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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month

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How to shatter the class solidarity of the ruling class

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me WEDNESDAY (Apr 11) at UCLA, then Chicago (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Audre Lorde counsels us that "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," while MLK said "the law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me." Somewhere between replacing the system and using the system lies a pragmatic – if easily derailed – course.

Lorde is telling us that a rotten system can't be redeemed by using its own chosen reform mechanisms. King's telling us that unless we live, we can't fight – so anything within the system that makes it easier for your comrades to fight on can hasten the end of the system.

Take the problems of journalism. One old model of journalism funding involved wealthy newspaper families profiting handsomely by selling local appliance store owners the right to reach the townspeople who wanted to read sports-scores. These families expressed their patrician love of their town by peeling off some of those profits to pay reporters to sit through municipal council meetings or even travel overseas and get shot at.

In retrospect, this wasn't ever going to be a stable arrangement. It relied on both the inconstant generosity of newspaper barons and the absence of a superior way to show washing-machine ads to people who might want to buy washing machines. Neither of these were good long-term bets. Not only were newspaper barons easily distracted from their sense of patrician duty (especially when their own power was called into question), but there were lots of better ways to connect buyers and sellers lurking in potentia.

All of this was grossly exacerbated by tech monopolies. Tech barons aren't smarter or more evil than newspaper barons, but they have better tools, and so now they take 51 cents out of every ad dollar and 30 cents out of ever subscriber dollar and they refuse to deliver the news to users who explicitly requested it, unless the news company pays them a bribe to "boost" their posts:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

The news is important, and people sign up to make, digest, and discuss the news for many non-economic reasons, which means that the news continues to struggle along, despite all the economic impediments and the vulture capitalists and tech monopolists who fight one another for which one will get to take the biggest bite out of the press. We've got outstanding nonprofit news outlets like Propublica, journalist-owned outlets like 404 Media, and crowdfunded reporters like Molly White (and winner-take-all outlets like the New York Times).

But as Hamilton Nolan points out, "that pot of money…is only large enough to produce a small fraction of the journalism that was being produced in past generations":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/what-will-replace-advertising-revenue

For Nolan, "public funding of journalism is the only way to fix this…If we accept that journalism is not just a business or a form of entertainment but a public good, then funding it with public money makes perfect sense":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/public-funding-of-journalism-is-the

Having grown up in Canada – under the CBC – and then lived for a quarter of my life in the UK – under the BBC – I am very enthusiastic about Nolan's solution. There are obvious problems with publicly funded journalism, like the politicization of news coverage:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/24/panel-approving-richard-sharp-as-bbc-chair-included-tory-party-donor

And the transformation of the funding into a cheap political football:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-defund-cbc-change-law-1.6810434

But the worst version of those problems is still better than the best version of the private-equity-funded model of news production.

But Nolan notes the emergence of a new form of hedge fund news, one that is awfully promising, and also terribly fraught: Hunterbrook Media, an investigative news outlet owned by short-sellers who pay journalists to research and publish damning reports on companies they hold a short position on:

https://hntrbrk.com/

For those of you who are blissfully distant from the machinations of the financial markets, "short selling" is a wager that a company's stock price will go down. A gambler who takes a short position on a company's stock can make a lot of money if the company stumbles or fails altogether (but if the company does well, the short can suffer literally unlimited losses).

Shorts have historically paid analysts to dig into companies and uncover the sins hidden on their balance-sheets, but as Matt Levine points out, journalists work for a fraction of the price of analysts and are at least as good at uncovering dirt as MBAs are:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-02/a-hedge-fund-that-s-also-a-newspaper

What's more, shorts who discover dirt on a company still need to convince journalists to publicize their findings and trigger the sell-off that makes their short position pay off. Shorts who own a muckraking journalistic operation can skip this step: they are the journalists.

There's a way in which this is sheer genius. Well-funded shorts who don't care about the news per se can still be motivated into funding freely available, high-quality investigative journalism about corporate malfeasance (notoriously, one of the least attractive forms of journalism for advertisers). They can pay journalists top dollar – even bid against each other for the most talented journalists – and supply them with all the tools they need to ply their trade. A short won't ever try the kind of bullshit the owners of Vice pulled, paying themselves millions while their journalists lose access to Lexisnexis or the PACER database:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/24/anti-posse/#when-you-absolutely-positively-dont-give-a-solitary-single-fuck

The shorts whose journalists are best equipped stand to make the most money. What's not to like?

