Randal Marlin
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mote racism or ethnic hatred to defeat the Germans and Japanese in World War II?
The Allied war effort spread stereotypes of Japanese soldiers as sneaky, slant-eyed,
buck-toothed men desirous of rape, sadism, and other evils and of the German as
a monocle-wearing, steely individual, capable of torture. Such stereotypes are likely
to interfere with the civilized conduct of war (if there can be such a thing, Geneva
Convention notwithstanding) and with the goal of peace. We have already seen how
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the atrocity propaganda in World War I built up hatreds that made the punitive provisions of the Treaty of Versailles so hard to resist, in turn sowing the seeds for World
War II.
An example of the hazards of making use of existing racial or nationalist stereo-
types or feelings can be found in a description, prior to World War I, by the noted
scholar of crowd psychology, Gustav Le Bon, of his own attempts at shaping opinion
in his community. A park in a Paris suburb was threatened with development. The
people were not aware of this because the official name of the park, Villeneuve-l’Étang,
was different from that by which the people knew it, St.-Cloud. After trying unsuc-
cessfully to interest the press or the civic administration—which needed money from
the sale—Le Bon resorted to the following persuasive technique. He found that the
only serious buyer for the park was a German Jew, and he sent a note to a large news-
paper announcing, “Sale of St. Cloud Park to the Germans.” There was an immediate
explosion of interest: masses of reporters descended on the community, and sensa-
tional articles appeared in the press. A political decision was quickly made during the
outcry not to sell the park in the present or the future. Le Bon succeeded, in a good
cause. However, he also added fuel to the potent force of nationalism and possibly
to anti-Semitism. He does not say whether his note included reference to the buyer
being Jewish, but the fact that he mentions this detail in his book suggests that he may
also have done so in his note to the newspaper.62 This was, after al , only 10 years after
the uproar over the Dreyfus Affair, when a French Jewish military officer was falsely
accused and convicted of selling military secrets to the Germans. The French had suf-
fered a humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, and military minds were set on
reconquest of Alsace and Lorraine, which had been annexed by the German Empire in
1871. Alfred Dreyfus was from an Alsatian family, and his loyalty was suspect at a time
when anti-Semitism was rampant in France. Popular newspapers mostly were anti-
Dreyfus.63 Turmoil erupted following the celebrated novelist Émile Zola’s accusation in
1898 that evidence pointing to Dreyfus’s innocence was being suppressed. A year before
the outbeak of World War I and on the occasion of Zola’s death, the writer Anatole
France denounced “Tartuffes of patriotism” who were prepared to sacrifice truth and
justice as “promoters of hatred and disorders” and “sowers of panic.”64 The attitudes
harnessed by Le Bon, though reinforced only in a small way (one may assume) by his
action, were nevertheless of the kind that, repeated by others on countless occasions, fed
the emotions supporting total war and a generation after that, genocide.
With hindsight, one can say that Le Bon’s tactic was unethical because of the
potent forces for evil that he encouraged (although at the time he did so without
awareness, one can presume, of the full extent of this potential). However, acting as
an early urban environmentalist saving a park, Le Bon at least was promoting a public
good, thus providing a mitigating factor to his action.
Third, while good arguments have been given for the use of emotional levers
in persuasion, there is often resentment against this method for reasons mentioned
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above. These reasons become magnified when propagandist and propagandee strongly disagree about the morality of the end the propaganda is directed at achieving. We do
not mind too much when our heartstrings are pulled for support of some downtrod-
den or starving group, but when disputing parties on, say, abortion, produce pictures
and use tendentious language in support of their causes, they typically are led into
increased hostility with no more light being thrown on the disputed question. If you
see the other side as fundamentally wrong, the use of manipulative persuasive means
will be seen as compounding the wrong. Furthermore, each side is concerned that the
other side will win over a sizable part of the population through such means without
their own side getting an adequate hearing.
