[HN Gopher] What Is Propaganda? (1944)
___________________________________________________________________
What Is Propaganda? (1944)
Author : jruohonen
Score : 47 points
Date : 2023-11-05 08:08 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historians.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historians.org)
| golemotron wrote:
| > While it is a serious mistake, as has been said, to overvalue
| propaganda, it is an equally serious mistake to assume, as some
| people do, that everything in the newspapers and on the radio, in
| the movies and magazines, is "propaganda''--propaganda that is
| self-seeking, deceitful, or otherwise improperly motivated. This
| is absurd. ... The journalist of today has a responsibility to
| report facts as accurately, objectively, and disinterestedly as
| is humanly possible. The newspaperman who respects himself and
| his work--the average newspaperman---accepts this responsibility.
| The honest, self-disciplined, well-trained reporter seeks to be a
| propagandist for nothing but the truth.
|
| How the mighty have fallen.
| midasuni wrote:
| You seem to have made a mistake, as some people do, to assume
| that everything in the newspapers and on the radio, in the
| movies and magazines, is "propaganda
| krapp wrote:
| It is. Every news media story in every form and every format
| is presenting a narrative, possibly crafted by a government,
| possibly crafted by corporations, or even simply being the
| result of the biases and politics of the journalist
| themselves. If that weren't the case, the media would simply
| recite the cold facts. They don't because their goal is
| influence, not information. Ergo, propaganda.
|
| OK, maybe not sports and weather. Everything else, though.
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| It's not even the just the individual stories. The act of
| selecting which stories to promote and which ones to
| publish without fanfare and which to not publish at all is
| also propaganda.
| krapp wrote:
| There doesn't even need to be a nefarious conspiracy
| involved, just the rational intersection of common
| interests and capitalist incentives are enough.
| ejb999 wrote:
| had this debate with a family member, when I was pointing
| out the 'bias' in a particular newspaper - his contention
| that if the story was true, it couldn't be considered
| biased - he couldn't quite grasp that choosing (or not
| choosing) which stories to publish, and how often to
| report on something is defacto bias.
| bigger_inside wrote:
| also, you can propagandize quite well with something that
| contains no lies. The current discourse conflates
| "propaganda" with "lie", but of course that's .. well,
| part of propaganda. The best ways to rile up a mass is to
| tell them verifiable things, but in selective ways,
| leaving out context, leaving out history, leaving out
| ambiguities; it would be hard to claim the information is
| "wrong" on its face, but it's still wrong simply because
| of what it leaves out.
| golemotron wrote:
| Propaganda is just advocacy that we don't like.
|
| Same as "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom
| fighter."
| lyu07282 wrote:
| It's not exactly a secret that in a post-Trump world,
| journalists have decreed that they also have a responsibility
| to protect democracy. If only the Iraq invasion caused within
| them a similar introspective episode, but for some reason it
| didn't? Perhaps it would've been different if there were more
| dead nyt journalists among the 1+ million victims.
| swayvil wrote:
| Trump is just the 2-minutes-hate target of the day. A
| multipurpose distraction and negative waifu.
| bigger_inside wrote:
| "negative waifu" is genius.
| imjonse wrote:
| I think the reason Trump caused so much talk about fake news
| and propaganda is that until him these were only generated
| and controlled by very powerful organizations (autocratic
| governments or in free societies the governement, big
| companies and their media). That an upstart could also start
| convincingly spreading falsehoods and fear, and move masses
| was alarming. No longer were the NYT&co or Fox the sole
| arbiters of how public discourse is framed. Fake news was
| democratized. We all lose, whether we are being lied to
| subtly by the NYT and big companies or blatantly by populist
| upstarts.
| throw0101b wrote:
| There is now another 'form' of propaganda that seems to be being
| used:
|
| > _We characterize the contemporary Russian model for propaganda
| as "the firehose of falsehood" because of two of its distinctive
| features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless
| willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions.
| In the words of one observer, "[N]ew Russian propaganda
| entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience."[2]_
|
| > _Contemporary Russian propaganda has at least two other
| distinctive features. It is also rapid, continuous, and
| repetitive, and it lacks commitment to consistency._
|
| > _Interestingly, several of these features run directly counter
| to the conventional wisdom on effective influence and
| communication from government or defense sources, which
| traditionally emphasize the importance of truth, credibility, and
| the avoidance of contradiction.[3] Despite ignoring these
| traditional principles, Russia seems to have enjoyed some success
| under its contemporary propaganda model, either through more
| direct persuasion and influence or by engaging in obfuscation,
| confusion, and the disruption or diminution of truthful reporting
| and messaging._
|
| * https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
|
| This has been picked up by some other folks:
|
| * https://www.vice.com/en/article/epzxqj/steve-bannon-jan-6-tr...