Well, the issue here is whether the ruling class's sense of solidarity is stronger than its greed. The wealthy have historically oscillated between real solidarity (think of the ultrawealthy lobbying to support bipartisan votes for tax cuts and bailouts) and "war of all against all" (as when wealthy colonizers dragged their countries into WWI after the supply of countries to steal ran out).

After all, the reason companies engage in the scams that shorts reveal is that they are profitable. "Behind every great fortune is a great crime," and that's just great. You don't win the game when you get into heaven, you win it when you get into the Forbes Rich List.

Take monopolies: investors like the upside of backing an upstart company that gobbles up some staid industry's margins – Amazon vs publishing, say, or Uber vs taxis. But while there's a lot of upside in that move, there's also a lot of risk: most companies that set out to "disrupt" an industry sink, taking their investors' capital down with them.

Contrast that with monopolies: backing a company that merges with its rivals and buys every small company that might someday grow large is a sure thing. Shriven of "wasteful competition," a company can lower quality, raise prices, capture its regulators, screw its workers and suppliers and laugh all the way to Davos. A big enough company can ignore the complaints of those workers, customers and regulators. They're not just too big to fail. They're not just too big to jail. They're too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Would-be monopolists are stuck in a high-stakes Prisoner's Dilemma. If they cooperate, they can screw over everyone else and get unimaginably rich. But if one party defects, they can raid the monopolist's margins, short its stock, and snitch to its regulators.

It's true that there's a clear incentive for hedge-fund managers to fund investigative journalism into other hedge-fund managers' portfolio companies. But it would be even more profitable for both of those hedgies to join forces and collude to screw the rest of us over. So long as they mistrust each other, we might see some benefit from that adversarial relationship. But the point of the 0.1% is that there aren't very many of them. The Aspen Institute can rent a hall that will hold an appreciable fraction of that crowd. They buy their private jets and bespoke suits and powdered rhino horn from the same exclusive sellers. Their kids go to the same elite schools. They know each other, and they have every opportunity to get drunk together at a charity ball or a society wedding and cook up a plan to join forces.

This is the problem at the core of "mechanism design" grounded in "rational self-interest." If you try to create a system where people do the right thing because they're selfish assholes, you normalize being a selfish asshole. Eventually, the selfish assholes form a cozy little League of Selfish Assholes and turn on the rest of us.

Appeals to morality don't work on unethical people, but appeals to immorality crowds out ethics. Take the ancient split between "free software" (software that is designed to maximize the freedom of the people who use it) and "open source software" (identical to free software, but promoted as a better way to make robust code through transparency and peer review).

Over the years, open source – an appeal to your own selfish need for better code – triumphed over free software, and its appeal to the ethics of a world of "software freedom." But it turns out that while the difference between "open" and "free" was once mere semantics, it's fully possible to decouple the two. Today, we have lots of "open source": you can see the code that Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook uses, and even contribute your labor to it for free. But you can't actually decide how the software you write works, because it all takes a loop through Google, Microsoft, Apple or Facebook's servers, and only those trillion-dollar tech monopolists have the software freedom to determine how those servers work:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/04/which-side-are-you-on/#tivoization-and-beyond

That's ruling class solidarity. The Big Tech firms have hidden a myriad of sins beneath their bafflegab and balance-sheets. These (as yet) undiscovered scams constitute a "bezzle," which JK Galbraith defined as "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it."

The purpose of Hunterbrook is to discover and destroy bezzles, hastening the moment of realization that the wealth we all feel in a world of seemingly orderly technology is really an illusion. Hunterbrook certainly has its pick of bezzles to choose from, because we are living in a Golden Age of the Bezzle.

