With the Democratic National Convention halfway over, and the Republican National Convention right around the corner, the campaign season is just about to go into full swing. If you think you've seen a lot of campaign ads so far, you just wait. In the coming months, they'll be taking over your TV.
So this strikes me as a good time to review some of the tactics frequently used by politicians and others (including news organizations, documentary filmmakers, television and radio talk show hosts, etc) to sway public opinion through the use of deliberately deceptive or misleading information.
That's right, I'm talking about propaganda.
Propaganda (from Latin, literally "things to be propagated") didn't always have a negative connotation. In the 17th century, Pope Gregory XV founded the Congregation for Propagating the Faith, a group of Cardinals who sent missionaries to propagate Christianity. It wasn't until World War I that propaganda became used in a political sense, and a negative connotation became associated with it.
In 1937, the Institute for Propaganda Analysis was created, composed of social scientists and journalists, to educate the American public about the widespread nature of political propaganda. The IPA outlined an oft-cited list of seven basic propaganda devices the public should be aware of and watch out for.
Some of them will seem familiar if you've taken courses in Critical Thinking, as they are very similar to well-known fallacious arguments. Even if you've never taken a Critical Thinking course in your life, you may recognize some of these techniques from, well, politics. The candidates routinely criticize each other for using some of these basic propaganda devices:
1. Name-Calling The IPA said of name-calling, "Bad names have played a tremendously powerful role in the history of the world and in our own individual development. They have ruined reputations, stirred men and women to outstanding accomplishments, sent others to prison cells, and made men mad enough to enter battle and slaughter their fellowmen. They have been and are applied to other people, groups, gangs, tribes, colleges, political parties, neighborhoods, states, sections of the country, nations, and races."
Name-calling is used to connect a person (or thing) to a negative symbol. The person doing so hopes you will reject the person based on your association with the symbol, instead of based on actual evidence. In World War II, names like Commie or Jap were common in propaganda. In the years since, we've seen Queer used the same way. And even today, Liberal, Socialist, and Evil-Doer are names thrown about in a propagandist manner by our politicians and pundits. Indeed, at least one news organization has even been using "French" as a Name-Calling device.
Those of you who did take Critical Thinking classes will recognize Name-Calling as an argumentum ad hominem, a form of fallacious argument that is an attack against a person rather than his or her idea.
2. Glittering Generalities This is what the IPA wrote about Glittering Generalities in 1938:
We believe in, fight for, live by virtue words about which we have deep-set ideas. Such words include civilization, Christianity, good, proper, right, democracy, patriotism, motherhood, fatherhood, science, medicine, health, and love.
For our purposes in propaganda analysis, we call these virtue words "Glittering Generalities" in order to focus attention upon this dangerous characteristic that they have: They mean different things to different people; they can be used in different ways.
This is not a criticism of these words as we understand them. Quite the contrary. It is a criticism of the uses to which propagandists put the cherished words and beliefs of unsuspecting people.
When someone talks to us about democracy, we immediately think of our own definite ideas about democracy, the ideas we learned at home, at school, and in church. Our first and natural reaction is to assume that the speaker is using the word in our sense, that he believes as we do on this important subject. This lowers our 'sales resistance' and makes us far less suspicious than we ought to be when the speaker begins telling us the things 'the United States must do to preserve democracy.'
The Glittering Generality is, in short, Name Calling in reverse. While Name Calling seeks to make us form a judgment to reject and condemn without examining the evidence, the Glittering Generality device seeks to make us approve and accept without examining the evidence. In acquainting ourselves with the Glittering Generality Device, therefore, all that has been said regarding Name Calling must be kept in mind.
Glittering generalities are practically a cornerstone of political advertising. If you haven't noticed it before, you will now.
3. Transfer This one is so obvious, it's almost easy to overlook. Transfer, according to the IPA, is when someone "carries over the authority, sanction, and prestige of something we respect and revere to something he would have us accept."
The website Propaganda Critic offers the following examples of Transfer:
When a political activist closes her speech with a public prayer, she is attempting to transfer religious prestige to the ideas that she is advocating. As with all propaganda devices, the use of this technique is not limited to one side of the political spectrum. It can be found in the speeches of liberation theologists on the left, and in the sermons of religious activists on the right.
In a similar fashion, propagandists may attempt to transfer the reputation of "Science" or "Medicine" to a particular project or set of beliefs. A slogan for a popular cough drop encourages audiences to "Visit the halls of medicine." On TV commercials, actors in white lab coats tell us that the "Brand X is the most important pain reliever that can be bought without a prescription." In both of these examples, the transfer technique is at work.
