Of Propaganda and the Truth

[Solly Mack]

I post this from time to time - adding to it every so often.

It's been a year or two since the last time.

Propaganda

information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause


Propaganda

2 : the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
3 : ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect



Propaganda has traditionally been divided into three main categories: white, grey and black.


1 - White propaganda: comes from an acknowledged source and often is aimed at sympathetic audiences



Examples:

"The White House announced today that they have proof of Iran aiding the insurgents in Iraq"


"Birth records show Barack Obama's middle name is Hussein, from the Chicago Sun-Times"




2 - Grey propaganda: is anonymous



Examples:

"Some say" (the often used intro on Fox News to announce some whopper)


"A White House source that wishes to remain anonymous claims Bush enjoys calling people by nicknames rather than their own names"




3 - Black propaganda: pretends to be from a source it is not and is usually aimed at an enemy audience.


Examples:

"On Fox News tonight, a former campaign worker for Bill Clinton tells all about Hillary's violent temper"

"Iraqi radio announced today that the Iraqi government said that Americans need to stay the course and not give up on the Iraqis"

The 7 main techniques identified by the US Institute for Propaganda Analysis in 1938


1. Bandwagon - is a device to make us follow the crowd, to accept the propagandist's program en masse. Here his theme is: "Everybody's doing it." His techniques range from those of medicine show to dramatic spectacle.



2. Name Calling - is a device to make us form a judgment without examining the evidence on which it should be based. Here the propagandist appeals to our hate and fear.



3. Glittering Generalities - is a device by which the propagandist identifies his program with virtue by use of "virtue words." Here he appeals to our emotions of love, generosity, and brotherhood.



4. Transfer - is a device by which the propagandist carries over the authority, sanction, and prestige of something we respect and revere to something he would have us accept.



5. Testimonial - is a device to make us accept anything from a patent medicine or a cigarette to a program of national policy.



6. Plain Folks - is a device used by politicians, labor leaders, business men, and even by ministers and educators to win our confidence by appearing to be people like ourselves—"just plain folks among the neighbors."



7. Card Stacking - is a device in which the propagandist employs all the arts of deception to win our support for himself, his group, nation, race, policy, practice, belief, or ideal. He stacks the cards against the truth. He uses under-emphasis and over-emphasis to dodge issues and evade facts.

Additional Propaganda Techniques

Assertion: is an enthusiastic or energetic statement presented as a fact, although it is not necessarily true

Lesser of Two Evils: technique tries to convince us of an idea or proposal by presenting it as the least offensive option.

Pinpointing the enemy: an attempt to simplify a complex situation by presenting one specific group or person as the enemy.

Simplification (Stereotyping): is extremely similar to pinpointing the enemy, in that it often reduces a complex situation to a clear-cut choice involving good and evil.

Nothing in the definition of propaganda defines all propaganda as lies or non-factual. Propaganda can be true; it can be factual. It is intent and motive - the goal, of mass communicating information, either true or false, that makes it propaganda.

A lot of people use the word propaganda with derision. (even while employing its use themselves)

And yet...


Thomas Paine was excellent at propaganda. I happen to enjoy the words of Thomas Paine...but he was still a propagandist. That takes nothing away from his message, nor does it cause his words to be lies. Propaganda does not equal lie. It can - but not always. Telling the truth or telling a lie is not the point of propaganda. The intent of propaganda is to sway other people.


Every day on DU we see the excellent use of propaganda (subtle and expertly done), as well as the heavy-handed (offensively conspicuous and annoying) use of it.


You can recognize something as propaganda and agree or disagree with it. You can see the truth of it, as well as any lies told. You can react or not react. However, you should always try and find the motive behind it. The intent matters...

[MajorChode]

1. Propaganda targets people's emotion rather than their reason

Fear, pity, and prejudice are the easiest way to manipulate people. Glenn Beck, BillO, Limbaugh, and many others are masters at the craft. To the propagandist, irrational fear, sympathy, and bigotry are simply opportunities to be exploited. You say that "Propaganda does not equal lie" and on the face of it, this is quite true, but certainly playing to the visceral feelings of the audience rather than their intellect is a form of deceit.

[Solly Mack]

3. There is deceit in propaganda but that doesn't mean a statement

used to manipulate a person is a lie.

