Revision as of 13:43, 30 May 2015

Propaganda is "any form of communication in support of national objectives designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, or behavior of any group in order to benefit the sponsor, either directly or indirectly". Governments have always tried to control people. Those in authority want control of the people’s hearts, minds and allegiances, and block or censor dissident voices. Probably every conflict is fought on at least two grounds: the battlefield and the minds of the people via propaganda. The “good guys” and the “bad guys” can often both be guilty of misleading their people with distortions, exaggerations, subjectivity, inaccuracy and even fabrications, in order to receive support and a sense of legitimacy. The good guise and the bad guise. Black and white. A fight for supremacy, for government. The king is dead, long live the king. We can learn how their game is played for how to deal with (counteract) these propaganda wars ^[1].

The term “propaganda” first came into common use in Europe as a result of Pope Gregory XV creating the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. This was a commission of cardinals charged with spreading the faith and regulating church affairs in heathen lands. A College of Propaganda was set up to train priests for the missions. The word came into common use again when World War I began.

No matter the word used, the battle for our minds is as old as human history. The Greeks had games, theater, assembly, law courts, and festivals for propagandising ideas and beliefs. The conflict between kings and Parliament in England was a struggle in which propaganda was involved. Propaganda was one of the weapons used in the movement for American independence, and in the French Revolution.

In western nations, most people believe propaganda happens in other nations. Meanwhile the military-industrial-machine is rife with propaganda, and it is not always easy to detect, or when detected, to find the source of it, and exactly why it is done. Not impossible tho.

The Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA)

In 1936 Boston merchant Edward Filene helped establish the short-lived Institute for Propaganda Analysis which sought to educate Americans to recognize propaganda techniques and it's seven propaganda methods have become somewhat of a standard.

Bandwagon

The 'bandwagon' pumps up the value of 'joining the party'. Bandwagon is a fallacy, or mistake, in argumentation. Related to the emotional appeal in persuasion, or pathos, the 'bandwagon' approach involves convincing a readership that the majority of people agree with the writer's argument. This technique suggests that just because a large majority of people agree, the reader should, too. The bandwagon plays heavily on the human need for belonging, making the group a desirable place to be.

Commercial writers often make statements like "Over 5 million people have called…," adding the name of a company. This approach works because of the social pressure of majority opinion. Or an author states, "Everyone is doing whatever it takes to make himself happy. When you recognize that, you don't feel guilty for doing what everyone else is also doing." This approach works because the author argues that what everyone is doing is correct, equating popularity with truth. Review writers use it when they inform their audience that a book or a song has been number-one for several weeks, adding "Check it out." If the readers do not, they risk being left behind.

Card-stacking

Card-stacking (alias Ignoring the Counterevidence, One-Sided Assessment, Slanting and Suppressed Evidence) builds a highly-biased case for your position. In 'card-stacking', deliberate action is taken to bias an argument, with opposing evidence being buried or discredited, whilst the case for one's own position is exaggerated at every opportunity. Thus the testimonial of supporters is used, but not that of opponents. Coincidences and serendipity may be artificially created, making deliberate action seem like random occurrence. Things 'just seem to happen' whilst you are 'in town'.

It is by no means always fallacious to present a one-sided argument. It is not a defense attorney's job to present the evidence for a defendant's guilt, rather that is the job of the prosecutor, for example. Nor can we expect a salesman to list "what could possibly go wrong". Or politicians to give us all sides equally in an election campaign. As is usual with fallacies, we have to take the context of the argument into consideration. One-sidedness is fallacious in contexts where we have a right to demand objectivity. IMHO, two such contexts are news stories and scientific writing. Slanting in a news story or scientific production may lead the reader into drawing false conclusions, which means that the story is a boobytrap and the reader's reasoning is inadvertently fallacious. A one-sided lack of objectivity is a cardinal scholarly sin in my book.

Glittering Generalities

Glittering generalities uses power words to evoke emotions replacing rational argument and clear evidence. This is a combination of the generalisation fallacy where one thing is applied to others, hypnotic talk that puts people into a light trance (darkened rooms and flashing lights are tale-telling signs of that) and the use of nouns giving a sense of substance while lacking lacking substance.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is with the greatest pleasure that I welcome you to this most anonymous of operations. We are gathered here together on twitter and facebook on the brink of a worldwide collapse to which we must all rise in concert [raises fist], for all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing, which I will never do and I know you will never accept.

Name-calling

'Name-calling' (alias Mud Slinging alias Demonisation) is for denigrating opponents (individuals and groups) and seemingly a much used political practice ^[2] and one of the easiest to do: Take a random person and denigrate them. Show that you can and will do this to any opponents. You can do it to an apparently strong person, to demonstrate that you are not afraid and will take on and defeat even the powerful. You can do it to a weak person, to show that nobody is safe from your ire. You can do it to an ordinary-next-door person, to show that 'people like you' are not safe either.

This practice seems to have been used often as a prelude to genocide (those that are not 'targeted' directly are less likely to intervene). Mud sticks, as we all know (a fallacy right there, but hey). Name-calling associates a target (group) with something that is despised or is inferior in some way. Now, if anyone associates with the target (group), the mud will also stick to them. The more the other person or persons become socially isolated, the more people will avoid the target (group). The result is a spiral of isolation neutralising opponents and sending a chilling warning to those who might defend the target (group) or follow in that person's path.

