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April 6, 2023April 25, 2023

Ars Propagandica

A thread passing through the eye of a needle. An audience being drawn through the acts of a dramatic play. Light separating into a rainbow as it hits a prism. These are all apt visual metaphors for the 1940’s. It’s the era which contains the origin story of how a reluctant U.S. became the accidental imperial power of the world as the British stepped down gracefully so as to ‘spend more time with its family’.

The prism is most fitting in this case. The seizing and breaking-up of I.G. Farben’s dye trust by 1953, which at one time produced ~90% of the world’s dyestuffs, appears to have had the observable coincidence of exploding the visual world into color. To get there, the “intelligent men”, or the ones who are allowed access to the channels of communication, had convinced themselves and world public opinion that Total War and modelling lockstep censorship was the only way forward.

White light enters the prism

They were quite vocal about it in 1942. In his book, Proclaim Liberty!, cultural critic Gilbert Seldes wrote,

“if our leaders believed that total effort could be achieved more quickly by lies than by truth, it would be their obligation to lie to us. In total war there is no alternative to the most effective weapon. Only the weapon must be effective over a sufficient length of time; the advantage of a lie must be measured against the loss when the lie is shown up…”

“Before propaganda can lie to us, safely and for our own preservation, honorably and desirably, it must persuade us to give up our whole system of communication, our political habits, our tradition of free criticism.”

Those were responses to the actions of Archibald MacLeish. History remembers him as a poet, not as a bureaucrat propagandist or social engineer, because his groups ideas won. Martin Quigley, editor and publisher of the Motion Picture Herald, prosed at the time,

“The question that challenges serious attention in connection with MacLeish… is whether he was speaking as A. MacLeish, poet, writer, ‘advanced’ political and social thinker and, incidentally, librarian of Congress, or whether he was speaking as director of the Office of Facts and Figures, a department… intended to afford the public facts and figures useful to… the prosecution of the war… Presumably, a function of the department is wartime propaganda.”

“We trust that the day shall not arrive when, clothed with wartime powers, they shall substitute directives for argument and insistence. Thus, if our trust is not misplaced, time and experience will solve the problem – if there is one – in the American way.”

That “American Way” was to continue the ‘ask nice and we profit’ self-censoring which had been working just fine in movies and radio. There was no need to impose rules or force directives on them. They weren’t the newspapers.

In the spring of 1942, MacLeish was basically on a moralizing censorship advisory tour, starting with the newspapers. He delivered an address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors titled “The Responsibility of the Press”, proclaiming that the German’s are trying to divide us and “[if] successful this propaganda would divide us internally precisely as our enemies propose we shall be divided”.

Three days later, his most significant contribution to this era, an address he delivered at the Annual Luncheon of the Associated Press on April 20, 1942, stating, “To have the masters of the American press silenced in front of you for twenty minutes while you tell them, is something any public servant would gladly sacrifice his hope of heaven to achieve.” The speech he prepared for them was titled “The Strategy of Truth”.

It was hard to define at the time, as new ideas tend to be, but the essence of “The Strategy of Truth” is to combine patriotic and ideological opinion with Inoculation Theory to engineer a truth that drives a public opinion. That required editorializing and overt acts of opinion molding. And they did it. They were told it was okay to do it by a peer, a comrade, one of the intelligent men.

Recipient of the 1941 Peabody Award for Outstanding Educational Program for the show “University of Chicago Round Table of the Air”, Director of Radio Productions at the University of Chicago, Sherman Dryer, responds in his book Radio in Wartime, not by arguing the concept, but by splitting hairs over the choice of words,

“Ideally the shift from a Strategy of Truth to a propaganda for the truth should be made as an official decision, so there can be no misunderstanding either as to its aims or purpose.”

This mentality became embedded into journalism and entertainment at the height of radio, the golden age of movies, the dawn of television and never left. Subjective “propaganda for the truth” rules the day.

We exit the prism together

For two contemporary examples, think Colin Powell’s testimony about WMD’s in Iraq as justification for that war: It was presented as a truth of that time, supported by the justifications our then fledgling nation needed. Or the anti-MAGA harpies: they are all brainwashed by a “Strategy of Truth” propaganda pseudo-environment, which they know in their soul to be true, and which justifies their Total War.

The intelligent men too, like it or not, have to go through the prism: the eye of the needle: the final act, and find out with the rest of us, what is on the other side.