Obama's middle name is Hussein - a fact. It's how that fact is presented/used that turns it into propaganda. That is an example of manipulation through the appeal to emotion (as it plays on fear/prejudice/bigotry/hate) - which is used in propaganda.

There's deceit in ALL such manipulation.(playing on fears, bigotry, prejudice, etc.)


Even when you may agree with the intent...manipulating people through emotion can still be a form of deceit.



I agree - an appeal to prejudice (fear,bigotry, etc.) is more effective than an appeal to reason. It can be (and has been) quite deadly, in fact. (appeals to emotion)

[pinboy3niner]

5. Good point

Even the truth can be used to manipulate.

Thanks for posting this again. :thumbsup:

[Solly Mack]

12. Hey pinboy3niner

You're welcome & Thank you!

[MajorChode]

6. That's why it's important to recognize propaganda for what it is

Some of the hardest propaganda to recognize is that which may support an underlying principle you happen to agree with. For instance, someone might say Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hitler were both from Austria and both had only one testicle. Even if all those things were true, the association between those things is utterly irrelevant. It doesn't mean that someone can automatically draw negative connotations from one balled Austrian men.

[Solly Mack]

7. Absolutely.

Techniques of propaganda can be used to appeal to the baser of human emotions or the best of human emotions. A lot of times people feel that if it's to the good (and/or something they can agree with) then it can't be propaganda, when it very well could be.

Even facts can be used, as you've shown in your example, to distort and manipulate. Simply having one testicle and being from Austria does not a connection of shared ideology make between 2 or more people....though connections, and I'm speaking in general, have been made with just such caliber of reasoning.

'His name is Hussein like Saddam's! So he must be a terrorist! or hate America, or be the enemy!, or hate Christians!'...or whatever...

[beam me up scottie]

2. PERFECT timing, k & r !

:hi: Solly!

[Solly Mack]

4. Hey, BMUS!!!

:D

Thanks!!

[Scuba]

8. Thanks for the post. As you well point out...

...propaganda can be used for good or evil, but the word has taken on an unfavorable connotation.

I see 'bandwagon' all the time. "Our survey shows that 78% of Americans love Republicans. Jump on board!"

Bush was great at 'simplification'. "We're good, they're evil."

[Solly Mack]

9. Indeed. The Bush administration could reduce just about anything

to us/good v. them/evil with 2 word phrases - 'national security', 'real American', 'true Patriot', 'supports America', etc..

[OnyxCollie]

21. The Bush administration was appealing to an audience

(Right Wing Authoritarians/Social Dominance Order personalities) that generally see things as black and white.

Maclay, K. (2003, July 22). Researchers help define what makes a political conservative.
Retrieved October 13, 2008, from http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_politics.shtml

Conservatives don't feel the need to jump through complex, intellectual hoops in order to
understand or justify some of their positions, he said. "They are more comfortable seeing
and stating things in black and white in ways that would make liberals squirm," Glaser said.
He pointed as an example to a 2001 trip to Italy, where President George W. Bush was
asked to explain himself. The Republican president told assembled world leaders, "I know
what I believe and I believe what I believe is right." And in 2002, Bush told a British
reporter, "Look, my job isn't to nuance."

[Solly Mack]

23. They are the 'because I said so' folks

[OnyxCollie]

24. I've been doing a lot of research on conservative "thinking".

I'll post more later.

[Solly Mack]

25. Looking forward to it! Thanks!!

[OnyxCollie]

31. The research was on speaker/message/audience

for a Master's thesis I am unlikely to write.

Might as well use it somewhere.

Okay, I gotta go now.

[Solly Mack]

32. I'll express good wishes that you DO write it.

Thank you, again!!

[OnyxCollie]

33. I'm facing strong opposition.

My professors are fellows at the non-partisan (yet very conservative) Bliss Institute.

They hate me.

When asked how propaganda might affect a populace, my conservative professor said, "People lie all the time. So what?"

All right, I'm out of here.

[OnyxCollie]

28. Political conservatism as motivated social cognition.

Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129(3), 339-375.

Intolerance of Ambiguity

Frenkel-Brunswik’s work on intolerance of ambiguity was
closely related to research on the authoritarian personality, but it
was distinctive with regard to methodology and content. In an
abstract published in 1948, she reported a study of ethnic prejudice
involving the attitudes of adults and children (9 to 14 years old).
Frenkel-Brunswik (1948) argued that intolerance of ambiguity
constituted a general personality variable that related positively to
prejudice as well as to more general social and cognitive variables.