These techniques can also take a more ominous turn. As Alfred Lee has argued, "even the most flagrantly anti-scientific racists are wont to dress up their arguments at times with terms and carefully selected illustrations drawn from scientific works and presented out of all accurate context." The propaganda of Nazi Germany, for example, rationalized racist policies by appealing to both science and religion.
This does not mean that religion and science have no place in discussions about social issues! The point is that an idea or program should not be accepted or rejected simply because it has been linked to a symbol such as Medicine, Science, Democracy, or Christianity.
4. Testimonial Testimonial is a tricky one because it's not always a bad thing. To the contrary, citing a source is generally a good idea, and testimonials can be used to construct excellent arguments.
The problem comes when the testimonial comes from an unqualified source, or is otherwise irrelevant when one person's experience is not enough on which to base a decision.
For example, I saw a famous actor on television today endorsing a candidate. I know that some people think he's a really good actor, and he's made some rather entertaining movies. He even won an Academy Award. But why is his endorsement of the candidate any more important than anybody else's?
Another example. I used MapQuest to drive cross-country, and it gave me terrible directions. Based on that, I can tell you that MapQuest is awful.
The use of a celebrity endorsement, or the story of one person's experience to put forth a position are examples of Testimonial propaganda.
5. Plain Folks Aw, shucks. Those candidates are just like you and me. At least, that's what they try to get across, despite the fact that they're multimillionaires and we aren't.
When you see George W. Bush doing chores on his ranch, or when you saw Bill Clinton eating McDonald's, they may both have been doing things that they actually enjoy, but the fact that you heard about it is an example of the Plain Folks device.
When the candidates go along the campaign trail, talking to people in Middle America, they are trying very hard to make people see them as Plain Folks.
6. Card Stacking Card Stacking is where an argument which seems logical is used, often in conjunction with other propaganda techniques meant to hide the poor logic, and especially where fear is a key ingredient.
As Propaganda Critic explains, "there are four elements to a successful fear appeal: 1) a threat, 2) a specific recommendation about how the audience should behave, 3) audience perception that the recommendation will be effective in addressing the threat, and 4) audience perception that they are capable of performing the recommended behavior."
Does this sound familiar to anyone? Did any of you go out and buy duct tape and plastic bags when Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said it might save your life in case of a chemical or biological attack?
In our current political climate, I'm sure you can think of countless other examples of fear appeals being used in political propaganda.
7. Band Wagon Here's how the IPA described the Band Wagon device:
The propagandist hires a hall, rents radio stations, fills a great stadium, marches a million or at least a lot of men in a parade. He employs symbols, colors, music, movement, all the dramatic arts. He gets us to write letters, to send telegrams, to contribute to his cause. He appeals to the desire, common to most of us, to follow the crowd. Because he wants us to follow the crowd in masses, he directs his appeal to groups held together already by common ties, ties of nationality, religion, race, sex, vocation. Thus propagandists campaigning for or against a program will appeal to us as Catholics, Protestants, or Jews...as farmers or as school teachers; as housewives or as miners.
With the aid of all the other propaganda devices, all of the artifices of flattery are used to harness the fears and hatreds, prejudices and biases, convictions and ideals common to a group. Thus is emotion made to push and pull us as members of a group onto a Band Wagon.
In other words, "Everybody else is doing it. So should you." Nobody wants to be left out, so when people hear that their peers are all voting for so-and-so or buying that such-and-such or going to here-or-there, they all want to jump on the Band Wagon.
Often, we recognize propaganda when we see it. We scoff at the pundit on TV and say, "I can't believe they expect me to believe this crap." But sometimes, it might sneak past your radar. So keep this overview in mind as the next few months play out, and see how many of these 7 propaganda techniques you can spot.
And if you find any new ones that don't fall under the categories outlined by the IPA, share them in the comments section below.
[Bonus: For hours of historic propaganda fun, check out the Prelinger Archives at the Internet Archive, and do a keyword search for "propaganda." You can find classics like the old Duck and Cover cold war propaganda film (featuring Bert the Turtle), and much more.]
UPDATE: This just seems like an opportune moment to once again promote the Annendale Political Fact Check, a nonpartisan organization that scrutinizes political advertisements for accuracy. I first wrote about them back in April, but I know many of you haven't been reading this website that long. I highly recommend checking out their archives and signing up for their e-mail alerts, especially if you're in a swing state, where you're more likely to see these ads. They do a good job of separating the facts and the rhetoric. It's very interesting seeing an ad on TV and then getting an e-mail explaining where the candidates' claims come from, and what the truth is behind them.
