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.