Propaganda Is Not Noise Coming From Loudspeakers In A Red Square, Nor A Giant Poster Of The Leader’s Face Overlooking The Facade Of A Gray Building In A Totalitarian System. This Is The First And Shocking Lesson That The American Philosopher Jason Stanley Puts Forward In His Book “How Propaganda Works” Published By Princeton University Press In 2015. The Book, Which From Its Title Seems To Promise The Reader A Historical Tour Through The Archives Of Goebbels And Lenin And Mussolini, Does Exactly The Opposite. It Drags Propaganda Out Of The Museum Of Tyranny And Throws It Into The Heart Of The Living Room In The Most Liberal Democracies, Into The Streets Of New York And London, Into The Speeches Of Congress, Into School Curricula, And Into The Evening News Bulletins That We Think Are Neutral.
Jason Stanley Is A Philosopher Of Language And Knowledge, A Professor Of Philosophy Who Was At Yale University, And Therefore His Approach Is Different And Radical. He Does Not Ask “Who Is Lying To Us?” But Asks A Deeper And More Disturbing Question: “How Can Completely True Speech, Or Noble Ideals That We Sincerely Believe In, Function As Propaganda And Destroy Democracy From Within?” From Here Comes The Strength Of The Book And Its Originality, For It Does Not Treat Propaganda As A Synonym For Blatant Lying, But As A Mechanism For Managing Beliefs, For Shaping What We Can Think About And What Cannot Occur To Us, For Disrupting Our Ability For Intellectual Empathy With The Other Who Is Different From Us.
The Story Of This Book Begins, As Stanley Himself Narrates In His Introduction, From A Personal Observation, From Being A Jew Who Grew Up In A Family That Survived The Holocaust, And From Watching The Rise Of A Political Discourse In Post-9/11 America That Speaks In The Name Of Freedom And Democracy While Justifying Torture And Surveillance And Preemptive Wars. He Noticed How Words Like “Freedom” And “Security” And “Rule Of Law” Were No Longer Used As Goals For Discussion, But As Weapons To End Discussion. When A Politician Says That A Certain Law Aims To “Protect Freedom,” Then Objecting To It Automatically Becomes An Objection To Freedom Itself, And Here Lies The Trick. This Is What Stanley Calls “Undermining Propaganda,” And It Is The Most Dangerous Type Of Propaganda, Because It Uses The Ideals Of Democracy Itself To Undermine Its Practice. Talk About Freedom Becomes A Means To Silence The Demand For Equality, Talk About Law And Order Becomes A Means To Justify Mass Incarceration, And Talk About Merit And Entitlement Becomes A Means To Hide A Deep Racial And Class Structure.
Stanley Bases His Book On A Philosophical Distinction Borrowed From The Traditions Of Philosophy Of Language, Between What Is Said Explicitly And What Is Conveyed Implicitly. A Single Sentence Can Carry Two Messages, A Respectable And Noble Overt Message, And A Covert Message That Moves Feelings Of Fear And Disgust And Tribal Belonging. When A Politician Talks About “The Welfare State” Or “Inner Cities” Or “Workers’ Rights,” In America He Is Not Only Talking About Economic Policies, But He Is Evoking In The Collective Unconscious Entrenched Racial Stereotypes, Images Of Laziness And Crime And Unworthiness, Even If He Never Mentions Race At All. This Is The Essence Of How Propaganda Works In Liberal Democracy, It Does Not Need To Say “Black People Are Lazy,” It Is Enough To Say “We Are Against The Culture Of Dependency” For The Listener’s Mind To Do The Rest Of The Work, Conjuring Up All The Stereotypes That Decades Of Coded Discourse Have Planted In It.
And In Order To Explain How This Black Magic Succeeds, Stanley Borrows A Central Concept From Marxist And Critical Philosophy, But He Reformulates It In Contemporary Language: “Flawed Ideology.” Ideology Is Not Just A Collection Of False Ideas, But A Complete Epistemic System That Makes Injustice Appear Natural And Just. It Is The Lens Through Which We See The World, Making Us Interpret The Poverty Of The Poor As A Result Of Their Laziness And Not As A Result Of An Economic System That Excludes Them, And Making Us Interpret The Wealth Of The Rich As A Result Of Their Intelligence And Not As A Result Of Privileges They Inherited. Flawed Ideology Works Because It Presents Itself As Neutral And Scientific And Innate Knowledge, While In Truth It Protects The Interests Of The Dominant. And Propaganda, In This Framework, Is The Tool That Maintains This Ideology, Feeds It, Prevents Questioning It, And Makes Any Attempt To Dismantle It Seem Unreasonable Or Extremist Or Unpatriotic.
