Propaganda: How You are Being Tricked pt. 1

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why we do what we do. Welcome
to Why we Do what we do. I am your
gullible host Abraham.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
And I am your Ministry of Truth host Shane.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
that humans and non human animals do, and sometimes we
talk about the ways that we interact with each other
that are not so above board.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah, and so today we're going to talk about propaganda.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
That's how you say it.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, propaganda. Even so we before the episode, we just
brought it. You just brought up propagandhi and that's where
that was stuck in my head. And so there's that.
So we've got that now that Propagandhi will show up
multiple times in this episode as a result of our misspeaking.
But yeah, today we're talking about propaganda.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah, so welcome that you enjoy would you hear today?
If you are a first time listener, then we are
so excited to have you here and stick with us
because we get a lot to cover, but hopefully this
will be illuminating and useful to you. And if you're
a returning listener, then welcome back. We're so glad that
you keep coming back to check out what we have
to offer and hope that this is of value to
you as well and continues to be that thing. And

(01:19):
if you are in either of those camps and you
would like to support us, and you aren't already, then
there are many ways you can do that, including liking, subscribing, sharing,
telling a friend, downloading, leaving a rating, and review, joining
us on Patreon. I'll talk more about those things at
the end of this entire discussion. But this episode is
going to publish on September seventeenth, and therefore we wish

(01:40):
to wish you all a happy Citizenship Day.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
I thought you're going to do doctor sus thing. We
wish to wish you a very fine fish or something
like that, whatever rhyme is there. It's also Constitution Day.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Goodbye Constitution.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
See uh.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
It is International Country Music Day.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Okay, it's funny to think of like country music as
we know it as like an international thing.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Right, yeah, good on you for those who celebrates.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Sure. It is National Apple Dumpling Day.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Oh fun yep. National Monte Cristo Day. Oh you know what.
The Count of Monte Cristo was one of my favorite
books for a long time.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
The Sandwich of Monte Cristo is also one of my favorite.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Things of all time.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
So I think both of those things are great.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Perfect just a name that is applied to good things.
That's so far hopefully hopefully.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah, hopefully that doesn't come back to bite us. It
is National Professional House Cleaner's Day.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Very nice, love that for all the people involved. Yeah,
National Rehabilitation Day, very important.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yes. It's National School Backpack Awareness Day. Hey, school backpacks
are a thing.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Be aware.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, if you didn't know.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
It's National Table shuffle Board Day. Shuffle Board's fun. I
wouldn't mind having a shuffle board table.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
No, it's actually a lot of fun. It's just very sandy.
It's Times Up Day.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Indeed. It is VFW Lady's Auxiliary Day. Wow.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
Sure. It is World Patient Safety.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Day, very important. Adopt a Less Adoptable Pet Week, love
that for those pets I do.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
I do. It is Balance Awareness Week something I do
not have.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Walk with balance but without rhythm otherwise you'll trust form.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Sure. Yeah, yeah, watch out for shilute.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
It is also Constitution Week, which I guess makes some
amount of sense if it's Constitution Day and again rip.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah yeah, yeah, it's mitochondrial Disease Awareness Week, which apparently
RFK knows how to spot these from a mile away.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
That's right. Yeah, it's the brain, the worm in the
brain that does it. It's like takes one to no one.
I guess sure. National Drive Electric Week. Oh I love that.
That's fun.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, it's a it's an interesting week of things.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah, but anyway, we don't just read weeks about things,
or we don't just read weeks or days or the
calendar holiday things. It's just a quippi fun thing that
we enjoy doing. I don't know if it's quippy, it's
just a fun thing we enjoy doing. Yeah, it's fine though,
so many qualifiers anyway. Yeah, we are not talking about
those things. Instead, as we mentioned, we are talking about propaganda.

(04:19):
And I think we're good to dive into our topic.
This one is fairly long. It is very possible that
this is going to be a multi part episode, possibly two,
unless we're very fast, and then it will be possibly one.
But I don't know how to predict that just yet.
I just know that relative to other amounts of content
we have assembled for a discussion, this is fairly long.
So it does feel like it's probably going to run

(04:41):
beyond the time we would normally allot for an episode,
speaking of which these are full length episodes. They're usually
around an hour long or so. And then on Mondays,
and these publish on Wednesdays, and then on Mondays we
release short dive episodes that are like fifteen minutes or
less most of the time. Sure, some of the time
that are meant to be a quick dive into a topic,

(05:03):
just for a brief overview of that thing, and then
we get out of there. But this is the long one,
and that means that we're going to really spend the
time to dissect and interact with and understand our topic
at hand, so that you, dear listener, may also understand
this topic at hand. And I will start by telling
you that you, you listener, you are being tricked, hopefully

(05:25):
not by us, not at least on purpose. But you
may not believe me. You may think that you are
immune to propaganda, that you can spot it, that you
can avoid it, that you know what it is and
where it is. But I'm here to tell you are not.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
No.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Indeed, some of us are better than others at spotting it.
Some of us are able to recognize it more easily,
but it comes for us like they. It is arranged
to influence us. And the agents of propaganda they work
tirelessly to manipulate you and to stay ahead of whatever
is trying to slow them down. So as soon as
one piece of technology comes along to stop them from

(06:02):
doing what they're doing, they are in an arms race
to beat that technology and keep doing what they're doing.
So I am unwittingly influenced by propaganda sometimes, and you
are unwittingly influenced by propaganda sometimes. Some people are heavily
influenced by it all the time. Yeah, it gets us
hooks in right away and it just never lets go,

(06:23):
and they never are they're none the wiser most of
the time. So we're going to unpack that today.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
We certainly are. Let's go ahead and dive into it.
So they're just saying, when playing poker, if you can't
find the sucker at the table, it's you. As doctor
Noam Spencer pointed out in an article about propaganda, we
can apply this to propaganda. If you don't hear much
about propaganda, that's what you're hearing.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yeah, Yeah, it is all around us. It is constantly
affecting us and We've said it before, we will say
it again, but it's worth understanding here as we're talking
about human behavior. I argue I think we take the
position on this podcast a language is one of, if
not the thing that makes humans truly unique among animals.

(07:08):
It allows us to understand symbolic meaning, express and recognize subtlety,
and allows us to cooperate, to do science, to do religion,
to educate one another, and of course to trick one
another m hm.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
And human beings, we are a tricksy bunch. Yes, as
a gollum would say, you know, we're tricksy. We're like
Trixie Hobbits, is you know now? Military strategist Sun Sue
wrote the famous, or you could argue infamous book The
Art of War, over two thousand years ago. In it,
he instructs strategies that are still used to this day.
A not insignificant amount of the text itself is dedicated

(07:45):
is actually dedicated to the importance of information. And this
is something that you are going to hear a lot
anytime there is a conflict, anytime there is As kind
of technologies evolve and kind of like grow and develop
and meet the needs of humans today, always going to
find that information, misinformation and disinformation are powerful tools to

(08:05):
influence in shape entire populations of people, not just individuals.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yes, and so in the art of war, as you
were just saying, like information is held at a premium,
it's extremely important in warlike activities. And there are sections
in the book on various types of spies and spy activities.
Now I didn't read the whole thing in preparation for this,
but I looked up some of these excerpts because I'm

(08:30):
somewhat familiar with them. I've heard about them, and so
I was kind of looking into them. And they are
like different types of these these spy roles that exist.
Some spies are as you might think, they're just intended
to collect information. They infiltrate a space, they will grab documents,
they'll listen to people talk, they'll like eavesdrop and whatnot.
But there are some other roles that you might not

(08:52):
know about. So some are intended to actually stop information
from spreading. So they might try and just stop a
mess from getting a message out, or to alter or
destroy some kind of I guess memo or piece of
literature or propaganda or whatever that's supposed to be spread,
but some are actually specifically intended to Their role is

(09:13):
to sow disinformation, dissent, and discord. They will go into
a communal space and they will just tell people incorrect
things very subtly. They'll do it like in conversation, in passing.
They'll make little comments, and it's like they're just trying
to get people doubting and riled up and confused because

(09:36):
they'll have incorrect information, or they'll start to form some
like beliefs about things that are not necessarily true, but
give them sort of a angry zeal I guess against
some idea or a group of people. And even in
some cases there were spies who were given incorrect information

