The science of propaganda, spin and doubt: A short summary

At the least, the information in this post should be mandatory knowledge for both a high school degree and for any post high school credential. If a person does not know this, they are more susceptible to the dark arts than is justifiable in American democracy. -- Germaine, 2022

Context

Lots of books and thousands of research articles have been written on propaganda and why and how it works so well. Propaganda became sophisticated in America a couple of years before World War 1. To get the US into WW1, president Woodrow Wilson created the Committee on Public Information. The CPI was a gigantic US government deceit and emotional manipulation machine. Tens of thousands of spinning con artists worked for it. Wilson's goal was to con the American people into supporting American entry into the war and feeling emotionally justified, e.g., making the world safe for democracy. Some of the greatest propagandists of the 20th century, maybe of all time, worked on that effort. It was a smashing success.

Wilson's massive public disinformation effort jump-started modern propaganda ("public relations") in support of businesses and commerce (discussed here). Business leaders watching how effective propaganda could be to get people to walk into a brutal war quickly realized that good propaganda wasn't just for governments to use to deceive people into making the ultimate self-sacrifice. It could be used by businesses to deceive both customers and governments. It was, and still is, a freaking super rich gold mine chock full of diamonds, platinum, lithium and all the hot, juicy cheeseburgers that T**** could ever eat.

A short summary of propaganda tactics

In 2021, two researchers, Rebecca Goldberg and Laura Vandenberg, at the University of Massachusetts, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, and School of Public Health and Health Sciences, published a very nice summary of spin or propaganda tactics from 5 major sources.[1] Their paper is entitled, The science of spin: targeted strategies to manufacture doubt with detrimental effects on environmental and public health.

The paper's abstract includes these comments:

Results: We recognized 28 unique tactics used to manufacture doubt. Five of these tactics were used by all five organizations, suggesting that they are key features of manufactured doubt. The intended audience influences the strategy used to misinform, and logical fallacies contribute to their efficacy.

Conclusions: This list of tactics can be used by others to build a case that an industry or group is deliberately manipulating information associated with their actions or products. Improved scientific and rhetorical literacy could be used to render them less effective, depending on the audience targeted, and ultimately allow for the protection of both environmental health and public health more generally.

The list of tactics that special interests who used them is shown below in Table 1 from the article. Table 2 lists the logic fallacies the propagandists tend to rely on.

Tactics or strategies 1, 2, 3, 8 and 21 were all used by all five sources of deceit and doubt.

• 1. Attack Study Design: To emphasize study design flaws in A** that have only minimal effects on outcomes. Flaws include issues related to bias, confounding, or sample size
• 2. Gain Support from Reputable Individuals: Recruit experts or influential people in certain fields (politicians, industry, journals, doctors, scientists, health officials) to defend B** in order to gain broader support
• 3. Misrepresent data: Cherry-pick data, design studies to fail, or conduct meta-analyses to dilute the work of A
• 8. Employ Hyperbolic or Absolutist Language: Discuss scientific findings in absolutist terms or with hyperbole, use buzzwords to differentiate between “strong” and “poor” science (i.e. sound science, junk science, etc.),
• 21. Influence Government/Laws: Gain inappropriate proximity to regulatory bodies and encourage pro-B policy

** “A” refers to information generated to combat scientific evidence and facts

“B” refers to information generated to promote narratives that are favorable to the industry

Logic fallacies

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Larry Motuz for bringing the work of these two researchers to my attention.

Footnote: 

1. The researchers describe the five sources of propaganda like this:

The first, Big Tobacco, is widely considered to have “written the playbook” on manufactured doubt [1]. The tobacco industry has managed to maintain its clientele for many decades in part due to manufactured scientific controversy about the health effects of active and secondhand smoking [1, 2, 4, 6, 10,11,12,13].

The other industries we examined include the coal industry, whose employees often suffer from black lung disease [14], yet the industry has avoided awarding compensation to many affected miners by wielding disproportionate influence in the courtroom [15,16,17,18,19]; the sugar industry, which distracted from its role contributing to metabolic and cardiovascular diseases [20] by deflecting blame toward dietary fat as a plausible alternative cause for rising population-level chronic disease rates [21,22,23,24,25]; the agrochemical business, Syngenta, manufacturer of the herbicide atrazine [26,27,28], which conducted personal attacks against a vocal critic of atrazine whose research revealed disruptive effects on the endocrine systems of aquatic animals [29, 30]; and the Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank comprised of Cold War physicists eager to maintain their proximity to government, and associated scientists who deliberately misrepresented information to the government to both minimize and normalize the effects of fossil fuels on global temperatures [1, 4, 31].

