13 Evil Propaganda Techniques

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13 Evil Propaganda Techniques

• Sophistry to overcome any audience

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Tie-in to Cold War

• By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda,
  one can make a people see even heaven as hell or
  an extremely wretched life as paradise.
• Adolf Hitler

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Tie-in to Cold War

• Our country is now geared to an arms economy
  bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war
  hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.
• Douglas MacArthur 

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Tie-in to Cold War

• The Marine Corps is the Navy's police force and
  as long as I am President that is what it will
  remain. They have a propaganda machine that is
  almost equal to Stalin's.Harry S. Truman 

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• "The essence of propaganda consists in winning
  people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally,
  that in the end they succumb to it utterly and
  can never escape from it.
• -Goebbels (Minister of Propaganda and National
  Enlightenment)

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Propaganda by Pathos/Heart

• Tribal Appeals

• Oh, you dont have a date to prom?

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Propaganda by Pathos

• Appeals to Emotions Fear, Pity, Shame on You,
  Joy, Anger
• If you dont pay attention in my class you will
  end up working at McDonalds for the rest of your
  life.

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Twisted Pathos Fear1. Bandwagon/Snob Appeal

• Join the crowd or Only for a special few
• Everyone else is working quietly.
• Maybe City High does that, but we are West High,
  one of the top schools in the nation.
• Which is better? Operators are standing by or
  If you get a busy signal, keep calling?

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Twisted Pathos2. Fear Bargain/Exigency

• Ill give you a good deal/
• Do it now or else!
• I only have one Black SUV left and I have two
  people coming to look at it today.
• If you work hard on this now, there wont be any
  homework tonight.

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Twisted Pathos3. Fear Slippery Slope

• It may not seem bad now, but it will set off a
  chain of negative events.
• If I let you go to your car, then Ill have to
  let everyone go, then we wont get any work done
  and someone might get hurt.

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Twisted Pathos4. Transfer

• If you like/dislike that, then you have to
  like/dislike this too.
• Why show the President in front of a flag?
• Can you tell from the image what Mike Huckabee is
  transferring?

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Twisted Pathos5. Pride Flag-waving

• If you dont do this, you are not an American
• Why arent you wearing green on Friday? Dont
  you like West High?
• Flag Pins

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Propaganda by Ethos/Gut

• Ethos Argument through Character
• The way you look, the words you use, your
  experience, etc.
• Look out for wolves in sheeps clothing.

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Twisted Ethos6. Name-calling

• Attack the person, not the idea
• EX Obamas foreign policy cant be good for
  America, the man is a hippie community
  organizer.

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Twisted Ethos6. Name-calling

• Other Variations of Name-calling
• Humiliation An argument that sets out only to
  debase someone, not to make a choice.
• Innuendo No one has ever asked to
• See my birth certificate Mitt Romney

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Twisted Ethos7. Just Plain Folks

• Im just like you are so believe me.
• Im not a witch Im you. Christine
  ODonnell
• Heinrich Himmler and two other S.S. officers
  collecting wildflowers for a little girl that he
  is going to visit.

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Twisted Ethos8. Testimonial/Wise-Man Fallacy

• Just because someone is famous does not mean they
  have credibility.
• Bill Gates believes that the war must stop
  because it is not justified.

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Propaganda by Logos/Brain

• Because logos means persuading through logic, in
  order to use logos for propaganda you have to be
  lying or twisting logic to suit you.
• Its important to detect them, just as you should
  spot any kind of persuasive tactic used against
  you.
• Another reason to understand fallacious logic
  you may want to use it yourself.

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Twisted Logos
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Twisted LogosHow to Twist Logos

• Deductive Logic
• Premise A Women like good smelling men.
• Premise B Axe body spray makes you smell good.
• Conclusion C Therefore if you use axe body spray
  women will like you.
• Not Valid A B doesnt necessarily C.
  (Alternate Explanations)
• Not Sound A or B isnt true. (Bad Evidence)

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Twisted LogosWhats Wrong with This?