(09:58):
because the intention for those spots, who I think are
not supposed to know this was the case for them.
But the intention was that those spies would be captured
and that when they were caught and whatever was done
to them, what they would confess would actually give incorrect,
erroneous details to the people who captured them and were
extracting information from them. So like they specifically set these

(10:20):
people up to be caught so that under duress they
would confess things that were false. Because even though they
believed them to be true, Like that was an actual
way that they might use people in this space. So
it's kind of messed up, but like they understood how
important it was to control the narrative and to have
as much information as possible on your side, and so

(10:43):
they this was over two thousand years ago that they
were orchestrating these things.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah, you know, this makes me think of like how
interesting it would be to talk about the psychology of
spies and spy work, because I feel like there's got
to be some like cognitive dissonance that goes along with that,
where you know, like you are kind of like causing problems,
but like you're also loyal to your country or loyal
to your government, and then what happens when you find
out that your government is not loyal to you and

(11:07):
all the things that go on, Like like you're listening
to the show, right, like you're listening to the podcast,
and you think that we're going to continue to do
content and then we just drop in an ad and
then you feel betrayed that we throw ads at you,
and then like the cognitive dissonance that goes along with
having to hear ads in the middle of a thing,
like I imagine that's probably a unique experience for you listener. Okay,

(11:32):
so now that we've captured your attention as a spy
has been captured to confess erroneous details, we're going to
go back into the art of war and kind of
talk about this. Right. So, the tactics that are used
to orchestrate disinformation and misinformation campaigns are now sometimes called propaganda,
which is the topic that we're covering today, and versions
of the strategy are even called psychological warfare operations or

(11:54):
psyops for short, like Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift being a
syop for folks. Now, that's like one of my favorite
conspiracy theories right now, is that Taylor Swift is a
sie up. Wow, it's a whole thing. Now. They used
fairly basic tricks to hijack the vulnerabilities in our language,
and in doing so, they influence our behavior in a
way or in a direction that is more favorable to

(12:14):
the organizing group. And that's kind of the thing, right, Like,
these tactics are designed to move behavior in a certain direction, and.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
It is really it is moving at such a high
pace now given the rise of I mean, essentially photorealistic
AI generated content and the activities of like long running,
well established think tanks whose only job, whose only obscenely
lucrative job is to spread disinformation and influence people. We

(12:45):
may be in the most danger of being persuaded than
ever before. Maybe, but you can also make the case
that we are not right.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
And although our awareness of it has also enables us
to be the most guarded against it that we have
ever been. That's another thing to think about, right, Like,
we are aware enough to be very guarded against it. However,
very few people know when they're being manipulated, and part
of the psyop strategy is to keep people uninformed and
ignorant and therefore prevent people from recognizing that they have

(13:16):
been manipulated.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah, that's very much the general tactic. And so it's
worth then digging into attempting to understand propaganda and like
start to unpack how it works. And fortunately we as
a species, the people who have done the science and
research on this and whatnot, we actually understand fairly well

(13:39):
how the different techniques that propaganda use sort of work
and what those techniques are. And because of this we
can also understand to a point how to at least minimize,
if not avoid, being sort of tricked and manipulated by
propaganda campaigns. The problem is that propaganda FFI is dirty,

(14:00):
It fights fast. It basically all it has to do
is appeal to emotion. It has no obligation to and
in fact, I would argue, is the enemy of critical
thinking and truth. So all it has to do is explode.
It's like it's just a grenade. It just goes off
and it explodes. Whereas fighting the explosion, cleaning up its mess,
that takes time. It takes time, it takes effort, it

(14:22):
takes a willingness to engage. Propaganda does not have those obligations.
All it has to do is explode. It's like a grenade,
and it's like it's a lot faster and more destructive
to blow up a grenade than it is to build
the things that the grenade destroyed and to clean up
the mess that it leaves behind.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
Yeah, I mean, like propaganda has no obligation to the truth.
And I think that that is so critically important to understand.
I mean, like a perfect example, this happens like it
came out like this week, is that now there's some
language around the idea that Donald Trump was an FBI
informant trying to take down Jeffrey Epstein, like he wasn't
a friend, he was in listen instead, is an FBI informant.

(15:01):
That's the current propaganda that's going out right now, and
people are buying it. Like all it takes is for
somebody to go, this is what it is, and they go, Okay, yeah, man, unbelievable,
right an FBI informant like that is just it's just
it's just wild. So here's the thing. Propaganda can be fun, funny, scary,
inviting or all of those things, right like that, like
a lot of like movements and like a lot of

(15:22):
different like revolutionary movements will enlist some levels of propaganda
too to move people towards their side. But like the
thing is is, it's like you mentioned before, it moves quickly.
Whereas being educated can feel boring, complicated, confusing, accusatory. People
feel guilt when they learn about their histories and the
histories of their peoples, like that can be really uncomfortable
to kind of sit through. And further, we can't just

(15:44):
use tools of the propagandast because their strategies are part
of the problem. Right They are using rapid emotional misinformation
to get people riled up, to not think critically, to
buy into or hook into some idea and then run
with and share that information. That's like a virus.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
You know, you're you're sorry about the Epstein thing. South
Park did this joke many many years ago where there
was like a cop who went undercover to bust sex workers,
and he so went undercover as a sex worker, and
then he would like follow through with and go through
like the whole thing of having sex with the john, yeah,
and then arrest them afterward after he'd done like all

(16:24):
this stuff, like completely fulfilled out his part of the
bargain for sex work. And one of them even goes
so far as to like he marries the john, has
like a whole life with them, and then at some
point deep into their marriage he like reveals as a
cop is like freeze, you're under arrest. That's like that

(16:45):
seems to be like what they're espousing here. It's like
like Trump's like I had to have sex with those
underage girls because I'm I'm under I'm like an infronment
or something like no, no, no, there are lines that
where you're not suppose to cross and there, Yeah, like
you're just a bad person. Also, that's not happened, so,

(17:05):
like you know, propaganda and whatnot. Anyway, Right, the other
problem we're getting to here because one of the things
you may have noticed we have not done is define
our terms, which is usually where we start. But the
problem is how to define what propaganda even is. So
a lot of sources that are primary sources you might
look at, like the dictionary offer something like quote the

(17:27):
spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of
helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
end quote. And so propaganda, in other words, is manipulative
persuasion in the service of an agenda. The word itself
doesn't imply truth or falsehood in the content or past
judgment on the agenda. So that's sort of the the

(17:48):
whole thing in terms of the various definitions there. Right,
that feels broad and maybe more inclusive than we might
want it to be. For like what we believe and
understand about what propaganda is and is trying to do.
Others specifically say instead that it is the dissemination of
ideas that are half truths, heavily biased, outright lies, or

(18:09):
incomplete information that are presented as real, whole information with
the intention to influence your opinions and actions. So that's
that I think takes a more direct approach that like
this is functionally lies that are just designed to get
you to believe and act in a particular way. That's

(18:30):
that's kind of what it is.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah, I was gonna say, and I think that's it.
I think there's an important maybe thing to unpack inside
of that where this is different than bias. Right, Yes,
propaganda is biased, but bias does not necessarily indicate that
you are engaging in propaganda, right, Yeah, So like having
a bias is like a particular like idea, you're leaning
towards a certain idea, a thought, a belief, you value,

(18:52):
whatever it might be. Like, that's a bias. That doesn't
necessarily mean that you are intentionally trying to influence somebody else.
Like you're not trying to dismantle a system, You're not
trying to do any of those things. You're just kind
of like you know that that's where you lean, and
like it's important to kind of like understand that and
check your biases. Propaganda goes, yes, this is a bias
and here's how we weaponize bias to change or influence people.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
Well, the fact that it's bias can be is often
very deliberately hidden, right, And I think there are those
that will state outright what their bias is and like
acknowledge that they have a bias, because we pretty much
cannot talk about anything without taking an angle about which
you that we use to have that discussion, which means

(19:35):
that we come from a position of bias all the time. Sure,
Like pretty much everything we say about a thing could
be interpreted qualitatively as us suggesting good or bad qualities
of that thing, and so like, bias is kind of
just baked into the language a lot of the time.
But as you said, it's whether or not that is

