The tone of Gorgias is particularly violent, and not only with regard to rhetoric. The dialogue formulates one of the most radical critiques that have been addressed to Athenian democracy, its dominant values ​​and its prestige politics. Indeed, Socrates attacks all aspects of this policy, from the most concrete to the most ideological. But most of the criticism targets the condition which gives Athenian democracy its main characteristics. Now this condition is the same as that which ensured the influence of rhetoric. It is about the crowd as the dominant subject of the political scene. The government of freedom is a government of the crowd, that is to say of illusion, pretense and seduction. The critique of rhetoric therefore leads directly to the critique of democracy.