How Propaganda Works

obedience-and-authority

• Victor Klemperer was a German citizen of the Jewish faith who had the remarkable good fortune to survive throughout the entire period of National Socialist rule.

  HPJ-RC-012

• Political propaganda presents itself as an embodiment of cherished political ideals. In a democracy, demagogic propaganda will characteristically be presented as an embodiment of democratic ideals.

  HPJ-RC-078

• There is a structural problem in certain imperfectly realized liberal democracies that necessitates civic rhetoric — no obvious deliberative way to bring marginalized groups into equal political standing.

  HPJ-RC-108

mind-and-cognition

• Miranda Fricker described epistemic injustice — certain epistemic harms have their source in prejudice rather than lack of resources, crucial for explaining propaganda's effects.

  HPJ-RC-010

• The very prejudices that operate to oppress negatively privileged groups work, via stereotype threat, to lead them to adopt those prejudices as beliefs.

  HPJ-RC-219

education-and-formation

• The decade featured notorious examples of technicist discourse that presents racist ideology in the guise of objective science.

  HPJ-RC-006