In 1967, writing in the Saturday Review of Literature, MacLeish laments about the resolve of that time, commenting on President Johnson’s grievance to “the cussers and complainers… who only see what is wrong in the world”. He begins,

“Throughout the contemporary world, or that part of it, at least, which modern technology has affected, nothing is more noticeable than… the contradiction between the triumphs of human achievement, on the one hand, and the profound uneasiness of humanity on the other.”

“For the first time the deeds of men have caught up with their imaginations… Fire has been stolen not from the Olympic gods but from the sun itself. Time has been extended and distance reduced so that a word can be heard around the earth as it is spoken and an ordinary life can be lived in leisure.”

“But what is true of the accomplishments of the age is not true of our feelings for it… Ordinary, unheroic man has dwindled until nothing but his morbid fears, his exceptional vices, his “extreme situations” are significant, and common human life itself has lost its literary interest; only its “absurdity” inspires a novel or a play.”

“The discoveries of contemporary literature are old discoveries long since made: the discovery that men do truly die; the discovery that mortal human life is meaningless; the discovery that nothing is real but the convulsions of sex, which are not real, either. ‘Vanity of vanities’, said the preacher thousands of years ago.”

“There is, in truth, a terror in the world, and the arts have heard it as they always do. Under the hum of the miraculous machines and the ceaseless publications of the brilliant physicists a silence waits and listens and is heard.”

“It is the silence of apprehension. We do not trust our time, and the reason we do not trust our time is because it is we who have made the time, and we do not trust ourselves. We have played the hero’s part, mastered the monsters, accomplished the labors, become gods– and we do not trust ourselves as gods. We know what we are.”

“In the old days when the gods were someone else, the knowledge of what we are did not frighten us. There were Furies to pursue the Hitlers, and Athenas to restore the truth. But now that we are gods ourselves we bear the knowledge for ourselves. Like that old Greek hero who learned when all the labors had been accomplished that it was he himself who had killed his sons.”

This is a deep and impressive observation. However, societies uneasiness can’t simply be reduced down to feeling insignificant; what Carl Sagan calls the “Pale Blue Dot”. With the exception of “play[ing] the hero’s part” and killing young men, MacLeish conveniently omits much of his own contributions beginning a quarter century prior. Much of the disillusionment of the post-war American-narrative is the overuse of “Strategy of Truth” style propaganda. The aftermath Seldes had warned “when the lie is shown up”, and Quigley “if our trust is not misplaced”. The fact that we are lied to for truth is very unsettling.

Reducing back to white light

Considering the Pale Blue Dot is the light passing through the lens of a telescope, when the 10,000-foot view is reduced down to a Dealy Plaza sized dossier, you can be assured that there is censorship involved. The information has been reduced down by the self-censoring of the intelligent men. When that censorship favors lies, half-lies, and falsehoods to manufacture a truth, then engineered “strategy of truth” propaganda is being produced. Corporate and bureaucratic interests only make this way easier than it is hard to do.

It should be no surprise, then, that when people find out how the consent of the masses has been manufactured, they no longer trust the social engineers on face value. The Applied Scientists who built the past have been replaced by the Social Scientists who are manufacturing the future. The kind of future that does not appreciate question or inquiry. The kind of future that human intuition rightfully resists, naturally.

November 8, 2022April 20, 2023

The Doctor Will See You Now

The flaw in our system of trust becomes more exposed when looking at past incidents where an argument of a propaganda had changed. When at one time we were told to believe a certain thing in a certain way, then suddenly forced to pivot, based on new information. Of course, the frustrating part being the good chances that the only reason for even caring about the thing in the first place was because of propaganda: the use of symbols, repetition, and various appeals by marketers, advertisers and information brokers to sell products, people, and ideas to the public without the use of physical coercion.

A commonly used and effective appeal, is the appeal to authority.

The clean diesel myth

“Everyone believed Volkswagen’s clean diesel fantasy. Maybe we wanted it. Maybe some needed it.”^[1]

Volkswagen did the impossible: they changed the public image of diesel engines from a stinky dirty polluter into an eco-friendly hero, and the advertising was “fun” and persuasive^{^[2]}:

“For the eco-conscious and the high-performance-conscious.
We build our fuel-efficient vehicles so that you’ll have a great time passing all those other fuel-efficient vehicles out there. The steering wheel is more fun to turn. The accelerator is more fun to press. And because stopping for fuel is as much “fun” as it’s always been, our hybrid and TDI Clean Diesel vehicles are designed to allow you to stop less and go more.”

“TDI vehicles use clean diesel fuel and advanced engineering to achieve up to 43 miles per gallon with a range of up to 795 miles. That’s up to 30% better fuel economy than comparable gas engines.”