~snip~

Frenkel-Brunswik (1949, 1951) developed further the theory of
ambiguity intolerance and elaborated the antecedent conditions of
this psychological disposition and its manifold consequences. At
the time, ambiguity intolerance was viewed in Freudian terms as
stemming from an underlying emotional conflict involving feelings
of hostility directed at one’s parents combined with idealization
tendencies. Although stable individual differences in the intolerance
of ambiguity have been observed across many
generations of researchers and participants, theoretical explanations
have changed somewhat. Anticipating current perspectives
on uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede, 2001; Sorrentino & Roney,
2000; Wilson, 1973b), Budner (1962), for example, defined intolerance
of ambiguity as “the tendency to perceive ambiguous
situations as sources of threat” (p. 29).

Intolerance of ambiguity, by increasing cognitive and motivational
tendencies to seek certainty, is hypothesized to lead people
to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to
impose simplistic cliche´s and stereotypes. In a review of research
on ambiguity intolerance, Furnham and Ribchester (1995) provided
the following list of consequences of this tendency:

Resistance to reversal of apparent fluctuating stimuli, the early selection
and maintenance of one solution in a perceptually ambiguous
situation, inability to allow for the possibility of good and bad traits in
the same person, acceptance of attitude statements representing a
rigid, black-white view of life, seeking for certainty, a rigid dichotomizing
into fixed categories, premature closure, and remaining closed
to familiar characteristics of stimuli. (p. 180) (p. 346).

[Ichingcarpenter]

10. Propaganda (1928) by Edward Louis Bernays

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."

...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized."

"Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. "

"It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."




Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995, was an American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda along with Ivy Lee, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations".<1> Combining the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Dr. Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to attempt to manipulate public opinion using the subconscious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

[Solly Mack]

11. Excellent! Thank you for posting that!!

[Ichingcarpenter]

13. I think I posted it years ago when you did the same OP

I hope people bookmark your thread for reference.

[glitch]

15. Oh thank god, I thought I was in a time loop. K& R for excellence! nt

[Solly Mack]

16. LOL!

[Solly Mack]

17. Lot to be said for continuity.

:o)

[EFerrari]

14. Kick

[Solly Mack]

20. Hey!

Thanks! :)

[felix_numinous]

18. Wading through propaganda searching for truth

is a high art these days. I guess most of us here sharpened our skills during the Bush reign. But there is still a lot of baiting going on to create more divisiveness on the left, in order to derail us.

The left needs a strategy, like win in the Fall, while pushing for FDRs 2nd Bill of RIghts. In order to defeat the RW extremist movement to dismantle the Constitution, we need to add to it and preserve our rights first, put it into law. I feel so strongly about this, it's got me all fired up today:)

[Solly Mack]

19. Preserving our rights is definitely worth getting all fired up about

Thank you, felix_numinous.

The Bush II years were like taking an eight year course in propaganda. (among other things)

[OnyxCollie]

22. K&R. nt

[G_j]

26. big K&R

excellent

[Solly Mack]

29. Thank you, G_j

:)

[Uncle Joe]

27. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Solly Mack.:thumbsup:

[Solly Mack]

30. Thank you, Uncle Joe

You're welcome!

[malaise]

34. K & R

:hi:

[Solly Mack]

43. Thanks malaise

:hi:

[Javaman]

35. K & R + bookmarked! nt

[Solly Mack]

42. Thanks, Javaman

[Tsiyu]

36. Sweet

kicking :kick:


and proud to add the 40th Rec :thumbsup:

[Solly Mack]

41. Thank you, Tsiyu

[amborin]

37. K&R

[Solly Mack]

40. Thanks!

[Spike89]

38. Propaganda has its positive side too

I know that others in this thread have said the same thing, but virtually all the examples I've seen have been negative. Perhaps the most successful positive propaganda campaign of my lifetime is the environmental awareness efforts of the late 60s and early 70s that resulted in Earth Day and helped make a real difference in attitudes and laws that still positively affect us today. I kind of hate to see the word constrained to simply mean lies and trickery.