For This Reason, Stanley Rejects The Naive Definition Of Liberal Democracy As Merely A System Of Free Elections And Free Markets And Free Expression. For Him, Real Democracy Is A Culture, It Is What He Calls, Borrowing From The Philosopher John Rawls And Du Bois, “Reasonableness.” A Reasonable Society Is Not A Society In Which Everyone Agrees, But A Society In Which Citizens Assume That Others Have Good Reasons For What They Believe, Even If They Disagree With Them, A Society In Which People Practice What He Calls “Epistemic Empathy,” The Ability To Imagine Yourself Completely In Another Person’s Place, With All His History And Pains And Constraints, And To Think From His Perspective. Propaganda Is The Archenemy Of This Reasonableness, Because It Is Based On Destroying This Ability, On Making Us See Our Opponents Not As People Who Have A Different Point Of View, But As Evil Or Stupid Or Traitors Or Parasites Who Do Not Even Deserve To Be Listened To. And When This Ethical And Epistemic Assumption Collapses, Democracy Collapses, Even If Ballot Boxes And Courts Remain In Form.
The Genius Of Stanley’s Book Lies In The Fact That It Connects Three Fields That Have Remained Separate For A Long Time: Philosophy Of Language Which Studies How We Communicate More Than What We Say, Epistemology Which Studies How Our Beliefs Are Formed And What Makes Them Justified Or Deviant, And Political Theory Which Studies How Systems Of Domination Maintain Themselves. It Shows That Propaganda Is Not Just A Political Problem, But Is An Epistemic Problem In The First Place, It Is An Attack On The Citizen’s Rationality. And From Here Comes Its Implicit Subtitle: If You Want To Understand How A Candidate Who Promises To Destroy Social Security In The Name Of Protecting Freedom Wins, Do Not Look Only At Economics, But Look At How Language Works And How The Brain Builds Its Biases.
If There Is One Sentence That Summarizes The Revolution That Jason Stanley Proposes In His Book “How Propaganda Works,” It Is The One He Writes: “Propaganda Is Not Necessarily False.” This Sentence Alone Demolishes A Whole Century Of Our Common Understanding Of Propaganda, That Understanding Which Taught Us To Look For Blatant Lies, For Forged Numbers And Fabricated Images, While Truth, As Stanley Explains, Can Be The Most Lethal Tool Of Propaganda When Placed In A Context That Makes It Misleading, Or When Used To Support A Flawed Ideology That Prevents Us From Seeing The Whole Picture.
And In Order To Build This New Definition, Stanley Returns To The Philosophical Roots Of The Concept Of Ideology, But He Does Not Take It From Traditional Marxism Alone, But He Mixes It With Contemporary Social Epistemology. Ideology For Him Is Not Just A Lie Promoted By The Rich To Deceive The Poor, But It Is, As He Defines It Competently, A System Of Beliefs That Makes It Difficult For People To Realize That Their Interests Conflict With The Existing System. It Is Not A Lack Of Intelligence, But A Systematic Distortion In How We Acquire Knowledge. And Here Comes His Second Central Concept: “Epistemic Oppression.” An Unequal Society Does Not Only Distribute Wealth And Power Unjustly, But Also Distributes The Tools Of Knowledge Unjustly. Whoever Owns Good Schools And Newspapers And Universities And Research Centers Owns The Ability To Determine What Is Considered Knowledge And What Is Considered Ignorance, What Is Considered A Reasonable Opinion And What Is Considered Extremism. The Poor And Marginalized Are Not Only Deprived Of Money, But Are Deprived Of Credibility, When They Speak They Are Not Listened To As Experts In Their Suffering, But As Complainers Or Lazy People.