Whether you believed this fairy tale at the time didn’t matter. Questioning the narrative was not allowed. Then when it was discovered that some of the “advanced engineering” was manipulation through software to detect when the car was on a dynamometer being performance tested (i.e. no “fun” stuff happening like turning the steering wheel or pressing the accelerator), the message had to change.

Martin Winterkorn received a doctorate in 1977. He became CEO of Volkswagen in 2007, the year before the company introduced it’s new line of “Clean Diesel” vehicles. He remained CEO until 2015 when the allegations of the emissions scandal had surfaced. He issued a heartfelt apology^[3]

“I personally am deeply sorry that we have broken the trust of our customers and the public. We will cooperate fully with the responsible agencies, with transparency and urgency, to clearly, openly and completely establish all of the facts of this case.”

Although he has been charged with crimes in the US and Germany, he has yet to be sentenced or see a trial.

The smartest guys in the room

“Still, it’s hard not to wish for that naïve time when Enron was shocking, when we believed President Bush when he said that Sarbanes-Oxley would rein in greed, and when we really, truly thought that the act of putting Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay behind bars would solve everything.”^[4]

Enron was in to everything: they traded in over 30 different products, and the appearance of trustworthiness (and fun) was reinforced using persuasive language ^[4]:

OUR VALUES
RESPECT: We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness, and arrogance don’t belong here.
INTEGRITY: We work with customers and prospects openly, honestly, and sincerely. When we say we will do something, we will do it; when we say we cannot or will not do something, then we won’t do it.
COMMUNICATION: We have an obligation to communicate. Here, we take the time to talk with one another . . . and to listen. We believe that information is meant to move and that information moves people.
EXCELLENCE: We are satisfied with nothing less than the very best in everything we do. We will continue to raise the bar for everyone. The great fun here will be for all of us to discover just how good we can really be.
— From Enron’s 1998 Annual Report

It’s easy to be skeptical now, but how do you question what was considered at the time to be the most innovative company? When the company went bankrupt in 2001, and it was discovered that they had defrauded investors and customers for mucho dinero, the message had to change.

Kenneth Lay received a doctorate in 1970. He founded Enron through a merger in 1985 and was CEO until he stepped down in February 2001, only to return to the position later in August as the company was in a tailspin. He did not apologize^[5]:

“I respectfully ask you not to draw a negative inference because I am asserting my Fifth Amendment constitutional protection on instruction from counsel.”

Although he had been found guilty of several crimes, he died before the sentencing hearing.

Violating the airwaves, a public trust

“[The co-producer] also told me that the show was merely entertainment and that giving help to quiz contests was a common practice and merely a part of show business. This of course was not true, but perhaps I wanted to believe him.”^[6]

In the early years of television, TV quiz show contestants appear to know everything. Sweating in a soundproof isolation booth, answering obscure long-form five-part questions, attracted millions of viewers to the new medium… who wanted to watch the money for fun^[7]:

Do You Qualify for TV Quiz?
So you fancy yourself a quiz kid? So you want to get on a television quiz show and make a fortune?

Well, here are some of the 100 questions which, until a new batch was cooked up recently, were answered by every hopeful seeking to appear on the National Broadcasting Co. quiz show Twenty One.

Producers of shows like Twenty One thought they themselves had hit the jackpot. They could sell advertising to big business, and give the audience the illusion of big instant winning, all while claiming to further the cause of education by turning the TV of millions of homes into a classroom each week. Then it was uncovered that contestants of many of these shows were given the answers in advance, so the message had to change.

Charles Van Doren received a doctorate in 1955. He will become a contestant on Twenty One in 1957 and be given the answers to the questions in advance. He will win $129,000 in cash while on the show, and following that run received an NBC contract worth $50K/year, committing him to a minimum of one appearance a week on the network^[8]. He will commit perjury during the initial investigation, eventually being arrested for it ^[9], but did come clean to the House Investigation of Television Quiz Shows in a long prepared statement with his lawyer by his side ^[6]:

[Albert Freedman] also stressed the fact that by appearing on a nationally televised program I would be doing a great service to the intellectual life, to teachers and to education in general, by increasing public respect for the work of the mind through my performances. In fact, I think I have done a disservice to all of them. I deeply regret this, since I believe nothing is of more vital importance to our civilization than education.

Charlie will lose two jobs as a result: the lucrative NBC contract and his teaching job at Columbia University.

