Precis of How Propaganda Works

Precis of How Propaganda Works Jason Stanley Received: 20/06/2016 Final Version: 05/07/2016 BIBLID 0495-4548(2016)31:3p.287-294 DOI: 10.1387/theoria.16512 ABSTRACT: Precis by the autor of the book How Propaganda Works (Princeton University Press, 2015). Keywords: propaganda, ideology, social philosophy, political philosophy, democracy, material equality. RESUMEN: Sinopsis del autor del libro How Propaganda Works (Princeton University Press, 2015). Palabras clave: propaganda, ideología, filosofía social, filosofía política, democracia, igualdad material. The overarching goal of How Propaganda Works is to provide an argument that democracy requires material equality. My aim was to forge an argument for this view without premises about morality or justice. I do so by arguing that material inequality, like other forms of inequality, has pernicious epistemic effects. Inequality results in anti-democratic flawed ideologies, such as the ideology of meritocracy, and the ideology underlying the division of labor, the subjects of the last two chapters. Propaganda plays crucial roles both in preventing us from recognizing these epistemic harms, in the form of demagoguery, and in repairing them, in the form of civic rhetoric. The first half of the book is about propaganda. Chapter 2 advances a novel analysis of propaganda, as well as a novel explanation of its effectiveness. I split propaganda into two varieties. The first more familiar kind, which I call “supporting propaganda”, employs a valued political ideal to elicit emotion devoid of reason (such as ungrounded fear, or ungrounded pride) in the service of realizing that ideal. It is another species of propaganda that is however the focus of the book, which I call undermining propaganda. Undermining propaganda is an argument that employs an ideal in the service of a goal that tends to undermine that ideal. Undermining propaganda is demagoguery when there is a flawed ideology in place that distorts a valuable political ideal in such a way that prevents recognition of the fact that the goal undermines the realization of the valued ideal. Here are some basic examples that exemplify how flawed ideologies make undermining propaganda effective. Both involve the ideal of freedom, and the flawed ideology of anti-Black racism. Southerners in the United States during secession and the Civil War THEORIA 31/3 (2016): 287-294 288 Jason Stanley appealed to the ideal of freedom to defend their secession. A flawed racist ideology was re- quired to mask the contradictions inherent in appealing to freedom in order to defend a social order based on the enslavement of so many. On a similar note, Frederick Douglass’s 1892 speech, “The Meaning of Fourth of July for the Negro” calls attention to the way racist ideology masked the paradox of celebrating freedom on the Fourth of July under condi- tions of widespread enslavement. One might wonder, however, given my explanation of why propaganda is effective, whether propaganda is at all important. If the presence of flawed ideology explains the effectiveness of propaganda, doesn’t the fault lie just in the flawed ideology? This response neglects the crucially important role propaganda plays in masking flawed ideologies. In each society, there are ideals that are sacred. It is difficult to argue for policies that explicitly vio- late the sacred ideal. A violation of a sacred ideal must therefore often be packaged in the language of that ideal. The flawed ideology is what prevents you from recognizing that the policy proposal being advanced is in fact a violation of the very ideal that it is presented as furthering. One example is policies that restrict certain religious practices in the name of protecting liberal freedoms, such as gay rights. In the propaganda of climate change, we find oil companies and large agribusiness setting up their own “science” institutes, present- ing anti-science policies under the guise of science. The “Discovery Institute” in the United States defends intelligent design against evolution, under the guise of scientific inquiry. In each case, the propagandistic guise is important to mask the flawed ideology. Undermining propaganda is the central concept of How Propaganda Works, because undermining propaganda is how we conceal from ourselves the immense gaps between liberal democratic ideals and illiberal reality. When we think of political propaganda, we think for example (in the United States at least) of the strategy of using certain vocabulary, sometimes called “dog whistles”, e.g. “welfare”, and “inner city”, which in the United States trigger negative racial messages, to signal adherence to problematic yet popular anti-democratic ideologies. We also think of the propaganda that accompanies social movements, emphasizing the solidar- ity between citizens otherwise divided by prejudice, as in the Civil Rights