In This Context, Stanley Presents His Most Famous Distinction On Which The Whole Book Is Built, The Distinction Between “Supporting Propaganda” And “Undermining Propaganda.” Supporting Propaganda Is That Which We Understand Intuitively, A Discourse That Supports A Noble Ideal In A Noble Way, Like An Awareness Campaign About The Importance Of Blood Donation That Uses National Slogans To Encourage People To Do Good, This Is Propaganda But It Does Not Harm, Rather It Supports Democracy. As For Undermining Propaganda, Which Is The Heart Of The Matter, It Is A Discourse That Uses A Noble And Agreed-Upon Ideal, Like Freedom Or Equality Or Rationality Or Security, But In Its Actual Practice It Undermines That Ideal Itself. And Here Lies The Great Deception, It Is Propaganda Wearing The Mask Of Virtue.
Take For Example What Stanley Calls “The Propaganda Of Freedom.” In The United States, As In Many Countries Of The World, Laws Are Passed That Drastically Reduce Taxes On The Rich, And Cut Health Care And Education Programs For The Poor, But They Are Not Passed In The Name Of “Enriching The Rich,” But In The Name Of “Liberating The Economy” And “Protecting The Individual’s Freedom From State Interference” And “Encouraging Free Enterprise.” The Words Used Are Sacred Words In The Liberal Dictionary, No One Is Against Freedom, But The Practical Result Of These Policies Is The Destruction Of The Actual Freedom Of Millions Of People Who Become Unable To Achieve Social Mobility Or Even To Remain In Good Health. Undermining Propaganda Here Succeeded Because It Made It Morally Impossible To Attack The Project, For Whoever Attacks Tax Cuts Becomes An Enemy Of Freedom.
And The Other Example That Stanley Details Is The Propaganda Of “Rule Of Law.” When A State Wants To Justify A Racist Prison System That Imprisons Blacks At Fantastical Rates Compared To Whites, It Does Not Say It Is Racist, But Says It Applies The Law Firmly To Everyone, And That It Protects Society From Crime. Here A Lofty Ideal, Equality Before The Law, Is Used To Justify A System That Produces Blatant Inequality. The Language Itself Prevents You From Seeing The Contradiction, Because If You Say That Law Enforcement Is Unjust, It Appears As If You Are Defending Crime.
How Does This Mechanism Succeed? Stanley Answers That It Succeeds Through Language, Through What Philosophers Call “Not-At-Issue Content” And “Presuppositions” And “Implicatures.” Propaganda In Democracy Is Rarely A Direct Declarative Sentence That Can Be Falsified, Rather It Works Through What Is Not Said. Take The Famous Word “Welfare” In America, Theoretically It Means The Social Safety Net, But Practically, And Because Of Decades Of Coded Discourse, It Has Come To Carry Within It A Racial Stereotype About A Black Unemployed Woman Who Bears Children To Get Government Money, Although Statistics Say That Most Beneficiaries Are White. When A Politician Says “We Must End The Culture Of Welfare,” He Is Not Linguistically Lying, But He Triggers A Spark In The Listener’s Mind That Evokes All Those Images, And Makes The Poor White Voter Vote Against His Economic Interest Because He Does Not Want His Money To Go To “Those People.”
This Leads Us To One Of The Most Exciting Chapters Of The Book, The Chapter On “Coded Language.” Stanley Borrows From American Philosophy Of Language The Concept Of “Coded Word,” Which Is An Expression That Appears Neutral But In Fact Carries An Undeniable Racial Or Sectarian Charge In Context. A Word Like “Inner City” Appears Geographic, But In American Discourse It Is A Code For Blacks, And The Word “Terrorism” Has Become A Code For Muslims, And The Word “Elite” Has Become A Code For Jews In Far-Right Discourses. These Codes Work Because They Grant The Speaker Plausible Deniability, He Can Always Say “I Did Not Mean Race, I Meant Only Crime,” While His Audience Understands The Message Completely. And Thus Propaganda Spreads Without Leaving Fingerprints, Without Having To Say The Forbidden Explicitly.
And Stanley Goes Further To Say That The Most Dangerous Types Of Propaganda Are Not Those That Address Emotion At The Expense Of Reason, But Those That Address Reason Itself But Distort It. It Makes Us Believe That We Are Thinking Rationally While In Reality We Are Repeating Our Biases. How? By Destroying “Shared Standards Of Reasonableness.” In A Healthy Society, Even If We Disagree, We Agree On What Counts As Evidence, What Counts As A Reliable Source, What Counts As A Logical Argument. Propaganda Works To Destroy This Agreement, Making Each Team Consider The Other’s Sources As False And Conspiratorial, Making Experts Traitors, And Universities Strongholds Of Conspiracy, And The Press The Enemy Of The People. When This Succeeds, No Discussion Is Possible Anymore, Because We No Longer Share The Same Reality. And This Is Exactly What We See Today In The Era Of Fake News And Social Media, And Which The Book Predicted Years Before The Explosion Of This Phenomenon.