These observations support the idea of restraint in the use of emotional appeals
but not eliminating them altogether. Quite apart from Whately’s reasons, there is
Aristotle’s point that appropriate style increases credibility; in other words, if the issue
is morally powerful, it is right to speak with appropriate emotion. As Aristotle puts it:
Appropriate style also makes the fact appear credible; for the mind of the hearer is
imposed upon under the impression that the speaker is speaking the truth, because,
in such circumstances, his feelings are the same, so that he thinks (even if it is not the
case as the speaker puts it) that things are as he represents them; and the hearer always
sympathises with one who speaks emotionally, even though he really says nothing. This
is why speakers often confound their hearers by mere noise.65
A fine example of a powerful communication having even greater force for its
garbled syntax and literal near-unintelligibility is provided by Richard Lanham. He
quotes the conductor Richter’s impatient comment to the second flautist at Covent
Garden: “Your damned nonsense can I stand twice or once, but sometimes always,
my God, never!”66 The moral, amply supported by Lanham’s other writings, is that
we speak or write in a certain situation that may demand from us certain affective
responses. If we ignore any semblance of passion in order to present some pure, dis-
tilled, objective truth, we may fall into a different kind of falsehood. Situational fal-
sity might well coexist with efforts to preserve truth in our statements. Kierkegaard
is a well-known exponent of this idea, illustrated by his story of the escaped lunatic
who wants to persuade people he is sane by always saying something true. So he
repeats saying “The world is round” over and over, but of course he is soon picked
up again.67
All of this argues for the legitimacy of some appeals that will have the effect of
bypassing the rational assessment of a communication; in other words, appeals that
display a characteristic we have located in propaganda. It should be noted that we are
thinking here of a sincere expression of emotion, not a stance cynically adopted to
provide maximum impact. Whately makes a good practical point about simulated
emotion. The person who becomes accustomed to engaging in histrionics even for
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justifiable reasons runs the risk of developing the habit of communicating in ways that lack candour. The habit of disregarding right reason, truth, and fair argument in
favour of emotional excess is not a habit easily unlearnt. He thinks this is debasing to
moral character but also “ends up depriving the rhetorician of that air of simple truth-
fulness which has so winning a force and which is so impossible completely to feign.”68
Viewing Propaganda in a Positive Light
So much of this book is devoted to exploring propaganda in its negative aspects that
it is important to counteract the impression that the reader might be left with—that it
is always unacceptable to make use of it. In the definition of propaganda proposed in
Chapter 1, propaganda involves bypassing the ability of a recipient to assess rationally
and on a factually adequate basis what it is we want to impart. But there are many cases
where, as thus defined, it seems perfectly acceptable to persuade people on this basis.
In educating our children, we make use of stories that have a favourable moral mes-
sage to impart. We inculcate attitudes of patriotism through things such as national
anthems, and this is quite acceptable within limits. These limits come at the point
where the anthems foment hatred of other nations for real or perceived grievances.
Persuasion by rational argument and by full explanation of factual background
is not always feasible. People don’t have the time or inclination to listen to detailed
arguments explaining why this action by government is worth supporting or why it
is in their interest to buy this or that product. That is why artful means of persuading
an audience by mixing entertainment with a message or by using language or pic-
tures with a high motive content can be meritorious. Advertising and public relations,
which we deal with in the next chapter, have legitimate functions to fulfil , though as
always there are limits to what is, and what is not, morally acceptable.
The teaching and inculcation of religious belief is a particular case where purely
rational forms of persuasion seem inadequate for the purpose. The Bible, stories of
the lives of saints, and appropriate music, whether Gregorian plain chant or the many
hymns sung in church, are traditional ways of imparting, maintaining, and strength-
ening faith. It has been claimed that more people were sung into accepting the
Reformation than were persuaded of it through rational means. A militant atheist who
views all religions as bad might say that all this is propaganda and therefore unethical.
But there are kinds of religious life that have a very positive value, and although the
imparting of that mentality through what, by the definition offered earlier, amounts
to propaganda, it is still, within limits, morally praiseworthy. Here there are obvi-
ous limits, notably the point where bigotry and intolerance are encouraged. But the
values of religious experience of the desirable kind need not entail these undesirable
consequences, even if historically they have frequently done so. Here not all religions
are on the same footing. Some are more open than others to modification in the light
of well-formulated criticisms from a secular standpoint.
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In the political realm there are some compelling arguments favouring deception and propaganda in special circumstances. Ibsen’s Brand describes a case where a religious fanatic has persuaded the population of the town to follow him on a mission up
the mountain where they are likely to be killed by an avalanche. To save them from
this fate, the mayor falsely tells the gathered crowd that shoals of fish have arrived in
the fiord. To the Norwegian town dwellers, the seasonal arrival of the fish requires
immediate action and they depart the scene to look after the fish while the fanatic
heads up the mountain with very few followers. Ibsen so characterizes the religious
leader, named Brand, that the story is very believable. Merely telling the people that
they would be risking their lives in going up the mountain would not have persuaded
them, since they felt under the sway of a higher power that the fanatic had managed
to communicate to them. It is hard to see a way out of the mayor’s dilemma that
avoids the deception he invoked.
