Propaganda

According to Wikipedia, propaganda is:
"...information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to produce an emotional rather than a rational response..."

This may sound like a good definition, but it casts a pretty wide net.  Firstly, objectivity is a worthy ideal, but it comes largely in degrees, and is never more than approximated in our day to day communication.  In point of fact, all communication is used to influence, to further agendas, and all types of communication present facts selectively.  This is true, not for nefarious reasons, but because we always have purposes in communicating, and in the act of fulfilling these purposes we are intentionally influencing people,  presenting facts selectively, and furthering some agenda. Where this is a bad thing is when someone sets out deliberately to deceive people in order to get them to accept a version of reality that benefits a particular group of people, in opposition to the wider, public good. 

However, propaganda can be used for good effect, it can be used by democratic governments to increase civic involvement, to make their citizens feel good about being citizens, leading to greater overall cooperation. “Uncle Sam Needs You!”   That sort of thing.   So, where did  the word “propaganda” originate from?   It came from seventeenth century Catholicism,  which had an organization called “the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith”  which was charged with spreading the faith to heathen countries.

To early seventeenth century Europeans, “propaganda”  meant propagating the faith; that was seen as an unquestionably good thing .  Since then, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge and now the common point of view is that propaganda is something dark and negative.  To simplify:   with Martin Luther, the Catholics had a serious competitor and his propaganda was not welcome in Catholic countries, nor, it may be said, was Roman Catholic propaganda welcome in Protestant countries.  After a few hundred years of religious wars the dilemma of propaganda has seemed to reach a kind of impasse - what one says is the truth the other calls propaganda.

 Let us now see if we can get any further looking at the concept of propaganda as it is used in secular politics.  Today, in Canada and the United States, we live in  countries with  democratic political systems.  We like to think of democracies as stable well-managed political systems that represent the public interest in a fair process of deliberation.  But what if the democratic deliberative process itself is hijacked by a particular group?  This possibility is the dilemma of propaganda in modern democratic systems.

It seems to me, and I’m following the lead of philosopher Jason Stanley, in his book How Propaganda Works,  that the way out of this dilemma is to accept that the most important moral dividing line to observe is between propaganda that supports democracy and propaganda that undermines democracy.

 In speaking about propaganda there is a theme that we cannot evade talking about -  the problem of rising inequality.  It’s important to understand why it is important.   Democracy is about representation.  When one person or group dominates a political system, there is only narrow representation.  The interests of the majority can be ignored and dismissed while the institutions of the state are corrupted to serve the interests of the few.  That is why inequality erodes democratic institutions.

Thus, it is no surprise that propaganda has become more demagogic and deceptive as inequality has increased in North America and other places around the world.  The bigger the difference between rich and poor, the more likely the rich will try to seize power in order to prevent the rest of the population from threatening their wealth and status.  And since the wealthy cannot seize power in a democratic system by being honest about wanting to protect their status, they will be inexorably tempted to use deception and demagoguery.

Note, that entrenched inequality is not a threat to authoritarian or political systems because their very reason for existing is to further inequality.   In fact, it is a major way that authoritarian political systems prop themselves up and keep themselves going.  Authoritarian systems are set up to favour one group over all other groups in society.  Propaganda that serves to conceal this fact is the default mode of communication for authoritarian states; it is the everyday means by which any authoritarian regime communicates with its populace.

   As Stanley argues, propaganda is more of an issue in democratic systems because the bad kind is a direct threat to democracy.  He points out that the  bad propaganda or “demagoguery”, was first described by Plato, in his book, The Republic, written twenty-four hundred years ago, it is a message that on the surface appears to be supporting democracy but the real intention is to subvert the democratic system.

 For instance vote suppression, widespread in Southern states, is deceptively claimed to be protecting the voting system against “voter fraud” in the absence of evidence of any widespread voter fraud.  It is marketed as a way of protecting democracy when it’s real intended effect is to disenfranchise ethnic or low income groups from exercising their right to vote.

 The current Trump Presidency is in a class all by itself when it comes to examples of demagoguery.   For instance Trump’s focus on immigration and the immigrant caravans from Central America, weeks before the 2018 midterm election, was intended to heighten passions and inflame tensions in order to motivate his followers to get out and vote. The result was that more Republicans got out to vote in the midterms than might have otherwise if Trump had not stoked racial fears.  Getting more people to vote seems to support democracy doesn’t it?