(19:55):
being used to specifically try and influence a behavior and action,
and if it is being done in a way that
it's like trying to pass itself off as not biased.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
Sure, yeah, that makes sense. So even identifying what is
considered propaganda can be difficult or biased or even part
of the propaganda syop strategy. So some include advertising as
a type of propaganda or persuasion as a type of propaganda,
whereas others make a clear distinction between advertising, persuasion, and propaganda.
So the first definition offered by the definition could conceptually

(20:29):
include literally any attempt to spread any kind of information whatsoever,
even including stating basic observable facts. So you can see
kind of where this gets a little bit muddy.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, I mean you can imagine that, like an astronomer
has an agenda that we want to get you excited
about astronomy so that we can have people who like
go to school to study astronomy and get jobs in
astronomy and advocate for funding for astronomy. And so they
like come with this agenda that's like, I want to

(21:00):
show you how cool the work that we do. Is
this awesome science. It's really neat. We really love it.
We think you'll love it too. And like, based on
that first definition, that's all propaganda. Sure, and maybe that's
a useful way to think about it, But for the
purposes of this discussion, I think we maybe would find
it more useful to focus our language about this on

(21:21):
the kind of strategies that use incomplete or false information
with the intention to influence behavior, specifically in a way
that is beneficial to the designer of the propaganda and
in conflict with the best interest of the audience. That's
kind of where I think is a more useful way
to think about propaganda, as I think actually most people

(21:44):
kind of tend to understand it. And I think one
thing that even stands out to me is trying to
even define propaganda that is so inclusive that any type
of information could be considered propaganda. Is a propaganda technique
in and of itself. If you just say everything is propaganda,
the effect of that is that you can sort of

(22:04):
start to influence and persuade people that A Propaganda is
everywhere and can't be avoided, therefore they shouldn't care. B
they can only trust the author of the propaganda because
propaganda is everywhere. C is not something that they should
worry about, and D it's some combination of all of
those things. So they kind of set the groundwork for

(22:27):
like A, I'm right or B you're wrong, Like those
are those are the options here, because if propaganda's everywhere,
then I can now use propaganda even more effectively because
you're no longer on the lookout for it as much,
and I can convince you that it's everyone else who's propaganda,
but I'm trustworthy. That's part of my propaganda, right, so

(22:51):
you can see sort of how insidious it can be.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Yeah, I mean it's so insidious that, like you just
went through this list, right, so like you gave us
four options. It starts with A through D, which leads
me to believe that this is leading to an ad
So we're back and we're talking about definitions of propaganda,

(23:14):
and I think one of the things that we need
to understand is that whatever definition is used, what is
clear is that propagandists have an agenda, have a target audience,
and have a carefully curated message. The overwhelming majority of
the time, the delivery is obviouscated, so that you don't
know that it's intended to persuade, and often don't know

(23:34):
who is trying to do the persuading. It's basically just
you don't know that you're getting influenced, you don't know
who is doing the influencing, and then surprise, you have
been influenced, and by the time you realize you've been influenced, it.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
May be too late. Yeah. The analogy I think of
is it's almost like you're being fed a low dose
of a drug that makes you more pliable and more
like compliant. Yeah, you don't really know that you're being
this drug. It's happening over and over and over again,
and this way they can sort of influence you. Ironically,
I think that's maybe what the conspiracy theorist say about fluoride.

(24:07):
That's not how fluoride works. Florida is very safe and
healthy and is good for your teeth and helps reduce
constances of cavities and gum disease. But sure, like that's
a conspiracy people take. But and the idea here being
the like, that's kind of how propaganda works is that
they will try and flood the space without you noticing
that they're flooding the space if you will. Sure, And yeah, now,

(24:28):
fortunately many people have written about how propaganda works, and
there's actually pretty strong consensus on the goals and strategies
of propagandas so we'll start with like the sort of
core components.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah, so first there are four core tenants of propaganda
and then many specific strategies that we'll get into. The
four core tenants, which were authored by psychologist William Biddle
in nineteen thirty one, are one avoid argument and appeal
to emotion. Do not use full facts arguments or information
really easy to get people riled up, not thinking if
they're emotional, right, yep. Two establish a clear us versus

(25:04):
a clear them. Where them is or are the enemies?
Would you hear these You're gonna be like, oh my god,
this is so clear.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
Three reach out to social groups as well as individuals
for the greatest impact. And four hide the propagandist as
much as possible. Do not let the audience know that
what you are doing is propaganda. So just the recap,
real quick appeal to emotion, don't use facts, establishing us
versus them mentality, create an enemy essentially, is what you're doing.

(25:33):
Reach out to social groups so you can get to
more people, and then hide whoever is behind all the mechanations. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
And we are going to get into several examples of
instances where propaganda it was very clearly used, like you
could look at and be like, yep, that was propaganda.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
But one that I did not list as an example
is that there are anti vaccine groups who specifically went
out and targeted new mothers on Facebook and would start
to flood their feed with anti vaccine disinformation because they
were they considered a vulnerable target population they had an
agenda prevent people from getting vaccines. They had an audience

(26:08):
who they believed would be receptive to their messaging, and
so they tailor their messaging to fears around the well
being of babies and then put that in the space
only of new mothers who are likely to see that
and start to form doubts about the safety and efficacy
of those things. And now we now measles as back
yep against a little bit more of that. Anyway, there

(26:30):
are a few primary sources for this discussion. One helpful
website that we use is called Disinformation Nation. They provided
their own take on this idea of the four sort
of core tendants of propaganda using the acronym seed SED
and that stands for simplification, exaggeration, exploitation, and division seed simplification, exaggeration,

(26:54):
exploitation and division. So I'll quickly go through what each
of those sort of means, but you'll see how they
line up up with the basic temples tenants, nut temples
tenants that were listed before. So simplification refers to keeping
the messaging easy to understand. This might look like catch
it quotes, slogans, insulting nicknames, or epithets or name calling,
simplifying a complex topic into what seems to be an easy,

(27:19):
black and white, bad versus good type of messaging. So
that's simplification.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
Exaggerating means over or understating information to make it seem
more or less important than it actually may be to
the recipient audience. So basically just kind of like taking
some small nugget of information and blowing it up. Like
a really good example would be right now, radioactive shrimp
at Walmart. Right, Like, there were shrimp that were shipped
to Walmart that like had traces of radioactive material. But

(27:47):
now it's turned into like when you see news headlines
radioactive shrimp, don't eat shrimp. And it's like kind of
like one of those things where it's a small bit
of information that is exaggerated or conflated into something that
is actually not as important but like it's not as
big as what it sounds like.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
And they trying to the opposite too, you know, in
the whole case with the Epstein files, like Trump's rosen
like nobody cares about that. It's dumb. You're dumb if
you care about that. Like it went from this being
a campaign issue that got people motivated to get out
and vote to like nothing to see here, look away,
So like there's also the downplay aspect cutting is included

(28:24):
in the exaggeration piece.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Sure exactly.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
The next part is exploitation, and this means specifically appealing
to your biggest hopes and dreams and sort of speaking
to like, you too can be rich and wealthy and powerful,
just like me who was born into rich and wealth
and power and never going to work for anything. Alternatively,
or I guess, in addition to emphasizing and appealing to

(28:48):
your hopes and dreams, they will also focus on and
emphasize your greatest fears and concerns, so specifically alluding to like,
these are things you should be afraid of, and they're
gonna get worse. They're just so terrible.

