Jason Stanley's[1] book, How Propaganda Works (Princeton University Press, 2015) starts by observing that there are good reasons to believe that liberal democracies such as the US generally do not exist. The logic dates back to Plato (424-348 BCE). He argued that liberal democracies value freedom and therefore they cannot or will not ban free speech. Plato reasoned that because free speech protects propaganda, liberal democracies empower demagogues who will come to rule, in significant part by shrewd use of propaganda. Due to the natural rise of propaganda-empowered demagogues, Plato considered democracy the worst form of government. In time, demagogues in power become democracy-crushing tyrants and democracies have no defense against that political outcome.
Instead of democracy, which is naturally inefficient and corrupt, Plato argued that virtue- and justice-based rule by philosopher guardians or kings in service to society and the public interest is the best form of government. That form of government amounts to something akin to an aristocracy or monarchy based on the leaders' rare philosophical merit, including the leaders' unusual capacity to apply reason or logic to governance, policy and society's needs.
Others see propaganda, including fake news and bogus logic, as threats to governance and societies. For example the World Economic Forum's Global Risks 2013 report cites the viral spread of false or baseless information as a risk on a par with terrorism. Plato's student, Aristotle came to believe that democracy was the least worst form of government. Stanley comments that ". . . . even Aristotle recognized (in Politics, book 5, chapter 5) that democracy's flaw, the particular instability it faces, comes from 'demagogues' who alternately 'stir up' and 'curry favor' with the people. Aristotle clearly recognized that a chief danger to democracy was flawed ideology and demagogic propaganda."
Stanley asks if the cherished value of free speech constitutes democracy's fundamental flaw, a key source of instability and a well-known, direct route to tyranny.
Political propaganda (PP) defined: Stanley defines PP as "the employment of a political ideal against itself." He identifies two kinds of PP, one being "supporting propaganda" that supports a good, bad or neutral democratic ideal by appeal to and overloading humans' amazingly puny rationality and logic bandwidth. However, the demagogue's ultimate political goal is to favorably influence opinion by appeal to emotion such as fear or other cognitive biases. Appeal to human emotion and bias tends to shut down conscious reason. In turn, that tends to close off conscious consideration of other possibilities the demagogue wants to avoid.
By contrast, "undermining propaganda" involves a contradiction between the demagogue's professed democratic ideal and his real goal. Specifically, undermining propaganda is a public appeal in support of a democratic ideal, but the demagogue's real goal is to limit the ideal's realization. An example is a demagogue's appeal to the American ideal of expanding liberty by arguing that tax cuts are necessary to expand personal liberty, but where evidence shows that tax cuts may reduce liberty for more people than benefit.
Stanley points out that PP demagoguery can convey truth or falsehoods and that it can be sincere or insincere. Stanley argues that PP in totalitarian states tends to be rather open and thus not taken seriously by its citizens, while in democracies it is disguised and usually not recognized as political propaganda.
Stanley makes a number of observations:
1. "Flawed ideologies characteristically lead one to sincerely hold a belief that is false and that, because of its falisty, disrupts the rational evaluation of a policy proposal . . . . [citing Hume] . . . . a flawed ideological belief leads to 'an unwillingness to amend immediate judgment in light of reflection.'"
{comment: That sounds a lot like what other social scientists say about voters in democracies, e.g., Christiopher Achen and Larry Bartels.}
2. "Lying too is a betrayal of the rational will. But it is a different kind of betrayal of the rational will than propaganda. At least with lying, one purports to provide evidence. Propaganda is worse than that. It attempts to unify opinion without attempting to appeal to our rational will at all. It bypasses any sense of autonomous decision. . . . . [citing Chomsky] . . . . a more nuanced version is . . . . propaganda as 'biased speech.' Propaganda is speech that irrationally closes off certain options that should be considered."
{comment: Again, we see an argument that emotion's impact on human cognitive biology, perceptions of reality and thinking make PP, lies, deceit and etc. powerful persuasive tools in the hands of skilled artisans such as successful demagogues and tyrants. We also see here the ancient argument, e.g., it was Plato's central belief, that conscious reason is superior to unconscious (implied irrationality) thinking. Modern science suggests a combination of unconscious thinking plus conscious reason to reduce unconscious bias is the optimal 'rational' mind set, e.g., Philip Tetlock's discovery of superforecasters, who are in essence, pragmatic non-ideologues capable of harnessing both unconscious and conscious thought to see things that others cannot.}
3. ". . . . one central source of ideological belief is our social identities. . . . . revision of flawed ideological belief whose source is flawed social structure is very hard . . . . Because of this, I am skeptical about the search for a psychological strategy individuals can use to 'protect themselves' . . . . what is needed to eliminate problematic ideological belief is to change the practice of a large group of people simultaneously over time, to alter a social identity many people share.
{comment: Other than through mass public education, B&B sees no way to change social identity on a mass scale. Listening to mainstream partisan political rhetoric, particularly conservative rhetoric, it is obvious that there's a whole lot of PP going on all the time. B&B argues that, unless some major catastrophe befalls a society, such changes are necessarily incremental and generational. B&B believes that what Stanley is talking about here will come about only from public education about human cognitive and social biology that, in essence, teaches children the psychology and cognitive biology they can use to at least partially 'protect themselves' from demagogues and their PP.}
4. ". . . . democracy functions as an ideal. . . . . the [ ] conception of norm guidance as faith is too problematic to be adopted. The problem is that faith in democratic ideals leads us to blindness to their violations. . . . . perhaps a reasonable way to adhere to ideal deliberative norms, for example, the norm of objectivity, may be to adopt systematic openness to the possibility that one has been unknowingly swayed by bias. If so, the mark of a democratic culture is one in which participants in debates regularly check themselves for bias, and subject their own beliefs and unthinking use of language to the same critical scrutiny as they do to the beliefs and utterances of others."
{comment: Couldn't agree more. This is precisely what B&B and its predecessors, e.g., Dissident Politics, have argued for years.}
5. "Undermining propaganda . . . . . depends on people having beliefs that are resistant to the available evidence . . . . [and it] . . . . conceals a contradiction of sorts, the beliefs that are resistant to evidence must themselves must be flawed in some way."
{comment: Just let that sink in for a minute. This is a critically important point. Beliefs resistant to evidence are a significant part of the political ideologue's cognitive biology. Just knowing that one thing ought to inject some doubt, but that rarely happens to any meaningful extent for most (>90% ?) ideologues.}
Questions: Is Donald Trump a demagogic propagandist with aspirations to tyranny? Is America engulfed in propaganda, along with an ocean of lies, BS and other forms of deceit? If so is the propaganda, lies, BS and deceit mostly from progressives, conservatives, both or something else? If it's mostly from one one side, which one is it? It is possible that public education can arm our children with knowledge that they can use to become self-aware and at least partially resistant to propaganda, lies, BS and deceit?
Footnote:
1. Stanley is professor of philosophy at Yale University. He is a staunch progressive. He clearly views PP through that lens and the world view it creates in his mind. His thesis holds that substantial material inequality, just or not, leads to flawed ideology, the existence of which makes demagogic propaganda more persuasive to people on the long end of the stick. In turn, that undermines democracy by creating and maintaining inequalities.
B&B orig: 5/31/17
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