🤨Propaganda. How not to be bamboozled?

 Cтатья by Donna Woolfolk Cross "Propaganda. How not to be bamboozled?"

Propaganda. If an opinion poll were taken tomorrow, we can be sure that nearly everyone would be against it because it sounds so bad. When we say “Oh, that’s just propaganda,  it means, to most people, “That’s a pack of lies.” But really, propaganda is simply a means of persuasion and so it can be put to work for good causes as well as bad – to persuade people to give to charity, for example, or to love their neighbors, or to stop polluting the environment.

    For good or evil, propaganda pervades our daily lives, helping to shape our attitudes on a thousand subjects. Propaganda probably determines the brand of toothpaste you use, the movies you see, the candidates you elect when you get to the polls. Propaganda works by tricking us, by momentarily distracting the eye while the rabbit pops out from beneath the cloth propaganda works best with an uncritical audience, Joseph Goebbels, propaganda minister in Nazi Germany, once defined his work as “the conquest of the masses.” The masses would not have been conquered, however, they had known how to challenge and to question, how to make distinctions between propaganda and reasonable argument.

    People are bamboozled mainly because they don’t recognize propaganda when they see it. They need to be informed about various devices that can be used to mislead and deceive-about the propagandist’s overflowing bag of tricks. The following, then, are some common pitfalls for the unwary.

1. Name-calling

    As its title suggests, this device consists of labeling people or ideas with words of bad connotation, literally, “calling them names” Here the propagandist tries to arouse our contempt so we will dismiss the “bad name” person or idea without examining its merits.

   Bad names have played tremendously important role in the history of the world. They have ruined reputations and ended lives, sent people to prison and to war, and just generally made us mad at each other for centuries.

   Name –calling can be used against politics, practices, beliefs and ideal, as when we hear a candidate for office described as a “foolish idealist” or a “two-faced liar” or when an incumbent’s policies are denounced as “reckless”, ”reactionary”, or just plain “stupid”.

    The point here is that when the propagandist uses name-calling, he does not want us to think-merely to react, blindly, unquestioningly. So the “Forgetting the bad name attached to it, what are the merits of the idea itself? What does the name really mean anyway?

2. Glittering Generalities.

      Glittering generalities are really name-calling in reverse. Name-calling uses words with bad connotations; glittering generalities are words with good connotations –“virtue words,” as the Institute for Propaganda Analysis has called them. The Institute explains that while name-calling tries to get us to reject and condemn someone or something without examining the evidence, glittering generalities try to get us to accept and agree without examining the evidence.

     Both name-calling and glittering generalities work by stirring our emotions in the hope that this will cloud our thinking. Another approach that propaganda uses is to create a destruction, a “red herring” that will make people forget or ignore the real issues. There are several different kinds of “red herrings” that can be used to distract attention.

3. Plain – folks appeal

     “Plain-folks appeal” is the device by which a speaker tries to win our confidence and support by appearing to be a person like ourselves – “just one of the plain folks.” The plain-folks appeal is at work when candidates go around shaking hands with factory workers, kissing babies in supermarkets, sampling pasta with Italians, and fried chicken with Southerners. “Now I’m a businessman like you” is a plain-folks appeal, as is “I’ve been a farm boy all my life.” Senator Yakalot tries the plain-folks appeal when he says, “I’m just a small-town boy like you fine people.” The use of such expressions once prompted Lyndon Johnson to quip, “whenever I hear someone say, “I’m just an old country lawyer,” the first thing I reach for is my wallet to make sure it is still there.”

     The irrelevancy of the plain-folks appeal is obvious: even if the man is “one of us”(which may not be true at all),that does not mean that his ideas and programs are sound – or even that he honestly has our best interests at heart. As with glittering generalities, the danger here is that we may mistakenly assume we are immune to this appeal. But propagandists wouldn’t use it unless it had been proved to work. You can protect yourself by saying, “Aside from his “nice guy next door” image, what this man stands for? Are his ideas and his past record really supportive of my best interest?”

4. Argumentum ad populum (stroking)

      Argumentum ad populum means “argument to the people” or “telling the people what they want to hear.” The colloquial term from the Watergate ear is “stroking”, which conjures up pictures of small animals or children being stroked or soothed with compliments until they come to like the person doing the complimenting – and, by extension, his or her ideas.