Climate change notes

The AP writes about how pro-pollution interests have deceived the public and the damage that causes to society:

In 1998, as nations around the world agreed to cut carbon emissions through the Kyoto Protocol, America’s fossil fuel companies plotted their response, including an aggressive strategy to inject doubt into the public debate.

“Victory,” according to the American Petroleum Institute’s memo, “will be achieved when average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science... Unless ‘climate change’ becomes a non-issue... there may be no moment when we can declare victory.”

The memo, later leaked to The New York Times that year, went on to outline how fossil fuel companies could manipulate journalists and the broader public by muddying the evidence, by playing up “both sides” of the debate and by portraying those seeking to reduce emissions as “out of touch with reality.”

“The tragedy of this is that all over social media, you can see tens of millions of Americans who think scientists are lying, even about things that have been proven for decades,” said Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University who has written about the history of climate change disinformation. “They’ve been persuaded by decades of disinformation. The denial is really, really deep.”

And persistent. Just last month, even with record heat in London, raging wildfires in Alaska and historic flooding in Australia, the Science and Environmental Policy Project, a pro-fossil fuel think tank, said all the scientists had it wrong.

“There is no climate crisis,” the group wrote in its newsletter.

Now, even as those same companies promote investments in renewable energy, the legacy of all that climate disinformation remains.

It’s also contributed to a broader skepticism of scientists, scientific institutions and the media that report on them, a distrust reflected by doubts about vaccines or pandemic-era public health measures like masks and quarantines.

Aggressive approaches to address climate change are now dismissed not on scientific grounds but on economic ones. Fossil fuel companies talk about lost jobs or higher energy prices — without mentioning the cost of doing nothing, said Ben Franta, an attorney, author and Stanford University researcher who tracks fossil fuel disinformation.

“We are living within an extended multi-decade campaign executed by the fossil fuel industry,” Franta said. “The debate (over climate change) was manufactured by the fossil fuel industry in the 1990s, and we are living with that history right now.”

Another AP article comments on increasing migration that climate change is causing:

Climate migration growing but not fully recognized by world

Worsening climate largely from the burning of coal and gas is uprooting millions of people, with wildfires overrunning towns in California, rising seas overtaking island nations and drought exacerbating conflicts in various parts of the world.

Each year, natural disasters force an average of 21.5 million people from their homes around the world, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. And scientists predict migration will grow as the planet gets hotter. Over the next 30 years, 143 million people are likely to be uprooted by rising seas, drought, searing temperatures and other climate catastrophes, according to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report published this year.

A blog post at Neurologica comments:

It should come as a surprise to no one that the fossil fuel industry has been financing a vast public relations campaign over the last three decades to sow confusion and doubt about human-caused climate change. This is already well established. One Harvard study, for example, focusing on ExxonMobil, found:

That analysis showed that ExxonMobil misled the public about basic climate science and its implications. They did so by contributing quietly to climate science, and loudly to promoting doubt about that science.

Now, the BBC reports on two people who worked with a PR firm specifically to deny the science of climate change who are now telling their story, adding some more details and focus to the tale. Don Rheem and Terry Yosie worked for E Bruce Harrison, an industry PR guru, who, starting in 1992, landed the campaign to work for the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), an industry group comprised of oil, coal, auto, utilities, steel, and rail industries. What do all these industries have in common? They all contribute significantly to green house gas emissions.

They made great headway with this strategy [unwarranted lies and doubt], because journalists did not understand the complexities of climate science and welcomed the “help” provided by GCC. Then Harrison figured that they could be even more successful if they recruited the help of scientists and academics, whose voices would carry more weight. So they sought out the minority of climate change doubters in the community and paid them well to speak, significantly magnifying their voices. This strategy worked, and much of the public became convinced that there was uncertainty and disagreement among scientists about climate change. Journalists were also complicit, because it fit their narrative to find contrary voices and then present them as equal to the mainstream.

This strategy [of sowing lies and unwarranted doubt] worked so well that it has taken on a life of its own. First, the propaganda of the GCC essentially became the platform of the Republican party. It became tied to a political and ideological group. With the rise of social media it also became easy for people who identify with this ideological group, or who were just convinced by the GCC propaganda, to further magnify climate change denial. They repeat industry talking points cooked up a couple decades earlier by a PR firm without necessarily realizing it.

It is critical that we learn the lessons from this experience. What this means is a few things. Journalists need to do a better job in the aggregate – they need to learn how to report science in general, controversial science in particular, and how not to become the lap dogs of industry propaganda. Scientists and academics also need to develop their knowledge and skills in dealing with the public understand of science and other complex topics, and to make it a much higher academic priority. Skeptical science communicators, in my opinion, have largely filled the gap left by journalists and academics, but we also need to do a better job – of educating ourselves, engaging with the media and academics, and jumping on topics earlier in the disinformation cycle. At present we are mostly a hodge-podge of individual uncoordinated outlets. How we can improve the situation is a conversation for another day.

