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Tag: Critical thinking

More Than Just Fake News: The Pernicious Effect Of Modern Propaganda

Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.  Eric Hoffer

What is propaganda?

Propaganda! The very word conjures up images of sinister people involved in nefarious activities meant to delude the innocent. But this has not always been the case. Propaganda has, through much of history, been view as information, though frequently of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

Propaganda has always involved exaggeration and omission in order to achieve a specific goal.  It was intended to shape beliefs and attitudes without actually lying to the listeners. At its core, there was a basis of truth.

We generally think of propaganda as the domain of governments.  But, in its broadest definition, advertising might be considered as propaganda. It’s intended to create the impression that specific products contribute real advantage to your life.  Drinking a specific beer will make you have a better time. Driving a certain car will show that you are more environmentally concerned. Wearing specific clothes will make you more popular.

It wasn’t until the 20th century that the incorporation of falsehoods, deception, and other activities intended to create a totally false impression and to promulgate untruths became the mainstay of propaganda.

Phillip Taylor in his book “Munitions of the Mind” presents an excellent history of propaganda from its origins in the early years of civilization through its rapid evolution in the 20th century, to its infiltration of all aspects of society in the 21st century.

Propaganda began as early as ancient Mesopotamia when the boastings of kings were inscribed on stone monuments. It continued, principally as a way of monarchs justifying their rule up through the 19th century.

The earliest use of the term propaganda was in the early 17th century when the Catholic Church, wishing to spread Catholic doctrine, support the faithful and counter the protestant reformation, established the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide).

World War I saw the beginnings of the disconnection of propaganda and truth. Both sides in that war created knowingly false narratives to bolster civilian morale and increase the fighting spirit of their soldiers. World War II took this process to a whole new level as false propaganda was used to justify mass murder and enslavement of an entire continent.  In the 21st century propaganda techniques have been raised to a new level of technical sophistication. Social media, artificial intelligence and modern psychological techniques can create images, sounds and documents completely unrelated to reality but almost impossible for the average person to recognize as false.

Elements of propaganda.

One of the classic elements of propaganda is repetition, the more a statement is repeated the more likely people are to believe it. There is a concept called “illusory truth effect” where the more you hear a statement, the more it feels true.

In past centuries, reference was made to respected people in authority to give credence to statements.  Over the years, this has evolved into celebrity endorsements and continues to expand with the recent emergence of instant celebrities in the form of social media influencers.  

Emotional appeals have always been a significant part of propaganda, emotions being more easily manipulated than facts. The audience is encouraged to react rather than think.

Simplification is also a central tenant of propaganda; complex ideas are reduced to simple slogans that can be repeated over and over again.  Slogans that are catchy and clever will encourage people to repeat them without considering their true meaning.

The repeated use of slogans contributes to the bandwagon effect, a critical propaganda technique for creating the impression of widespread acceptance. The more a person believes everyone else supports the program, the more likely they will be to support it without detailed personal analysis. 

Evolving propaganda.

In the early years of the 20th century, propaganda began to take a more malicious path. It began to lose a grounding in truth, except where necessary to sell the lie.  As propaganda evolved through the first few decades of the 20th century it became a specialized and highly effective weapon of statecraft.

It’s important to recognize that the ultimate goal of propaganda is not merely manipulating opinions and beliefs. It is a tool for obtaining and using political power.

The following quote, which I will leave unattributed, underlies the objective of propaganda from the mid-20th century on.

 “All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach. The great mass of the people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one. If you tell a lie that is big enough and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”

Propaganda in Action

A propaganda program that is designed to achieve political goals has several key elements.

The Target

The first step is to decide on the target population. These are the people you wish to cultivate as supporters and whom you wish to manipulate into specific actions. It’s important to understand what they consider to be their critical concerns. Whether you share those concerns or not isn’t important if you are able to convince the target population that you care about them and that you will meet their needs. Once you have analyzed the concerns of your target population you can develop your message to best appeal to and manage their opinions.

The Leader

The second element is to create a cult of personality around the leader. Generally, the leader will be a charismatic and effective speaker. On other occasions, he simply may be someone they would “like to have a beer with”. If a bond can be created it doesn’t matter how. The leader doesn’t have to have a true concern for the target group as long as they believe he does.  Once the leader and the target group have bonded, he will have an easier time manipulating them.  The stronger they are connected to him personally, the less scrutiny they will give to his ideas.