Speaker 2 (29:01):
Yeah. And then you got division, right, which means establishing
a clear distinction between the good guys and the bad guys.
With the good guys are obviously the side you were
on and should want to be on, and the bad
guys are the enemies who want to hurt you or
undo the work that you've done. Like I just finished
this book where you know the group there were multiple
groups that were there were like the lower levels, the mids,

(29:21):
and then the up levels, and there was like even
a little bit of division among those different status classes. Right,
the people who lived at the top of the silo
were like the well off folks, the ones that were
the mids, with the middle class, the ones that were
the lower class, like the lower class folks quote unquote,
they were working and doing like the hard labor jobs.
So like there is like even some of that division.
Once you do that, now you've created separation, and now

(29:42):
you've created us versus them mentalities, which really is effective
for getting people on your side.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yes, exactly. So those are a couple of different takes
on the basic for principles of propaganda and how it works.
So I guess is a quick summary. Then propaganda works
essentially by engaging our emotions, keeping the messaging simple, establishing
a clear enemy who is or should be your enemy,
who's definitely the enemy of the propagandist, appealing to members

(30:08):
of groups you belong to and individuals, and making it
seem like all this information is just out there, not
a specific campaign, not a person necessarily, it's just out there.
It's just how people feel. It's just what's going on.
It's kind of how it's more or less floated out
because again, you want to hide the source of the propaganda,

(30:28):
the fact that it's propaganda. You just want it to
sort of exist in a little ecosystem that pervades people's
sort of daily consciousness, if you will.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah, so I think that sounds like it makes sense.
But I do think it's important to point out specific
behaviors or specific things that people do so that you
can know what to look for in the event that
you're worried about propaganda. Right, Like, these are things that
you can start noticing that are part of like propagandist strategies.
And the first one is name calling. Like, name calling
is super easy. It's one of those things that exaggerates

(30:59):
and over simplifize messaging. It creates an out group versus
an in group. It's really easy to create enemies in
this space. Right, And name calling is exactly what it
sounds like. The Nazis specifically referred to Jewish people as
rats to create a negative association and dehumanize them. Trump
called immigrants verbin and name calls literally everyone he doesn't like.

(31:21):
So number one in the Book of Propagandists is name
calling and calling. For those of you who are going, well,
Trump's not a Nazi. He's using literally in the same language. Yes, literally,
He's not even hiding it. He's not even hiding it.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a crazy amount of overlap there. So
that's the thing. The next strategy is transfer. There's actually
a couple that are similar in the idea here, but
transfer is the idea of trying to transfer a positive
association you have about something to the person or idea
that you want people to feel positively about. So it's

(31:56):
trying to create a positive association with the targeted idea
or person by putting them next to someone or something
else that already has sort of a positive connotation built in.
This can include a celebrity endorsement, or you might fly
an American flag or whatever flag is the one you're
trying to fly next to or behind an image of

(32:17):
this person that creates that sense of patriotism or whatever
flag message that that flag is supposed to communicate or represent.
But that's the idea of transfer as a strategy, is
just trying to create that positive association by putting them
next to things that you already have some kind of
positive association.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
Uh. An example of that would be like Uncle Sam, Like,
oh yeah, yeah, Uncle Sam is like one of the
best examples of this where you've got a dude who
is dressed in like literally the American flag from head
to toe, true, and he isn't listing your help. He
thinks you specifically are going to be the most helpful
thing to support your country. So he is. Now Now

(32:56):
every time you see the flag, you think of Uncle Sam,
you think of the associations, you think, I feel needed
and I'm here and I can help, I can be helpful. Yeah,
And to me, that's like one of the like one
of the most clear examples of propaganda, especially in wartime,
like Uncle Sam wants you to join the war to
support your nation, right, and that is that is to me,
like just a really clear example of.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
That, Yeah, very much so. And a total counter example
to that was like putting something with a negative association
in like ads in a podcast, All right, we are back.
We're walking through and illustrating the various specific techniques that

(33:38):
propagandists use to influence your thinking and behavior. We've talked
about name calling, which is what it sounds like, and
then transfer just creating that sort of positive association and
making that thing have juxtaposition to the idea of person
that you are trying the propagandist wants to have create
that association with.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Yeah, another one is called glittering generalities. So it sounds
One of my favorite things in the world is when
like a term just means what it says in the term. Like,
I think that's why I like behavior analysis so much,
because every term is like just what the definition like
it's it's it says it in there. So imagine what
glittering generalities means. It means that like you're putting a

(34:18):
sheene or a shine or like general like using some
term to generalize, and like it doesn't really mean anything.
So like these are vague phrases that have positive, appealing
sounding words. Glittering is one of those things, but it
lacks any specificity or meaning generalities right, so things like
make America great again, hope change if we want to
have like multiple examples of this. Yeah, these are all cheap,

(34:40):
simple words or phrases that don't mean anything but sound
really good. They're mottos, they're enticing, they're like, you know,
the thing that actually doesn't have any substance. Make America
great again has no substance. Yeah, And saying the word
hope in no context has no substance.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah, exactly. It's just it's vague, it's general. It sounds
nice that yeah, so yeah, glittering generality is absolutely. The
next one is called bandwagon being on the bandwagon. Sure,
you could think of this effectively as peer pressure. It's
arguing that you ought to do what the propagandist wants

(35:18):
you to do because everyone else is doing it too.
They might not be, but they want you to believe that.
At least they'll tell you quote, everyone is voting for me,
so you should too. End quote. That's sort of the
idea here. It's appealing to your sense of community and inclusion,
your participation in whatever group you have already identified with,
and say that like, this is how that group behaves,

(35:39):
and so it's how you should also behave. And it's
again a strategy to persuade you to do something or
vote in some particular way, or take some particular action,
or form some particularly strong belief. And again it doesn't
matter whether or not the group actually thinks or believes
that way. They want to use your identified as soation

(36:00):
with that group to say like, this is what the
group that you belong to thinks and does, therefore you
should think and do it. And again doesn't have to
be true. In matter of fact, it probably isn't sure,
but you might then sort of see it as like, well,
these are people that I know and trust and then
my group, and therefore like if this is how they feel,
then this must be somewhat accurate at least, and so
you sort of accept that.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
Yeah. Now there's also scare tactics. This is basically it's
what it sounds like. This is telling you all the
bad things that will happen if you don't adopt the
propaganda's position or do as they ask. So things like
if you don't vote, a criminal will be elected. If
you vote for my opponent, there will be no more Christmas,
no more gas powered stoves, no more religion, and we

(36:41):
will be overrun by immigrants. End quote, Like does that
sound familiar? That's yeah, I would imagine that you've probably
heard something similar to that. Now it is telling you.
Scare tactics is telling you that there is something terrible
that will happen, but the propagandas can save you from
it if you give them what they want, which is
your vote, your money, your support, spread their message, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. So, and this is actually extremely common.

(37:03):
All sides use this. This is used in politics, This
is used in religion, This is used in cults, This
is used in across a lot of different spaces, and
it gets used so much. It's actually probably like one
of the number one tactics that people like to employ.
And some groups use it more than others. And you
can probably guess which ones are Republicans. And I wouldn't
even go that far. I'd say like like like lots

(37:25):
of like ultra conservatives. This is really this is like
the go to, Like it's coercion at its finest right,
Like it's coercion through language.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
I mean, if you were to just ask people about
the specific policy issues in that agenda, the overwhelming majority
disagree with them fundamentally, from top to bottom, obscured or
plain as day, they disagree with them, and they are
often counter to the best interest of those people in
a lot of ways. But they frame it up as

(37:53):
this being like just absolutely a necessity for those people.
They trick them into believing that they want to be
engaged with, that with those policies that are counter to
their interests, that are counter to all of humanity in
many cases really and only serve the interests of the
few who are doing them promoting. And it works, It

(38:14):
absolutely works. They use these scare tactics, and like I said,
one side, that's the cut. All they have. They don't
have anything real or substantive to offer. All they have
is fear about something that's not real, and they can
exploit that fear. So yes, one of the most common
is scare tactics. Name calling can be very common, but
I think scare tactics might be the most common.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yeah, I think it's got one of the most emotionally
appealing responses. It is like, you're scared, you're you're fearful,
and so you're gonna respond to avoid whatever is causing
that fear. Like you're gonna you're gonna you want a savior,
you want somebody who's gonna protect you, right, And like
it's very easy to elicit that response out of people.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
And fear leads to anger, Anger leads to hate, Hate
leads to the dark side.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
That's what I've been saying this entire time.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
And the Betty Jesuits. The fear is the mind killer.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Yeah, fear is the mind fear, fears of mind killer.
That's what I'm saying, Guys, like, don't we know it is?
I mean, y'all, please read Dune. Like, go go read Dune,
because I feel like, if you really want to understand
the complexities that are propaganda and how it works to
influence major things, Dune is a really good example of
how like language and religion are used as propaganda's tools.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
It's good, it is very good. And I I also
I just love so much. I'm like, that is such
a great way describing it. Fear as the mind killer. Yeah,
and and propaganda's depend on it, particularly those who that's
their only messaging. Bet you didn't think we're gonna end
up a Dune, did you, Folks, we kind of constantly doacitating.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
By the way, this is a Dune podcast.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
Now surprise if you if you've been listening for a while, Dune.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
We'll call it the We're the Shaiha dudes.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
Oh man, if you have, if you haven't read do
and we're seeing the movie, then that that is a
reference you will not get. Yeah, it's the name. It's
a name from the book. But anyway, all right, next,
next strategy we're getting into here because there's still quite
a few more to unpacked. There's so many, and this
is called the plane folk folk plaine folk strategy. The