Which is why I titled my new novel The Bezzle. It's a tale of high-tech finance scams, starring my two-fisted forensic accountant Marty Hench, and in this volume, Hench is called upon to unwind a predatory prison-tech scam that victimizes the most vulnerable people in America – our army of prisoners – and their families:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

The scheme I fictionalize in The Bezzle is very real. Prison-tech monopolists like Securus and Viapath bribe prison officials to abolish calls, in-person visits, mail and parcels, then they supply prisoners with "free" tablets where they pay hugely inflated rates to receive mail, speak to their families, and access ebooks, distance education and other electronic media:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

But a group of activists have cornered these high-tech predators, run them to ground and driven them to the brink of extinction, and they've done it using "the master's tools" – with appeals to regulators and the finance sector itself.

Writing for The Appeal, Dana Floberg and Morgan Duckett describe the campaign they waged with Worth Rises to bankrupt the prison-tech sector:

https://theappeal.org/securus-bankruptcy-prison-telecom-industry/

Here's the headline figure: Securus is $1.8 billion in debt, and it has eight months to find a financier or it will go bust. What's more, all the creditors it might reasonably approach have rejected its overtures, and its bonds have been downrated to junk status. It's a dead duck.

Even better is how this happened. Securus's debt problems started with its acquisition, a leveraged buyout by Platinum Equity, who borrowed heavily against the firm and then looted it with bogus "management fees" that meant that the debt continued to grow, despite Securus's $700m in annual revenue from America's prisoners. Platinum was just the last in a long line of PE companies that loaded up Securus with debt and merged it with its competitors, who were also mortgaged to make profits for other private equity funds.

For years, Securus and Platinum were able to service their debt and roll it over when it came due. But after Worth Rises got NYC to pass a law making jail calls free, creditors started to back away from Securus. It's one thing for Securus to charge $18 for a local call from a prison when it's splitting the money with the city jail system. But when that $18 needs to be paid by the city, they're going to demand much lower prices. To make things worse for Securus, prison reformers got similar laws passed in San Francisco and in Connecticut.

Securus tried to outrun its problems by gobbling up one of its major rivals, Icsolutions, but Worth Rises and its coalition convinced regulators at the FCC to block the merger. Securus abandoned the deal:

https://worthrises.org/blogpost/securusmerger

Then, Worth Rises targeted Platinum Equity, going after the pension funds and other investors whose capital Platinum used to keep Securus going. The massive negative press campaign led to eight-figure disinvestments:

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-05/la-fi-tom-gores-securus-prison-phone-mass-incarceration

Now, Securus's debt became "distressed," trading at $0.47 on the dollar. A brief, covid-fueled reprieve gave Securus a temporary lifeline, as prisoners' families were barred from in-person visits and had to pay Securus's rates to talk to their incarcerated loved ones. But after lockdown, Securus's troubles picked up right where they left off.

They targeted Platinum's founder, Tom Gores, who papered over his bloody fortune by styling himself as a philanthropist and sports-team owner. After a campaign by Worth Rises and Color of Change, Gores was kicked off the Los Angeles County Museum of Art board. When Gores tried to flip Securus to a SPAC – the same scam Trump pulled with Truth Social – the negative publicity about Securus's unsound morals and financials killed the deal:

https://twitter.com/WorthRises/status/1578034977828384769

Meanwhile, more states and cities are making prisoners' communications free, further worsening Securus's finances:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Congress passed the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, giving the FCC the power to regulate the price of federal prisoners' communications. Securus's debt prices tumbled further:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

Securus's debts were coming due: it owes $1.3b in 2024, and hundreds of millions more in 2025. Platinum has promised a $400m cash infusion, but that didn't sway S&P Global, a bond-rating agency that re-rated Securus's bonds as "CCC" (compare with "AAA"). Moody's concurred. Now, Securus is stuck selling junk-bonds:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

The company's creditors have given Securus an eight-month runway to find a new lender before they force it into bankruptcy. The company's debt is trading at $0.08 on the dollar.

Securus's major competitor is Viapath (prison tech is a duopoly). Viapath is also debt-burdened and desperate, thanks to a parallel campaign by Worth Rises, and has tried all of Securus's tricks, and failed:

https://pestakeholder.org/news/american-securities-fails-to-sell-prison-telecom-company-viapath/

Viapath's debts are due next year, and if Securus tanks, no one in their right mind will give Viapath a dime. They're the walking dead.

