I have a friend whose father was a Minister. She tells the story of watching him at work on a sermon. Every once in a while he would make a note...." weak point, pound pulpit "
This seems to be a variation on the old advice to attorneys arguing in court. “If the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law is on your side, pound the law. If neither the facts nor the law is on your side, pound the table.”
In Paraguay we use the same word "propaganda" to refer to advertisements and to regular propaganda.
It's not even a Spanish thing, regular Spanish has the separate word "publicidad" to refer to advertisements. But in Paraguay specifically, we don't make a separation between someone trying to sell you on a product/service and someone trying to sell you on a more abstract idea.
The most effective propaganda is that to which the recipient is predisposed. So for example, "mask up to save lives". I want to save lives, so I'd better mask up. Another extremely effective one has been "our diversity is our strength." I want to be strong! Also diversity is good with plants and stocks and diets. Thus it must be good for everything. "We're a nation of immigrants." You know it's good propaganda when the whole phrase just rolls off the tongue and you don't even think about it anymore. It has become goodthink.
I agree, Bryan, but I think it good to see propaganda as one among several prongs of a wider endeavor. The core set of prongs are: propaganda, clientelism, censorship, and persecution. Running through all prongs: Intimidation. I elaborate here:
One thing im noting watching various media or discussions is that most people do not think of being “irrational” as a bad thing. Usually its pretty irellevant to them, and they only care if theres a social role/expectation that this person is supposed to be rational.
Most people also seem to mostly care about whether their preferences will get respected, and whether costs will be put on them.
Leftist People being concerned about paternalism isn’t concerned that some people will have less expectations/freedooms on them: when they say a policy is paternalistic they usually mean that the policy is refusing to give people what they want or should have, because of them being “not competent enough” or such.
I think many people dont think that precisely about what words they use, and care about the vibe or the signal of it.
So they assume other people do the same.
So the person critizing caplan saying propaganda is then essentially saying “your saying its BS and not real concerns, and i disagree with you saying that”
And not
“You are saying lots of information about X and Y is vapid and just empty repetition, and i disagree about the word you used to describe the communication”
P perhaps you’ve read, Propaganda by Edward Bernays. If not, I highly recommend you do. The kind of propaganda of which you speak is certainly widely used and immensely effective. However, there is a kind of propaganda that is used which is much more devious and infinitely harder to perceive. While it’s easier to discover you have been repetitively conditioned to buy a certain product, it’s not as easy to discover why it is you have been conditioned to do so. The kind of propaganda that manipulates an entire industry, in the case of home builders just to sell pianos, is another level entirely. According to Bernays, piano manufacturers were having difficulty selling their product. A plan was devised to build homes with the addition of music rooms. It was a win/win situation. Everyone was going to make more money. The only downside was to the consumer. They paid more for the home. Paid for more home they didn’t actually need. And then spent money on a piano to fill the unnecessary space with an unnecessary item. All while never realizing how they were led by ideas they thought were their own but were only planted as seeds, subliminally, by an industry only concerned with their own bottom line. While I believe myself to be a critical thinker who can spot propaganda a mile away, I’m absolutely certain it has become so sophisticated that none outside the machine pushing it out can know it’s happening.
“If your ideas are good, then selling them via argument and evidence is relatively easy.” Not always. You might be led to good ideas by your good intuition, though it would be difficult to articulate the (valid) basis for your intuitive judgment.
Your definition labels a sophist who was paid by a politician to spin up a credible-sounding case that would appeal to intellectuals as “not a propagandist.” Since I think it is, I think that your definition of propaganda is flawed.
No comment on the actual issues at hand re: gender, but the argument presented here is nonsensical. You cite propaganda as proof by repetition, and then simply wave at a few gender related concepts without stopping to consider why the points might be relevant or not.
One can have propaganda about, say, "Our military is the most powerful in the world" because that's an external fact about the world. Again, without commenting on the value of the claims either way, the COVID examples of six feet apart and masks are also external claims about the world.
The fact that someone feels themselves to be a different gender is not a fact about the world, it is a claim about someone's subjective experience. That subjective experience may very well be influenced by external as well as intrinsic factors, but it's still not a factual claim about the state of the world.
The trigger for this argument is a category error.
I disagree, it's self promoting a personal narrative which is just propaganda at the local level. If it was self evident it would be different. How they feel about themselves is an internal dialogue and neither subject to fact nor verifiable. Whereas just repeating to the world ad infinitum "I'm a guy though I wear dresses, am pregnant, only sleep with men, and for all intent and purposes look and act identical to a trad wife including genitalia" until you get people to believe it via sheer repetition is propaganda.