 As Stanley emphasizes, using racial prejudice to motivate voters in elections harms the deliberative process in democracies, because it makes it more difficult to have rational discussions about immigration, social welfare and other important issues when certain groups are targeted as less worthy of consideration.  We only have to look at  the amount of child poverty, poor educational results, poor access to medicine for low income groups, diminished life expectancies, and poor post-partum survival statistics to realize that America is an outlier on major measures of public health, given its per capita GNP.  To stoke fears about immigrants is really about playing to people’s prejudice, and what it does is make it far harder for anyone to deal constructively with issues like immigration, public health, and social welfare.

During the 1920’s and 1930’s the Nazis also pushed immigration as a hot-button issue and stoked racial prejudice against Jews, Eastern Europeans and Gypsies  But notice, if you look at what historians view as the major problems hounding the German Weimar Republic:  for instance, hyperinflation, widespread poverty after WWI, crippling reparation payments, The Great Depression -  the so-called problem of immigration is notable by its absence. In effect, fears about immigrants appears to have been a delusive fear not based on reality.    In hindsight we can see that Hitler used racial fears about “outsiders” to manipulate the electorate and keep them oblivious to the dangers of his totalitarian rule.

Since the invention and widespread use of the internet and social networks on the internet we are seeing the rise of a new danger.  We saw it first come to prominence in the U.S. Presidential election of 2016, when Vladimir Putin outsourced computer hacking and trolling to shadowy individuals and organizations dedicated to one of  Putin’s prime goals - that of weakening the Western Alliance.    It is also a homegrown phenomenon in the U.S. perfected by Steve Bannon and Breitbart News, where propaganda is effectively outsourced to private individuals and groups om social media to sow hatred and prejudice.

Something just as alarming is the mushrooming of conspiracy theories on youtube and on the internet,  also specialised in by the Kremlin via it’s T.V. mouthpiece: Russia Today.  Trump himself is no stranger to this form of propaganda; during the Obama Presidency  he actively promoted a discredited conspiracy theory that President Obama was born in Kenya. Conspiracy theories like Birtherism and the 9/11 “Truther” conspiracy are like hidden corrosives to the  democratic system.  The more people believe them the less they trust the government and the media, and the safer they feel inside of a bubble of fellow “truthers”.  This makes them all the more susceptible to the next conspiracy theory or, and this is more dangerous, it makes them susceptible to trusting someone like Trump who seemingly creates his own reality and “alternative facts” whenever he likes.

Civility

 Civility is a common pool resource. A common pool resource is a resource that is shared in common by a group of people.   It is protected and preserved through an agreement with easy to follow rules that everyone agrees to follow and to enforce together. Everyone both practices and benefits from civility,  but there is no one person or group in charge of enforcing it, because everyone already participates in enforcement.

 Suppose that some one in a  group starts taking more from a common resource than is allowed.  What does this do to the resource?  If the rule-breaker is not stopped by the rest of the group he or she will inspire imitators, and soon people will cheat and undermine the agreement;  then people can see that a minority is taking more for themselves, so more people abandon the agreement; soon the common resource is depleted and becomes less available, or it goes extinct. This process is often called the tragedy of the commons.  But commons have some history of being wisely regulated by group agreements, as the Nobel Prize economist Elinor Ostrom has shown.

Civility is a common pool resource.  Civility allows the people of any group to get along with each other.  It makes civilization possible.  Civility allows us to have  all these interactions between strangers, between coworkers, between different levels of hierarchies, between employees and members of the public at large, all in ways that avoid intimidation and violence.

 When civility breaks down, it destroys cooperation;  and it needs to be quickly repaired or else it can corrode society from the inside  because it creates a poisonous atmosphere where no one appears trustworthy, more people become hostile, and the level of violence increases.  Needless to say, the absence of civility hurts productivity in many different ways.

When our leaders display incivility it is one of the worst kinds of erosion of a public good.  The leader sets an example.  If he or she is allowed to get away with incivility, many others will be inspired to do the same, radically lowering the level of civility in all of society.

What about protest movements? Aren't these a form of incivility?  In the sixties, the civil rights movement was protesting against institutional discrimination and the absence of civil rights for blacks. A movement like Civil Rights can seem disruptive to a significant number of people because they themselves may have benefited from the discrimination in the first place.  If the rules as they are enforced are  manifestly unfair, the apparent  civility may be a  sham, existing only by virtue of physical force and intimidation.