Worth Rise's brilliant guerrilla warfare against prison-tech and its private equity backers are a master class in using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house. The finance sector isn't a friend of justice or working people, but sometimes it can be used tactically against financialization itself. To paraphrase MLK, "finance can't make a corporation love you, but it can stop a corporation from destroying you."

Yes, the ruling class finds solidarity at the most unexpected moments, and yes, it's easy for appeals to greed to institutionalize greediness. But whether it's funding unbezzling journalism through short selling, or freeing prisons by brandishing their cooked balance-sheets in the faces of bond-rating agencies, there's a lot of good we can do on the way to dismantling the system.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/08/money-talks/#bullshit-walks

Image: KMJ (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boerse_01_KMJ.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

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potato-frend-blog · 3 days

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Different Types of Propaganda: Part 1

Hello chuckle fucks of Tumblr, it's clear to me that you no fucking clue what propaganda is or how to spot it.

So 1st is what is propaganda?

Definition of propaganda:

the spreading of ideas, information, or rumors to help or injure an institution, a cause, or a person ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one cause or to damage an opposing cause https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/propaganda

dissemination of information—facts, arguments, rumors, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion. It is often conveyed through mass media. https://www.britannica.com/topic/propaganda

information, ideas, opinions, or images, often only giving one part of an argument, that are broadcast, published, or in some other way spread to influence people's opinions https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/propaganda

Propaganda Techniques Explained

This video does a good job of summarizing the different techniques

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sybo484veJY (you have to copy the link because the video doesn't allow playback.)

Agenda Setting:

Agenda: a secret aim or reason for doing something. (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/agenda?q=Agenda)

A situation where critics perceive inexplicit political motives (or an institutional tendency to overlook underprivileged perspectives) to lie behind the choice of topics covered (e.g. in the news, current affairs, and documentaries), their relative importance (inferred from sequence and the relative amounts of space or time devoted to them), how they are presented, and what issues are backgrounded or excluded (see also selective representation). Media agendas are often set by ‘authoritative sources’ in government and industry upon which news organizations rely. The primary concern is that those in power thus call attention to issues that suit their agendas and distract attention from those that undermine them. It is usually argued that this influences or determines the terms and scope of public debate—not by telling people what to think but by telling them what to think about and controlling the salience for them of particular issues. (https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095355782)

Agenda setting means the "ability [of the news media] to influence the importance placed on the topics of the public agenda". If a news item is covered frequently and prominently, the audience will regard the issue as more important. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques#:~:text=Bandwagon%20and%20%22inevitable%2Dvictory%22,the%20road%20to%20certain%20victory)

(https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Agenda-Setting-Theory-Model_fig1_307536314)

Fear Appeal:

A psychological and rhetorical strategy in persuasive communication such as advertising that seeks to evoke a response of fear or anxiety in the audience by showing them an undesirable outcome that they can avoid by heeding the warning. This strategy is intended to increase the effectiveness of the message and it is commonly used in health and safety campaigns, such as those warning motorists not to drink and drive. (https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095812722?p=emailAWHA3YEy2eMug&d=/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095812722)

For example, fear can be used to drive votes toward a particular candidate or party—a method that relies on our natural instinct to find safety in numbers. And, a meta-analysis conducted by Albarracin and her colleagues found that messages with fear are nearly twice as effective as messages without fear (Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 141, No. 6, 2015). (https://www.apa.org/news/apa/2020/fear-motivator-elections)

(https://thevisualcommunicationguy.com/2017/09/14/the-fear-appeal-advertising/)

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_Damage)

Appeal to Prejudice

Prejudice: an unfair and unreasonable opinion or feeling, especially when formed without enough thought or knowledge. (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/prejudice)

The one who makes the appeal to prejudice attempts to persuade you to act or feel in a certain way by associating his person, product or proposal with a certain one or more of your prejudices, positive or negative – a prejudice being a prejudgment wrapped in emotion and having a history. Not only does he rekindle your prejudice, he also arouses in you warm feelings toward the one (himself) who apparently shares your prejudice. And so it becomes much easier to make you believe or buy whatever he has to offer. (https://agloa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019PropGuidelinesSecD.pdf)

Using loaded or emotive terms to attach value or moral goodness to believing the proposition. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques#:~:text=Bandwagon%20and%20%22inevitable%2Dvictory%22,the%20road%20to%20certain%20victory)