Furthering the cause of education by the educated

What’s maybe even more fantastical is that the producers of Twenty One, Freedman and company, will recycle their successful formula of fabrication in the summer of 1957 to produce another show using Charlie’s younger brother.^[8]

“That Van Doren family is all over the broadcasting scene. Now it’s John Van Doren (Charles’ 29-year-old brother) who will trade knowledge for money as a regular panelist in “High-Low”, the NBC quiz game which will be unveiled July 4. John, a resident of Cornwall, Conn., teaches at Brandeis University.”

John was never implicated in the quiz show scandal for receiving answers, but that detail is moot because it was uncovered that the producers could not do this type of show of complex long-form questions, the ones that really showcase their intellectual flex, without doing so. They originally tried and it absolutely failed.

These educated, credentialed people are in the same class which Dostoevsky points out should not even have to lie, but yet they do. And we trust them because we think, “why should they lie?” They are the people propped up (repetition) with their credentials (symbols) as an authority (appeal) by marketers, advertisers and information brokers to sell products, people, and ideas to the public without the use of physical coercion.

Charlie’s parents, Mark and Dorothy, were both involved in the massive propaganda network made up by the publishing world working with the government during World War II. It was so big, in fact, that we still get new WWII-era content being produced almost every month. That propaganda never sleeps. And Mark’s best friend, Archibald MacLeish, was a major influence and is perhaps one of that era’s greatest propagandists… and he gets no credit for it.

That’s next.

Notes:

^[1]“We Have All Been Smoked by Volkswagen”, Chicago Tribune, Sep 27, 2015, Phil Rosenthal

^[2]Fremont Volkswagen Advertisment (2013, Feb 2). For the eco-conscious and the high-performance-conscious. Casper Star-Tribune (Casper, Wyoming), p. C12.

^[3]“VW Halts Diesel Sales”, The South Bend Tribune, Sep 21, 2015, USA TODAY, Nathan Bomey

^[4]McLean, Bethany & Elkind, Peter (2012). The smartest guys in the room : the amazing rise and scandalous fall of Enron. Penguin Group.

^[5] “Man with few words gets earful of criticism”, Journal and Courier, Feb 13, 2002, The Washington Post, Susan Schmidt

^[6] “The Truth Is the Only Thing with Which a Man Can Live”: Quiz Show Contestant Charles Van Doren Publicly Confesses to Deceiving His Television Audience. TESTIMONY OF CHARLES VAN DOREN, ACCOMPANIED BY HIS ATTORNEY, CARL J. RUBINO, Congress, House, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Investigation of Television Quiz Shows, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., November 2–6, 1959 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960). http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6566

^[7]“Do You Qualify for TV Quiz?”. Asbury Park Press, Sep 15, 1957, Cynthia Lowry, Associated Press, New York

^[8] “Van Doren to Remain In Teaching — Also NBC”. Democrat and Chronicle, Jun 27, 1957, Marie Torre, New York Herald Tribune, Inc

^[9] “Van Doren, Other TV Quiz Stars, Purjured Selves”. Reno Evening Gazette, Oct 17, 1960, Associated Press, New York, p. 1

November 6, 2022April 25, 2023

And They Called it Vranyo

If “every media input that is consumed through the senses is propaganda” and “rhetorical persuasion is the algorithm of propaganda“, then there must be a system in the environment which brokers these two ideas together. For this, incidentally, the Britannica Kids Encyclopedia^[1] provides additional context to the explanation of propaganda, which reads:

“All propaganda is a systematic effort to persuade. Thus the issue is not the truth or falsehood of what is said. The propagandist gives a one-sided message, emphasizing the good points of one position and the bad points of another position.”

A systematic effort to persuade? Alright, hold your pampers. Before thinking you already have the answer to Final Jeopardy, you may have only triggered a predefined response and elicited a biased conclusion. Depending on whence the propaganda came, you might be thinking: “it’s the lying Republicans and their FOX News”, “it’s those do-nothing-Democrats and their government checks”, or maybe just waving a fist in the air and exclaiming “Capitalism!”. These examples, of course, are nothing more than reductive claims which provide a shorthand explanation to project blame and excuse problems onto another group. More on that later.

The system which allows propaganda, both agreeable or disagreeable, is not a system that actually exists in the external environment.

The system is inside of us

Cold War era social science has given us many fun and exotic ways to manipulate the human brain. The 1950’s brought us cool stuff like MK-Ultra experiments, the CIA program which continued the WWII-era work on subduing and controlling human minds. The early 1960’s brought us decisive tools like Inoculation Theory, which is the idea that introducing counter-arguments of a propaganda in advance can work like an inoculation against its ever ensuing counter-propaganda.