Republican tactics for subverting elections is coming into focus

Actually, it's been in focus for at least the last year or thereabouts. But that quibble aside, Salon writes:

GOP officials refuse to certify primaries: “This is how Republicans are planning to steal elections”

Election officials in three states refuse to sign off on primary results in a preview of likely November chaos

Republican election officials in at least three states have refused to certify primary votes, in a sign of things to come amid the party's baseless election fraud crusade.

Numerous allies of former President Donald Trump have echoed his lies about voter fraud on the campaign trail. Trump-backed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Adam Laxalt both claimed evidence of "election stealing" before any votes were cast. Colorado secretary of state candidate Tina Peters has twice demanded recounts of her Republican primary race after losing by double digits. Nevada gubernatorial candidate Joey Gilbert filed a lawsuit alleging that his GOP primary loss was a "mathematical impossibility," even after a recount he requested confirmed the results.

While candidates are free to challenge the results of their elections under various state guidelines, Trump-allied election officials pose a more insidious threat. Echoing the same false narratives as Trump and his endorsed candidates, county officials in New Mexico, Nevada and Pennsylvania have tried to circumvent state laws and refused to sign off on primary results.

Republican commissioners in Otero County, New Mexico last month refused to certify primary results in their GOP-dominated jurisdiction, citing unspecified concerns about Dominion voting machines. These apparently stem from TrumpWorld's crusade to stoke baseless allegations that the machines had "flipped" votes from Trump to Joe Biden. The Otero County commissioners ultimately relented and certified the votes amid concerns that they could go to jail after state officials took them to court.

Well, at least there's still the threat of jail for people who subvert elections. Once that goes away, the dam is going to burst. Republican election integrity is going to gush out bigly. What's left of democracy that's still standing in the way will be swept away, never to be seen again.

The GOP plan for elections:

kill 'em with a gusher of election integrity

Republican Party social re-engineering tactics: Cowardice, lies, slanders & emotional crackpottery

By now, GOP propaganda tactics are well-known to people who can see them for what they are. Divisive lies, slanders, emotional button pushing and idiotic reasoning are all front and center as usual. That is at the heart of the morally rotted Republican Party. Adam Serwer at The Atlantic writes:

Republicans’ Cowardly Excuses for Not Protecting Marriage Equality

Republican senators such as Marco Rubio and Ben Sasse, as well as conservative outlets such as National Review, have insisted that the Respect for Marriage Act is unnecessary because there is no case currently on its way to the Supreme Court that has the potential to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the decision that recognized the right of same-sex couples to marry. Rubio said he would vote against the bill because it was a “waste of our time on a non-issue.” Sasse told reporters that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was “trying to divide America with culture wars. I think it’s just the same bullshit. She’s not an adult.”

The reason some Republican senators are complaining about the existence of a marriage-equality bill is that they do not want to be forced to take a real position on the issue. They do not want to publicly take the unpopular position, even among the Republican rank and file, that these families should be destroyed, but they also do not want to do what is necessary to protect them and potentially earn the wrath of right-wing media and other members of their political coalition. This is cowardice, but also a GOP plan for as long as they can hold the Court: to avoid taking risky stands in Congress while the conservative justices act as a super-legislature that imposes an unpopular right-wing legal agenda on the entire country. Because the justices cannot be voted out of office, they can take the heat for imposing policies that elected officials would be nervous about supporting. If marriage equality were truly a “non-issue,” passage of the bill would be assured; GOP legislators are waiting for the Court to do their dirty work for them.

Contrary to Sasse’s blubbering about dividing the country, if the legislation were passed and successfully dissuaded the Supreme Court from trying to invalidate marriage equality, it would leave Democrats without a popular issue with which to criticize Republicans. And that’s good, because the duty of the Democratic Party should be to make sure their constituents—and by extension, all Americans—can retain their basic rights, not to have culture-war grievances to run on forever. I can understand, however, why Republican elected officials, used to offering their constituents little more than a steady diet of culture-war red meat, might have trouble grasping the concept.

Sasse lies when he claims that defense of same-sex marriage (SSM) is a non-issue. The Christian nationalist wing of the GOP, of which all six Republicans on the Supreme Court and Sasse himself are elite members of, is crystal clear that SSM has to go. God hates SSM so Christians nationalists hate it too. Because of that alone, there is no reasonable basis to claim that this is a non-issue. It is an issue.