Der ewige Jude, a pseudo-documentary directed by Fritz Hippler and influenced by German Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, featured scenes of Jews in Warsaw and Lodz ghettos. The film was popular in Germany and occupied Europe, with notorious sequences comparing Jews to rats carrying contagion. The film also highlighted the alien nature of East European Jews, with "stereotypical" Polish Jews transformed into "western-looking" Jews. The film's crude characterizations and gruesome footage made it a hit with audiences, demonstrating that there was no difference between Jews in East European ghettos and those in German neighborhoods.( https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/der-ewige-jude)

Inevitable Victory + Bandwagon

Inevitable: certain to happen and unable to be avoided or prevented (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/inevitable?q=Inevitable) + Victory: an occasion when you win a game, competition, election, war, etc. or the fact that you have won. (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/victory?q=Victory) = Certain to happen and cannot to be stopped or averted occasion when you win a game, competition, election, war, etc.

Bandwagon: an activity, group, movement, etc. that has become successful or fashionable and so attracts many new people. (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/bandwagon)

An effort is made to influence you to act in a certain way by asserting or implying that that is what is popular or what the majority is doing (https://agloa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019PropGuidelinesSecD.pdf)

invites those not already on the bandwagon to join those already on the road to certain victory. Those already or at least partially on the bandwagon are reassured that staying aboard is their best course of action. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques#:~:text=Bandwagon%20and%20%22inevitable%2Dvictory%22,the%20road%20to%20certain%20victory)

(https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/the-big-question-about-donald-trumps-rise-in-the-polls)

(https://x.com/AHA_tylersgap/status/734961473265373185/photo/1)

Beautiful People

The type of propaganda that deals with famous people or depicts attractive, happy people. This suggests if people buy a product or follow a certain ideology, they too will be happy or successful. (This is used more in advertising for products, instead of political reasons.) Usually for advertising rather than political purposes, sexual arousal may also be used. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques#:~:text=Bandwagon%20and%20%22inevitable%2Dvictory%22,the%20road%20to%20certain%20victory)

depiction of attractive famous people or happy people to associate success or happiness with adherence to an idea or cause or purchase of a product. (https://www.dailywritingtips.com/50-types-of-propaganda/)

(https://quizlet.com/855901690/persuasive-techniques-flash-cards/)

Big lie

The repeated articulation of a complex of events that justify subsequent action. The descriptions of these events have elements of truth, and the "big lie" generalizations merge and eventually supplant the public's accurate perception of the underlying events. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques#:~:text=Bandwagon%20and%20%22inevitable%2Dvictory%22,the%20road%20to%20certain%20victory)

A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the truth primarily used as a political propaganda technique. The German expression was first used by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf (1925) to describe how people could be induced to believe so colossal a lie because they would not believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously". Hitler claimed that the technique had been used by Jews to blame Germany's loss in World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent nationalist political leader in the Weimar Republic. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie)

A deliberate gross distortion of the truth is used especially as a propaganda tactic. (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/big%20lie)

(https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/big-lie-looms-over-nevadas-legislative-primaries)

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_Adolf_Hitler#Mein_Kampf)

Black-and-white fallacy

Presenting only two choices, with the product or idea being propagated as the better choice. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques#Specific_techniques)

type of cognitive distortion characterized by the tendency to see things in absolutes, with no shades of grey in between. This type of thinking can manifest in various aspects of life, from relationships to work to personal beliefs. (https://www.psychowellnesscenter.com/Blog/how-does-black-and-white-thinking-affects-your-mood-and-behavior)

only two choices are given. You are either for something or against it; there is no middle ground or shades of gray. It is used to polarize issues and negate all attempts to find a common ground. (https://www.cuesta.edu/student/resources/ssc/study_guides/critical_thinking/103_think_logic_errors.html#:~:text=This%20technique%20is%20also%20called,to%20find%20a%20common%20ground)

"“Globalize the Intifada” is a phrase used by pro-Palestinian activists that calls for aggressive resistance against Israel and those who support Israel. The most prominent expressions of intifada have been through violence so this phrase is often understood by those saying and hearing it as encouraging violence against Israelis, Jews, and institutions supporting Israel. While the intent of the person saying this phrase may be different, the impact on the Jewish community remains the same."

