. Opposing arguments are countered using ‘Truth Bullets’, which are sharply-angled streams of text shot at sentences constructed by other students, mimicking the precision expected of a successful debater. The use of terms such as ‘armament’ and ‘bullet’ emphasises the weapon-like purpose of words in this context.In modern society, politicians sometimes use rhetoric in this weapon-like capacity to influence and shape perceptions. Common rhetorical devices include apophasis, where the speaker draws attention to a subject by denying it or pretending to pass over it (‘back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out [...] under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama. I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.’)3; anaphora, the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses (as in Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, where the phrase ‘I have a dream’ and ‘Let freedom ring’ are repeated)4; and personification.At first glance, these techniques may be viewed simply as theoretical stimulants to boost a speech’s effectiveness. But they can also be put to more insidious ends, such as to disguise hate speech as political fact. For instance, when examining the spread of Islamophobia, the anaphoric use of words such as ‘halal’, ‘shariah’, and ‘Muslim’ in political discourse ‘creates an impression of excess’, helping to cultivate an inaccurate image of religious extremism in the listener’s mind.5In 1920s Germany, widespread discontent with the heavy reparations imposed by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, coupled with a desire for national rejuvenation, provided a fertile platform for Adolf Hitler, an able and charismatic rhetorician. In a speech in Munich on 12 April 1922 Hitler showed his awareness of rhetoric through ethos, a technique whereby the speaker attempts to bolster their credibility through various appeals to higher reasoning: ‘[As] Mommsen once uttered: The Jew is the ferment of decomposition in peoples’.6 Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) was a respected German classicist and Nobel Laureate, and by invoking his authority, Hitler lent weight to his antisemitic arguments to further his eventually genocidal agenda. A hundred years later, and using more modern technology, former American president Donald Trump was found in a report by a Select Committee7 to have incited his followers to storm the Capitol building in January 2021. His posts on Twitter (now X) used effective rhetoric through imperatives such as ‘Be there, will be wild!’8 to achieve the desired result.Thus, although Danganronpa is just a game, it highlights an important facet of humanity: the use and abuse of rhetoric. A close examination of rhetoric in both historical and contemporary contexts reveals its far-reaching consequences. The choice of words can indeed alter the course of history. We are able to see that, while rhetoric can encourage positive action, it can also be insidious in nature — perhaps lending credence to Plato’s concerns.