And Therefore, Stanley Sees That Confronting Propaganda Is Not Simply Through “Revealing The Truth,” Because The Problem Is Not A Lack Of Information, But It Is An Epistemic Structure That Makes People Unable To Process Information Fairly. The Solution Lies In What He Calls “Dismantling Ideology,” That Is, In Creating Educational And Social Spaces That Allow People To Practice Epistemic Empathy, To See The World Through The Eyes Of The Marginalized, To Understand That Their Suffering Is Not Natural But Is The Result Of Political Decisions. And This Is The Reason That Makes Education The Central Battlefield In The Whole Book, Because School Is The Place Where Either Citizens Capable Of Critical Thinking Can Be Produced, Or Citizens Who Repeat Slogans That Undermine Their Freedom While Thinking They Are Defending It Can Be Produced.
Jason Stanley Here Moves From The Philosopher Who Defines Concepts To The Anatomist Who Opens The Linguistic Body Of American Society To Reveal To Us How Its Organs Work Together To Serve Inequality.
Stanley Begins With A Chapter He Calls “Civic Rhetoric,” And By It He Means That Way In Which Society Talks About Itself, About Its Past And Its Present And Its Future. Every State Has A Civic Narrative, A Story It Tells Itself To Justify Its Existence. The Traditional American Narrative Says That America Is A Nation Built On Freedom And Equal Opportunities, And That Anyone Can Succeed If He Works Hard. This Narrative Is Not Entirely False, But It Is Dangerously Selective, Because It Erases The History Of Slavery And The Genocide Of Indigenous Peoples And Systematic Discrimination, And Presents The Success Of Whites As Evidence Of Merit, While Presenting The Failure Of Blacks And Latinos As Evidence Of A Lack Of Morals. Propaganda Here Does Not Lie, But Chooses, Chooses To Celebrate Thomas Jefferson As The Writer Of The Declaration Of Independence Without Mentioning That He Owned Hundreds Of Slaves, And Chooses To Celebrate The American Dream Without Mentioning That This Dream Was Forbidden To A Large Part Of The Population By Force Of Law Until The Sixties Of The Last Century.
And In Order For This Selective Narrative To Preserve Itself, It Needs What Stanley Calls “Epistemic Authority,” And This Is The Subject Of His Most Disturbing Chapter. Who Is Considered A Reliable Source Of Knowledge In Society? Who Do We Believe When He Talks About Poverty Or Crime Or Education? In Liberal Society, Epistemic Authority Is Supposed To Come From Experience And Evidence, But Stanley Shows That Flawed Ideology Grants Epistemic Authority Unequally. The Rich White Politician Who Has Never Visited A Poor Neighborhood In His Life Is Considered An Expert In Poverty Policies, While The Black Woman Who Has Lived In Poverty For Three Generations Is Considered Biased And Emotional And Not Objective. This Imbalance In The Distribution Of Credibility Is What Feminist Philosophers Like Miranda Fricker Call “Epistemic Injustice,” And It Is The Silent Engine Of Propaganda. When The Real Stakeholders Are Silenced And Fake Experts Are Presented As Neutral, Then Public Debate Becomes A Farce, Everyone Talks About The Poor Without A Single Poor Person On The Platform.
And From This Epistemic Injustice, Is Born The Most Lethal Weapon In The Arsenal Of Democratic Propaganda: The Stereotype. Stanley Devotes An Entire Chapter To Deconstructing How Stereotypes Work Not Only As False Ideas, But As Mechanisms To Justify Inequality. The Stereotype, In His Analysis, Is Not Just A Lazy Generalization, But It Is A Tool For Cognitive Economy, And It Serves A Clear Social Function, Making Inequality Seem Justified. If You Believe That Blacks Are Less Intelligent Or More Violent By Nature, Then Their High Rates Of Imprisonment Or Their Failure In Schools Will Not Appear As A Result Of Structural Racism, But As A Natural Result Of Their Nature. And More Dangerously, Stereotypes Work Even When We Do Not Believe In Them Consciously, They Work In The Unconscious, In Those Fast Parts Of The Brain That Make Decisions Before We Think.
