In the abstract, possibly. In the current context, it’s bad. Unquestionably bad.
If you’re receiving what you think is “News” and it’s actually propaganda, and you’re too unintelligent to know or too cynical to care, it’s bad. All the more so when that propaganda is coming from a foreign power whose interests are unquestionably counter to the interests of Americans.
“It’s [just] a tool.” You’re not acknowledging how much damage it does and has done. Your point is “It could do damage.” We’re well past that.
Propaganda is neutral. It is a powerful, dangerous tool…like a rifle. The ethics depend upon where it’s aimed and why.
So what? We’re being fired at and all you keep repeating is “The rifle thats firing at you is not necessarily dangerious.”
By my definition, most of the posts on the BB politics threads are propaganda. If the intention of a poster is to alter the political opinions of the reader, they are engaged in propaganda.
Propaganda is neutral. It is a powerful, dangerous tool…like a rifle. The ethics depend upon where it’s aimed and why.
In regards to the mass media, this is a conversation that began with this Tweet:
MCR: thats in Russia Today. you know, the propaganda outlet?
SMD: You people have gone completely off your rocker. Learn to read and discern for yourself instead of the half chewed propaganda you’re eating.
MCR: The article is posted on Russia Today’s news site. Russia Today is a Kremlin-controlled news outlet. It IS propaganda. QED.
SMD: Read the damn thing. All news is propaganda. CNN is propaganda. MSNBC, New York Times are propaganda. Washington Post is propaganda. That was my point. You learn to think critically and read every outlet assuming everything is propaganda and still think critically.
I’m still aghast at deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s blithe (or corrupt/cynical) response to Russian interference:
"You know, American citizens are pretty savvy, and they decide who to vote for," he said. "I don't think they'd be influenced by ads posted by foreign governments," Rosenstein said. "I think people are more thoughtful about that in the way that they make their decisions."
I just struggle to think Can he possibly believe this? “Savvy”? We buy caramel colored sugar water by the pallet because of propaganda.
Even without referring to political issues, its inarguable that advertising works. We are not “savvy” enough to be unaffected by advertising for consumer products. Why should we suddenly become “savvy” when the advertising has an unknown backer (in this case, Russian intelligence)?
"I think one of our responsibilities is to make sure that people understand, you know, what the risks are, but also that they make their own determinations."
Yup, you’re on your own!
Rosenstein is “supposed” to be one of the “good ones”. Appointed by Bush, sure, but he’s “career”. He’s supposed to have great intelligence and great concern for propriety. And he did appoint Mueller. But after this quote: “What the fuck, Rod?” Then again, Rosenstein did write the obviously Trump-dictated Comey-firing letter.
“Internet Research Agency” - I suspect the Russian sense of humour in the initials.
The word derives from the Vatican department Propaganda Fide, which is in charge of evangelising - propagating the faith. I don’t agree that it is ever neutral, but certainly the people engaged in it may believe that they are spreading information and doing the right thing. Others may disagree.
What this organisation was doing was a cynical exercise in manipulating the US vote in a direction intended to cause dissension in US politics and ensure that the President was a clueless clown, thus weakening US foreign policy. That is a campaign of disinformation, not propaganda.
Anyone with a knowledge of the Soviet era would expect this. It is sound doctrine to turn the tools of the capitalists against them, because Communists believe that capitalism inevitably contains the seeds of its own destruction. You can imagine some near-retirement Communist apparatchik telling the younger generation “Krushchev said we would attend their funeral. History will prove him right.”
I understand that the negative meaning of propaganda is commonly held. The reason that I’m going on about it is because I believe that this negative meaning is itself the result of destructive, malicious deception.
The purpose of this alteration was to disguise the propaganda that was already in effect. “They are propagandists, we are just telling you what is obviously true”.
Lord Haw-Haw and Tokyo Rose were propagandists, but so was Radio Free America. And the BBC. And Woody Guthrie. And Dr King. And Slate, Salon, MSNBC, Fox, CNN, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, etc.
All political communication is propaganda. Dishonesty and deception is a feature of crude, clumsy propaganda, but not all propaganda is like that.
Good propagandists don’t lie; credibility is a valuable asset, not to be squandered needlessly. Dishonesty is the hallmark of the incompetent or desperate propagandist; a skilled one works via framing and selection rather than deception.
Which facts? And in what lighting?
There is no such thing as a perfectly objective commentator. The facts we choose to pay attention to, the facts we choose to dismiss as irrelevant; these decisions are more a function of psychology and sociology than mechanical logic. It is trivially simple to reverse an argument just by altering which true facts are in focus.