There was also a confusing new concept. This concept was in an effort to differentiate the Russian environment as different from the American’s, because the Russians are lying liars that just lie in their world of lying lies… and they called it “vranyo”^[2].

Vranyo was introduced in an article published in the journal, “Problems with Communism”^[2-47], in 1962. The author, Ronald Hingley, credits much of the evidence for this concept to a 90-year-old essay written by Fyodor Dostoevsky back in 1873. The essay is titled “Something about lying“, but was printed differently in the journal as “A Word or Two about Vranyo“, from which is quoted:

“Not long ago I was suddenly struck by the thought that among our Russian intellectual classes the existence of a non-liar is an impossibility. The reason for this is that in Russia even completely honest people can lie. I am convinced that in other nations, for the great majority, it is only scoundrels who lie; they lie for practical advantage, i.e. with directly criminal aims.”

Self-serving translations of the original essay title aside, Hingley’s other mistake is using, as his supporting rhetorical argument, the suggestion that Dostoevsky is implicating the entire Russian people as liars. He wasn’t. He was referring to a very specific group.

Hingley’s propaganda could have explained that the primary difference between the cultures was largely along the guilt–shame–fear spectrum of cultures, or how best we are manipulated and ultimately motivated by information. The general consensus of the time being that Americans respond more to guilt tactics and the Russians more to shame. These tactics are often exploited when used at the intersect where individual and group interest converge, previously discussed.

Hingley just calls all Russians liars to help create the shorthand explanation as to why the Russians are so susceptible to what Americans are told is simply propaganda: You see, it’s simple: Russians are just addicted to lying.

Never do we get the whole story

Dostoevsky was very specific in his essay about who the main culprits of this needless and shame-free lying phenomenon were. He specifically called out intellectuals; the educated class; liberals. The class of people that in 1873 Russia, in his view, shouldn’t have needed to lie because they already had better access to resources.

Dostoevsky continues in “Something about lying”:

“In fact, people have finally reached the point where all those things the human mind is forever and ever lying to itself about are much more understandable than the truth itself; and this is the case all over the world. The truth can lie on the table right in front of people for a hundred years but they won’t pick it up; they go chasing after fabrications precisely because they consider truth to be fantastic and utopian.”^[3-271]

“There is a point on which any Russian person of the educated category, when appearing in society or in public, is terribly exacting and will not yield an inch… This point is intellect, the desire to appear more clever than he is and – this is remarkable it is certainly not a desire to seem cleverer than everybody else or even cleverer than anyone in particular but only not to be stupider than anyone else.”^[3-273]

“Here there arises a phenomenon that exists only in the soul of the Russian educated classes: in that soul, as soon as it finds itself in public, not only is there no doubt of its own intelligence but there is not even any doubt of its own complete erudition^*, if the matter comes to erudition^*.”^[3-274]

^{*erudition. n. showing knowledge or learnedness.}

“One can state positively that every windbag with relatively decent manners (our public, alas, still has a prejudiced weakness for decent manners despite the education that is being spread further and further through feuilletons^**) can gain the upper hand and convince his listeners of whatever he pleases, earning their gratitude and departing with deep respect for himself. The one necessary condition, of course, is that he be a liberal; that goes without saying.”^[3-276]

^{**feuilletons. n. newspaper or magazine material designed to entertain the general reader.}

Our system of trust is a system of belief, which are both systems of the mind

Hingley does explain, as does Dostoevsky, that historically the “vranyo” was associated with “white-lies”, “fibs”, or “lies for good”. Maybe an embellished story to liven up the listener, an exaggeration to please a group, or something completely made up for personal attention. That’s the way it was for years. Twenty-first century vranyo however, like propaganda, has gone through some changes. This Cold War era relic has gotten itself a makeover: an analog to digital conversion, if you will.

“Perhaps it’s part of the same old game, vranyo“, writes Elena Gorokhova in her 2010 memoir about growing up in the former Soviet Union, “[t]he rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying but they keep lying anyway, and we keep pretending to believe them“.

Vranyo in this modern way sounds like a liberal in America describing how they think a conservative consumes media. Vranyo in this way sounds like a conservative in America describing the effects of a liberal media bias. It sounds like how the media still views Russia. Regardless, as the communications landscape becomes more and more centralized, more and more polarized, we can expect to see only the appearance of objectivity more and more. And it’s through this appearance that we capitulate our trust.

It’s our flawed trust system which makes us vulnerable

Civil society requires trust. Our interconnected global world is built around networks of trust. Trust not breaking down is the thing which protects that world against descending into lawless anarchy.^[4] Trust is that important. But who do we trust? And why?