|
| * https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/16/20991816/i...
|
| For a history of propaganda, the book _Munitions of the Mind_ by
| Philip M. Taylor may be of some interest (the third edition was
| published in 2003, so covers up to 9 /11):
|
| * https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719067679/
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| > which traditionally emphasize the importance of truth,
| credibility, and the avoidance of contradiction
|
| I think the use of inconsistency and outright contradiction
| 'works' not so much in pushing a specific message but by making
| all messages seem equally suspect to people who don't have time
| to check every claim. The more contradictory messages out
| there, the more people just disbelieve everything and
| disconnect -- which may be the goal.
| zikzak wrote:
| Wolf Blitzer is famous for this (or used to be). He'd use the
| same tone of voice for "rain expected later today" as
| "apparent Klingon ship lands on White House lawn."
| AnonCoward42 wrote:
| This is itself propaganda. Pretending one propaganda is better
| than the other is always a difficult game in my opinion, but of
| course everyone sides with some narrative. That being said our
| narratives are littered with fundamental contradictions (as
| well).
| thriftwy wrote:
| I hope somebody told them that Russians (having a life) do not
| watch or read propaganda all day long so the window of
| interaction is actually quite narrow...
|
| That can invalidate a lot of assumptions.
| verisimi wrote:
| Any discussion of propaganda that has no mention of Bernays or
| 'Public Relations', that thinks its something the Russians do,
| but not the 'good guy' Western countries, is remiss.
|
| Edward Bernays opening wiki paragraph:
|
| > Edward Louis Bernays (/be:r'neIz/ bur-NAYZ, German: [beR'naIs];
| November 22, 1891 - March 9, 1995) was an American theorist,
| considered a pioneer in the field of public relations and
| propaganda, and referred to in his obituary as "the father of
| public relations".[3] His best-known campaigns include a 1929
| effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as
| feminist "Torches of Freedom", and his work for the United Fruit
| Company in the 1950s, connected with the CIA-orchestrated
| overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government in
| 1954. He worked for dozens of major American corporations,
| including Procter & Gamble and General Electric, and for
| government agencies, politicians, and nonprofit organizations.
| crabmusket wrote:
| This reminds me of Ellul's _Propaganda_ , which does mention
| Bernays.
|
| > "Mass production requires mass consumption, but there cannot
| be mass consumption without widespread identical views as to
| what the necessities of life are."
| klft wrote:
| The Century of the Self is a BBC documentation about "... how
| those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control
| the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy." (1)
|
| (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
| throwaway743 wrote:
| That's a must watch. Adam Curtis' work is brilliant.
| globalnode wrote:
| everything you see (and don't see) is propaganda
| ddq wrote:
| And you are not immune to propaganda.
| zikzak wrote:
| I believe people who are working professionals and have busy
| lives are particularly susceptible since they often graze
| news and prefer things that confirm and entrench their
| worldview because it's ego affirming.
|
| They have the critical thinking skills but lack the desire to
| use them in some circumstances.
|
| There are other people who lack education who also lack
| critical thinking motivation and all variations of this
| matrix. I'm just saying it's a huge mistake to assume
| intelligent, educated people are somehow immune from
| propaganda.
| winrid wrote:
| This. If you disagree I suggest reading Ordinary Men.
|
| Only book that ever gave me nightmares.
| ordu wrote:
| If you came to this conclusion, then you definitely did
| something wrong. Such a definition is useless in practice. You
| need a definition that allows you to cathegorize information
| and sources of information, to deal with them in different
| ways.
|
| What I can agree is any information shift your beliefs. I can
| agree that any update of beliefs is beneficial for some entity.
| I can probably agree that any source has an agenda and tries to
| shift your beliefs for someone's benefit.
|
| But if we conclude from that that everything is propaganda it
| would be a loser's thing to do.
|
| Facts are meant to shift your beliefs. Beliefs are meant to be
| shifted by facts. The trouble when your beliefs are manipulated
| so they lose coherence with a reality. While they reflect
| reality without major mistakes, they are good.
|
| So I'd say that propagandness of a source is a measure of my
| cognitive efforts needed to not let my beliefs to slip from a
| good enough picture of a reality while consuming information
| from that source.