The Others

The next element is to identify the “other” group that will be the focus of attacks. The first step is to create fear of this group. Once your target population has developed a significant fear of whatever this group may be accused of, be it crime, immorality, or “unAmericanism”, a program is put in place to demonize them. The purpose of the early program is to generate a high level of unreasoning fear of this group within the target population. Fear is difficult to control, so once this stage has been reached, the fear must be converted to hate through repeated attacks blaming the “others” for every grievance the target group has experienced. Hate is easier to focus and to direct.  People can be more easily rallied to action, even violence, in response to hate.

Action

Once hate of the “other” group has been raised to a significant level, your target population can be moved to action. Be that unquestioning acceptance of ideas, voting for whatever candidates you identify, or even resorting to violence to suppress the “others”. 

This is the stage where real political power begins to flow from your propaganda program.  Your supporters have given up all efforts at critical thinking and blindly accept whatever orders you give in the misguided thought that you are concerned about them and their needs and are doing what is best for them and the country.  They have become the weapon for implementing your agenda.

Conclusion

For those of you with an appreciation of history, this should resonate not only with the 20th century but with current events. If you would like to know the source of the quote I gave at the beginning of this section, contact me. 

Having seen the effects of modern propaganda on our society, I am left in great despair.  In a future post I’m going to be discussing how social media has significantly increased the rate of spread and the effectiveness of propaganda and other disinformation programs.

New Myths Arise

So why should we consider myths as anything but an anachronistic curiosity since we consider ourselves a rational and scientific society? Because the willingness to believe in myths is as strong today as it has ever been. While belief in Olympian gods, elves, and fairies has faded away new myths have arisen. Since the late 1800s, at least two new myths have spread in the United States.

The Golden Age of America

Our political situation today has much to do with belief in the Myth of the Golden Age of America. I strongly believe that the United States has been and continues to be the best hope for personal freedom in the world today. But the idea that at some time in the recent past everything was wonderful for everyone is a myth. In this “Golden Age” to which some people wish to return, women, minorities, gays, and the disabled were clearly discriminated against.

One key contributor to the Golden Age Myth was the economic boom that followed World War II. The United States was a global industrial leader and the economy showed significant gains in jobs, wages, and consumer goods. The middle class was expanded, college education rose due to the GI Bill, and home ownership reached new levels. However, these advantages did not reach all members of our society.

Racial minorities continued to be actively discriminated against. Segregation, particularly under the Jim Crow laws in the South, limited economic, social, and political opportunities for our Black citizens.
Women’s roles and opportunities similarly were significantly constrained. Women were expected to take a domestic role over professional or personal aspirations. Even women who obtained advanced college degrees were expected to stay at home and raise their family or to take “appropriate” jobs such as secretaries, teachers, or nurses.

Reaction to the Golden Age Myth led to movements such as women’s liberation and the civil rights movement, both followed shortly by gay rights and the advocacy for the disabled. The Golden Age seems to have existed principally in popular television shows such as Ozzie and Harriet or Father Knows Best. In short, this “Golden Age” was not golden for everyone.

The Lost Cause

This myth arose in the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries though it had its origins while the war still raged. According to the Myth of the Lost Cause, the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. It had to do with the southern states fighting for their individual state rights and their prerogatives of self-government. They were fighting against northern aggression that was trying to destroy the southern way of life. Most Confederate soldiers were poor farmers who neither owned nor could afford slaves. They had to be convinced that they were fighting for their way of life against a malicious union army that was intent on invading their homes and forcing “northern ways” on them. The soldiers had to be distracted from the fact that they were fighting, suffering, and dying to protect the way of life of the wealthy slave owning aristocracy.

The evolution of legend was also involved in the creation of this myth. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were idealized as true southern gentlemen struggling in a glorious but doomed battle against overwhelming odds.

Of course, it completely ignores the fact that the southern way of life and those state rights were predominantly based on slavery. A critical element in this myth is that slavery was good for the slaves. We continue to hear this stunning falsehood from politicians today as they try to describe slavery as a little more than job training.

Many historians today agree this myth is an intentional distortion of historical facts. The Lost Cause Myth reached its fully developed form in the years surrounding the turning of the 20th century and was intended to change the historical narrative of the South’s role in the Civil War by minimizing the central role of slavery in the origin of the conflict. This revisionism was part on the broader social effort used to justify segregation, Jim Crow laws, and white supremacy.