John J. Mearsheimer provides some fairly compelling examples in his book Why
Leaders Lie 69 where government leaders have lied, apparently with justification. These are cases where the lies are not to advance a private benefit ( selfish lies) but to serve the public good ( strategic lies) in cases where telling the truth or remaining silent would foreseeably lead to great harm. One such example was the case where US President John
F. Kennedy lied about having made a deal with the Soviets that in exchange for the lat-
ter removing missiles in Cuba aimed at the United States, he would remove US missiles
in Turkey aimed at the Soviet Union. The deal was important for avoiding conflict that
could escalate to nuclear war, but straightforward admission to the deal would have
provoked anger from the political right in the United States with the possible result
that the deal would be cancelled. The concession would also, in Mearsheimer’s view,
have damaged relations with NATO allies.70 If the analysis as to the political realities and
anticipatable consequences is correct, it does seem to provide a justification for lying.
There would seem to be some room for doubt, though. Can we assume that Kennedy’s
opponents, if the truth had been broadcast, would have taken over power and contin-
ued the brinksmanship with all the resultant dangers? It is hard to tell. And the solution
was reasonable. Maybe the people would have been amenable enough to reason to have
supported Kennedy’s decision.
It is worth noting in passing that Mearsheimer defines a lie somewhat broadly,
so as to include deliberate deception by implication and not just by direct statement.
Under such a definition, he would have no problem agreeing with G.K. Chesterton’s
statement, mentioned in the Preface to this edition, to the effect that the worst kind
of lying is by selection of facts in such a way as to suggest a wrong conclusion. This
also dovetails well with Nobécourt’s observation about the difficulty of combating
propaganda in the form of a steady supply of selected, suggestive factoids. Although
there is a powerful rhetorical benefit from defining “lying” in this way, I prefer to say,
in the case of circumstances of the kind mentioned, that we have the moral equivalent
of a lie but not an actual lie. Using the word “lie” in the extended sense contributes
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to diluting the moral force of the term, since we often (sometimes rightly) feel justified in selectively presenting truths, say, to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. If we
apply the word “lie” to such cases, we are not thinking of it as something wrong. We
can distinguish such cases from out-and-out lying, which we would be less likely to
condone even for good purposes. Similarly, when someone hides the truth from us by
mentioning f
acts that give a false impression as distinct from engaging in a direct lie,
we are likely to feel less resentment in the former case if and when the truth comes to
light, other things being equal.
Ethical Implications of Context
Douglas Walton makes illuminating arguments invoking the notion of what he calls
“dialectical shift” in discourse.71 In some contexts, such as debates, or party-affiliated
newspapers, or courtroom situations, we accept and are prepared for the fact that the
communicators have certain biases. With that understanding, there is no propaganda
necessarily connected to selective presentation of facts. We expect that and hope to
have the opposing side correct any factual deficiencies. Under these circumstances,
there is reason to hope that the truth will emerge and that negative references to the
two sides engaging in “propaganda” are somewhat misplaced or misleading. By con-
trast, where the context is ostensibly one of purported dispassionate, unbiased pres-
entation of truth to readers and listeners, then the use of biased selection of facts does
become propaganda, by virtue of the “dialectical shift” in context having occurred.
The implication for ethics is that supposedly propagandistic discourse needs to
be evaluated in the light of context and what other facts and opinions a given audi-
ence has encountered. Being completely “objective” may not have the same corrective
power as the forceful, but simplified statement of a contrary set of facts and opinions,
even though taken in isolation the statement could be misleading.
Perhaps a new norm might be invoked: that of “truth maximization.” You are
entitled to choose the rhetoric that, in the given circumstances, conveys the greatest
power of correcting falsehood and generating truth. Interpreting such a norm could
of course land us in problems. What if the norm were used to justify a lie on the pos-
sibly over-optimistic assumption that doing so would result in others producing the
correct information?
A note on objectivity
Reference to the notion of “objectivity” and bias is likely to raise questions about the
validity of these terms, given the widespread existence of relativistic attitudes toward
truth. As expressed by Nietzsche, we should not talk about the truth, but only about