Propaganda is related to rhetoric; they are both tools of persuasion rather than methods of truth-seeking. But that makes them neutral, not malicious. Hitler used rhetoric to promote evil; Niemöller used rhetoric to fight evil.
“Manipulation” can be the hatemongering that motivates genocide, but it can also be the inspiring speech that mobilises the fight for justice.
Propaganda is one of the few areas of conflict in which the underclass have a fighting chance against the wealthy; the peasants should not abandon one of their only effective weapons.
The idea that “reason” is superior to emotion is itself a rhetorical claim. Reason planned the train schedules at Auschwitz, before emotion tore down the fences.
Incidentally: this meaning of propaganda was vigorously hammered into me by my high school English teacher. Who was a dying [1] gay man, and knew what he was talking about.
When I want to distinguish malicious from altruistic propaganda, I usually do it with adjectives. E.g. “dishonest propaganda”, “hatemongering propaganda”, etc.
Or, if I prefer to be blunt and pithy: I just call it bullshit.
[1] HIV, 1980’s. He kept teaching right up until he was physically incapable; he died the day before my final exams.
Ummm…you have noticed that Russia is no longer the USSR, yes? Putin is an authoritarian racist kleptocrat, just like Trump. He isn’t the slightest bit communist.
No such thing as objective journalism (prop). Still, facts do have a certain weight. This whole election farce was of our own making (like Yeltsin & progeny) . Vote manipulation has been a feature, not a bug, since at least Boss Tweed.
No, that’s probably unlikely since the US generally prefers to just ignore any indictments and results of trials. And impose trade sanctions.
The general point that suggesting that other countries have any sort of effective response to US meddling is disingenuous is valid but still pretty much OT.
I agree with Wanderfound that propaganda is one of those irregular nouns, “I provide neutral, factual and reasoned arguments”, “Your argument is well-meaning but flawed”, “He is engaging in propaganda”.
In other words, use of the term ‘propaganda’ to describe something is itself ‘propaganda’.
It is (as your definition says) a derogatory way of describing someone else’s political messaging in order to assert or imply that their messaging is biased or misleading or improperly manipulative in contrast to one’s own factual, accurate, etc. message.
As far as your point about common definitions goes I have to point out that the definition you chose to quote reads:
“information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.”
Even that definition therefore accepts that the base meaning is “information used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view” with its misleading or biased nature being a modifier to the basic meaning rather than a fundamental requirement.
It lists information, promotion, advertising, etc. as synonyms.
Does that mean the fact that Russia was trying to influence the US election is nothing to be concerned about? Of course not.
I really wish Facebook would write a notice and push it to everyone who was shown the propaganda. Because right now, there is heavy disbelief- no one thinks they were affected, even those who were very much so.
I’m also waiting too find out how much of Bernie’s grass roots support can be traced back to Russia. A lot of the anger at the DNC can be traced back to Russian Propaganda. (Note: I am not accusing Sanders with collusion.)
I’m not sure if you are implying that Sanders would have been the nominee if the DNC had been impartial, but I’m going to assume that, since he was the only other Democratic Party candidate who came close to challenging Clinton. So going on that assumption, you do realize that the same voters who bought into the pizzagate story are also the ones who showed up in Charlottesville screaming “Jews will not replace us!”, don’t you? The Russian propaganda meme machine would have been cranked up just as high against Bernie, and the same people who were screaming “Lock her up!” would have been believing Sanders was the head of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to destroy democracy. The target would have changed, but I don’t think the outcome would have.
It’s not a relative term - it is not defined relative to other statements, in the mine isnot and yours is sense.
Something is propaganda relative only to the verifiable factual truth, not some relative scale where the least false is not propaganda. Propaganda lives where emotions TRUMP reason, where passions and failed boundaries meet. It is a disrepesct of self via disrespect for other.
Propaganda is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth - it is half the truth, half the time, and nothing but opinion.
It thrives on implication and innuendo, like several regulars here. So healthy for a society!!!
Perhaps. But, just as voters to the left of the Democratic mainstream didn’t vote for Clinton, voters on the right end of the Democratic party, and some of the GOP voters who voted for Clinton (Ana Navarro, e.g.) would never have voted for Sanders.
Regardless, this is a bit of a pointless argument. It’s a bit like having a giant hippo charging at us and debating about whether the hyena to our left or the jackal to our right is a bigger threat. Jeez, I just realized how fucked we are.