|
| It is not rigorous enough definition, but it is a good starting
| point.
| globalnode wrote:
| what i meant was everything you see (and dont see) is there
| to shift your beliefs, as you noted... i like your idea of
| trying to stay rooted in facts and i agree this is a good
| strategy. however, the sheer number of sources competing for
| mind share nowadays is astonishing and i think facts are very
| hard to come by. so i try to err on the side of disbelief no
| matter the source (unless i see the same facts from multiple
| non-connected sources). again, non-connected source is a very
| difficult thing to determine too. often, its a case of follow
| the money, or follow the power, or just look at whos
| suffering and who isnt, while ignoring all the other
| messages.
| ordu wrote:
| I cannot possibly explain in a full how I deal with it, but
| I can give you advice.
|
| Pick a few sources and stick with them. Pick carefully,
| they must be a professional media. They must separate
| opinions and facts. They must avoid emotional arguments and
| judgements. They must check facts and communicate the
| quality of their checks if they are not completely sure.
|
| If you watch them over a prolonged period of time, you'll
| learn their biases. You'll learn their tricks and
| systematic failures. In some cases you can even learn
| biases of individual reporters. When you know biases you
| can correct them, either by thought alone or by a few
| google queries.
| roenxi wrote:
| The "Limitations of Propaganda" section is, I think, a bit weak.
| I want to zero in on this particular point:
|
| > To give an illustration, the American attitude toward Germany
| was not bitterly hostile in the early months of World War I. But
| when the Lusitania was torpedoed in May 1915, with loss of 128
| American lives, anger against the Central Powers mush roomed
| overnight.
|
| This is claimed to be an example of events overruling propaganda.
| That isn't the right way to think when critically evaluating
| propaganda:
|
| 1) The idea that these 128 lives are different from any other 128
| lives in, say, Central Africa is precisely a result of
| propaganda. Arguably the beneficial kind.
|
| 2) The US is perfectly capable of absorbing ~100 odd deaths and
| then just moving on. The idea that they aren't is propaganda.
|
| 3) The US population has demonstrated relatively little ability
| to control the military's adventurism. It may have been different
| pre-WWI, but we should at least suspect someone important thought
| that they would profit from the US being involved and was trying
| to fire people up. The US, as in all democracies, have some
| wickedly effective propagandists who work ceaselessly to shape
| public opinion.
|
| We know for a fact that the media can't cover most events.
| Historians don't know about most events. Choosing the events that
| will be admissible in the public conversation is one of the key
| tools of propaganda.
| AnonCoward42 wrote:
| > The idea that these 128 lives are different from any other
| 128 lives in, say, Central Africa is precisely a result of
| propaganda. Arguably the beneficial kind.
|
| That is the kind of relativism that doesn't hold water. To make
| it very simple: I value my life higher than yours or mostly
| anyone else's life. Or with different words I care for my life
| more than I care for yours. No offence!
|
| You can expand that to my family vs some other family, then
| going on to "tribe" and to country/race, whatever. The further
| away you get the less I care and doing otherwise involves
| propaganda. That is also obvious since you need to focus your
| care.
|
| It is en vogue to pretend otherwise and to care for some people
| you know the least which involves the inversion of care. You
| care for people you don't know more than you care for people
| close(r) to you. In a certain environment this is actually
| easier, but it involves this kind of propaganda, since people
| are acting against their own good.
|
| > We know for a fact that the media can't cover most events.
| Historians don't know about most events. Choosing the events
| that will be admissible in the public conversation is one of
| the key tools of propaganda.
|
| This is what I mean with "care more/less". You can't cover all
| events and therefore you're concentrating on matters closer to
| you, but with media this comes with a twist of course since
| they are the carrier of propaganda (intentional or not and true
| for any).
| notahacker wrote:
| > The further away you get the less I care and doing
| otherwise involves propaganda. That is also obvious since you
| need to focus your care.
|
| We're not talking about people caring more about their family
| and neighbours than someone in Central Africa (or England,
| since we're talking about WWI) though. We're talking about
| people being extremely angry about people born hundred or
| even thousands of miles away that they would never have met
| dying even further away in circumstances they'd never find
| themselves in, because the news points out that unlike the
| much larger number of fellow white English-speaking
| Christians that might be very distant relatives dying in the
| same faraway conflict (and on the same boat) _they 're
| American_...
| keiferski wrote:
| Yes, a nation is a thing that unites people via culture,
| geography, and (more historically) genetics. I'm not sure
| why that's controversial?