The Lost Cause is a compelling example of history being reshaped by myth and legend. It shows how over time people can come to accept those things that most support their personal beliefs despite evidence to the contrary. It continues to dominate much of our current debate about race relations, voting rights and social welfare policies. However, today open advocacy of the Lost Cause Myth is in the background and it is seldom mentioned by name though its tenents are reflected in the opinions and statements of many .

Why believe in myths?

So why do we have a widespread belief in these myths? There are several reasons people persist in a false belief even after it has been largely disproven.

The most obvious reason is that myths meet emotional needs. They can be deeply ingrained in a person’s identity, beliefs, and values. When the myth is tied to political or religious beliefs people will be resistant to change even in the face of contradictory evidence. Admitting a previous error of belief is, in some ways, viewed as a form of weakness.

There is also a condition called confirmation bias. People are inclined to seek out and accept without question things that confirm their pre-existing beliefs and opinions. They ignore anything that is not consistent with an already held position.

When presented with information that conflicts with previously held opinions, people can experience what is known as cognitive dissonance. This is the emotional distress that people feel when attempting to hold two contradictory ideas or when trying to reconcile new information that challenges their behaviors or previously held ideas. To reduce this distress people either ignore or in some cases violently reject anything that conflicts with what they previously believed.

Critical thinking skills involve objectively evaluating evidence, identifing inconsistencies, and appling reasoning skills. Critical thinking isn’t always a natural process. When I was in high school, we were expected to memorize facts and then duplicate them on tests. I don’t remember even hearing the term critical thinking until I was in graduate school. Even then, I’m not really sure I understood how important it is to develop a personal understanding of facts and events and how difficult it would be to aquire those skills.

Teachers now make an effort to teach critical thinking skills. But it can be difficult for students to translate those skills into their life outside the classroom. Perhaps many of them may think of critical thinking the way they think of algebra, something they must do in school but won’t ever use in their everyday life. A well-informed citizenship requires all of us to encourage critical thinking practices. We need to ensure that our young people are reading and listening and using those skills outside the classroom. It’s easy to say, but venturing out of our comfort zone can take strength and purpose for all of us.

We can quickly fall into the habit of listening to or reading only a narrow range of opinions from a limited number of sources. It is particularly easy when those sources don’t challenge us to think or to analyze. It is too easy to reject new information rather than trying to evaluate and reconcile it with our previously held beliefs.

Obviously, these reasons are not mutually exclusive and are melded into a continuum of reasons for the rejection of fact in favor of myth.

Both the Lost Cause Myth and the Golden Age Myth arose much quicker and for a more limited purpose than did the classic myths. In this way the evolution of these myths has much in common with the concepts of propaganda. In my next post I will be looking at the difference between lies and myths and how both relate to propaganda and how it has evolved in modern times.

What We Need Is Old Fashioned Horse Sense

This was shared by my friend Leigh. The problem of critical thinking summed up in one picture.

Critical Thinking

Tomorrow, February 15, 2024 is the first West Virginia Critical Thinking Awareness Day. In recognition of this event, I am republishing this post from January of last year. This day was declared by the West Virginia Legislature. I will allow you you apply your own critical thinking to the irony of that statement. This was due largely to the efforts of the West Virginia Skeptics Society. I need to find out more about them.


Recently I have been reading about the significant increase in childhood diseases that previously had been well controlled with vaccines. There are a number of factors at play here. One is the pandemic which has reduced doctor’s visits and with it some routine vaccinations. But the most significant factor is the resistance among the vaccine deniers not just the COVID vaccine, but vaccines in general.

This is especially troubling to me. These are people, many of whom are well educated, who have chosen not to vaccinate their children or themselves. The majority of these decisions are based on misinformation which has resulted in faulty decision making. I’ve addressed this in a previous post entitled Fake News. However, I would like to address some additional issues related to what is commonly called “critical thinking”. The ability to apply critical thinking would most likely have resulted in a far smaller vaccine denial movement and fewer deaths and disabilities.

Just to start, I’m going to repeat the definition of critical thinking I used in that post. “Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.”

That post was principally geared to critical thinking in adults. I wanted to discuss how to gather information, evaluate it and make a rational decision. I’ve come to realize, that by the time we are adults our method of thinking is very close to being set in stone. If we are to make a significant impact on the way our population evaluates data and makes decisions, it must start with the children.