• Premise A Ice Cream Sales increase in summer
• Premise B Drownings increase in summer.
• Conclusion C Therefore ice cream causes drowning
  
• Why is this Wrong
• Not Valid A B doesnt necessarily C.
  (Alternate Explanations)
• Not Sound A or B isnt true. (Bad Evidence)

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Twisted LogosWhats Wrong with This

• Premise A Unicorns are imaginary
• Premise B All unicorns have horns
• Conclusion C Therefore all imaginary animals
  have horns.
• Why is this Wrong
• Not Valid A B doesnt necessarily C.
  (Alternate Explanations)
• Not Sound A or B isnt true. (Bad Evidence)

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Twisted Logos

• Bad Proof The arguments commonplace or
  principle is unacceptable, or the examples are
  bad.
• False Comparison Two things are similar, so
  they must be the same.
• Hasty Generalization Uses too few examples and
  interprets them too broadly.
• Misinterpreting the Evidence Takes the
  exception and claims it proves the rule.
• Fallacy of Ignorance Claims that if something
  has not been proven, it must be false.

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Twisted Logos

• Bad Conclusion Were given too many choices, or
  not enough, or the conclusion is irrelevant to
  the argument.
• Many Questions Squashes two or more issues into
  a single one.
• False Dilemma Offers the audience two choices
  when more actually exist.
• Fallacy of Antecedent Assumes that this moment
  is identical to past, similar moments.
• Red Herring Introduces an irrelevant issue to
  distract or confuse the audience.
• Straw Man Sets up a different issue thats
  easier to argue.

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Twisted Logos

• Disconnect Between Proof and Conclusion The
  proof stands up all right, but it fails to lead
  to the conclusion.
• Tautology A logical redundancy the proof and
  the conclusion are the same thing.
• Reductio ad absurdum Takes the opponents
  choice and reduces it to absurdity.
• Slippery Slope Predicts a series of dire events
  stemming from one choice.
• Post hoc ergo propter hoc (The Chanticleer
  Fallacy) Assumes that if one things follows
  another, the first thing caused the second one.

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Twisted Logos9. Oversimplification

• Either/Or fallacy
• Either you do your homework now, or you fail
  this class.
• Either you are part of the problem, or you are
  part of the solution.
• Why must you be either a
• Democrat or a Republican?
• Why not

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Twisted Logos10. False cause-effect

• Acting like one thing leads to another (speaker
  knows it is not true)
• Drowning in the U.S. increases dramatically at
  the same time that ice cream sales increase
  dramatically. Therefore, ice cream kills.
• The non-partisan research office for Congress --
  shows that "there is little evidence over the
  past 65 years that tax cuts for the highest
  earners are associated with savings, investment
  or productivity growth."

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Twisted Logos11. Card-Stacking

• Only tell your side of the story
• We know that there are terrorists working right
  now to kill Americans. We know that Saddam has
  helped these terrorists in the past. We know
  that people are suffering in Iraq and that we can
  help them by overthrowing their repressive
  government. There is nothing more that we need to
  know.

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Twisted Logos12. Repetition

• As Hitlers propaganda ministry said Make the
  lie big enough and often enough and theyll
  believe anything.
• President George W. Bush said, "See in my line of
  work you got to keep repeating things over and
  over and over again for the truth to sink in, to
  kind of catapult the propaganda. Wiki

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Twisted Logos13. Glittering Generality

• Use words that sound great but the words are so
  general that you cant pin down exactly what is
  being promised.
• The politics of failure have failed. We should
  be going forwards, not backwards upwards, not
  forwards and always twirling, twirling to the
  future. Kodos

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Metaphors/Similes

• Our country has been issued a check marked
  insufficient funds MLK

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Parallelism

• Pattern of phrasing that allows your listeners to
  anticipate what will be said next.
• I will not eat them in a box. I will not eat
  them with a fox. I will not eat them here or
  there. I will not eat them
• I have a dream I have a dream From the rolling
  heights From every mountain and mole hill

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Antithesis

• Say the negative/opposite, then say the positive.
• Ask not what your country can do for you, ask
  what you can do for your country.
• I have a dream. That one day people will be
  judged not on the color of their skin, but on the
  content of their character.
• You call this a sandwich with mayo on the side,
  this is mayo with a sandwich on the side.