Propaganda: Lies are the New Honesty

Can you spot the lie in the picture? Guns are a moderately useful defense only against unarmed crazy people. A trained professional killer will eventually get you, even if you carry a loaded AR-15 everywhere you go for the rest of your life. Assault weapons are primarily offensive, not defensive weapons. Just look up the meaning of assault, if you have to. But the very fact that the "guns are for defense" argument is a lie, only makes the case for guns stronger.

In an earlier blog I mentioned that good propaganda was truthful, that a good propagandist would avoid being caught in a lie, and that lies actually weakened the point of the propaganda.

Well, that was the theory back in the early days of Nazi propaganda, but we have made great advances in the science of propaganda since then. The Nazis had no idea how much power propaganda eventually would have over people's minds.

Now studies have been done which indicate that if people support a certain cause, they are more likely to redouble their support when confronted by proven contradictory facts. So even if your cause has no need for lies to make it's case, it would be good propaganda science to include a few. If only to give your opponents a chance to call your supporters liars, and so redouble their support for your cause.

In case this is not obvious, I have a bias against lies myself. But I get worn out proving facts to counter right wing lies. So I would love to turn the propaganda tables so that it was the right wingers who were defending the truth, and leftists started telling lies. Why doesn't the left support some ridiculous lie, like for example "The Earth is Flat". It would cause no end of mental anguish to right wingers to try arguing that the Earth is actually round. And it would be great practice in the free form debates found on most TV news shows today.

I was reading through Al Franken's book "Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them", and I was struck by how much has changed in peoples attitudes even since 2003. For example, Bush talked about his tax cuts helped the poor more than the rich. Bush said "By far the vast majority of the help goes to those at the bottom of the economic ladder". Finally after much math, Al Franken basically proves that "Joe Average" would lose out with Bush's tax cuts, which in truth all went to the ultra-rich. And to Al, being somewhat naive in the world of propaganda, this seemed an open and shut case.

Now, in 2009, we have the real face for Joe Average: "Joe the Plumber". Joe the Plumber got famous for saying that he would suffer under Obama's taxes. Many TV interviews later, Joe became aware that the only way Obama's taxes would hurt him would be if he became very rich. Joe's response was that he regarded a tax cut for the poor as an unearned handout. It redoubled his support for the Republican tax policy, even though it was hurting him personally.

The important discovery is, that once a follower has been convinced to support a cause, the facts no longer matter. This is the new reality of propaganda. Telling the truth is now seen a sign of weakness, something like being an honest lawyer, or an ethical CEO. "Nice guys finish last" was expressed by baseball manager Leo Durocher in 1946, coincidentally just around the end of WW2. Considering the recent demise of Hitler and the Japanese, it was a shocking statement by Leo.

Everywhere you look on the conservative right you will find lies, and the right wing conservatives consider defending them to be a badge of honour, not shame. For example try telling a pro-war Christian that Jesus was a pacifist and see what reaction you get.

Wasn't it in the old west that a gun was called an equalizer? Lying is the great equalizer in debates against bigger intellects, and now it is part of the science of propaganda too.