I believe that the two pillars of early education should be reading and critical thinking. Admittedly, I am not an educator, but I believe if you can read you can teach yourself anything. But you also need the ability to decide what you should believe. The framework for being able to make these decisions is critical thinking.

In some ways critical thinking has been taught in the past, often as the Socratic method. Elements of it have been in specific courses such as philosophy, logic, and scientific investigation. These courses are usually designed for older, advanced students who most likely have already developed these skills or have a natural inclination to pursue such inquiry and evaluation.

For most students, if they haven’t learned how to gather information, evaluate competing ideas and draw coherent, fact based conclusions by the time they are in high school, it may be difficult for them to do so. Critical thinking must be a substantial part of education from the beginning. It cannot be a separate course. It must be integrated into the way every subject is taught. Students shouldn’t just be given rote information to be memorized. They should be taught how to think and evaluate and then they should be provided with all the information necessary to make their own informed decisions.

What does this mean? It means that all sides of a topic should be covered. There should be no forbidden subjects. There cannot be an effective analysis of competing information if only one side is presented. This needs to begin in the very first years of education. After all, as Americans we want education not indoctrination.

The ability to develop critical thinking and to make informed decisions requires the exposure to all varying ideas without any value judgment being attached by the teacher. The idea of an academic “safe space” where students are insulated from hurt feelings presupposes that they are unable to evaluate competing ideas and must be protected. This is the very essence of indoctrination and should be an anathema to education.

Children need to learn that the world is not a safe place. If they are not exposed to the competing ideas, how can they be expected to evaluate and recognize the harmful ones.? If they are only exposed to one side, they will come to believe that side is the only true side regardless of its value.

I will use myself as an example. There were no efforts to teach critical thinking when I was a student. We were taught that everything presented in class was the right thing, and we were not to question it. Well, this might be true in math and most science classes, it is not true anywhere else. It was not until well into my adult years that I recognized many of the things I had been taught were the result of societal prejudices and in some cases even ignorance. As a result, like many people, I tended to defend my long-held opinions even after I recognized their weakness.

I was very slow to adopt new ideas. Many of the opinions I now hold are far different from those with which I grew up. Critical thinking was not easy for me; challenging your core values never is. We don’t want our children and grandchildren to have to suffer through the same weakness of thought that we did.

How could evaluating competing information that is part of critical thinking have helped prevent the wide scale vaccine denial that we are currently experiencing? Many rumors are being spread about COVID and about the COVID vaccine, just as they have been about other vaccines in the past. There were many rumors that the disease did not exist and that the deaths were faked. These rumors are still on the Internet. They never had any verifiable source and anyone taking the effort to view the data would know that there was a significant death toll early in the pandemic.

The effectiveness of COVID vaccination can easily be checked on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website www.COVID.cdc.gov. A study in November 2022 shows unvaccinated Americans had a 16 times (not percent) higher rate of hospitalization compared to the fully vaccinated and a study from January 2022 shows the unvaccinated had a 12.7 times higher COVID related death rate.

There were many reports about side effects of the vaccine. Checking available medical sources, it was easy to discover that while there are some side effects, there are many misstatements or exaggerations about the COVID vaccines. The side effects are similar in frequency to other vaccines and medications in general. Vaccine side effects tend to diminish as the vaccine is improved in subsequent versions. A detailed review of COVID vaccine side effects can be found on www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines21.

Social media were quick to jump on every alternative to vaccination. It took very little research to realize that none of these alternatives (think Clorox) had documented medical justification and had never been effectively studied. The supposed studies that were cited were either significantly flawed or could never be duplicated or even be found. Because they had no experiencing in critical thinking, many people accepted the unsupported statements that most satisfied their desires, either politically, socially or medically and adopted them as truth. Unfortunately, this failure in critical thinking resulted in hundreds of unnecessary deaths and severe illnesses.

I have not updated this post because I am currently working on a series of articles that further develop this idea.

Critical Thinking


Recently I have been reading about the significant increase in childhood diseases that previously had been well controlled with vaccines. There are a number of factors at play here. One is the pandemic which has reduced doctor’s visits and with it some routine vaccinations. But the most significant factor is the resistance among the vaccine deniers not just the COVID vaccine, but vaccines in general.


This is especially troubling to me. These are people, many of whom are well educated, who have chosen not to vaccinate their children or themselves. The majority of these decisions are based on misinformation which has resulted in faulty decision making. I’ve addressed this in a previous post entitled Fake News. However, I would like to address some additional issues related to what is commonly called “critical thinking”. The ability to apply critical thinking would most likely have resulted in a far smaller vaccine denial movement and fewer deaths and disabilities.