A probably challenging example: In September of 2013 there was talk of banning Golden Dawn ^[3]. This target could not have been chosen better if authorities wanted to introduce people to banning and proactive arrests becoming "normal".

According to Donald Black in "The Behavior of Law", our use of the law (and also what we find acceptable in law keeping) is governed by three qualifications:

• The degree of intimacy we have with a defendant, i.e., we will invoke the law more often (and prosecution is more likely) if we view the defendant as an outsider versus a family member, neighbor, or friend.
• Cultural distance, i.e., our use of the law will increase if the defendant is of a different race or religion.
• Conventionality, i.e., if we participate in the culture of the majority we’re more likely to view the state as an advocate, e.g., whites versus blacks or the middle class versus the lower class.

Banning Golden Dawn could lead to:

• A possible slippery slope situation (today it's "them", tomorrow it's "us")
• What you ban will likely go underground where we can not see what’s brewing (more)
• Other, possibly more important and immediate, problems not getting solved: a perverse coalition of “socialist modernizers” and far-right nationalists, who are governing Greece ostensibly to safeguard its “European perspective” ^[4].

Writing that does not mean I think Golden Dawn members and affiliated are free to do as they please! These are indeed out-of-control-thugs. How about making clear actions like bullying or coercing others into submission to ones ideas, and actions like murder, are not acceptable, not by anyone and give perpetrators sentences fitting the crime per case.

Plain Folks

'Plain folks' makes a leader seem ordinary to increase trust and credibility. IOW, 'plain folks' attempts to short circuit reasoning by asserting that the arguer is just like you and therefore you should believe them. This seems to have been integrated into "perception management" (see Psychological warfare). I know tax increases are a bad idea. I pay taxes too.

In 2011, Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and a US expert on crafting the perfect political message, said, "I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death. They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism." Next Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances of the Occupiers, and help the governors better handle all these new questions from constituents about "income inequality" and "paying your fair share." Yahoo News sat in on the session, and counted 10 do’s and don’ts from Luntz covering how Republicans should fight back by changing the way they discuss the movement ^[5].

Testimonial

The testimony of an independent person is seen as more trustworthy.

Transfer

Associate the leader with trusted others.

Sleeper effect

The impact of a persuasive message will generally tend to decrease over time. A sleeper effect takes place in a situation when effects of a persuasive message are stronger when more time passes.

Countermoves

Detecting stupid and deceptive propaganda is easy. You can use critical thinking and reasoning skills:

• Learn the fallacies, memorise the fallacies, recognise the fallacies.
• When presented with an argument, locate the claim and the evidence that supports it, and deliberately recall the source and hence credibility of the data.
• Look for signs of the obvious fallacies.
• Work to understand why the arguer feels the evidence warrants the claim and apply the analytic fallacies above.

Know that it is next to impossible to convince anybody with reason. Everyone with strong ideologies, and that means the overwhelming majority of people, only wants to see, hear and read what they already believe.

You can try humour. Humour is the art of the incongruous. Seeing, hearing or reading something that conflicts with preconceptions is already incongruous, and the "normal" reaction seems to be to reject the new information. Humour provides a way for new information to get into the brain, where it may be considered. Also, note that authorities can not easily deal with not being taken serious.

Educating people to think critically for (at least partial) immunisation but I haven't seen a case where this has been tried at any institutional scale in educational services.

Related

• Covert operations
• Psychological warfare

News and watchdogs

• FAIR http://fair.org/
• PR Watch http://www.prwatch.org/
• SpinWatch http://www.spinwatch.org/
• RationalWiki http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
• Fallacy Files http://www.fallacyfiles.org/

Books

Fallacies

• How to Detect Propaganda (pdf) - Adapted from: The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, 1937 http://www.mindivogel.com/uploads/1/1/3/9/11394148/how_to_detect_propaganda.pdf
• Love is a Fallacy (pdf) - story by by Max Shulman p.10 https://www.dartmouth.edu/~aporia/spring08.pdf
• Propaganda and debating techniques http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-propaganda.html

Sleeper Effect

• The Influence of Speaker Credibility on Information Recall (pdf) - Michael E. Corrie http://www.uwlax.edu/urc/JUR-online/PDF/2003/corrie.pdf
• Detecting and Explaining the Sleeper Effect (pdf) - Darlene B. Hannah & Brian Sternthal http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.455.3259&rep=rep1&type=pdf
• The Sleeper Effect in Persuasion: A Meta-Analytic Review (pdf) - Tarcan Kumkale and Dolores Albarracın http://home.ku.edu.tr/~tkumkale/sleeper.pdf

Documentaries

References

1. ↑ The Semantics of “Good” & “Evil” http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/robert-anton-wilson-the-semantics-of-good-evil
2. ↑ Name Calling: An intricate map of who's insulted who http://laphamsquarterly.org/comedy/charts-graphs/name-calling
3. ↑ Calls to ban Greek far-right party after murder of anti-fascist rapper http://rt.com/news/greek-rapper-funeral-tension-074/
4. ↑ The problem is the Greek government, not golden dawn https://greekleftreview.wordpress.com/2013/09/19/the-problem-is-the-greek-government-not-golden-dawn/
5. ↑ How Republicans are being taught to talk about Occupy Wall Street http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/republicans-being-taught-talk-occupy-wall-street-133707949.html