(https://www.ajc.org/news/what-does-globalize-the-intifada-mean-and-how-can-it-lead-to-targeting-jews-with-violence)

See when people say "Globalize the Intifada" it implies that there are only two choices in the conflict. One, is the pro-Palestine side, that the aggressive resistance against Israel, and those who support it, and the pro-Israel side is the ones they are against. Without realizing that there is a peaceful option. ( The one I do not know because, one I am not a politician, and international politics is a mess. And two I do not know enough about the conflict to support a peaceful end where everyone is satisfied. )

Cherry picking

suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related and similar cases or data that may contradict that position. Cherry-picking may be committed intentionally or unintentionally. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking)

Present only evidence confirming your position, while ignoring or withholding an often more significant portion that contradicts it. (https://www.propwatch.org/category_results.php?cat_id=1&id=29&k=cherry+picking&p=propaganda.php)

Example : “CLAIM: Four recent shootings show there has been an “incredible rise” in transgender or nonbinary mass shooters in the past few years, making the group “by far the largest group committing as a percentage of the population.” Donald Trump Jr. spread the narrative widely on Twitter, claiming the supposed “incredible rise” and later saying there was a clear trend forming. Hundreds of other social media users amplified the idea. Trump Jr. did not respond to a request for comment.” THE FACTS: While specific data on transgender and nonbinary mass shooters can be hard to isolate, available information shows that the overwhelming majority of assailants in mass shootings are cisgender males. In making the claim, social media users are citing four examples over the past five years in which the assailant in a shooting identified as trans or nonbinary: the November killing of five at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado; a 2019 shooting at a Denver-area school by two shooters, one of them a trans man, that left one student dead and eight wounded; a 2018 shooting at a Maryland warehouse that left four dead, including the shooter; and the shooting Monday in Nashville. The number of mass shootings committed by those identifying as trans or nonbinary — and their ratio compared to mass shootings committed by other groups — is hard to quantify. It depends on the database used, how the act is defined, and how gender identity is recorded — for example, transgender males may statistically be counted as just men. But experts agree that the most reputable information still shows a clear pattern that cisgender males are the most likely to commit such an act of mass violence.” (https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-transgender-nashville-shooting-misinformation-cd62492d066d41e820c138256570978c)

youtube

(02:15: cherry picking definition: Biden highlights only wage growth in "the bottom 40%," while not mentioning that, due to inflation, real wages actually declined for all other income groups.) (https://www.propwatch.org/category_results.php?cat_id=1&id=29&k=cherry+picking&p=propaganda.php)

Classical conditioning

That is, if A is always present when B is present and B causes a physical reaction (e.g. disgust, pleasure), then when presented with object A in the absence of B, that same reaction will be experienced. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques#Specific_techniques)

The behavioral psychological method that systematically transfers feelings, thoughts, or dispositions through relationships. It pairs an object, event, or variable that elicits a particular natural or reflexive response (unconditioned stimulus) with a neutral one to the point that only the presence of the latter is required to induce the originally impulsive and event-specific response. This time, it’s no longer neutral but a conditioned stimulus. (https://www.thecable.ng/classical-conditioning-potent-political-strategy/)

(https://sites.psu.edu/intropsychf19grp7/2019/11/15/classical-conditioning-puppy-training/)

youtube

As you can see, the food products in both these ads have been depicted as mouth-watering and delicious, and are designed to cause consumers to feel hungry. (https://www.advergize.com/marketing/classical-conditioning-examples-in-psychology/#Classical_Conditioning_in_Advertising_Examples)

Ad hominem

A Latin phrase that has come to mean attacking one's opponent, as opposed to attacking their arguments. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques#Specific_techniques)

attacking the character or motive of the person making an argument, rather than attacking the argument itself. (https://www.propwatch.org/term_results.php?cat_id=1&id=23&k=ad+hominem)

(https://thinkingispower.com/logical-fallacies/)

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(35:19: ad hominem definition: Warnock attacks the character of Walker and his allies for making allegations against his church, without addressing any of the specific allegations against his church.) (https://www.propwatch.org/term_results.php?cat_id=1&id=23&k=ad+hominem)