     We all like to hear nice things about ourselves and the group we belong to – we like to be liked- so it stands to reason that we will respond warmly to a person who tells us we are “hard –working taxpayers” or “the most generous, free spirited nation in the world.” Politicians tell farmers they are “the backbone of the American economy” and college students that they are the “leaders and policy makers of tomorrow.”

        Obviously, the intent here is to sidetrack us from thinking critically about the man and his ideas. Our own good qualities have nothing to do with the issue at hand. Ask yourself, “Apart from the nice things he has to say about me (and my church, my nation, my ethnic group, my neighbors), what does the candidate stand for? Are his or her ideas in my best interests?”

5. Argumentum ad hominem

      Argumentum ad hominem means “argument to the man” and that’s exactly what it is. When a propagandist uses argumentum ad hominem, he wants to distract our attention from the issue under  consideration with personal attacks on the people involved. For example, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, some people responded by calling him the”baboon”. But Lincoln’s long arms and awkward carriage had nothing to do with the merits of the Proclamation or the question of whether or not slavery should be abolished.

         Refuse to be way –laid by argumentum ad hominem and ask, “Do personal qualities of the person being discussed have anything to do with the issue at hand? Leaving him aside, how good is the idea itself?”

6. Transfer

        In argumentum ad hominem, an attempt is made to associate negative aspects of a person’s character or personal appearance with the issue or idea he supports. The transfer device uses the same process of association to make us accept or condemn a given person or idea.

       The process works equally well in reverse, when guilt by association is used to transfer our dislike or disapproval of one idea or group to some other idea or group that the propagandist wants us to reject and condemn. “John Doe says we need to make some changes in the way our government operates; well that’s exactly what the Ku Klux Klan has said, so there’s a meeting of great minds!” That’s guilt by association for you; there is no logical connection between John Doe  and get us thinking (and worrying) about the Ku Klux Klan and its politics of violence.

       How can we learn to spot transfer device and distinguish between fair and unfair associations? We can teach ourselves to suspect judgment until we have answered these questions: “Is there any legitimate connection between the idea under discussion and the thing it is associated with? Leaving the transfer device out of the picture, what are the merits of the idea by itself?”

7. Bandwagon

    Essentially, the bandwagon urges us to support an action or an opinion because it is popular, because “everyone else is doing it”. This call to “get on the bandwagon” appeals to the strong desire in most of us to be one of the crowds,  not to be left out alone. Advertising makes extensive use of the bandwagon appeal (“Join the Pepsi people”), but so do politicians (“Let us join together in this great cause”). Senator Yakalot uses the bandwagon appeal when he says that “More and more citizens are rallying to my cause every day,” and asks the audience to “join them – and me – in our fight for America.”

      Once the mass begins to move – on the bandwagon – it becomes harder and harder to perceive the leader riding the bandwagon. So don’t be a lemming, rushing blindly on to destruction because “everyone else is doing it.” Stop and ask, “Where is the bandwagon headed? Never mind about everybody else, is this - what is best for me?”

8. Faulty cause and effect

      As the name suggests, this device sets up a cause –and – effect relationship that may not be true. The Latin name for this logical fallacy is post hoc ergo propter hoc, which means “after this therefore because of this.” But just because one thing happened after another doesn’t  mean that one caused the other.

     An example of false cause- and – effect reasoning is offered by the story (probably invented) of a woman aboard the ship “Titanic.” She woke up from a nap and, feeling seasick, looked around for a call button to summon the steward to bring her some medication. She finally located a small button on one of the walls of her cabin and pushed it. A split second later, the Titanic grazed an iceberg in the terrible crash that was to send the entire ship to its destructions. The woman screamed and said, “Oh, God, what have I done? What have I done?” The humor of that anecdote comes from the absurdity of the woman’s assumption that pushing the small red button resulted in the destruction of a ship weighing several  hundred tones: “It happened after I pushed it, therefore it must be because I pushed it”- post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. There is, of course, no cause – and- effect relationship there.

         Don’t be taken in by false cause and effect; be sure to ask, “Is there enough evidence to prove that this cause led to that effect? Could there have been any other causes?