Some of the highest trust we give in top-down society is to the educated. The credentialed class. The winners. The educated are most often used as an appeal to authority by marketers, advertisers and information brokers to sell products, people, and ideas to the public without the use of physical coercion. And no one personifies the educated in the eyes of public opinion more than the holder of a doctorate degree. It doesn’t matter in what discipline. In fact, maybe it doesn’t even matter if it’s real. If given the trust, they can pretty much sell anything and get away with anything. Even if we think it’s bullshit. And we let them do it.

A little trust in vranyo is better than no trust at all.

That’s next.

NOTES:

^[1] “Propaganda.” kids.britannica.com Encyclopedia, Britannica Kids, https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/propaganda/276549#:~:text=A%20message%20that%20is%20intended,be%20delivered%20in%20many%20ways. Accessed 4 Nov. 2022.

^[2]“That’s No Lie, Comrade”, Ronald Hingley, Problems with Communism, April 1962, Vol 11, No. 2 (1962), pp. 47-55

^[3]Dostoevsky, F. (1993). Translated by Lantz, K. A Writer’s Diary: Volume One 1873-1876. Northwestern University Press.

^[4]Jasinski, Michael P (2011). Social Trust, Anarchy, and International Conflict. Palgrave Macmillian.

November 4, 2022April 20, 2023

Propaganda and Rhetorical Argument

In “What is propaganda?“, a definition was established followed by a claim. The definition,

“Propaganda is the use of symbols, repetition, and various appeals by marketers, advertisers, and information brokers to sell products, people, and ideas to the public without the use of physical coercion.”

And the claim,

“Essentially, every media input that is consumed through the senses is propaganda.”

How dare you

There is a natural hesitation, or even aversion, to this claim because it pushes against any number of cultural truisms, or “the type of beliefs… culturally regarded as being truisms almost beyond debate.”^[1] These are beliefs in, for example, an objective truth, integrity in journalism and the press, or that propaganda is bad and something only other countries do. These types of truisms are at the roots of the public trust. And trust is important to society. It is so important that the mere appearance of trust will do. Appearance is everything.

Another hesitation, or aversion, to the claim is the accusatory nature of suggesting that, well, if all media is propaganda then it implicates everyone that produces media as a propagandist. That’s only an issue if propaganda is negatively defined, but as previously explored, it is a neutral term. So there is no needed complicity in this regard by any participants required.

Just because someone calls themselves a propagandist doesn’t mean they are bad; and just because someone doesn’t like to be called a propagandist doesn’t mean that they are not.

Logos, Ethos, Pathos

Rhetorical persuasion is the algorithm of propaganda. And rhetorical persuasive writing is at the core of academic composition. Rhetoric as defined by Merriam-Webster’s^[2] is:

: the art of speaking or writing effectively: such as
a : the study of principles and rules of composition formulated by critics of ancient times
b : the study of writing or speaking as a means of communication or persuasion
2a : skill in the effective use of speech
b : a type or mode of language or speech also
: insincere or grandiloquent language
3 : verbal communication : discourse

Everybody learns rhetoric and is encouraged to practice persuasive writing as an academic pursuit. This very writing is an attempt at that.

In order to obtain any degree from a college or university, students must take Writing 122, or equivalent, as a core requirement. This is the course that supercharges basic writing composition into rhetorical argumentative writing. The University of Oregon describes their WR122 course “Written Reasoning as a Process of Argument”^[3] as follows:

“WR 122 focuses on specific ways to develop argumentative essays in response to the challenges of complex contexts, which should include increasingly sophisticated competing arguments and issues… Students practice further how to develop effective theses and compose essays in which they control the reasoning that supports their theses.”

And this is where the persuasion gets baked in. Every writer is taught how to sell their ideas to an audience through the use of effective persuasive communication. This is regardless of any motive, such as profits or an attempt to influence a campaign, and so on. Recognize that it can be assumed that everyone’s motives, even if their ideas are unpopular, are pure to them.

Maybe the witch is just misunderstood

In the Grimm’s Fairy Tale Hansel and Gretel, a witch lures children into her house for the express purpose of fattening them up in order to eat them. From the witches point of view, you can easily see that she is just looking out for “numero uno”, so her intent is more selfish. However, it is difficult to see her point-of-view when we live in society that has a “cultural truism” such that we don’t eat children.