Ad nauseam

This uses tireless repetition of an idea. An idea, especially a simple slogan, that is repeated enough times, may begin to be taken as the truth. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques#Specific_techniques)

repeating something over and over again, until it forms a mental association and/or becomes perceived as truth. Based on the "mere exposure effect," is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they're familiar to them, including things they don't like. This principle for example makes people more likely to prefer listening to a song they've heard before over a new song they've never heard and to believe something they hear repeatedly, even if they know it's untrue.(https://www.propwatch.org/category_results.php?cat_id=1&id=24&k=ad+nauseum&p=propaganda.php)

"Make America Great Again"

(https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/donald-trump-dropped-378000-make-america-great-again-hats-2015s-final-quarter-msna786506)

Appeal to authority

Appeals to authority cite prominent figures to support a position, idea, argument, or course of action. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques#Specific_techniques)

(also known as an appeal to false or unqualified authority) plays on people’s feelings of respect or familiarity towards a famous person to bypass critical thinking. It’s like someone is telling us “accept this because some authority said it.” (https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/appeal-to-authority-fallacy/#:~:text=An%20appeal%20to%20authority%20)

appeal to anonymous authority - insisting something is true because an unnamed expert, study, or generalized group (like 'scientists') says it's true (https://www.propwatch.org/category_results.php?cat_id=1&id=73&k=appeal+to+anonymous+authority&p=propaganda.php)

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(09:56: appeal to anonymous authority see definition: There are "those that say" you can test too much, without identifying who those people are.) (https://www.propwatch.org/category_results.php?cat_id=1&id=73&k=appeal+to+anonymous+authority&p=propaganda.php)

Cognitive dissonance

People desire to be consistent. Suppose a pollster finds that a certain group of people hates his candidate for senator but loves actor A. They use actor A's endorsement of their candidate to change people's minds because people cannot tolerate inconsistency. They are forced to either dislike the actor or like the candidate. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques#Specific_techniques)

Creates a feeling of mental stress when we encounter ideas or beliefs that conflict with our own. (https://www.propwatch.org/term_results.php?id=99&k=cognitive%20dissonance)

Psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously. (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cognitive%20dissonance)

Common man

The approach attempts to convince the audience that the propagandist's positions reflect the common sense of the people. It is designed to win the confidence of the audience by communicating in the common manner and style of the target audience. Propagandists use ordinary language and mannerisms (and clothe their message in face-to-face and audiovisual communications) in attempting to identify their point of view with that of the average person. A common example of this type of propaganda is a political figure, usually running for a placement, in a backyard or shop doing daily routine things. This image appeals to the common person. With the plain folk's device, the propagandist can win the confidence of persons who resent or distrust foreign-sounding, intellectual speech, words, or mannerisms. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques#Specific_techniques)

Establishing a connection with an audience based on being just like one of them and being able to empathize with their concerns. (https://www.propwatch.org/category_results.php?cat_id=1&id=30&k=common+folk&p=propaganda.php)

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(04:53: common folk see definition) (https://www.propwatch.org/category_results.php?cat_id=1&id=30&k=common+folk&p=propaganda.php)

(https://movieposters.ha.com/itm/movie-posters/war/world-war-ii-propaganda-us-government-printing-office-1944-navy-poster-285-x-40-i-m-proud-of-you-folks-too-jo/a/7132-86871.s)

Cult of personality

A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. The hero personality then advocates the positions that the propagandist desires to promote. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques#Specific_techniques)

A situation in which a public figure (such as a political leader) is deliberately presented to the people of a country as a great person who should be admired and loved. (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cult%20of%20personality)

“Nazi propaganda often focused on glorifying Adolf Hitler as Germany’s sole savior in order to inspire a sense of personal devotion to him. Many films, books, newspapers, magazines, and other items portrayed Hitler as a strong and self-sacrificing father figure who personally embodied the character traits of the “ideal Nazi.”” (https://perspectives.ushmm.org/tag/cult-of-personality)

