FDR's "Dagger" Address: Disarming the Anti-Interventionists at the University of Virginia Through Metaphoric Inversion.

Days before the French surrender to Nazi Germany in June 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered an address at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville that was broadcast worldwide. This speech marks the moment FDR began in earnest his campaign of public persuasion in support of U.S. intervention in World War II. He executed three rhetorical maneuvers that invited Americans to appreciate the Axis in a more threatening light in this address. He crafted a narrative that cast the war as being between only two sides, subverted the anti-interventionist position through stark imagery, and inverted his longstanding good neighbor metaphor to morally condemn Italy. By performing a close reading analysis of this address, this paper helps students of communication better understand the interpretive frameworks that emerged in Roosevelt's time and continue to saturate present debates over U.S. foreign policy, including the American response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]