| Larrikin wrote:
| Historically speaking, where are you making the cut off
| point for genetics and in which countries? Only countries
| that are on the map in 2023?
| keiferski wrote:
| I don't understand your question. I'm not making any cut-
| off point, I just said that it was more common in the
| past for a citizens of a nation to be genetically linked
| to each other. Certainly that still applies to many
| countries today.
| oa335 wrote:
| I'm sorry , I don't believe that is true. Do you have any
| sources for your claim? Historically empires had been
| multi ethnic and multi lingual; with rise of nationalism
| in mid 1800s onwards we start seeing large population
| transfers and ethnic cleansing, and forced acculturation,
| leading to a world today where many modern nation states
| have only one "ethnic group". E.g. 150 years ago there
| used to be many German speaking villages in what is now
| Poland. There used to be many Turkish speaking locales in
| Greece, etc etc.
| keiferski wrote:
| It obviously depends on where and when, but I think you'd
| have a difficult time finding any past empires that are
| as genetically diverse as contemporary Canada, USA, etc.
| Even as wide spread as say, Rome or the Ottoman Empire
| were, they had little-to-no representation of Chinese,
| Japanese, South American, Indian, and so on.
|
| Germans and Poles are more similar to each other than
| Indians and Colombians.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| > a nation is a thing
|
| Even that there is the result a couple centuries of
| propaganda. Again, propaganda isn't _false_ , just
| promoting a certain viewpoint or perception. That you
| share anything with people living hundreds of miles away
| in one direction, but not in another, is not a conclusion
| you came to without help.
| notahacker wrote:
| And whilst nationhood _can_ have tangible effects on your
| life (you might live in a US city closer to Tijuana than
| Ohio, but opinions and issues in Ohio are having more
| impact on who governs you), in this case caring most of
| all about the people closest to you tends towards having
| the opposite position on US entry into the war. Its the
| choice between clamouring to send a bunch of people from
| your hometown to Europe to avenge the deaths of a small
| number of people you 'd never met who weren't targeted
| because of anything they may or may not have had in
| common with you, or not. Takes a lot of talking up
| American identity and the threat to all of us and what
| wonderful and inspirational people the Germans have
| killed to convince you that avenging these strangers is
| worth a death or two in your own community or family.
|
| (I say this as a Brit who thinks that the US speeding up
| the end of the conflict was a good thing, Fwiw)
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| This presupposes some 'higher power' that is directing
| everything.
|
| The sinking of a passenger liner with 128 lives lost is going
| to be news with or without higher direction, and we are always
| tuned to the unusual and particularly gruesome even if the
| actual harm is minimal in the grand scheme of things. See an
| airplane crash vs the daily deaths on our roads.
| roenxi wrote:
| You're counter-supposing that the US goes to war more or less
| randomly based on how it feels about interesting newspaper
| articles. Seems unlikely - being outraged is quite easy, I
| can manage it at least once a week if I go looking for bad
| news. However, it is quite difficult to sustain an overseas
| army for extended periods of time and requires reasons,
| intent and a certain ruthless self interest. It is possible
| to kill people and see effectively no response [0, 1].
|
| The US public on mass are regularly revealed to be completely
| horrible. They've looked past countless tragedies because it
| would be inconvenient to acknowledge them. It happens almost
| weekly; there is a lot going wrong in the world that the US
| kinda shrugs off. Much of it their fault to a first or second
| order approximation. They are totally capable of overlooking
| 100 murders if they don't also think that there is something
| to be gained by sending the army out.
|
| Consider the situation vs. Iraq as an example. Powerful
| people wanted the war. As soon as there was a half-plausible
| narrative they sent troops in. It wasn't the narrative that
| led to the going in, the narrative removed a blocker to
| stopping the political forces that were trying to trigger the
| war. That is very much the layer of the world where
| propaganda happens.
|
| _EDIT_ And just to try and articulate myself a bit more
| clearly, because I distracted myself with the interesting
| story in [1] - the US has well developed propaganda systems
| for building these events up into a justification for war
| that may, or may not, spin up depending on the assessed need
| of whoever organises the media. The fact that the German
| propaganda system was inferior to the Anglosphere propaganda
| system on its home turf doesn 't tell us much about the
| limits of propaganda. The Germans were dealing with an
| aggressive society [2] that was extremely good at finding a
| cause for war and then broadcasting it. But nevertheless the
| underlying cynicism of the English speaking world is very
| clear if you look for it - the official "why we are doing
| this" is almost always propaganda over the top of "this will
| be a profitable venture for the people making the decision to
| go to war".