(Recently appointed as German chancellor, Adolf Hitler greets President Paul von Hindenburg in Potsdam, Germany, on March 21, 1933. This pose was designed to project an image of Hitler as non-threatening to the established order. This particular image is from a popular postcard. The photo also appeared widely in both the German and international press. Hitler appears in civilian dress, bowing in deference to the heavily decorated von Hindenburg. The March 5, 1933, elections had conferred legitimacy on Hitler's leadership.) (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/making-a-leader)

(https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/30/washington-trump-and-cults-of-personality/)

Demonizing the enemy

Making individuals from the opposing nation, from a different ethnic group, or those who support the opposing viewpoint appear to be subhuman, worthless, or immoral, through suggestion or false accusations. Dehumanizing is also a term used synonymously with demonizing, the latter usually serves as an aspect of the former. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques#Specific_techniques)

Psychological process whereby opponents view each other as less than human and thus not deserving of moral consideration. Jews in the eyes of Nazis and Tutsis in the eyes of Hutus (in the Rwandan genocide) are but two examples. Protracted conflict strains relationships and makes it difficult for parties to recognize that they are part of a shared human community. Such conditions often lead to feelings of intense hatred and alienation among conflicting parties. The more severe the conflict, the more the psychological distance between groups will widen.

“During the protracted conflict, feelings of anger, fear, and distrust shape the way that the parties perceive each other. Adversarial attitudes and perceptions develop and parties begin to attribute negative traits to their opponent. They may come to view the opponent as an evil enemy, deficient in moral virtue, or as a dangerous, warlike monster. Such images can stem from a desire for group identity and a need to contrast the distinctive attributes and virtues of one's own group with the vices of the "outside" group…Enemy images are usually black and white. The negative actions of one's opponent are thought to reflect their fundamental evil nature, traits, or motives. One's own faults, as well as the values and motivations behind the actions of one's opponent, are usually discounted, denied, or ignored. It becomes difficult to empathize or see where one's opponent is coming from.”

“Once certain groups are stigmatized as evil, morally inferior, and not fully human, the persecution of those groups becomes more psychologically acceptable. Restraints against aggression and violence begin to disappear. Not surprisingly, dehumanization increases the likelihood of violence and may cause a conflict to escalate out of control. Once a violence break over has occurred, it may seem even more acceptable for people to do things that they would have regarded as morally unthinkable before.Parties may come to believe that destruction of the other side is necessary, and pursue an overwhelming victory that will cause one's opponent to simply disappear. This sort of into-the-sea framing can cause lasting damage to relationships between the conflicting parties, making it more difficult to solve their underlying problems and leading to the loss of more innocent lives."(https://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/dehumanization)

“In Virginia, for example, we are witnessing the most anti-LGBT legislative session in the state’s history. So far, 9 anti-gay and anti-trans bills have been introduced. Some of the bills reveal a fixation with determining the “anatomical sex” of students to ensure that trans students are expelled from communal bathrooms. One goes so far as to impose a $50 civil penalty on any student who uses the “wrong” bathroom. Others seek to prevent trans people from updating their Virginia birth records to match their gender and limit nondiscrimination protections based on sex to people whose gender matches the gender assigned to them at birth.” (https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/legislators-across-country-set-their-sights-transgender-people)

(https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/defining-antisemitism-talking-about-israeli-policy-by-using-classical-antisemitic-tropes)

(https://www.tumblr.com/the-library-alcove/search/zionism)

(https://en.abna24.com/story/1410340)

Demoralization

Propaganda towards an adversary to erode fighting spirit, and encourage surrender or defection. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques#Specific_techniques)

Propaganda in wartime must seek to demoralize enemy morale. A primary objective of propaganda aimed at enemy nations is to break down their will to fight. It seeks to lower the enemy’s will to resist and it does this in several ways. One is to picture the military successes on the propagandist’s side. Another is to picture the armed might and economic power that the enemy has to face. Yet another is to picture the moral superiority of the cause against which the enemy is fighting. It is part of a nation’s strategic plan to intimidate enemy leaders, to separate them from their people, and to break down resistance by producing evidence that the mass of the enemy people have been deceived and misled. (https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pamphlets/em-2-what-is-propaganda-(1944)/war-propaganda)

(https://x.com/Cluffalo/status/1790011284471083192)

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