What Qualifies As Propoganda

Propaganda is a more flexible term than many people might think.  A statement or visual message is not propaganda just because it originated from a certain person, and fallacious or refutable ideas are not automatically propaganda.  Conservatives and liberals are sometimes so accustomed to assuming that claims from the other side are false or misleading that they might accuse each other of propaganda without any serious analysis of the epistemology or intentions of the ideas at hand.  This is actually the very approach to truth and philosophy at the heart of all propaganda, regardless of who it comes from or how aware they are of their irrationality.  It is the intentions that make the expression of an idea fall into this category.

What qualifies as propaganda is not actually just lies or assumptions.  Even a truth could be used as part of a propaganda campaign if it is brought up and celebrated for the sake of political power instead of truth itself.  Propaganda, after all, is about using either truths, or at least partial truths, or lies to manipulate people into agreement with some assumed idea or grand goal of a person with power.  The goal is to use frequency of exposure or social pressure to influence someone to embrace an idea for reasons other than philosophical proof.  In some cases, the idea might be true and provable, while in others it might be true but unprovable, false but impossible to disprove, or verifiably false (if it contains contradictions or conflicts with the necessary truths of reason).

This is not what plenty of people specifically seem to mean by the term when controversy erupts.  Republicans and democrats alike will decry propaganda from the other side, and sometimes they will even object to claims that are not necessarily propaganda as if they were, while they indulge in the very thing they pretend to condemn.  Charges of propaganda from popular political factions might just be propaganda themselves.  This is the irony that results when conservative and liberal groups are so desperate to exert influence on those willing to believe their fallacies that they end up using some of the same strategies their opponents use, or at least supposedly use (since both factions have their glaring fallacies they cling to no matter what, they both use propaganda at times, but not all cases of fallacies or misinformation are automatically propaganda).

The political climate is so fragile that such truths about the actual nature of propaganda can easily go unrecognized.  Indeed, the truth is not what most people want; they want to feel justified in whatever biases, general assumptions, and preferences they have.  That actual truths which are verifiable can be politically used for purposes not related to knowing truth is not comforting to many others.  Truth itself can be used as propaganda--and not because it is appealed to out of context or in an incomplete way, but because the people behind the propaganda are not concerned with ultimate truth, rationalism and absolute certainty, instead appealing to random ideas because it is helpful for them.

Still, not all promotion of ideas is propaganda: the mass publication of information that is true and not meant to inspire assumptions and biases is not propaganda no matter how thoroughly it is spread across a culture or how fierce its adherents are.  The antidote to propaganda of all kinds is merely the pursuit of truth without assumptions, no matter how disliked or seemingly bizarre a truth might be.  It is just that the pursuit of truth is something each individual must come to for rationalistic reasons instead of bowing to even correct cultural ideas because of social pressures.  Someone unwilling to be manipulated by propaganda must be a rationalist if their opposition to it is in any way deeper than emotionalistic reactions, which is what anti-propaganda thinkers would allegedly want their opposition to be.