Here Stanley Draws On A Huge Amount Of Research In Social Psychology, To Show That Propaganda Does Not Need To Convince You That The Stereotype Is True, It Is Enough To Remind You Of It Continuously. Merely Repeating Words Like “Laziness” And “Crime” And “Welfare” In The Context Of Talking About Poverty Makes The Brain Automatically Link Poverty With Blacks, Even If The Speaker Means Poor Whites. This Is The Power Of “Implicit Activation,” And It Is What Makes Coded Speech Very Effective. You Do Not Need To Be A Conscious Racist In Order To Act Racistly, It Is Enough To Have Grown Up In An Environment Saturated With These Associations.
Then The Book Moves To One Of The Most Eloquent And Widespread Tricks, Which Is What He Calls “Myths Of Merit.” How Do Societies That Claim Equality Justify The Existence Of Huge Disparities In Wealth And Power? By Creating A Myth That The Rich Deserve Their Wealth And The Poor Deserve Their Poverty. In America, This Myth Takes The Form Of “Merit” And “Hard Work.” The Billionaire Businessman Is Portrayed As A Genius Who Worked Sixteen Hours A Day, While The Janitor Is Portrayed As Someone Who Did Not Work Hard Enough In School. This Myth Deliberately Ignores The Fact That The Billionaire Inherited A Network Of Relationships And Excellent Education And Initial Capital, While The Janitor Inherited A Neighborhood With No Good Schools And No Health Care And No Security. Propaganda Here Works By Transforming Structural Luck Into Personal Virtue, And Transforming Structural Deprivation Into Personal Vice. And When You Believe This Myth, You Will Not Demand Redistribution Of Wealth, But You Will Demand That The Poor Become More Diligent.
And This Scene Is Not Complete Without Talking About The Chapter On Education, Which Is The Chapter That Stanley Considers The Most Personal And Angry. Education In Liberal Democracy Is Supposed To Be The Tool That Dismantles Flawed Ideology, That Teaches Children Critical Thinking And Epistemic Empathy. But What Happens, According To Stanley’s Analysis, Is The Opposite, Education Itself Turns Into A Propaganda Tool. How? Through The Propaganda Of “Education Reform” That Spread In America, Which Talks About “Accountability” And “Standardized Tests” And “School Choice” And “Rewarding The Good Teacher And Punishing The Bad Teacher.” All These Slogans Seem Reasonable And Rational, Who Is Against Accountability? But Stanley Reveals That This Language Hides A Project To Privatize Education And Destroy Unions And Transform Public Schools That Serve The Poor Into Failed Schools That Are Closed, While Money Goes To Private Schools That Serve The Rich. In The Language Of Freedom And Choice, The Most Important Tool For Equality Is Destroyed. It Is Undermining Propaganda At Its Finest, Using The Ideal Of Good Education To Destroy Good Education.
And In The Midst Of All This, Stanley Returns To The Example Of The Document “The Israel Project” That Was Leaked In 2009, To Present It As A Textbook Model Of How To Manufacture Undermining Propaganda With Full Consciousness. The Document, Written By Frank Luntz, One Of The Biggest Polling And Language Experts In The Republican Party, Provides Precise Instructions To Speakers On Behalf Of Israel In America, Do Not Say “We Are Right,” But Say “We Understand The Suffering Of The Palestinians,” Do Not Say “Jerusalem Is Ours,” But Say “Jerusalem Is For Everyone,” Do Not Talk About History And Rights, But Talk About The Future And Security. The Golden Rule Is “Show Empathy,” Even If Your Policy On The Ground Is Demolishing Homes And Building Settlements. Why? Because The Liberal American Public Wants To Feel That It Is Moral, And If You Show It That You Share Its Values, It Will Turn A Blind Eye To Your Actions. This Is Not Just Political Propaganda, It Is Engineering Of False Epistemic Empathy, Pretending To Be Reasonable To Destroy Reasonableness, And This Is Exactly What Makes It Undermining Propaganda Par Excellence, And Makes It Applicable In Every Conflict, From Palestine To Issues Of Race In America To Issues Of Class In The Whole World.