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007
| "shot down by a Soviet Sukhoi Su-15 interceptor" -> "All 269
| passengers and crew aboard were killed, including Larry
| McDonald, a United States representative" -> "Reagan ordered
| the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on September 15,
| 1983, to revoke the license of Aeroflot Soviet Airlines to
| operate flights to and from the United States". No war broke
| out. via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shoot
| down_inc...
|
| [2] I mean, seriously, the British had the empire that the
| sun never sets on, the US has the Not An Empire on Which the
| Sun Never Sets They Are Just Random Military Bases and if you
| ask they got it by a continuous series of defensive moves.
| One shudders to think what it would be called if the same
| thing was done by people with the wrong passport.
| keiferski wrote:
| > 1) The idea that these 128 lives are different from any other
| 128 lives in, say, Central Africa is precisely a result of
| propaganda. Arguably the beneficial kind.
|
| The exact opposite is true. Every organism on this planet
| instinctively cares about itself and its family/close relations
| more than the abstract concept of its species - if it even
| _has_ such an abstract concept to begin with. Universalism is a
| viewpoint that has spread, or propagated, however.
| roenxi wrote:
| The concept of Citizen is the abstract concept, it has only
| existed for about 2,500 years and even in the modern form for
| less time than that. A US citizen could literally have been
| born anywhere. If you want 128 US citizens who in fact are
| from Central Africa; they exist [0].
|
| Their genes could not have detected they were supposed to get
| angry about those 128 people as opposed to 128 random
| Europeans. A lot of US people probably had more in common
| with the Germans than the ship's passengers, given the US's
| large contingent of ex-Germans at the time.
|
| The idea that some people have a magic label that makes them
| important is, 100%, due to propaganda. I'm not saying it's
| bad, I'm not saying it is unreasonable, but it takes a lot of
| social effort expended to maintain the label.
|
| [0] Although I will acknowledge a lot of hand-waving given
| the state of US citizenship law around WWI, but I think the
| point about propaganda is solid even if that is accounted for
| properly. The US is not defined by people with a long shared
| history, or close family ties. And if it is, at the time
| we're talking the roots of those things led back to Europe.
| keiferski wrote:
| I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make. The
| people in the US are linked to each other by history,
| culture, language, and a million other things that they
| don't have to a random group of people halfway around the
| globe. I don't know what is so complicated or difficult to
| understand about this.
| roenxi wrote:
| The idea that these 128 lives are different from any
| other 128 lives in, say, Central Africa is precisely a
| result of propaganda. Arguably the beneficial kind.
|
| You'll find that you haven't actually addressed that
| point. Unless you are suggesting that the US was so
| inbred that all of them were close family members and
| relations of the people onboard the ship [0]. There isn't
| any way to know that you're in the same group as those
| randoms without some serious social legwork explaining
| that the group exists to everyone, slowly, multiple
| times, over an extended period. The technical term for
| that explaining is propaganda. It isn't a truth of
| natural law, it is very much a social construct.
|
| [0] And, even if they were, there'd still be a lot of
| connection to other European countries like Germany by
| similar logic.
| keiferski wrote:
| People tend to care more about people that share the same
| language, culture, history, and geographical proximity.
| They tend to care less about people they have no such
| connection with or are not aware of at all.
|
| Again, I really, truly, have absolutely no clue as to why
| this is so difficult to understand. People can feel a
| connection to others that they share characteristics
| with, without it being a deliberate, top-down
| propagandistic effort.
|
| And as I said in my original comment, the opposite thing
| (universalism) is actually what must be propagandized [1]
| in order to spread, as tribalism is, for lack of a better
| word, the "default."
|
| 1. I'm not using the word in a negative sense here, as I
| generally think it's a good thing.
| roenxi wrote:
| > language, culture, history, and geographical proximity
|
| English, the language of England? European culture, with
| a heavy and detectable German tradition? Population with
| a history of maybe a century or so in America and
| millennia of habitation mainly on the Eurasian landmass +
| Africa?
|
| It probably took a _lot_ of propaganda to forge an
| independent US identity out of that and make it care
| enough about a small number of deaths to take it
| personally instead of just interpreting it as more-or-
| less-the-same-people squabbling violently. The only thing
| your argument that it occurred naturally has going for it
| is geography - and the US is damn huge so I don 't think
| that is persuasive.
