An Unpopular Point: Propaganda is Harmful No Matter Who Uses It
I need to make an unpopular point, one that people have been arguing with me about for months now. Nobody has succeeded in convincing me that I’m wrong YET. Maybe you could be the first. The United States is in a very dark place right now. We are looking at the possibility of the unspeakable - not the inevitability, the possibility. And one of the reasons that we’re in this place is because of propaganda’s ability to turn humans into righteous zombies, passionate shells of who they used to be. But here’s the thing about propaganda. It’s dangerous no matter who uses it. And my intended audience for this post are folks who've been reading my blog, a group that, as far as I can tell, is almost entirely devoid of Trump supporters. So - to be clear, if I was writing this post to Trump supporters, I would have very different words to offer. Propaganda is used to hack the audience’s critical thinking abilities. It taps into simple right/wrong binary forms of thinking that stop people from