If We Wanted To Summarize The Applied Chapter Of The Book “How Propaganda Works” In One Image, It Would Be An Image Of A Poor White Man In The State Of Ohio Voting Enthusiastically For A Candidate Who Promises To Cut Taxes On Billionaires And Abolish The Health Insurance On Which He And His Children Depend, While He Chants “Freedom.” This Image, Which Appears As Political Suicide From A Purely Economic Point Of View, Is In The View Of Jason Stanley The Ultimate Triumph Of Undermining Propaganda, The Moment In Which The Victim Becomes The Most Loyal Guard Of His Prison, While Thinking That He Is Defending His Principles.
Stanley Pauses Long On This American Paradox, How The American Right Since The Era Of Richard Nixon And Barry Goldwater Was Able To Build An Electoral Alliance That Brings Together Extremely Wealthy Businessmen Who Want To Dismantle The State, And Poor White Workers And Evangelicals Who Need The State More Than Anyone Else. The Answer, As He Explains In Amazing Detail, Lies In Propaganda That Transformed Politics From A Debate About The Distribution Of Resources Into A Debate About Identity And Values And Morals, A Process That Began With What Historians Call “The Southern Strategy.”
After The Civil Rights Act Of 1964 Which Granted Blacks The Right To Vote, The Republican Party Had To Find A Way To Attract Angry White Voters In The South Without Appearing Explicitly Racist, Because Explicit Racism Became Morally Expensive After The Civil Rights Movement. And Here The Diabolical Genius Of Coded Language Emerged, The Politician No Longer Said “We Will Restore Segregation,” But Began To Say “We Are For States’ Rights” And “We Are Against The Federal Bureaucracy That Interferes In The Affairs Of Our Schools” And “We Are For Law And Order.” All These Phrases Appear Constitutional And Respectable, But In The Context Of The South In 1968, Everyone Understood The Message, “States’ Rights” Means The State’s Right To Keep Schools Segregated, And “Law And Order” Means Suppressing Black Protests. And Thus, Complete Racism Was Passed Without Mentioning A Single Word Of Race, And An Entire Generation Of Voters Was Trained To Link State Intervention To Help The Poor With A Threat To Their White Identity.
And Stanley Takes This Analysis To Its Peak When He Analyzes The Propaganda Of “The Welfare State” And “The Welfare Queen.” In The Seventies And Eighties Of The Last Century, Ronald Reagan Promoted The Story Of A Black Woman In Chicago Who Had Eighty Names And Thirty Addresses And Collected Hundreds Of Thousands Of Dollars From Welfare Programs Without Working, The Story Was Completely Fabricated In Terms Of Numbers, But It Did Not Need To Be True, Because It Was Touching A Sensitive Chord In The Flawed Ideology, The Stereotype Of The Lazy Fraudulent Black Who Lives At The Expense Of Honest White Taxpayers. And Since Then, The Word “Welfare” Itself Became A Weapon, When You Say You Want To Cut Spending On Welfare, You Are Not Cutting A Budget, You Are Punishing Someone Who Does Not Deserve, And When Bill Clinton, A Democrat, Says He Will End Welfare As We Know It, He Is Not Fixing A Policy, But Exonerating Himself From The Accusation Of Sympathy With “Those People.”
And The Same Applies To The Propaganda Of “Crime.” Stanley Shows How The American System Of Mass Incarceration, Which Today Includes More Than Two Million Prisoners, A Third Of Whom Are Black Although They Are Only 13% Of The Population, Was Built Not Through Laws That Say “Imprison Blacks,” But Through Laws That Appear Completely Neutral Such As “Three Strikes And You Are Out” Laws That Sentence To Life Imprisonment For The Third Crime, And Laws Of Stark Disparity In Punishment Between Crack Cocaine Which Blacks Use And Powder Cocaine Which Whites Use, Where The Penalty For Five Grams Of The First Was Equivalent To The Penalty For Five Hundred Grams Of The Second. And When These Laws Were Criticized, The Response Was Ready, “We Do Not Target A Race, We Target Dangerous Criminals, We Are For The Rule Of Law.” Once Again, The Noble Ideal, Rule Of Law, Is Used To Undermine Equality Before The Law.