The group that has the most influence in dividing America with culture war is the Republican Party. Sasse arguing that Pelosi is trying to divide us by doing what most Americans want is divisive. 

That exemplifies another prominent trait of Republican Party propaganda. Republican elites rhetoric projects an awful lot. When they accuse and criticize Democrats of doing something, it is usually a good bet that the Republicans are the main culprits. 

Gallup, June 2022

What is more divisive, 

supporting it or opposing it?

Raising enough hell might finally get it done…

People often claim that the Democrats’ messaging is weak.  I guess I can get that, especially vis-à-vis what happened late last week, with enough Republicans voting against the PACT Act* for it to fail. 

What we, the Dems, need is some people like Jon Stewart to raise a little lot of hell.  If Dems “came out swinging” on the issues they feel passionate about, maybe it could get the media’s attention.  (So far, Beto O’Rourke is one of the few passionate Dems I’ve seen.  And he is still lagging in the polls behind bastard Greg Abbott for Governor of Texas.)

Yes, we Dems need outrage.  We need passion.  We need to call a Republican spade a Republican spade.  Call them out!  Make a scene.  That always get the media’s attention, since the media always goes where the trouble goes.  But Jon is making “good trouble.”  And without media, our messages, especially “good trouble messages” go nowhere. 

Well said, Jon (warning, strong language):

-Does America owe the veterans, less than 1% of the population, anything?

-Does not passing the PACT Act disgust you as much as it disgusts me?

-Am I just blowing off some steam here?  (Oh, you betcha!)

______________________________

*The PACT Act, also known as the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022, is a bill that directly addresses the impact on veterans and others who were exposed to environmental toxins, burn pits, radiation, and Agent Orange while serving.

Republican Party racism steps into daylight

A Washington Post opinion piece makes it about as plain as it can be made:

Opinion | A hero of the Trump right shows his true colors: Whites only

Thank you, Viktor Orban, for showing us where the American right is heading.

The Hungarian strongman, who derailed his country’s nascent democracy, has been a darling of the MAGA crowd for his anti-immigrant policies. He has enjoyed a fawning interview and favorable broadcasts from Budapest by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, and he has been invited as a featured speaker to next week’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas alongside a who’s who of Republican senators, governors and members of Congress, as well as former president Donald Trump himself. Several such luminaries addressed a CPAC gathering in Hungary in May, at which Trump described Orban as “a great leader, a great gentleman.”

During a July 23 address (in which he said immigration should be called “population replacement or inundation”) he gave voice to the belief underlying his nationalism: He opposes the mixing of races.

“Migration has split Europe in two — or I could say that it has split the West in two,” he said, after commending to his listeners a 50-year-old racist treatise. “One half is a world where European and non-European peoples live together. These countries are no longer nations. They are nothing more than a conglomeration of peoples.” He went on to contrast that with “our world,” in which “we are willing to mix with one another, but we do not want to become peoples of mixed race.”

That was too much even for Orban’s longtime adviser Zsuzsa Hegedus, who resigned and lambasted the prime minister for “a pure Nazi speech worthy of Goebbels.” She said the speech could “please even the most bloodthirsty racists” and suggested he was “advocating an openly racist policy that is now unacceptable even for the Western European extreme right.”

But not for the American right! CPAC’s organizer confirmed to me on Wednesday that Orban is still scheduled to address the group next week. “Let’s listen to the man speak,” Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Conservative Political Action Coalition, told Bloomberg News on Tuesday. Orban’s name remained on CPAC’s speakers list, along with Trump; some two dozen GOP House members; Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.), Rick Scott (Fla.) and Bill Hagerty (Tenn.); Fox News’s Sean Hannity; Texas Gov. Greg Abbott; and former Trump aides including Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller.

Republicans have hailed Orban as “Trump before Trump” (Bannon), whose government is doing “so many positive things” (Sen. Ron Johnson). Among the things it has been doing: seizing control of the judiciary and media, banning the depiction of homosexuality, demonizing Jewish billionaire George Soros, expelling asylum seekers and erecting a wire fence on the border, forcing out the country’s top university, and halving the size of parliament and redrawing districts to keep itself in power.

At its core, Orban’s rule has been about sustaining, and being sustained by, white nationalism. His July 23 speech was an extended articulation of the “great replacement” conspiracy idea — embraced by Carlson and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), among others — that non-White people are plotting to wipe out White people.

One would think that given how sophisticated GOP propaganda can be, they would be less blatant about their racism. There's nothing wrong with opposing most immigration on grounds of overpopulation and/or concern for the environment. But, maybe Republicans cannot base their opposition to immigration on either ground because they do not believe either is a problem. That leaves racism as the cause.

Well, at least Republicans are being honest about their motive. That's a refreshing change.