(40:21):
idea here is that you want to get support for
an idea, product, or candidate by getting the endorsement from
sort of regular or at least regular appearing people. Sure
the idea is sort of embedded here, is like, if
you're sort of everyday person endorses this, then if it's
good for that everyday person, it's good for you too,

(40:42):
because that's most of us. Most of us are not
in these elevated positions of power, who have obscene amounts
of wealth, who can drastically control the narrative and in
many ways that they want. It's just you sort of
find a grassroots person. Now, whether or not that person
is your sort of regular every day folk debatable. Might
be a hired actor, might be a someone who's just

(41:04):
posing as that. But there is a more there's an
increasingly common strategy to sort of dress like, appeal to
and select the endorsements from the sort of if what
you might call plane folk because, as we said, is
the name of this because it's a propaganda technique that
they use that can be effective.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
Sure. Sure, there's also something called card stacking, and this
is only representing information that shows the person, product or
idea in a positive light. And this is essentially looking
at Yelp reviews and only looking at the five star
reviews and never looking at anything else. Yeah, let me
say it like this. It's not necessarily just looking at it.
It's that that person is putting that information first and
foremost and not any other information. Correct. Yeah, So this

(41:44):
is only posting those positive reviews, only sharing positive statements,
only including statements that favorably represent whatever is the agenda
of the propagandist. I mean, I think this is really
clear in political campaigns, definitely, but specifically in those campaigns
that are not necessarily saying that the other candidate is bad.
It's just saying that the candidate that you're watching or

(42:05):
learning about is good. Like it's like, this is my policy,
this is what I'm doing, Here's what I've done to
help the people. Here's what dadada da like. That's usually
where you see card stacking like. And then also you've
got cardstacking, and then you include some name calling like
I do good, this guy's a joker, and like you
kind of have those things and you'll see those combinations.
But cards acking is really kind of like just like
really making it sound like you're pouring it on, you're

(42:26):
really glazing the person you know.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
And to kind of sidestep this from the political angle
we've been taking, I've had this idea of like I
would love to run advertisements about insurance companies where the
advertisements are honest. Yeah, the advertisement would go something like here,
at insert name of insurance company, we won't actually refund
any of your claims. We will not answer the phone

(42:50):
when you call. We will gladly take your money and
do nothing for you. Join us, won't you like? Join
us today?

Speaker 2 (42:58):
We'll tie you up in a series of phone calls
in unnecessary bureaucracy so that you can't get your benefits.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yeah, as long as you pay a fee that is
equal to the amount you're trying to get covered by us,
then sure we'll do the work for you. Maybe we
probably won't answer the phone, but will also probably just
deny your claim. And like that's how the ad would
actually go. Is something like that as like because they
always say like all they're like, oh, every one of
us can save you money. I'm like, well that's mathematically

(43:25):
impossible for one thing, sure, but also like as like
insurance is ruining the world. I actually think maybe we
should do a entire episode on insurance. I think it
is one of the worst things we have ever created
as a species. It is destroying everything, partially because it
is a for profit entity. I think there are ways
that could be done well that would protect and support people,

(43:45):
and it is not being done that way pretty much
in any space that it exists. It is done just
to suck the life out of people and destroy their
lives and their livelihoods and make them suffer. Yeah, but anyway,
they very much portray themselves in this card stacking way,
and I'm like, I would love to see the honest
commercial about ssurance companies.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
You know, it's kind of astounding that we have not
made more enemies on this show. Like I feel like,
like with the amount of being outspoken that we are, like,
we haven't had like insurance companies come after us or scientologists. Yeah,
like somebody somewhere like somehow, we I'm sure I'm surprised
we haven't pissed enough people off. I mean, we've pissed
off a couple of people. Yeah, you know, and like
even our advertisers, Like, we talked trash about all of

(44:23):
our ads all the time, and nobody's ever been like, hey,
like at least as far as we know, as far
as we know, you know, speaking of speaking of which,
here's that.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Okay, back back from that, from that, whatever the ad
was about, I'm sure that they appreciate everything we had
to say about them. Sure, maybe it was for insurance,
I hopefully all right, we still have several strategies to
unpack here. The next one is called testimonials. This is
fairly similar to the transfer idea we listed before, and

(44:58):
it's specifically soliciting endorsements from popular or famous people or organizations.
It's meant to elicit a favorable emotion and make the
agenda of the propagandist seem more legitimate. Right, you'd get
someone to say, like this is the best thing ever,
Like it's so great you should love it because this
person says you should love it, or you know, product

(45:18):
or person or idea. It is just getting that sort
of fame endorsement as if you will, and having people
sort of give their testimonial about why that thing is
so good. It's kind of one of the reasons I
actually tend to not really look at the five star reviews.
I kind of try to shoot for, like the negative ones,
because sometimes those are very informative and like, sometimes they'll

(45:39):
say things that are like to me, it helps underscore
how good of a product it like actually is. Like
let's say I'm looking at like an Amazon review. I
remember seeing one though was like did not come at
the like one star, did not come in as many
color varieties as I would have liked. I was like, yeah,
that's I don't care about that, right, Like So it's
actually it's kind of helpful for me to see a
review like that and think like, okay, so this is

(46:00):
like this person doesn't actually have something to say about
the product itself. They just didn't like the options that
weren't available to them as far as like customization, Right,
that doesn't bother me as much as the thing not
working or being of poor quality or you know, not
being as described Like those are the reviews where they're
like tried this thing, didn't work, couldn't get ahold of
customer service. That's the sort of thing is where I

(46:21):
get more worried about negative reviews. Yeah, but anyway, the
idea of testimonials the five stars is a common strategy.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
Yeah. Absolutely. You've also got stereotyping, and this means that
we are oversimplifying or greatly exaggerating a person or an idea.
It is meant to create a simple fear anger, discussed
emotion from you, often against an entire group of people,
set of ideas or types of products, like things like
they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs, which is
a new sentence that nobody's ever said out loud, right,

(46:50):
nobody would say that. Seriously, I couldn't imagine. But that's
a stereotyping propaganda strategy, right, Like you're isolating a group
of people, you're over generalizing some type of you know,
negative trait about that group or people that belong to
that group, and now you've kind of created an enemy
as a result of stereotyping. So this is happening a
lot with immigration, This is happening a lot with you know,
assuming that people from certain countries that are adjacent to

(47:13):
the United States maybe belong to gangs and they certainly,
don't you know, it's like that that's really what it is.
Or if like one person had an allergic reaction to vaccines,
you know, an anti vaxxer, like I don't know, I'm
gonna just say three random letters, like maybe with the
initials of R, F, and K. They might claim that
all vaccines are therefore unsafe for everyone, and that vaccines

(47:34):
are dangerous, and that people that administer vaccines are also dangerous.
But ultimately it's simple, a simple way to get people
against an idea. It's stupid, it's wrong, it's prejudiced, it's.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Biased, and it's stupid and it's stupid.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
Yeah, in case that wasn't clear, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
So that's stereotyping. That one actually is. Also I think
among the most common techniques that's very frequently used. One
that I think we have seen versions of four but
is now at the enjoying like the highest amount of
employment that it has ever enjoyed is unrealistic promises. Sure,

(48:12):
this one's in the name, like this is exactly what
it says. It is. When a person promises to end poverty,
end drug use and inequality, end war, these are unkeepable promises.
They sound great, but they cannot realistically happen, so they'll
make all kinds of promises. I'm gonna get those prices
down on day one, he said, sure, still up and

(48:33):
rising faster than yeah, than we thought they were going
to and we knew, you know, the strategy that was
laid out like that. We predicted this in our first
I think many where we were sort of prognosticating that
prices were not going to go down because he basically said,
as part of his campaign, i will just in so
many words, he said, I'm going to destroy this country,