And Stanley Does Not Stop At Race, But Extends His Analysis To Class, Through The Myth Of “Merit” That We Mentioned. Here He Presents An Amazing Chapter On The Propaganda Of Education, Showing How The Failure Of Public Schools In Poor Neighborhoods, Which Is A Failure Resulting From Unequal Funding Dependent On Local Property Taxes, Was Transformed Into Evidence That Teachers Are Lazy And Unions Are Corrupt And The Public Sector Is Naturally Failing. The Solution Offered By Propaganda Is “Choice” And “Accountability,” That Is, Giving Vouchers To Parents To Go To Private Schools, And Closing Schools That Do Not Achieve Good Results In Standardized Tests. The Practical Result Is The Destruction Of Public Schools Which Are The Last Refuge For The Poor, And Transforming Education Into A Commodity, And Transforming Structural Failure Into Individual Failure Of The Teacher And The Student. In The Language Of Saving Children, Children Are Abandoned.
And In This Context, Comes The Case Study That Stanley Considers A Pure Laboratory Model, The Document “The Israel Project: The Global Language Dictionary” Prepared By Frank Luntz. This Leaked Document Consisting Of 112 Pages Was Not Directed To The Public, But To Official Spokespersons, And It Tells Them Clearly, Do Not Talk About Facts, Facts Are Not In Your Favor, Talk About Values. When Asked About Settlements, Do Not Defend Them, Say ” Israel Wants Peace But It Needs Security, Just As America Wants Security.” When Asked About Demolishing Homes, Say “We Understand The Suffering, But What About The Suffering Of Israeli Mothers?” The Document Trains The Speaker On What Stanley Calls “Appearing To Be Reasonable,” To Use Words Like “Future” And “Children” And “Coexistence” And “Democracy,” While Practicing A Policy Of Occupation. And Most Importantly, The Document Warns Against Using Biblical Or Religious Words, Because The Liberal American Public Does Not Sympathize With Them, But Urges The Use Of Secular Liberal Language. This Is Undermining Propaganda In Its Purest Form, Using The Language Of Democracy And Empathy To Justify The Opposite Of Democracy And Empathy, And It Is A Mechanism We See Today Everywhere, From Oil Companies That Talk About “Sustainability” While Destroying The Planet, To Authoritarian Regimes That Talk About “Stability” And “Fighting Terrorism” While Crushing Their Peoples.
What Brings Together All These Cases, As Stanley Concludes, Is That They Work Because They Exploit A Flawed Ideology That Already Exists, The Belief That The World Is Just And That People Get What They Deserve. This Ideology Makes Us Prefer An Explanation That Blames The Individual Over An Explanation That Blames The System, Because It Is A More Comfortable Explanation And Less Threatening To Our Image Of Ourselves As A Just Society. Propaganda Does Not Create Racism From Nothing, But Takes Latent Racism And Makes It Appear As Common Sense, Does Not Create Classism, But Makes Class Disparity Appear As A Natural Result Of Intelligence And Effort.
When The Book “How Propaganda Works” Was Published In Late 2015, Donald Trump Was Still In The Eyes Of Many Of The American Elite Just A Fleeting Television Phenomenon, And The Concept Of “Fake News” Had Not Yet Turned Into A Global Industry, And The Idea That Facebook Algorithms Could Destroy Democracy Seemed Like A Conspiracy Theory For Technology Obsessives. To Read The Book Today, Almost Ten Years Later, And After The Storming Of The Capitol, And After Information Wars, And After Undermining Propaganda Has Become The Official Language Of Politics, This Is A Prophecy That Has Been Fulfilled To The Letter, And Reality Has Surpassed It In Cruelty.
Stanley Reaches His Conclusion Which May Seem Idealistic, The Solution Is Not More Facts, But More Critical Education And Epistemic Empathy. Democracy Is Not Protected By Laws Alone, But By A Culture That Allows People To Imagine The Lives Of Others. And This Means A Radical Reform Of How We Teach History, Not As A Civic Narrative That Glorifies Heroes And Erases Victims, But As A Critical Narrative That Acknowledges Injustice And Allows The Voices Of The Marginalized To Be Heard. And It Means Reforming How We Distribute Epistemic Authority, Who Do We Host In Our Television Programs As An Expert? Do We Host The Official Who Has Never Taken A Metro In His Life To Tell Us About Poverty, Or Do We Host The Metro Driver Himself As An Expert In His Suffering? And It Means A Fierce Defense Of Universities And Free Press And Unions, Not Because They Are Perfect, But Because They Are The Only Spaces In Which Reasonableness Can Be Practiced And People Trained To Think From The Perspective Of The Other.
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