In contrast, attacks on political correctness, although seemingly legitimate complaints, are not objections to unfair rules, they can often be attempts to restigmatize and remarginalize previously disadvantaged groups.  These attacks are contributions to a larger agenda of strengthening formerly dominant groups by attacking the weak and formerly oppressed groups -  the modus operandi of Fascism.

 Civility is a common pool resource.   it makes it possible for the participants of every human group to share information,  to arbitrate disputes, to have fair exchange, and to facilitate mutual help in times of need.  We are in trouble when we start to lose civility.  Remember, it is a common pool resource.  What that means in practice is that the pool of civility can be depleted if enough people trample on the rules.  When civility is gone it then becomes far more difficult for a group to regain it than it would have been to maintain it in the first place, and that is because it is a common pool resource.

George Soros on IT Monopolies, 2018

George Soros, Davos 2018  on IT Monopolies:


"I want to spend the bulk of my remaining time on another global problem: the rise and monopolistic behavior of the giant IT platform companies. These companies have often played an innovative and liberating role. But as Facebook and Google have grown into ever more powerful monopolies, they have become obstacles to innovation, and they have caused a variety of problems of which we are only now beginning to become aware.

Companies earn their profits by exploiting their environment. Mining and oil companies exploit the physical environment; social media companies exploit the social environment. This is particularly nefarious because social media companies influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it. This has far-reaching adverse consequences on the functioning of democracy, particularly on the integrity of elections.

The distinguishing feature of internet platform companies is that they are networks and they enjoy rising marginal returns; that accounts for their phenomenal growth. The network effect is truly unprecedented and transformative, but it is also unsustainable. It took Facebook eight and a half years to reach a billion users and half that time to reach the second billion. At this rate, Facebook will run out of people to convert in less than 3 years.

Facebook and Google effectively control over half of all internet advertising revenue. To maintain their dominance, they need to expand their networks and increase their share of users’ attention. Currently they do this by providing users with a convenient platform. The more time users spend on the platform, the more valuable they become to the companies.

Content providers also contribute to the profitability of social media companies because they cannot avoid using the platforms and they have to accept whatever terms they are offered.

The exceptional profitability of these companies is largely a function of their avoiding responsibility for-- and avoiding paying for-- the content on their platforms.

They claim they are merely distributing information. But the fact that they are near- monopoly distributors makes them public utilities and should subject them to more stringent regulations, aimed at preserving competition, innovation, and fair and open universal access.

The business model of social media companies is based on advertising. Their true customers are the advertisers. But gradually a new business model is emerging, based not only on advertising but on selling products and services directly to users. They exploit the data they control, bundle the services they offer and use discriminatory pricing to keep for themselves more of the benefits that otherwise they would have to share with consumers. This enhances their profitability even further – but the bundling of services and discriminatory pricing undermine the efficiency of the market economy.

Social media companies deceive their users by manipulating their attention and directing it towards their own commercial purposes. They deliberately engineer addiction to the services they provide. This can be very harmful, particularly for adolescents. There is a similarity between internet platforms and gambling companies. Casinos have developed techniques to hook gamblers to the point where they gamble away all their money, even money they don’t have.

Something very harmful and maybe irreversible is happening to human attention in our digital age. Not just distraction or addiction; social media companies are inducing people to give up their autonomy. The power to shape people’s attention is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few companies. It takes a real effort to assert and defend what John Stuart Mill called “the freedom of mind.” There is a possibility that once lost, people who grow up in the digital age will have difficulty in regaining it. This may have far-reaching political consequences. People without the freedom of mind can be easily manipulated. This danger does not loom only in the future; it already played an important role in the 2016 US presidential elections.

But there is an even more alarming prospect on the horizon. There could be an alliance between authoritarian states and these large, data-rich IT monopolies that would bring together nascent systems of corporate surveillance with an already developed system of state-sponsored surveillance. This may well result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even Aldous Huxley or George Orwell could have imagined.

The countries in which such unholy marriages are likely to occur first are Russia and China. The Chinese IT companies in particular are fully equal to the American ones. They also enjoy the full support and protection of the Xi Jingping regime. The government of China is strong enough to protect its national champions, at least within its borders. 

US-based IT monopolies are already tempted to compromise themselves in order to gain entrance to these vast and fast growing markets. The dictatorial leaders in these countries may be only too happy to collaborate with them since they want to improve their methods of control over their own populations and expand their power and influence in the United States and the rest of the world."