How Propaganda Works Egalley

How propaganda undermines democracy and why we need to pay attention Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us—not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy—particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality—and how it has damaged democracies of the past. Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States. How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere.

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Propaganda Techniques is a book designed to illustrate several of the many ways politicians, advertising writers and countless promoters try to control our thoughts. The readers of this book will become more aware of the countless and subtle ways in which they are being manipulated every day. Although initially this book was intended for use by teachers and students, I soon realized it would be useful for people in many other fields. Journalists, business people, sales people, police, counselors, advertisers, politicians, medical personnel and lawyers are just a few of the groups that would find this book useful. General readers would also find it stimulating and provocative. The eighty-nine selected techniques explained in the book are divided into seven sections; Faulty Logic Diversion and Evasion Appealing to the Emotions Using Falsehoods and Trickery Playing on Human Behavioral Tendencies, Mental Capacities and Processes Speaking or Writing Styles Reason or Common Sense The exercises at the end of the book will help the reader gain practice in using the propaganda techniques. The first exercise is for simplification of a persuasive message. A complex message loses effectiveness because most people lack the stamina to wade through a great deal of information to get to the point. The exercise for simplification calls for writing a summary of the Declaration of Independence so that the document will be reduced to a few paragraphs while maintaining the perceived intent of the author. This work should be very useful to all those trying to develop critical thinking skills.