Types of propaganda, propaganda techniques, and propaganda strategies (2017)

I don't want to necessarily pick on the left here, but the most in-your-face example is all the so-called 'wokeness' in the media. This is a conscious effort to promote the 'inclusiveness' or however you want to phrase it. It's discussed openly how do you want people to react to what you publish. Have you ever considered that it might be your own personal biases that you don't see it?

Or rationalize it as a right thing to do. The end justifies the means and such.

Trying to spin a strict definition of propaganda to include all propagation of information is disingenuous, regardless of where the original word came from.

And even then you're wrong, you have to go back much earlier to find the shift in definition of the term. The negative connotation that led to our modern definition originated in the French Revolution, not the Cold War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda#cite_ref-13

> Academic Barbara Diggs-Brown conceives that the negative connotations of the term “propaganda” are associated with the earlier social and political transformations that occurred during the French Revolutionary period movement of 1789 to 1799 between the start and the middle portion of the 19th century, in a time where the word started to be used in a nonclerical and political context.

Before the French Revolution the term was used by the Catholic church and was considered "an ancient and honorable term".

https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-hist...

WWI & II made the modern definition we know today popular, but both the American and French revolution guided it there.

Have read some of the source materials on the propaganda they talk about, and what I've found it comes down to is criticism of the nonsense is basically a tarpit.

The bit about Putin's propaganda guy is super interesting, as what he's doing makes complete sense within other frameworks. The advantage these propagandists have is they believe one simple thing and it's very easy to signal, operationalize, and organize around. It's basically nihilism.

The article does get a couple things wrong e.g.:

> Big Lie: Using a complex array of events to justify an action or narrative. What you do is take a carefully selected collection of truths, lies, and half-truths that all seem to tell a story (which is actually revised history) and use them to construct a story that eventually supplants the public’s accurate perception of the underlying events.

The Big Lie tactic is (as I remember reading in Cialdini, maybe?) something necessarily absurd like Kim Jong Il hitting 11 consecutive hole-in-one shots on a golf course, where if you can't contain your disgust at how absurd that sounds, and you have some sense of self where it is offensive for you to believe it, you mark yourself out for isolation and attack. The Big Lie is primarily a tactic to get people to react, and the people whose identities are still anchored to truth are potential resistance leaders, so this lets them paint themselves as targets. It's also called a "wedge issue," and is the complementary tactic to dogwhistles and watchwords. It is also close to a "scissor statement," which is a statement that only has polarized and opposing interpretations. (HN thread on scissor statements: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21190508)

There are also some standard sales and negotiation tactics thrown in there, and oddly, some of their own tactics to create a slant are written into it.

However, the goal of a propagandist is to hold your attention and it doesn't matter what you actually think, because as long as the propagandist has your attention, you are passified by their noise and not acting against them or in your own interest. Arguing the logic or principles? Engaged. Outraged? Engaged. Have a side? Engaged. Ditched family and friends over politics? Engaged. The job of a propagandist is to manage your attention and make the stories you tell yourself the ones they taught you, they don't actually care what you think, only that above all you do nothing, and so small squads of less than 10 people at a time can seem to control entire cities.

The best filter against propaganda is attitude. The question, "how do I benefit if they are wrong?" goes a long way to establishing the necessary personal boundaries that keep you from spending too much time mesmerized. Having an axiomatic truth as a co-ordinate or waypoint for who you are prevents you from being completely submerged by narrative. Deflecting arguments helps as well because they are mainly bait for a tarpit, and as Dale Carnigie said, "nobody wins an argument." If your reaction to something is angry or excitable, you are downstream of someone trying to get inside your head.

Anyway, it's a good and important article on a pet topic, so my advice for dealing with propaganda is: it's your attention they want, only ever give it on your own terms.

Susan Jacoby[1] made the case that the lack of a federal/national education system (the constitution makes it a state responsibility) historically results from Americans' fears of indoctrination by such an education system -- specifically that their children would not be properly indoctrinated into their religion, or worse, be indoctrinated into someone else's religion.

[1] Age of American Unreason