[Solly Mack]

39. Definitely. It can move people to act in a positive way to make things better.

[NNN0LHI]

44. Earth Day and The Crying Indian campaign were done by a front group for the worlds biggest polluters

The idea was to keep people busy watching for their neighbors to flick a cigarette while the huge polluters continued to get away with literally destroying this country. That propaganda obviously worked like a charm.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/3642/

The Crying Indian

How an environmental icon helped sell cans -- and sell out environmentalism

by Ginger Strand
Published in the November/December 2008 issue of Orion magazine

IF YOU WATCHED television at any point in the seventies, you saw him: America’s most famous Indian. Star of perhaps the best-known public service announcement ever, he was a black-braided, buckskinned, cigar-store native come to life, complete with single feather and stoic frown. In the spot’s original version, launched by Keep America Beautiful on Earth Day 1971, he paddles his canoe down a pristine river to booming drumbeats. He glides past flotsam and jetsam. The music grows bombastic, wailing up a movie-soundtrack build. He rows into a city harbor: ship, crane, a scrim of smog. The Indian pulls his boat onto a bank strewn with litter and gazes upon a freeway.

“Some people have a deep, abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country,” intones a basso profundo voice, “and some people don’t.” On those words, someone flings a bag of trash from a passing car. It scatters at the Indian’s feet. He looks into the camera for the money shot. A single tear rolls down his cheek.

“People start pollution. People can stop it,” declares the narrator. snip

The fraudulence of Keep America Beautiful is less well known. In a recent survey, respondents were given a list of “environmental groups” and asked “Which organization do you believe is most believable?” Thirty-six percent chose Keep America Beautiful—it beat out the Nature Conservancy (29 percent), the Sierra Club (17 percent), Greenpeace (15 percent), and the Environmental Defense Fund (3 percent). Over two million Americans acted on that belief in 2006, volunteering for Keep America Beautiful activities: picking up litter, removing graffiti, painting buildings, and planting greenery. Many may not have realized they were handing their free time to a front group for the beer bottlers, can companies, and soda makers who crank out the containers that constitute half of America’s litter. Or that this front group opposes the reuse and recycling legislation that might better address the problem. The information is not hard to find. Ted Williams wrote about it in 1990 for Audubon. Online, you can find many more narratives of KAB’s real motives, including a summary by the Container Recycling Institute. snip

At the same time, KAB’s corporate sponsors made sure their own glass containers and cans never appeared as litter in the ads. This hypocrisy did not go entirely unnoticed. In the late 1960s, a noncorporate faction within the Ad Council, led by Dartmouth president John Sloan Dickey, began to call for Keep America Beautiful to move from litter to the larger problem of environmental pollution. They threatened to scuttle Ad Council support for further antilitter campaigns. Backed into a corner, KAB directors agreed to expand their work to address “the serious menace of all pollutants to the nation’s health and welfare.”

Clearly a more subtle approach was necessary. The Ad Council’s volunteer coordinator for the Keep America Beautiful campaign was an executive from the American Can Company. With him at the helm, a new ad agency was brought in—Marsteller, who happened to be American Can’s own ad agency. The visual arm of Burson-Marsteller, the global public relations firm famous for its list of clients with environment-related publicity problems,* Marsteller crafted the new approach. The crying Indian campaign, premiering on Earth Day 1971, had it all: a heart-wrenching central figure, an appeal to mythic America, and a catchy slogan. There was a pro forma gesture in the direction of ecology—the Indian paddles by some belching smokestacks, after all—and the language had shifted from “littering” to “pollution.” But the message was the same: quit tossing coffee cups out of the window of your Chevy Chevelle, you pig, and America’s environmental problems will end.

[Kermitt Gribble]

45. Very appropriate

for the current atmosphere. K&R!

[Solly Mack]

48. Thanks, Kermitt Gribble

:D

[Overseas]

46. K&R! //nt

[Solly Mack]

49. Thank you, Overseas

[Overseas]

53. Thank you for showing the long history of propaganda.

The bread and butter of the hundreds of right wing PR firms in operation since the Powell Memo.
http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/powell_memo_lewis.html

I am embarrassed that they've achieved so many of their goals. I really thought at one time that surely people would not be so easily manipulated, yet here we are.

[zeos3]

47. KICK

[Solly Mack]

50. Ouch

Thanks :)

[Octafish]

51. Bookmarked.

Sorry I didn't see this earlier so I could Rec.

:kick: to the pants of liars.

[Ignis]

52. Too late for the R, but here's your well deserved K!

:kick: