Learning about how Propaganda is used to control us, has been a real education for me. I had no Idea just how powerful these different techniques are in getting us to do what we are told to do and think the way "They" (People,Organizations, Governments etc.) want us to think. In particular, I have been interested in the methods used by the Organization to achieve the level of control over the minds and actions of those who loyally serve them. "Doing what you are told without question" is almost a badge of honor among witnesses to the point family members will turn on their mothers,fathers, brothers,and sisters on command. The "Organization" has become a god that must be worshipped, protected, and served at all cost. If the Present truth has been in place for 40 or 50 years, in just a stroke of the pen in Brooklyn, the families of the whole organization turn to the new Present Truth like a huge school of fish swimming in the ocean. All obediently say "Which way did he go", "Which way did he go" like the turtle in the cartoon. The problem is though, is that witness families are not fish, or turtles. They have brains, and questions are the brains most powerful tool to learn with. Why do we allow ourselves to go to the hall week after week and regularly get a shot of novocain straight to the brain. The answer, is "Propaganda" Please read the follow carefully.
As generally understood, propaganda is opinion expressed for the purpose of influencing actions of individuals or groups. More formally, the Institute for Propaganda Analysis has defined propaganda as "expression of opinion or action by individuals or groups deliberately designed to influence opinions or actions of other individuals or groups with reference to predetermined ends."
Some of the devices now so subtly and effectively used by good and bad propagandists are as old as language. All have been used in one form or another by all of us in our daily dealings with each other.
Propagandists have seized upon these methods we ordinarily use to convince each other, have analyzed and refined them, and have experimented with them until these homely devices of folk origin have been developed into tremendously powerful weapons for the swaying of popular opinions and actions.
We have all emphasized our disapproval of a person, group, or thing by calling it a bad name. We have all tried to reverse this process in the case of something for which we have had admiration by labeling it with a "virtue word" or "glittering generality." And thus, we have all used two of the propaganda devices.
Once we know that a speaker or writer is using one of these propaganda devices in an attempt to convince us of an idea, we can separate the device from the idea and see what the idea amounts to on its own merits. The idea may be good or bad when judged in the light of available evidence and in terms of our own experience and interests. But a knowledge of these seven devices permits us to investigate the idea. It keeps us from having our thought processes blocked by a trick. It keeps us from being fooled.
In testing each statement of a propagandist, then, we merely have to ask ourselves: When stripped of tricks, what is he trying to sell us? Is it something we want?
NAME CALLING
Name Calling-Giving an idea a bad label is used to make us reject and condemn the idea without examining the evidence.
Bad names have played a tremendously powerful role in the history of the world and in our own individual development. They have ruined reputations, stirred men and women to outstanding accomplishments, sent others to prison cells, and made men mad enough to enter battle and slaughter their fellowmen. They have been and are applied to other people, groups, gangs, tribes, colleges, political parties, neighborhoods, states, sections of the country, nations, and races.
The world has resounded with cries of "Heretic," "Hun," "Red," "Yankee," "Reb," "Democrat," "Republican," "Revolutionary," "Nazi," etc., and their equivalents in all languages. Our personal lives have echoed with such words as "sissy," "moron," "bully," "tramp," "wayward," "unscientific," "unprogressive," "inhuman," "grasping," "easy-going," and "backward."
Buzz Words About JWs who are not in Good Standing
Weak in the Truth |
Disfellowshipped
Spiritually Weak
Disassociated
Spiritually not Qualified
Public Reproved
Spiritual Fornication
Privately Reproved
They went to the World
DF'd
Left Jehovah
DA'd
Turned to Satan
Committee Meetings
Apostate
Immoral Conduct
Not putting Spiritual Interests First
Materialistic
They miss Meetings
Turned Worldly
Drifting Away
Bad Association
Stumble
Returned to their own Vomit
Independent Thinking
Spiritually Sick
Inactive
Uncooperative
Not heeding the counsel of the Elders
Marked
Individuals and groups can be found who bear any one of these labels proudly. Other individuals and groups can just as easily be found who regard any one of these labels as the worst epithet to shout at an enemy.