The witch doesn’t live in that society though. She lives in her world inside of a house made out of candy. She plays by a different set of rules. And it is at this intersection, between individual interest and group interest, that we see a lot of propaganda and counter-propaganda being used to sell ideas that recruit between each side.

Unpopular ideas are often the fault of bad rhetoric

In the marketplace of ideas, it is the best rhetoric that wins. The job of marketers, advertisers, and information brokers selling products, people, and ideas to the public is to use the best rhetoric at their disposal. To use all the wilds of communications to deliver their message. To the extent that unpopular ideas are sold back to us by these same peddlers as counter-propaganda, we can’t really know.

However, providing the rhetorical persuasive arguments for both sides is the ultimate application of what is taught because it controls the reasoning that supports the theses. Working both sides is the best propaganda.

In the fairy tale, the individual candy items aren’t responsible for the intent of the witch. They are like employees, just doing what they are told. They just happened to have had the misfortune of being employed by an old lady with a candy house she hunts with. An environment that allowed the best candy items in large quantities to flourish while at the same time supporting the witches agenda, hidden in plain sight. Oh, the sweet smell of success.

So there must be something about the environment. An environment of propaganda that is also, somehow, free of propaganda.

That’s next.

NOTES:

^[1] “The Relative Efficacy of Various Types of Prior Belief-Defense in Producing Immunity Against Persuasion”, William J. McGuire, Demetrios Papageorgis, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1961, Vol 62, No. 3 (1961), pp. 327-337

^[2] “Rhetoric.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rhetoric. Accessed 4 Nov. 2022.

^[3] “WR 122: Written Reasoning as a Process of Argument” University of Oregon, Research Guides, https://researchguides.uoregon.edu/wr122. Accessed 4 Nov. 2022.

November 2, 2022April 21, 2023

What is propaganda?

I bet you think you know what propaganda is? Certainly you can point to some example from the past. Or maybe there is something that you don’t agree with in the present? Perhaps it’s a thing which a group has labelled distasteful, distrustful, or disapproved? And no doubt, there is some authoritative voice available to provide the necessary claim of provenance as a base of evidence that the “thing”, whatever it is, is propaganda. And you would be right. 100%. No question about it, whatever it is. Your example is propaganda.

But here’s the rub… that doesn’t mean you know what propaganda is.

The definition has not been static

Looking at how the definition of propaganda has ‘propagated’ over time is a good place to begin. Unfortunately, simply looking up the definition isn’t much help because the definitions are inconsistent between authoritative sources and sometimes even within a single source itself. Take for example, Merriam-Webster.com’s “Kids Definition of propaganda”, which changed quite drastically in late 2022.

The following definition which previously had their blessing of acceptance for years, which also contains a negative connotation, was present in September^[1]:

: an organized spreading of often false ideas or the ideas spread in such a way

It was replaced with more of a neutral definition in November^[2]:

: an organized spreading of certain ideas
also : the ideas spread in this way

This updated definition is more in line with the parent, Merriam-Webster.com’s, definition of propaganda^[3], and does not only focus on the negative:

1 : capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions
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

Notice the balance with the sense 2 definition: “helping OR injuring”. And sense 3: “further one’s cause OR damage[s]”. This is a fair framing of propaganda because it is not just the negative: the injuring OR the damaged cause. Propaganda can be positive and used for the helping AND the furthered cause, too.

There is propaganda in politics, but not all propaganda is political

The definition provided by Google.com^[4] insists on defining propaganda as a political tool with malice:

1 : information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
2 : a committee of cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church responsible for foreign missions, founded in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV.

It is these types of definitions that attempt to give propaganda a bad name and is biased towards only a specific type of propaganda. Change the word “political” to something like “consumer cause or point of view”, “marketing cause or point of view”, “advertising…”, “corporations…”, “public relations…”. Those are all plausible replacements for the word “political”, yet this definition avoids them completely.

A “particular religious cause or point of view” is also an acceptable replacement, as the aforementioned sense 2 definition indicates.

The Congregation de Propaganda Fide was established on June 22, 1622, and

“may be accepted as the completion of the formative stage of the Counter-Reformation… It resembled the other Congregations in its organization, but it differed entirely from them in the range of authority. From the beginning of its existence, the object of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide was definitely understood: it was to regain the faithful in all those parts of the world where Protestantism had been established, and to bring to light of the true faith to heathen lands.”^{[5, 479-480]}

“[T]he Congregation may indeed be proud of its success in the United States. For two hundred and eighty-years (1622-1908), Propaganda was the supreme court of administration and appeal.”^{[5, 482]} On June 29, 1908, “the United States and several other countries were withdrawn from the regimen.”^{[5, 481]}

With the Catholic church in a new stage, and the authority of their missionaries no longer regimented in the United States , the term propaganda was available to new suitors and began to have a reformation of its own.