Just to start, I’m going to repeat the definition of critical thinking I used in that post. “Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.”


That post was principally geared to critical thinking in adults. I wanted to discuss how to gather information, evaluate it and make a rational decision. I’ve come to realize, that by the time we are adults our method of thinking is very close to being set in stone. If we are to make a significant impact on the way our population evaluates data and makes decisions, it must start with the children.


I believe that the two pillars of early education should be reading and critical thinking. Admittedly, I am not an educator, but I believe if you can read you can teach yourself anything. But you also need the ability to decide what you should believe. The framework for being able to make these decisions is critical thinking.


In some ways critical thinking has been taught in the past, often as the Socratic method. Elements of it have been in specific courses such as philosophy, logic, and scientific investigation. These courses are usually designed for older, advanced students who most likely have already developed these skills or have a natural inclination to pursue such inquiry and evaluation.


For most students, if they haven’t learned how to gather information, evaluate competing ideas and draw coherent, fact based conclusions by the time they are in high school, it may be difficult for them to do so. Critical thinking must be a substantial part of education from the beginning. It cannot be a separate course. It must be integrated into the way every subject is taught. Students should not just be given rote information to be memorized. They should be taught how to think and evaluate and then they should be provided with all the information necessary to make their own informed decisions.


What does this mean? It means that all sides of a topic should be covered. There should be no forbidden subjects. There cannot be an effective analysis of competing information if only one side is presented. This needs to begin in the very first years of education. After all, as Americans we want education not indoctrination.

The ability to develop critical thinking and to make informed decisions requires the exposure to all varying ideas without any value judgment being attached by the teacher. The idea of an academic “safe space” where students are insulated from hurt feelings presupposes that they are unable to evaluate competing ideas and must be protected. This is the very essence of indoctrination and should be an anathema to education.


Children need to learn that the world is not a safe place. If they are not exposed to the competing ideas, how can they be expected to evaluate and recognize the harmful ones? If they are only exposed to one side, they will come to believe that side is the only true side regardless of its value.


I will use myself as an example. There were no efforts to teach critical thinking when I was a student. We were taught that everything presented in class was the right thing, and we were not to question it. Well, this might be true in math and many science classes, but it is not true anywhere else. It was not until well into my adult years that I recognized many of the things I had been taught were the result of societal prejudices and in some cases even ignorance. As a result, like many people, I tended to defend my long-held opinions even after I recognized their weakness.


I was very slow to adopt new ideas. Many of the opinions I now hold are far different from those with which I grew up. Critical thinking was not easy for me; challenging your core values never is. We don’t want our children and grandchildren to have to suffer through the same weakness of thought that we did.


Would the evaluation of competing information that is part of critical thinking have helped prevent the wide scale vaccine denial that we are currently experiencing? Many rumors are being spread about COVID and about the COVID vaccine, just as they have been about other vaccines in the past. There were many rumors that the disease did not exist and that the deaths were faked. These rumors are still on the Internet. They never had any verifiable source and anyone taking the effort to view the data would know that there was a significant death toll early in the pandemic.


The effectiveness of COVID vaccination can easily be checked on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website www.COVID.cdc.gov. A study in November 2022 shows unvaccinated Americans had a 16 times (not percent) higher rate of hospitalization compared to the fully vaccinated and a study from January 2022 shows the unvaccinated had a 12.7 times higher COVID related death rate.


There were many reports about side effects of the vaccine. Checking available medical sources, it is easy to discover that while there are some side effects, there are many misstatements or exaggerations about the COVID vaccines. The side effects are similar in frequency to other vaccines and medications in general. Vaccine side effects tend to diminish as the vaccine is improved in subsequent versions. A detailed review of COVID vaccine side effects can be found on www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines21.


Social media were quick to jump on every alternative to vaccination. It took very little research to realize that none of these alternatives (think Clorox) had documented medical justification and had never been effectively studied. The supposed studies that were cited were either significantly flawed or could never be duplicated or even be found. Because they had no experiencing in critical thinking, many people accepted the unsupported statements that most satisfied their desires, either politically, socially or medically and adopted them as truth. Unfortunately, this failure in critical thinking resulted in hundreds of unnecessary deaths and severe illnesses.

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