(48:55):
and everyone said I vote yes, yeah, and so like
that was essentially a camp promise and where things are at.
So anyway, let's think all politicians and all you know,
organizations and companies. They will often make these unrealistic promises
and they'll just say things are like they just couldn't
possibly they just couldn't possibly be true, and people sort
of just accept that that's just the nature of the

(49:17):
game anymore. I guess right.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
There's also manipulating information. This is basically just lying, and
it can include saying things that are kind of true
or completely false, claiming that there is waste and fraud
in the government, is almost certainly accurate that by itself
is I'm sure true, claiming that it is so rampant
that it is justifiable to cut everything in everyone's job,
wildly overstating and overreacting to the actual nature of the problem,

(49:39):
and then going and building something like I don't know,
I'm going to make up another term like alligator Alcatraz,
which is costing you know, anywhere upwards of four hundred
to five hundred million dollars of tax payer money, and
we're talking about rampant fraud like and waste. Yeah, I
could imagine that maybe manipulating that information and kind of
twisting it around is a problem. And so that's just
one of those examples like you just claiming that things

(50:00):
are happening half truth and then finding the opposite of
the problem, or even creating a problem in a different way.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Yeah, I mean, they like they went in and cut
all of USAID. Millions of lives are now being lost,
and that that represented less than one percent of the budget,
and the government is still spending more right now than
it has ever spent at any point ever before. So
like the idea that this was cutting waste and then

(50:27):
like it's less than a percent of the budget and
then they spend even more than they were spending insane
Like it's just utter nonsense lies. So yeah, that's where
it is.

Speaker 2 (50:39):
It's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
The next one is called snob appeal. It's kind of
the opposite of the plain folk idea in a way,
not exactly, but kind of. It's making something sound particularly deluxe,
luxury or special and available to only you. It's claiming
some sort of exclusivity to make you feel special. It
can include things that are like exclusive information that only

(51:03):
someone's smart, like you can understand and appreciate. It's intended
to make you feel good and smart and special and
makes you think that because you are the one who
has all this information, everyone else is dumb, like they
don't know what you know because you did your own research,
because you listen to the guy who's trying to sell
you boner pills and who like clearly has a very

(51:26):
very clear bias and their position, and who was trying
to milk you for cash, and like that's the guy
you're gonna trust now, I guess, because he tells you
you're smart and tells you that you now get to
know things that only people who trust him, get to know.
I mean, the Wizard of Oz is jealous with rage
that he cannot pull off that level of charlatan sure

(51:48):
and his man behind the curtain nonsense. But anyway, you
might even be wondering, like how can it be both
snob appeal and plain folk appeal? And like that's kind
of the thing about propaganda is it doesn't need to
make sense. You can do counter like things that would
you would expect to run counter to one another, side
by side, and they'll still work. Yeah, Like they'll still
work on the same people. So like you tell someone that,

(52:10):
like they should believe it because they're playing folk, just
like this guy who believes it. But also they should
believe it because they're special and smart and snobby and
this is only for them. Yeah, and there's like all
of those things sound great. I feel wonderful. I accept.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Let's talk about plain folk in snob appeal together and
how it might work. Like, let's say with an organization
that allegedly uses this, which would be scientology. And I
say allegedly because you know they're loggious, so allegedly, so
what they might do is this they create a hierarchy
that you have to pay more money into, more money
into so that you can get clear, right, And then

(52:45):
they'll have somebody who is playing folk who has worked
their way up and said this was good for me.
I was an everyday Joe, and so I work through
all this. You are an everyday Joe, and this will
be good for you too. And as you move through this,
you'll get more information and you'll get clothes sort of
being clear, and you'll do this like they kind of
like you can see how they can employ both of
those together to make that like this like package of

(53:07):
I'm a normal person. I'm a regular person and I
could benefit from having more information, and you could see
how they could collaborate to create this space where now
you're moving up levels and getting clearer and clearer and
clearer every day, allegedly.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
Allegedly, that is an exquisite example of what they allegedly
do over there.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
All right, So let's talk about repetition as another example.
So research shows that the more often we hear contacts
some piece of information, the more we believe, and even
when we know it's unreliable, we start to recognize it
as familiar, which makes us start to accept it as true.
Are partially true. Sometimes it's just a matter of just
saying the same thing over and over and over and
over again, in clear enough language and with enough emotion

(53:52):
that it elicits enough emotion in you that you could
eventually buy into it, and specifically good buy into it
knowing that it's not true.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
Yeah, they go in saying like, crime is the worst
it's ever been. We have to deal with this. All
available data, however you want to slice it and measure it,
show that crime is down the lowest levels it's ever been.
But they come in and they just keep saying over
and over again, crime is terrible, the worst it's ever been.
And eventually you just start to accept that narrative, Like
even if you know the data show that that's wrong,

(54:24):
you just start to accept, like crime must be they
must be bad. It must at least be worse than
they're saying, you know, yeah, and therefore it like the
repetition piece is extremely important and like partially you know,
really subtle messages very much depend on repetition, and just
have you hear bits and pieces over and over again.
And I think like another one is like the nicknames
thing falls into this. It's like constantly using that nickname,

(54:44):
constantly using those those yeah, those name calling things just
helps it stay in the consciousness. It just helps it
like reiterate and establish itself as the way to think
about it. It's like when you have to talk about
someone and start by discussing seeing their race if they're
not a white person, Like that doesn't have anything to
do with their identity in terms of like who they

(55:05):
are as a person or what they bring to the
table behaviorally, or their skills or anything. But for some
reason we feel the need to specify someone's race or
ethnicity when talking about them if they're a non white person.
This happens so much in like various discussions, and it's
just sort of like that is a kind of technique
that I think that white supremacists have long leaned on

(55:26):
as a way to other those groups of people by saying,
like you are either white and we don't have to
say that you're white because that is the default, or
you are wrong and therefore you belong to some group
that we need to specify is not the correct one, right,
And so like that repetition is like sneaky and subtle,
but they it depends on it to be effective.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
All right, there are a couple more to go over
here that we're going to get into, and they're fairly quick,
and then we still have a boatload of content after that.
So let's first play some ads and then we'll get
to those things and then discuss where we're going from here.

(56:08):
All right, we're back. So the last two sort of
strategies that I think are commonly employed in the not
I think these are strategies that are commonly employed by
people who are using propaganda to try and influence you.
One of them is called loaded language, and this is
just using specific words in the names of things to
make them sound more appealing. And it's not the same

(56:28):
as like stacking the deck in. It's more like choosing
words that have the intended effect. So you take terms
like pro life or pro choice. Both of those are
loaded with emotional meaning and implications for morality, right Like,
one of them is not anti life, one of them
is not anti choice. They're both pro and they're both

(56:51):
things that are pro good things, right like, those are
the way that they're framed. And you know, again trying
to sort of espouse here than the fact that this
is a double sided coin, like everybody's doing this. I'm
both on all sides of the issue that as they're
described and enlisted, and I do think like this is
so so common in the current administration to try and

(57:14):
downplayer brush things off, to say like this is a
tremendous victory. No one has seen anything like it ever before.
And that's kind of the exaggeration piece. That's a little
bit different. But like calling something the great, big beautiful bill,
the great Yeah, there you go, the great big beautiful bill,
that's a really good example. Is like there's so many
words in there that are intended to sort of evoke
a positive emotion. Essentially, it's just a huge ominimus spending

(57:36):
package that, like the government funds regularly as part of
their job in Congress. Usually it has a lot of
decision making and choice that went into it. In this
particular case, it was just Project twenty twenty five that
was green lit by the people who were like, yes,
let's have a king. There was a really common phrase
that was being tossed around a lot, particularly during the campaign.
Is still being used, but just not as much. That

(57:57):
was like migrant crime. That's not a thing, but it's
just specifically designed to evoke this idea of associating those
things together, like migrant being essentially in this case a
bad word, crime obviously being a word that we don't like.
And there's like common, constantly, constantly these allusions to immigrants

(58:18):
as criminals. And they even went so far as to
say things like they campaigned on We're going to get
rid of the violent criminal immigrants. There's so many violent
criminal immigrants. And then they get in and they start
just supporting everybody, and they say, like their existence in
this country is illegal, therefore the criminals. So now the

