As we approach one of the most consequential elections in our country’s history, American politics has deteriorated into the left and right blaming each other for lying, hate speech, inducing violence, and labeling their opponents as evil.
Both sides have accumulated an ignominious list of smear tactics, as you can read in these two articles representing the left and right.
Each side claims the other is using nefarious propaganda tactics to win at all costs …
The left claims President Trump and Republicans are following Joseph Goebbels’ fascist model:
- A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.
- Not every item of news should be published. Rather must those who control news policies endeavor to make every item of news serve a certain purpose.
- The truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
- It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.
- Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.
The right claims Democrats and the mainstream media are following Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals model:
- Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.
- Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions.
- Develop operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
- The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
- If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its countersued. In other words: Turn a negative around to your benefit.
- Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
So as voters wade through the myriad messages directed at them via $5.2B of advertisements ($1.1B from outside groups), news coverage, editorial endorsements, debates, speeches and rallies, they must assess and comprehend the who and why of political propaganda. As investigative journalist Sheryl Attkisson concluded in her 2017 book, The Smear, “One thing you can count on is that most every image (or speech or article) that crosses your path has been put there for a reason. Nothing happens by accident. What you need to ask yourself isn’t so much Is it true, but Who wants me to believe it — and why?”
We live in a democracy where we the people have the final say. In Edward Bernays’ famous book, Propaganda, he reminds voters that: “Governments, whether they are monarchical, constitutional, democratic or communist, depend upon acquiescent public opinion for the success of their efforts and, in fact, government is government only by virtue of public acquiescence.”
Exercise your vote wisely, with eyes wide open.