Movement. How do these characteristic examples of propaganda fit into my analysis of undermining propaganda? I argue that these are cases in which the all important liberal democratic ideal of reasonableness is central. In a liberal democracy, we are supposed to consider every citizen’s perspective in arguing for policy. Chapter 3 is a lengthy discussion of the notion of reasonableness, which is meant to undergird the discussion of civic rhetoric, as well as the subse- quent discussion of code words in Chapter 4. As I there explain, the basis of reasonableness is empathy. Chapter 3 contains my discussion of civic rhetoric. The goal of civic rhetoric is to undermine flawed ideologies that diminish empathy. The goal of demagoguery, by contrast, is to erode empathy. Chapter 4 is a detailed description of the mechanism underlying one species of demagoguery, which exploits reasonableness against itself. For example, dis- cussing economic policy by using words like “welfare” seems like classic reasonable political discourse. But via the mechanisms I describe in Chapter 4, such terms can be associated with unreasonable beliefs, such as that Black Americans are lazy. In W.E.B Du Bois’s classic 1926 paper, “Criteria of Negro Art”, he formulates a strategy for those without power to make their perspectives visible to a dominant majority. Du Bois argues that the only Black artists white Americans want to see are those who fit cer- Theoria 31/3 (2016): 287-294 Precis of How Propaganda Works 289 tain subordinating racial stereotypes; they “want Uncle Toms, Topsies, good “darkies” and clowns.” His strategy is to employ art that uses the subordinating racial norms as a mask, ultimately to undermine them by revealing a Black humanity inconsistent with these subordinating and dehumanizing stereotypes. Alain Locke names this strategy, the use of “art as propaganda”. Art is Du Bois’s suggested tool for expanding empathy and realizing Amer- ican democracy by making public spaces more reasonable, to make public discourse about policy inclusive of all perspectives. Du Bois’s paper was written during the flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance. James Weldon Johnson, the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1920s, and a central member of the Harlem Renaissance movement, shared Du Bois’s political vision of art as a vehicle for liberation. In turn, Du Bois re- garded the NAACP as an ideal vehicle to plan such propaganda “And it is right here that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People comes upon the field, comes with its great call to a new battle, a new fight and new things to fight before the old things are wholly won; and to say that the beauty of truth and freedom which shall some day be our heritage and the heritage of all civilized men is not in our hands yet and that we ourselves must not fail to realize.” The popular 1921 Broadway play Shuffle Along is a classic example of the use of Du Bois’s strategy. The writers met at an NAACP benefit, and the play was written by Black authors, produced by Black citizens, and starred Black performers. Marketed, as is evi- dent from its title, to appeal to whites with a simplistic stereotyped vision of Black ex- istence, it used novel forms of jazz to call attention to the vastly greater complexity and humanity of Black American life. It is civic rhetoric in the form of undermining propaganda. Civic rhetoric also of course takes the form of supporting propaganda. Here, it to realize the ideals of liberty and equality, by appealing to audience’s emotional connection to these ideals. Here, I use the work of Melvin Rogers to illuminate the ways in which Du Bois and others employed civic rhetoric in this way, as a direct attempt to increase the realization of democratic ideals. Civic rhetoric attempts to expand empathy and realize the ideal of reasonableness. In contrast, demagogic propaganda in a liberal democracy masks violations of reasonableness, by making certain perspectives invisible. Chapter 4 is an investigation of one way in which demagogic propaganda can occur, unnoticed, in a liberal democracy. Though Chapter 4 is extensive, its scope is limited. In it, I work out in detail how one class of political propaganda fits into my framework. Chapter 4 is not in any sense meant to be a general account of undermining propaganda. It just so happens that the tools of lin- guistics allow us to give a detailed account of one characteristic mechanism by which reasonableness is used to undermine reasonableness (often called “code words”). In this chapter, I show how repeated association between words and messages can create a second level of communicated content, which can be made precise in with distinctions drawn in recent semantics and pragmatics. On one level of content, the “official” level, a discourse can seem reasonable.

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