‘How Propaganda Works’ Is a Timely Reminder for a Post-Truth Age - The New York Times

["David Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

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In “Mein Kampf,” Hitler argued that effective propaganda appeals “to the feelings of the public rather than to their 
reasoning ability”; relies on “stereotyped formulas,” repeated over and over again, to drum ideas into the minds of the 
masses; and uses simple “love or hate, right or wrong” formulations to assail the enemy while making “intentionally 
biased and one-sided” arguments.

Although propaganda has usually been associated with totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the 
scholar Jason Stanley, a professor of philosophy at Yale University, reminds us in his latest book that propaganda can 
also pose a grave danger to democracies. The subject couldn’t be more relevant, given the profusion of fake news and 
misinformation on the web today; a public with a voracious appetite for scandal and entertainment, coupled with media 
outlets obsessed with ratings and clicks; Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign and next year’s European elections; and 
a president-elect who has stoked the fears and grievances of supporters, and who frequently lies, flip-flops and sows 
confusion by tweet.

In this newly released paperback edition of “How Propaganda Works,” Mr. Stanley analyzes modern propaganda — its 
operation, techniques and fallout. His prose can eddy into annoying academic-ese, but the reader who can get past the 
repetitions and jargon will find that this book provides valuable insights into an important and timely subject.

Mr. Stanley begins by offering a definition of propaganda that extends beyond dictionary descriptions of biased or 
misleading information used to promote a particular political cause or point of view. “Propaganda is characteristically 
part of the mechanism,” he writes, “by which people become deceived about how best to realize their goals, and hence 
deceived from seeing what is in their own best interests.” This is achieved by various time-tested means — by appealing 
to the emotions in such a way that rational debate is sidelined or short-circuited; by promoting an insider/outsider 
dynamic that pollutes the broader conversation with negative stereotypes of out-of-favor groups; and by eroding 
community standards of “reasonableness” that depend on “norms of mutual respect and mutual accountability.”


In an opinion piece for The New York Times just before this year’s presidential election, Mr. Stanley wrote that Donald 
J. Trump “engaged in rhetorical tactics unprecedented in recent American electoral history”: that he “repeatedly 
endorsed obviously false claims” and made many “odd comments, retractions, semi-retractions and outright false 
statements” — and in the process promoted a willfully dystopian (and distorted) portrait of America as a dysfunctional 
country reeling from violence and crime that needed him to restore law and order.


Denouncing Mr. Trump “as a liar,” Mr. Stanley argued, “misses the point of authoritarian propaganda altogether. 
Authoritarian propagandists are attempting to convey power by defining reality. The reality they offer is very simple. 
It is offered with the goal of switching voters’ value systems to the authoritarian value system of the leader.”

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