One of the most treacherous things about Name Calling is that bad names, like Glittering Generalities, are omnibus words. They are words that mean different things and have different emotional overtones for different people. When we spot an example of Name Calling, we must ask ourselves these questions:
What does the name mean?
Does the idea in question-the proposal of the propagandist-have a legitimate connection with the real meaning of the name?
Is an idea that serves my best interests and the best interests of society, as I see them, being dismissed through giving it a name I don't like?
In other words, leaving the name out of consideration, what are the merits of the idea itself?
We must constantly remind ourselves of the danger of omnibus-word reactions. Such reactions, rather than detailed appraisals of a philosophy and its ideals, are what we commonly encounter.
GLITTERING GENERALITY
Glittering Generality-associating something with a "virtue word"-is used to make us accept and approve the thing without examining the evidence.
We believe in, fight for, live by "virtue words" about which we have deep-set ideas. Such words are "civilization," "Christianity," "good," "proper," "right," "democracy," "patriotism," "motherhood," "fatherhood," "science," "medicine," "health," and "love."
For our purposes in propaganda analysis, we call these "virtue words" Glittering Generalities in order to focus attention upon this dangerous characteristic that they have: They mean different things to different people; they can be used in different ways.
This is not a criticism of these words as we understand them. Quite the contrary. It is a criticism of the uses to which propagandists put the cherished words end beliefs of unsuspecting people.
When someone talks to us about "democracy," we immediately think of our own definite ideas about democracy, the ideas we learned at home, at school, and in church. Our first and natural reaction is to assume that the speaker is using the word in our sense, that he believes as we do on this important subject. This lowers our "sales resistance" and makes us far less suspicious than we ought to be when the speaker begins telling us the things "the United States must do to preserve democracy." If we have permitted our "sales resistance" to be lowered by the use of "democracy" as a Glittering Generality rather than as a carefully defined term, we may soon find ourselves being "sold" such an anti-democratic notion as a "Corporate State" under a "democratic" disguise, one of Father Coughlin's tricks.
The Glittering Generality is, in short, Name Calling in reverse. While Name Calling seeks to make us form a judgment to reject and condemn without examining the evidence, the Glittering Generality device seeks to make us approve and accept without examining the evidence. In acquainting ourselves with the Glittering Generality Device, therefore, all that has been said regarding Name Calling must be kept in mind, and especially should we remember what has been said about omnibus words.
Propagandists are most effective in the use of both of these devices when their words can make us create devils to fight or gods to adore. By their use of "bad words," we may be led to personify as a "devil" some nation, race; group, individual, policy, practice, or ideal; we may be made fighting mad to destroy it. By their use of "good words," we may be led to personify as a godlike idol some nation, race, group, or the like. Before we are led to any such position, we should know what the propagandist is trying to do with us. If we are to be led, we should be led with our eyes open, not blindly.
Buzz Words About The Worldly System
At Armageddon |
That's the World for you
The Great Tribulation
World
This System of Things
Worldly
Worldly System
Worldly People
The Last Days
Worldly Associations
Satan's System
Opposers of Jehovah
Satan
Christendom
God?s Adversary, Satan the Devil
United Nations
Devil
Babylon the Great
Demons
World Empire of False Religion
Demonized
Harlot
Demonistic
666
Satan and his Demons
The Last Days
Table of the Demons
Bablonish
Goatlike ones
Pagan
Unbeliever
Gehenna
Bad association spoils useful habits
Like the Original Satan
Haughty Ones
Wicked system of things
In analyzing a Glittering Generality, we must ask ourselves such questions as these and suspend judgment until we have answered them:
What does the "virtue word" really mean?
Does the idea in question-the proposal of the propagandist-have a legitimate connection with the real meaning of the name ?
Is an idea that does not serve my best interests and the best interests of society, as I see them, being "sold" to me merely through its being given a name that I like?
In other words, leaving the "virtue word" out of consideration, what are the merits of the idea itself?
THE FINE ART OF PROPAGANDA
contains exerpts from "The Fine Art Of Propaganda; A Study of Father Coughlin's Speeches" by The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Edited by Alfred McClung Lee & Elizabeth Briant Lee, and published in 1939 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York.
This is the end of part 1 Rockhound