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 wondering what they might be missing. And ultimately, it makes us all more dangerous.

In the last few months, I’ve been making the argument in lots of different places that using language that invokes an enemy-image is a dangerous form of propaganda no matter who’s doing it. Trump supporters use words like leftist, communist, nazi, liberal, antifa, and others to do this. What makes these words dangerous is how they’re weaponized within the context that they’re used. Saying someone is a member of antifa, in and of itself, might just be stating a fact. But when that word is used with people who’ve been exposed to years of propaganda that has paired its use with images of scary-looking rioters, the effect is to alter a person's sense of safety, often with the purpose of encouraging them to do violence.

Propaganda in language also occurs when words like antifa or communist are used within a context of Us vs Them language that appeals to the audience to identify with an in-group in order to protect against an out-group.

For example, “That guy is a member of antifa. They are trying to take our country from us.”

This is propaganda, and it works for two reasons. The first reason is the word antifa itself is a trigger (a trigger that took years of repetition to activate in a lot of people). It signals danger by tapping into unconscious associations the audience has with the word. Second, it’s used within the context of Us vs Them language. This creates a sense of threat in the listener, and it mobilizes them to fight. This effectively makes them a more dangerous person, at least for a period of time. They might then calm down and need more exposure to propaganda to get riled up again.

But the thing about dangerous propaganda is that you don’t have to be a Trump supporter to use it.

As countries begin to descend into more and more dangerous forms of fascism, as the US is currently doing, it has a deleterious effect on the thinking capacity of everyone. This has the ultimate effect of increasing possibilities of unnecessary harm for everyone, and especially for already marginalized people.

People who are scrambling to speak truth in the face of fascist violence are turning, in a desperate attempt to save our country, to dangerous forms of propaganda. And this is often done under the guise of speaking truth. An example of this is using the term ‘traitor’ or ‘sedition’ or ‘enemy of democracy.’ And if you’ve been using these words, you might be annoyed by me right now. You might be thinking, “Yeah - but those are true! And we have to say what’s true! Now more than ever!” And, I’d agree. I just don’t think we need to use propaganda to speak the truth.

To understand the subtle but important argument I’m trying to make, we have to remember that propaganda relies not only on the words being used, but the context in which they’re being used. Both the historical context (i.e. how the word has been crafted in the minds of people over time), and the context of language we put around the word.

For example, if I say, “The insurrection at the Capitol Building was an act of terrorism,” that’s pretty different than saying, “Those Trump supporters who are trying to destroy our country are terrorists.” The first example does a better job of using the word terrorism with its appropriate denotative definition. The second example relies on decades of priming already done for us by the US government to associate terrorists with a clear-cut enemy we’ve been programmed to destroy. It also positions the word within a sentence that uses Us vs Them thinking.

Now, you may think, “Oh - get off it, james! We don’t need more lectures on semantics in the middle of a fascist insurrection. I’ll say whatever needs to be said to stop what’s happening right now.” And I’d be sympathetic to that reaction, but I’d also argue that this matters because using propaganda, however well-intentioned we think we are, only takes us deeper into a fascist mentality. It erodes critical thought, encourages stereotypes, and means that it will take us all longer to come out of this nightmare.

There are a few more problems with weaponizing propaganda to “do the right thing.” Let’s go back to the example I gave earlier: “Those Trump supporters who are trying to destroy our country are terrorists.” Using propaganda like this over and over again primes people to imagine all Trump supporters can fit into simple stereotypes. And I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this, but Trump supporters don’t easily fit into the stereotypes liberals often make for them.

I’m not saying Trumpism isn’t an extraordinarily dangerous cult. I’m saying that there are Trump supporters who dropped their support of him in the last week, others who are slowly waking up to the nightmare he’s creating, and still others who are becoming more radicalized.

Trumpism is a cult. If we understand the psychology of a cult, we understand that people almost never leave a cult unless they feel they have somewhere else to go. And if we have Trump supporters who are close to us and wondering what they’re next step is now that they see Trump is a dangerous con man, propaganda like the example above is not going to give them a sense that there are other possibilities for them.

Now, to be clear, I think we need to take different approaches with different people. I’m not saying that everyone ought to spend all their emotional energy with every Trump supporter we meet just hoping we can be their savior. Not at all. I’m saying it’s useful to remember that people are different and complex, and the assumptions we make about them are almost always false in some way.

One other danger of using propaganda in support of a liberal cause is that it often communicates a form of moral superiority that is not based in reality.

When we say those Trump supporters are terrorists who need to be locked up, we often imply that we could never be like them. THOSE people are despicable. They’re not like us. Remind you of anything? It should. A worthy us and an unworthy them is pretty much the foundation of the fascist mentality. Moreover, it ignores a century of studies into human behavior, like the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment, that demonstrate that nearly all of us significantly underestimate the power of our environment in shaping our behavior. How close are we to behaving like them? A lot closer than most of us would like to think. So let’s drop the moral superiority. No matter how good it might feel, it’s not warranted.

Having attempted this argument many, many, many times before, I know I can’t leave it here. Folks will jump on me about how superficial calls for unity aren't helpful, or how singing Kumbaya isn’t the way right now. And I’d agree with them while pointing out that the points I make above still stand.

Why do we think that we have to use propaganda in order to have accountability? Why do we think that making efforts to understand the way people behave somehow decreases the possibility of holding them accountable?

I think it’s because we don’t have real frameworks for accountability in our culture. We still think accountability and justice are about retribution and revenge. We don’t understand that real accountability demands that those who do harm understand the consequences of that harm and conduct a fierce moral inventory. And that demands that we develop the ability to feel what others are feeling. Real accountability can only happen when we can struggle to see the humanity in others, no matter how hard it may be to see. Propaganda erodes the possibility of all of these things. Speaking truth encourages them.

Lastly, the reason I’m making this argument is not because I’m afraid of hurting the feelings of those participating in fascist thinking and behavior. Rather, the reason I’m making this argument is because a hallmark of societies that descend into fascist authoritarianism is the erosion of critical thinking and the weaponization of language on all sides. This increases the likelihood of unnecessary violence for everyone, especially the most vulnerable. The longer we can resist that (and I know we can't resist it forever), the better chances we all have to live through this.