And yes I know a "guy" exactly like that, two of them actually.
I don't think "I am a woman" is propaganda, for the reasons you gave. But the argument is largely not about whether male people can insist that they identify as a woman. Anybody can have any opinion they want about their internal states. It's about statements like "feeling you are a woman makes you a woman" or "gender affirming healthcare is a moral necessity."
Since “I’m talking to a bunch of weak-minded fools” is a classic violation of Social Desirability Bias, the speakers naturally resent the implication. Still, it may be true. Propaganda is not always false. If your audience is dumb and irrational enough, propaganda is one of the few methods of persuasion that is likely to work.
This is why teenagers/young adults are so susceptible to just about anything you tell them.
I remember as a Catholic teen noticing that the Vatican's PR department was, in those days, called something like , "Office of Propaganda" -- "The Propaganda" for short.
Since the Catholic Church is the oldest institution in the world, the Church probably invented the term.
In my mind, the word already had negative connotations, much like "Pravda" probably does in Russian. But since my church was using the term, and the church obviously didn't want that word to mean something negative, I took it to mean, "Getting the official word out", much like we use the word "PR" today. "Propaganda" wasn't malicious, but only "approved."
And so the word meant neither false nor true, neither good nor bad. It simply meant, "promulgating the official position of a group of people." And I still take it that way.
For example, "Transgenderism" is propaganda -- not of any particular institution but rather of loose association of those who benefit from the concept. Neither true nor false -- just official and proper.
Propaganda always involves a percentage of falsehood, because no group, as Bryan has demonstrated, can avoid having some evildoers in its midst. There is always some "glossing over." But the basic concept is inevitable: any group of people with a common purpose must have propaganda.
But woe to those who mistake propaganda for "truth." They who put their trust in propaganda will suffer the "side effects" of its vaccines.
> If your ideas are good, then selling them via argument and evidence is relatively easy
Like YIMBY, or tariffs-are-bad ;-?
I have a friend whose father was a Minister. She tells the story of watching him at work on a sermon. Every once in a while he would make a note...." weak point, pound pulpit "
This seems to be a variation on the old advice to attorneys arguing in court. “If the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law is on your side, pound the law. If neither the facts nor the law is on your side, pound the table.”
In Paraguay we use the same word "propaganda" to refer to advertisements and to regular propaganda.
It's not even a Spanish thing, regular Spanish has the separate word "publicidad" to refer to advertisements. But in Paraguay specifically, we don't make a separation between someone trying to sell you on a product/service and someone trying to sell you on a more abstract idea.
The most effective propaganda is that to which the recipient is predisposed. So for example, "mask up to save lives". I want to save lives, so I'd better mask up. Another extremely effective one has been "our diversity is our strength." I want to be strong! Also diversity is good with plants and stocks and diets. Thus it must be good for everything. "We're a nation of immigrants." You know it's good propaganda when the whole phrase just rolls off the tongue and you don't even think about it anymore. It has become goodthink.
I agree, Bryan, but I think it good to see propaganda as one among several prongs of a wider endeavor. The core set of prongs are: propaganda, clientelism, censorship, and persecution. Running through all prongs: Intimidation. I elaborate here:
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-four-sins-of-thawteffery/
One thing im noting watching various media or discussions is that most people do not think of being “irrational” as a bad thing. Usually its pretty irellevant to them, and they only care if theres a social role/expectation that this person is supposed to be rational.
Most people also seem to mostly care about whether their preferences will get respected, and whether costs will be put on them.
Leftist People being concerned about paternalism isn’t concerned that some people will have less expectations/freedooms on them: when they say a policy is paternalistic they usually mean that the policy is refusing to give people what they want or should have, because of them being “not competent enough” or such.
I think many people dont think that precisely about what words they use, and care about the vibe or the signal of it.
So they assume other people do the same.