|
| I mean, we all love the US sense of togetherness. But it
| took (and takes) a lot of work to make it happen and it
| is purposefully nurtured and backed up by a lot of
| organised propaganda.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| The problem is that propaganda today just means "propaganda of
| the enemy". Of course we can't admit that, only Russia/et al does
| propaganda. Fine, but that also then means that we can never
| meaningfully educate people to recognize propaganda. It ends up
| being just "trust us, not them" and it doesn't work.
| imjonse wrote:
| Just like fake news is always 'the news the others read'.
| d0mine wrote:
| It does work. People are tribal. Keep them in the dark and it
| is easier to rule them.
|
| <<Sila pravitel'stva derzhitsia na nevezhestve naroda, i ono
| znaet eto i potomu vsegda budet borot'sia protiv
| prosveshcheniia.>> Lev Tolstoi (1896)
| thriftwy wrote:
| The problem with Tolstoi is that he seemed to take
| adversarial propaganda at the face value. The truth is, not
| only your government is doing the fishing.
| keiferski wrote:
| It is actually useful, though, when one group labels another as
| propaganda: it's a big flashing sign that says, "we can't
| debunk them via open dialogue, so we will just prevent you from
| listening to them." If the supposed propaganda were absurd and
| false on its face, there would be no need to engage with it at
| all.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| It's very naive to think that "debunking" propaganda, or
| anything really, disarms its effectiveness.
| keiferski wrote:
| Calling something _naive_ isn 't an argument. Do you have
| one?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Ya try reading the rest of the sentence I guess.
| realusername wrote:
| the modern propaganda departments like the one in Russia
| pushes dozen of competing and contradictory stories,
| debunking it doesn't matter, they print BS faster than
| what you can analyze to get a few to stick and will point
| to a different one as you try anyways.
| jhbadger wrote:
| That's very culture-dependent. The PRC has a literal Propaganda
| Department of the CCP called so in Chinese and until recently
| in English (It is now called the "Publicity Department"
| probably because they've figured out how negative "propaganda"
| sounds in English). It is just accepted that the CCP will
| provide support for their positions ("propaganda") without
| providing the "other side". And Vietnam _still_ calls their
| version a "propaganda department".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publicity_Department_of_the_Ch...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Propaganda_Department_...
| motohagiography wrote:
| The filter I use for determining propaganda is, "does this seem
| like an original thought or the product of original thinking?" In
| most cases, propagandists communicate using banal, recieved,
| thought terminating cliches, or rote criticisms. They aren't
| master manipulators, but the ideas spread because they are easy,
| satisfying, and empowering to some base impulses. They're like
| pop songs that get stuck in your head.
|
| In the case of the article, Assata Shakur's "nobody will give you
| the education you need to overthrow them" applies, where it's
| just enough info about propaganda techniques to manage them, but
| not enough to fight or make them yourself.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| This is also foolish though. Plenty of concepts are not
| remotely original but are still very useful if you haven't come
| across them before. No one is sitting down and recreating all
| of knowledge from first principles, even very smart people hear
| things for the first time.
|
| And for that matter, it's not like propagandists are dumb, any
| more than pop musicians are bad musicians. It's absolutely
| possible for one for formulate an original idea in the service
| of propaganda.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Propaganda is basically just viral shitty reasoning, where a
| small stack of memes replaces consideration with cliches.
| It's the lie delivered between two truths. The filter is
| based on whether a comment or belief is thoughtful or not.
| Sure, there are simple things that are mostly true, but
| thoughtless or rote repetition of them doesn't make them
| meaningful.
|
| Original ideas can be in service to propaganda, but
| preferring them imposes a cost that is higher than what most
| propaganda needs for scale. Your argument is misleading and
| neutralizing noise and not a counterpoint. Innoculating
| people to propaganda with humour and dead ideas is probably
| the most practical way to mitigate its more pernicious
| effects.
|
| Of course great musicians can be employed to make pop, but
| when the message is the same, it's like using IMAX to produce
| porn. See any music awards show.
| swayvil wrote:
| Re : Limitations.
|
| You need a big overpowering emotion first. Therefore...
|
| Step 1 is fear. Scare everybody.
|
| Step 2 is the actual propaganda. A story about what to fear, who
| to fear, why you are feeling this fear, etc.
|
| Maybe you've seen this pattern before.
| Fricken wrote:
| I regard propaganda as information that it disseminated with
| intent to radicalize, that is, to provoke an emotional reaction
| that circumvents reasoned or measured thought.
|
| "Tank man" is a great example. In nearly 35 years it hasn't lost
| it's lustre, and it regularly gets trotted out to drum up
| sentiment against China.
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