9.False analogy

              A famous example of this is the old proverb “Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream” often used as an analogy to convince voters not to change administrations in the middle of a war or other crisis. But the analogy is misleading because there are so many differences between the things compared. In what ways is a war or political crisis like a stream? And is a nation of millions of people comparable to a man trying to get across a stream? Analogy is false and unfair when it compares two things that have little in common and assumes that they are identical. Senator Yakalot tries to hoodwink his listeners with false analogy when he says, “Trying to take Americans out of the kind of cars they love is as undemocratic as trying to deprive them of the right to vote.”

        Of course, analogies can be drawn that are reasonable and fair. It would be reasonable, for example, to compare the results of busing in one small Southern city with the possible results of another, if the towns have the same kind of history, population, and school policy. We can decide for ourselves whether an analogy is false or fair by asking, “Are the things being compared truly alike in significant ways? Do the differences between them affect the comparison?

10. Begging the question

        Actually, the name of this device is rather misleading, because it does not appear in the form of a question. Begging the question occurs when, in discussing a questionable or debatable point, a person assumes as already established the very point that he is trying to prove. For example, “No thinking citizen could approve such a completely unacceptable policy as this one.” But isn’t the question of whether or not the policy is acceptable the very point to be established? Senator Yakalot begs the question when he announces that his opponent’s plan won’t work “because it is unworkable.”

        We can protect ourselves against this kind of faulty logic by asking, “What is assumed in this statement? Is the assumption reasonable, or does it need more proof?”

11. The two - extremes fallacy (false dilemma)

         The two–extreme fallacy is at work in this statement by Lenin, the great Marxist leader:”You cannot eliminate one basic assumption, one substantial part of this philosophy of Marxism (it is as if it were a block of steel), without falling into the arms of bourgeois-reactionary falsehood.” In other words, if we don’t agree 100 percent with every premise of Marxism, we must be placed at the opposite end of the political- economic spectrum – for Lenin, “bourgeois-reactionary falsehood.” If we are not entirely with him, we must be against him; those are the only possibilities open to us. Of course, this is a logical fallacy; in real life there are any number of political questions one can maintain between the two extremes of Marxism and capitalism.

         Senator Yakalot uses the two –extremes fallacy in the same way as Lenin when he tells his audience that “in this world a man’s either for private enterprise or he’s for socialism.”

           One of the most famous examples of the two –extremes fallacy in recent history is the slogan, “America: Love it or leave it.” With its implicit suggestion that we either accept everything just as it is in America today without complaint- or just get out. Again, it should be obvious that there is a whole range of action and belief between those two extremes.

         Don’t be duped; stop and ask, “Are those really the only two options I can choose from? Are there other alternatives not mentioned that deserve consideration?”

 12. Card stacking

       Some questions are so multifaceted and complex that no one can make an intelligent decision about them without considering a wide variety of evidence. One selection of facts could make us feel one way and another selection could make us feel just the opposite. Card stacking is a device of propaganda, which selects only the facts that support the propagandist’s point of view, and ignores all the others. For example, a candidate could be made to look like a legislative dynamo if you say, “Representative McNerd introduced more new bills than any other member of the Congress,” and neglect to mention that most of them were so preposterous that they were laughed off the floor.

     The best protection against card stacking is to take the “Yes, but…”attitude. This device of propaganda is not untrue, but then again it is not the whole truth. So ask yourself, “Is the person leaving something out that I should know about? Is there some other information that should be brought to bear on this question?”

13. Testimonial

     The testimonial device consists in having some loved or respected person give a statement of support (testimonial) for a given product or idea. The problem is that the person being quoted may not be an expert in the field; in fact, he may know nothing at all about it. Using the name of a man who is skilled and famous in one field to give a testimonial for something in another field is unfair and unreasonable.

  When celebrities endorse a political candidate, they may not be making money by doing so, but we should still question whether they are in any better position to judge than we ourselves. Too often we are willing to let others we like or respect make our decisions for us, while we follow along acquiescently. And this is the purpose of testimonial – to get us to agree and accept without stopping to think. Be sure to ask, - “Is there any reason to believe that this person (or organization or whatever) has any more knowledge or information than I do on this subject? What does the idea amount to on its own merits, without the benefit of testimonial?”

    If we are to be led, let us not be led blindly, but critically, intelligently, with our eyes open. If we are to continue to be a government “by the people”, let us become informed about the methods and purposes of propaganda, so we can be the masters, not the slaves of our destiny.