Hitler developed propaganda into a fine art. That is not to say he did not have instruction; he did in the battlefields of WWI. And now we are going him one better. We are so extreme about it, our Information Age might be better labeled the Progaganda Age. By "we" we mean all of humanity, all societies. Extremism lives on and by propaganda.
Visit various news sites after a terror event. Listen to radio and TV reports. Include eastern and western organs. What do you see? Do all western sources agree? Do the eastern? Does European media see it the same as US sources?
What we see for the most part is that media within a country or region have as much variation as sources between countries and regions. When trying to decide what is propaganda and what is not...well that is a bit more difficult.
Do we decide on what feels most comfortable, or do we search for descriptions in common? Is either good enough? Kris Rosenberg had one answer in a question: "Are you working a Paint-by-Number life or are you working on an original?" In the latter event, you look not just at the news stories to decide, but at their total context in view of history.
- What does each news organ leave out? What is editorial and what is real event?
- Does the editorial give equal time to all sides?
- Does the editorial make sense?
- Is it self consistent?
- Does it use judgmental, inflammatory or derisive language?
- Does it sound like a saw, harping on one idea?
- Does it appeal heavily to emotions at the expense of logic?
- Does the editorial content use terms in a sense opposite to, or different from, the dictionary meaning? (Certain world leaders are/were experts on this one.)
- Does it combine words that would not normally be used together in another age?
Answer those questions and we will be much closer to perceiving the reality of an event or how and why it happened.
If we have a mind to combat propaganda from all quarters , one option is to develop an internal Locus of Control.
Having said all that, there are cultures that use the word "propaganda" in the legitimate sense of advertising. But where does one draw the line?
The answer might not matter much except for one very disturbing thing Bob Altemeyer puts his finger on:
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We have covered nine attitude-change experiments on the effects of hate literature upon university students. The studies showed such propaganda "worked." It made people believe less that the Holocaust occurred, it made them less accepting of and nore hostile toward homosexuals, and it effectively wiped out support for feminist professors...
...Moreover, three of the studies found that the students were not influenced by truthful accounts of the Holocaust.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Monday, December 12, 2005.
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