If there is selling, there is propaganda

The 1898 edition of the Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary^[6] has a simple yet straightforward approach at defining propaganda:

Prop’a-gan’da, n. [Abbrev. fr. L. de propaganda fide. See PROPAGATE]
1 : (R. C. Ch.) (a) A congregation of cardinals charged with the management of missions. (b) The college of the Propaganda to educate priests for missions.
2 : Hence, any organization or plan for spreading particular doctrines or principles.

Prop’a-gate, v. t. & i.
1. To continue or multiply by generation, or successive production. 2. To spread or extend into space. 3. To spread from person to person; to extend the knowledge of. 4. To generate; to produce.

Now that propaganda was no longer limited to the parlance of selling religious products, people, and ideas, it was free to be used for all the wilds of American business. And business has been good.

Selling is at the core of the intersections where marketing campaigns, advertising agents, and information brokers peddle products, people, and ideas to the public. Propaganda is what marketers, advertisers, and information brokers use to sell their products, people, and ideas to the public. Propagandists employ symbols, repetition, and various appeals in an effort to persuade the public in favor of their goals. This is perfectly acceptable because it does not employ physical coercion.

So what is propaganda? Propaganda is the use of symbols, repetition, and various appeals by marketers, advertisers and information brokers to sell products, people, and ideas to the public without the use of physical coercion.

Essentially, every media input that is consumed through the senses is propaganda. Whether it is a sale on bananas, a message from a politician, or an event to introduce buyers to electric cars.

So everyone in marketing, advertising, and information brokering is a propagandist?

Actually, YES. Returning to the 1898 Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary:

Prop’a-gan’dist, n. One who devotes himself to the spread of any system or principles.

It’s really that simple, but unfortunately this simple fact is obscured. Propaganda and Public Relations are synonymous terms actually. It is the job of public relations to find ways of persuading public opinion. And persuasion itself is given a ‘free pass’ because it is able to hide behind western languages coveted “rhetorical argument”. Persuasive writing is part of every writers training, so persuasion is baked in from the factory.

Much of the perceived manipulation in a propaganda is the result of using a persuasive rhetorical argument aimed at achieving the propaganda’s predetermined outcome.

That’s next.

NOTES:

^[1] “Propaganda.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/propaganda. Accessed 25 Sep. 2022.
^[2] “Propaganda.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/propaganda. Accessed 2 Nov. 2022.

^[3] “Propaganda.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/propaganda. Accessed 2 Nov. 2022.

^[4] “Propaganda.” Google’s English dictionary provided by Oxford Languages, Oxford Languages and Google, https://www.google.com/search?q=propaganda. Accessed 2 Nov. 2022.

^[5] The Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide (1622-1922)
Author(s): Peter Guilday
Source: The Catholic Historical Review , Jan., 1921, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Jan., 1921), pp. 478-494
Published by: Catholic University of America Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/25011717

^[6] G. & C. Merriam, Co. (1898). Propaganda. Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (1st Edition, p. 651). The Riverside Press, Cambridge, MA.

April 28, 2022April 20, 2023

Our Nations Heritage from Standard Oil

The Korea Blues / Brothers and Sisters (We Ain’t Gonna Sit in the Back of the Bus No More) [05:22]

This is from album 19 “America at Mid-Century”, side A “From Atomic to Space Age”, of a 20 album series titled “Our Nations Heritage”, produced and provided to schools as a public service by Standard Oil Company.

Spanning the course of over 50 years, their “Standard School Broadcast” was a big deal throughout the golden age of radio, and continued by providing content to schools by tape and LP, often combining music education with history.

The Korea Blues – To President Truman this conflict in Korea is not a war but a “police action,” but to thousands of American soldiers who fought there, it is a war, dirty and thankless. The soldier, naturally, then sings the Blues.

The Blues originated with black musicians in the South during the early part of the century and became a basic source of other musical styles, particularly Jazz and Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Brothers and Sisters (We Ain’t Gonna Sit in the Back of the Bus No More) – When Mrs. Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1954, the civil rights movement got underway. A young minister, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., came forward to lead the bus boycott that grew out of this incident.

This song is played in a Soul style more recent than the fifties, but is a direct offshoot of black gospel music, one of the major influences on popular American music.

Written by Clancy Carlile
Copyright 1973 Chevron Research Company

Next we look at What is Propaganda?