(58:40):
violent part is gone, but they've left criminal. And like,
it doesn't matter what you have done, it is just
you are here as a person who is non white,
therefore criminal. Therefore get out sure or jailed in a
giant swamp in Florida or like since to a country
you've never been to. Then just left right, right, So,

(59:02):
like those are the kinds of like language that that
is used to try and gussie it up and make
it look good.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
Yeah, And the last tactic that we're going to talk
about today is something called weasel words, which is just
I think a really great label for this, right, and
this is a strategy for kind of like saying the
thing that you mean while saying you don't mean it.
Al Franken actually, many years ago, Senator al Franken I
had written this book and he used this phrase also
called kidding on the square, which was like the idea

(59:30):
that you're joking, but you're saying something that you really mean,
but you're saying it as a joke. Like so you're like,
you know, you're saying like, oh, you know, oh my god,
that baby is so ugly. You know what I'm saying
the like you actually mean the baby's ugly, but you're
pretending like you don't mean the baby's ugly because you're
just sure. And so like that's kind of this. It's
kind of a similar thing. So like weazel words would
be like if I were to say something like I'm
not saying Trump is a racist, sexist, incompetent Nazi and

(59:52):
a rapist, but you know, it's a way for me
to say the exact thing while claiming I'm not saying it.
The words are in your mind now Trump is a racist, sexist,
incompetent Nazi, and rapist. Oh I guess maybe it worked,
Like that's what it is, right, Well, I just use
weasel words or that's fact, but like that's you could
see how somebody could use that and turn that into

(01:00:12):
like how people can kind of like get away with
saying things. And actually, like weasel words are often used
in like legal spaces.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
Yes, very much.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
So like people will go, they'll go like, oh, I
didn't say that, I said that they weren't blah blah
blah blah blah. But you're creating these relations between these
words and this person by kind of using it and
kind of like weaseling your way into saying the thing
that you didn't that you're not actually saying.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
Yeah, like I'm not saying that all this whole group
of people are horrible, terrible people. I'm like that is
those are the words that just left your mouth, though
that is exactly like you're saying the thing. Yeah, by
saying you're not saying the thing. So it's it is
just to get those words out there and have people
hear them and and you know, have that be part
of the narrative and part of the description. But as

(01:00:57):
you said, sort of remove your self from the legal
liability of that statement, if you will. Yeah, exactly, all right,
we have so much to get into here lake we
need to, I think, unpack some of the examples of
where this has happened, and we also need to start
getting into the strategies of what can be done about it.
So I think it makes sense to go ahead and
separate here into a part two, and then we will

(01:01:20):
talk about those specific examples and the actions that we
can take to try and at least prevent ourselves from
being sucked into as many of these traps as exist.
I do think there is a way to mostly avoid propaganda,
but it is kind of an arms race, like the
propagandists are trying to find the ways that we're trying

(01:01:40):
to avoid them so that they can overcome those obstacles
and then be persuasive again. So we'll do what we
can now. This will probably be something we'll have to
revisit in a few years and give updated information on,
but I think it makes sense to go ahead and
split this up here, otherwise this will be a very
very very very long discussion.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Yeah, I agree. I think this will give some folks
to think about to as we go into what we
can do about it, so that maybe, like you know,
some homework that we can give folks as they leave.
This is just thinking about how you can start identifying
some of those strategies that we mentioned, yeah, and start
paying attention to see if you start noticing them at
the very least, because I mean that might be a
fun little activity as we go forward.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
Yeah, Yeah, I think be on the lookout for those
things that we just mentioned, like see where you see
this happening, because it's kind of all around you. Like,
as I said, I think it's useful to draw a
distinction between like advertising and propaganda. I think you will
see elements of this in some advertising, sure, and I
think you'll definitely be able to see this in politics
and really any kind of sort of social movement campaign

(01:02:42):
one way or another. And I think, as we'll get
into it can be used for both good and ill
when we'll explain that more later, but the point being that,
like just because this propaganda doesn't necessarily mean that it's
doing harm. But I do think the tactics of propaganda
are specific designed to be disingenuous, to hook you and

(01:03:03):
to work against your interest. And that's kind of like,
in my mind, the definition of what propaganda is just
to convince you to behave in a way that is
against your own interests. Yeah, and so I think that's
where I'm sort of coming from on it. But I
think you could take a broader view and say that
there are versions of it where it actually does work
in your favor. It's just like you wouldn't have done
this voluntarily, but now you're sort of being convinced to

(01:03:24):
do it. It's for your own good, Like you do
actually benefit from this, but you wouldn't have otherwise conceded
to it if it hadn't been sort of sold to
you in that way, if you will.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Right exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
But anyway, I think that's already getting too far into
the next part of the topic that we wanted to
save for next time, So we will probably just go
ahead and wrap this one up here, which means we
are going to end this episode of the way that
we end our episodes. We have a piece of listener mail,
we have some recommendations, and we have some credits to
get through. Listener mails are super fun. We enjoy reading them,

(01:03:54):
we enjoy you sending them to us. We think you
enjoy hearing them. And then recommendations, in case you are
not familar with that term, are where we say things
that we think that you could or would want to
check out or just things that we found joy in
and we think maybe if you like the things we like,
you'll like this too. And if not, then don't. That's fine.
It's just a recommendation, So take it or leave it.
That's fine, but perfect. So first let's get into the credits. First,

(01:04:17):
I would like to thank you all for listening. We
hope that you enjoyed what you heard in this episode
today and that you took the time to join us
and hear what is going on in the sort of
space of psychological warfare that we seem to find ourselves
a little bit. Yeah, and if you do enjoy what
you hear today and you're thinking I would love to
support them, there are many ways you can do that,
the non financial ways, Like if you're like I do

(01:04:39):
like them, I want to support them, but I'm not
going to kick any money over there. Totally get it.
It's tough out there. People got to do what they
got to do that's best for them. Sure, if you
want to go that route, you can just leave us
a rating. Just go in there. If you like what
we're doing, select five stars. That just helps us be
in the algorithm so we show up more in people's
feedes is like a suggested podcast that sort of thing. Right,
You can also go on tell a friend, you can

(01:05:00):
if you're feeling particularly ambitious, leave us a review. You
can just start grabbing people's phones and subscribing to us
and whatever audio feed they tend to use the most
often most often, and that is also helpful too, and subscribe.
Make sure that you are getting these podcasts in your
feed every week, so that we get to be in
your ears and show up for you and you get
to hear all the cool stuff that we're talking about.

(01:05:21):
But if you do want to go to the financial route,
that definitely helps us out and we appreciate it. You
can pick up some merch from our merch store. You
can go over and join us on Patreon, and if
you do that, you get sort of all kinds of
extra goodies, cause it's like a commitment, you know, it's
a thing that you do and we appreciate it, and
so we want to recognize the sacrifice that is being
made for people who have made such a generous contribution.

(01:05:42):
And so you'll get add free content, behind the scenes stuff,
bonus episodes occasionally all that kind of stuff. Mostly you
get a lot of the sort of behind the scenes
extra goodies as well as early episodes and add free content.
And at the end of each of our discussions, I
will read the list of names of people who have
been so generous and their wonderful contributions that help us
do what we do. So I like to say a

(01:06:02):
huge shout out and thank you too, Mike m Megan,
Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley, Kiara and Charlie.
Thank you all so so so much.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
Your beautiful people and we adore you.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
And of course thank you to my team of people.
I need them to do this podcast. So writing in
fact checking from Shane and myself, thank you for recording
with me today, Shane, thank you for having me. Our
social media coordinator is Emma Wilson. She makes all kinds
of cool reels and stuff like this. She's out there
doing the social media thing, which is very helpful. And
then the person who puts all of this noise together
and makes it turn into a podcast is Justin, who

(01:06:36):
is just endlessly talented at this and is so so
good and so handsome and so handsome. Indeed, hard to
tell through an audio medium, but you just have to
take our word on it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
If you heard his voice, you go, oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
Yeah, quite quite the guy buttery voice and all the things.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (01:06:52):
I think that is what I have to say about
the credits before we get into our listener mail. Is
there anything that I am missing or that you would
like to add before we get to the sort of
more fun things that we do.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
No, I think that covers it for now.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
Let's have some fun. Let's start with some listener mail.
This comes from someone who I hope I don't butch this.
I'm sorry I did not see a pronunciation guide, but
it looks like Kadija, they write regarding fast fashion. Sorry,
before I get into what they said, we hadn't mentioned
during the holidays. It was some holiday it was like