So the person critizing caplan saying propaganda is then essentially saying “your saying its BS and not real concerns, and i disagree with you saying that”
And not
“You are saying lots of information about X and Y is vapid and just empty repetition, and i disagree about the word you used to describe the communication”
P perhaps you’ve read, Propaganda by Edward Bernays. If not, I highly recommend you do. The kind of propaganda of which you speak is certainly widely used and immensely effective. However, there is a kind of propaganda that is used which is much more devious and infinitely harder to perceive. While it’s easier to discover you have been repetitively conditioned to buy a certain product, it’s not as easy to discover why it is you have been conditioned to do so. The kind of propaganda that manipulates an entire industry, in the case of home builders just to sell pianos, is another level entirely. According to Bernays, piano manufacturers were having difficulty selling their product. A plan was devised to build homes with the addition of music rooms. It was a win/win situation. Everyone was going to make more money. The only downside was to the consumer. They paid more for the home. Paid for more home they didn’t actually need. And then spent money on a piano to fill the unnecessary space with an unnecessary item. All while never realizing how they were led by ideas they thought were their own but were only planted as seeds, subliminally, by an industry only concerned with their own bottom line. While I believe myself to be a critical thinker who can spot propaganda a mile away, I’m absolutely certain it has become so sophisticated that none outside the machine pushing it out can know it’s happening.
I think of propaganda as a persuasion using any means other than rational argument
“If your ideas are good, then selling them via argument and evidence is relatively easy.” Not always. You might be led to good ideas by your good intuition, though it would be difficult to articulate the (valid) basis for your intuitive judgment.
Your definition labels a sophist who was paid by a politician to spin up a credible-sounding case that would appeal to intellectuals as “not a propagandist.” Since I think it is, I think that your definition of propaganda is flawed.
Propagandists have an entire battery of persuasive tricks, of which repetition is just one. It is manipulation by means of symbols and slogans.
No comment on the actual issues at hand re: gender, but the argument presented here is nonsensical. You cite propaganda as proof by repetition, and then simply wave at a few gender related concepts without stopping to consider why the points might be relevant or not.
One can have propaganda about, say, "Our military is the most powerful in the world" because that's an external fact about the world. Again, without commenting on the value of the claims either way, the COVID examples of six feet apart and masks are also external claims about the world.
The fact that someone feels themselves to be a different gender is not a fact about the world, it is a claim about someone's subjective experience. That subjective experience may very well be influenced by external as well as intrinsic factors, but it's still not a factual claim about the state of the world.
The trigger for this argument is a category error.
I disagree, it's self promoting a personal narrative which is just propaganda at the local level. If it was self evident it would be different. How they feel about themselves is an internal dialogue and neither subject to fact nor verifiable. Whereas just repeating to the world ad infinitum "I'm a guy though I wear dresses, am pregnant, only sleep with men, and for all intent and purposes look and act identical to a trad wife including genitalia" until you get people to believe it via sheer repetition is propaganda.
And yes I know a "guy" exactly like that, two of them actually.
I don't think "I am a woman" is propaganda, for the reasons you gave. But the argument is largely not about whether male people can insist that they identify as a woman. Anybody can have any opinion they want about their internal states. It's about statements like "feeling you are a woman makes you a woman" or "gender affirming healthcare is a moral necessity."
Since “I’m talking to a bunch of weak-minded fools” is a classic violation of Social Desirability Bias, the speakers naturally resent the implication. Still, it may be true. Propaganda is not always false. If your audience is dumb and irrational enough, propaganda is one of the few methods of persuasion that is likely to work.
This is why teenagers/young adults are so susceptible to just about anything you tell them.
I remember as a Catholic teen noticing that the Vatican's PR department was, in those days, called something like , "Office of Propaganda" -- "The Propaganda" for short.
Since the Catholic Church is the oldest institution in the world, the Church probably invented the term.
In my mind, the word already had negative connotations, much like "Pravda" probably does in Russian. But since my church was using the term, and the church obviously didn't want that word to mean something negative, I took it to mean, "Getting the official word out", much like we use the word "PR" today. "Propaganda" wasn't malicious, but only "approved."
And so the word meant neither false nor true, neither good nor bad. It simply meant, "promulgating the official position of a group of people." And I still take it that way.
For example, "Transgenderism" is propaganda -- not of any particular institution but rather of loose association of those who benefit from the concept. Neither true nor false -- just official and proper.
Propaganda always involves a percentage of falsehood, because no group, as Bryan has demonstrated, can avoid having some evildoers in its midst. There is always some "glossing over." But the basic concept is inevitable: any group of people with a common purpose must have propaganda.
But woe to those who mistake propaganda for "truth." They who put their trust in propaganda will suffer the "side effects" of its vaccines.
tk
It was Office of Propagation of the Faith. As in to spread the faith. 🤣
I mean, yes, the word comes from Catholics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregation_for_the_Evangelization_of_Peoples. It's same root as the word "propagate"="disperse".
Also, no, "pravda" doesn't have negative connotations in Russian despite that being the newspaper's name, it's just the neutral word.
You missed an important technique....emotional appeals. Probably the most important of all.