(01:07:25):
Welsh rare Bit day and I didn't know what that was,
so they wrote in to let us know. They said,
Welsh rarebit is super yummy, sharp cheese mustard sauce you
put on toast.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
HM.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
Very helpful. Thank you for that. Yeah, I would not
have guessed that, but that's awesome And.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
There are no clues in that statement like that would
have told me that that was it was a spread
or sauce or cheesy or mustardy, but.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
That all sounds good. Those are all things I like anyway. Yeah,
so Welsh rarebit go out and celebrate. They went on
to say, PS took my children to see the Gaslight
Anthem a few weeks back, and the band gave my
daughter a super sweet I'm head signed by the band
with teenage mutant ninja turtles eating pizza. So I was.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:07):
Yeah, very fun. I think that was probably somewhat in
response to the episode we did on the history of
punk music, The Very Fun. I actually had not heard
of Gaslight Anthem, but Shane had. I went and checked
them out and they're very good. So a great recommendation
as well.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
Yeah, love love, love, love love that band, love all
their output. For those of you who've never listened to
on bonus recommendation, go listen to literally anything they put out.
But fifty nine Sound is a good place to start,
and so is American slang if you want to give
those a listen.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
Well, thank you so much for writing in Kadija, and
I really hope that I got your name somewhat right.
But that is a thing that we like to do
is have people write into us and then we share
the fun things that they have to say. And if
you would like to write into us, you can do
so you emails directly at info at WWDWWD podcast dot com.
You can also reach out to us on the social
media platforms and engage with us. We totally love constructive criticism.

(01:08:56):
We also love people sharing their personal stories or adding
pieces of information to topics. Where we forgot something or
left something out, either intentionally or unintentionally. We're happy to
share that. So please feel for you to reach out
to us. But we're actually not done because the thing
that we always do at the end of episodes, listener
mill is here and there. We do it. Sometimes it
can be fun. We enjoy it. But the thing we

(01:09:17):
always do is recommend some stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):
So that's true.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
Cue the music.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
We recommendations. So I'm gonna recommend a book. I love books.
If you didn't know that, I am a Stephen King
will call me a constant reader. True, I started a
series that was recommended to me. You know, I'm always
hesitant to start a series because I'm always worried that
I'm gonna get sucked in or I'm gonna hate the
first book and then I'm not gonna get sucked in.
I gotta say though, this one totally pulled me in.

(01:09:49):
And the book is called Wool by Hugh Howie. Wool
is part of the Silo series. It's a three book
series trilogy, if you will, pretty incredible. So I I'm
not gonna spoil too much, but I will say that
the book, it takes place in an underground silo full
of humans and kind of like, uh like the experiences

(01:10:11):
of those folks inside of an underground silo who have
never been outside. And I think that's probably the best
way to lead you into it, because I don't if
I tell you more, it's gonna it's gonna. It's just
because I'll talk about it all day. I just absolutely
loved it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:24):
There's too much great stuff to discover in there, it
really is.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
And it's fast paced. It's it's like one of those
things where it like a lot of things happen really rapidly. Uh.
Just really great commentary on the human condition and systems
at large, and just a really really great read. So
strong recommend Wool by Hugh Howie.

Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
I think a lot of us could generally think of
like books that feel like or stories or movies or
TV shows where it's like it feels like they padded
out content to make it longer. This feels like it
maybe could have been padded out because it moves so quickly,
like yeah, it is at a very very rapid pace
the entire book, like just one thing to the next.

(01:11:04):
There is no downtime, is just churning through the action
really truly. Yeah, super engaging. I recommended this, I think
a while back, or at least I know I've recommended
it to several people. But yeah, I'm on the second
book in this, in the trilogy, and there's a TV
show corresponding to this on Apple TV Plus. It's called Silo,
and it also is absolutely fantastic, just truly spectacular TV

(01:11:26):
and a very faithful adaptation of the book. And actually
it kind of does elaborate on aspects of the book
that are not in the book, putting in sort of
elongated versions of scenes that's how, which actually plays really well.
So it is a spectacularly well done show.

Speaker 2 (01:11:40):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
Cool, all right, that's well. The first book in a
trilogy called the Silent Trilogy by author Hugh Howie, I'm
recommending a TV show. I've recommended this TV show before,
but they just at the time of this recording released
their fourth and final season of the series. The TV
show is called Upload. This is an Amazon Prime TV show.

(01:12:03):
The basic premise is that people when they are about
to die or are dying, can have their consciousness uploaded
to a digital world. And that is largely a commentary
on sort of capitalism, because they have to pay for
regular data fees to continue to engage in that world,
and they like, there are some people who only have

(01:12:25):
like two gigs of data or something like that, and
so they can't even experience strong emotions or they'll use
up all their data. They like can't read or that
uses up data. So they just kind of move around
it's slow paced to try and avoid using up their data.
Otherwise they freeze until the next month and they get
their two gig allotment back. But there's all kinds of
upgrade packages and you can spend all this money while
you're in this dead space to buy extra perks and

(01:12:48):
benefits like simulated foods you've never tried before, experiences you've
never done, and so you kind of get just to
live in this virtual digital world. But they do have
to completely destroy your head to bring you into this world.
This all happens like episode one, like the fifteen minutes
an episode one, by the way, So they basically cut

(01:13:09):
your head off. Well, it disintegrates your head and that
uploads your mind to this server, where then you can
only exist as a version of yourself in the server.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
Anyway, yeah, wild premise. The fourth season is really short.
It's only four episodes. Each of them are only like
forty five minutes long or less, and it does have
a It does not necessarily end on a super happy note,
but I think it ends in a way that feels
complete and I guess satisfine.

Speaker 2 (01:13:39):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:13:40):
Yeah, So anyway, that's upload season four. If you haven't
watched any of it, I recommend the whole show is
really really good. Same creator as one of the creators
of the US version of the Office, Greg Daniels. Okay, yeah,
so there are quite a bit. There are several moments
of humor. There are several moments of like just commentary
that is very close to home and kind of sad.
One thing they introduced that's just sort of a side

(01:14:01):
gag that I'm just gonna spoil here. They introduce something
called Gerbil cabs, I think the dribbles. These are cabs
that are driven by trained rodents and they have like
a squeak to speech feature where you can talk to
them as they're driving, but they drive the cars for you,
and they work for like food.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
That's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
It's a very funny side gag because they're like briefly
in it for a moment, but there it's very cute
and very funny that there are these Durbils that are
driving cabs around. So I love that.

Speaker 2 (01:14:33):
That brings me such joy.

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
Yeah. So, and I think it's supposed to take place
like forty or fifty years in the future of like
from now or something, but it's like the not too
distant future. Technology is sure evolved a bit. So anyway,
So that's an upload season four on Amazon Prime and
then the book trilogy Wool by Hugh Howie. And that
was a long time for us. Did you recommendations? I
feelink we spent some time on that. We're really dug into.

Speaker 2 (01:14:56):
Hey, that's okay, we're allowed to.

Speaker 1 (01:14:58):
It's our podcast, it is it is. I hope that
you enjoyed what you heard today. I think we've said
all the things we need to say, so come back
for part two of this because that's why we're really
going to dig into the examples and again get into
the like what can we actually do about this? How
can you guard against those techniques that are used by
propagandasts to influence you? And although you can sort of

(01:15:19):
also your homework today is also to use the descriptions
that we gave you about those techniques to try and
identify them more they're out there, That alone will help that. Like,
that's part of the strategy of guarding against it, is
just knowing what to look for. Yeah, all right, I
think that's what I have to say. Is there anything
you like to add before we wrap up today?

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):
Then no, I think that covers it for this one.
Perfect see you next time. This is Abraham and this
is Shane.

Speaker 1 (01:15:41):
We're out.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
Bye.

Speaker 1 (01:15:43):
You've been listening to Why We Do what we do.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and
we hope you have an awesome day.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Propaganda: How You are Being Tricked pt. 1