Propaganda, Power, Mimesis, and Community

Propaganda is about fear and safety. It will produce more fear. It never produces more safety.

Tiananmen Square protests

This is the sixth post in a series about techniques of propaganda, how they permeate public discourse, and how they threaten democracy. Earlier pieces include “Propaganda In Our Time” (posted March 16); “The Real Pronoun Problem” (posted March 19); “Who’s Your Daddy? The Father and Propaganda” (posted March 23); “Words, Words, Words, and Propaganda” (posted April 2); and “Bureaucracy, State Terror, and Propaganda” (posted April 17).

On April 15,1989, protestors occupied Tiananmen Square, Beijing, to demand democratic reforms. The event drew international attention. As it continued, protestors were often interviewed. They openly expressed the hope that they could reform their country. They seemed to have no fear. One protestor, who oddly held a shopping bag in each hand, stood in front of a line of tanks, momentarily blocking its movement into the public square. This was viewed as the power of protest over the power of the state.

Until June 3^rd. The government ordered the protestors to leave the square. When they refused, the troops opened fire. At least 300 protestors were killed (the government estimate), but the number may have been as high as 2,600. Many other protestors were arrested, put on trial, and executed.

Even after the square had been cleared of protestors, Western reporters continued to interview anyone they could find on the street. I remember watching these interviews. It was amazing how quickly every Chinese citizen began to speak the party line. It was as if reporters, one day, were interviewing hippies at an antiwar rally on the streets of Washington, DC, and then, the next day, they were interviewing citizens of North Korea. Only one thing had changed. The troops had opened fire.

We tend to think of propaganda as a form of public brainwashing. We believe that it can change even the inner thoughts of an entire society.

As propaganda focuses on the repetition of a simple message, many people—not all—find it difficult to think outside of propaganda. They live the party line.

However, propaganda is not, as the Tiananmen Square example shows, particularly effective at controlling a society’s inner thoughts.

As the government more completely controls sources of information and reduces public discussion, thought is certainly limited. But propaganda’s ability to control thoughts—maybe, limit and restrict thought is more apt—is never complete. Thoughts lead to more thoughts. The random nature of thinking means that thoughts will, at some point, break from any limitations imposed on it from the outside.

Propaganda, however, is effective at controlling the outer expression of those thoughts, especially when it is used with state terror.

If the outer expression of thought is controlled, if the public forum is destroyed, then individuals begin to act robotic. The inner thoughts of an individual might still imagine a better society, but democratic dialogue is so restricted that it is difficult to translate thought into action.

It is important to understand the connection between propaganda and power at a social and even a historical level. In this post, however, I am going to explain it from the personal level—what individuals feel and how that makes them more susceptible to the effects of propaganda.

It all begins with fear and a desire for safety.

The world is inherently dangerous, so propaganda always has ample fears to magnify. In times of rapid change, like ours, fears proliferate. To focus these fears, propaganda finds some “they,” some outgroup, to serve as the source of all fears—a scapegoat. In Nazi Germany, Jews were the scapegoats. In America, now, immigrants are the scapegoats.

Propaganda does not persuade through the beauty of its ideas or the elegance of its language. It persuades through a way of thinking—Hannah Arendt called it “not thinking”—that magnifies the fears of individuals and then makes them feel safe in a group. “If you think like us,” the strong leader says, “then you are one of us.” But, this also means that any aberrant thought, no matter how spontaneous, no matter how insignificant, will mark you as an outsider. Propaganda teaches us to control even our own inner thoughts.

This feeling of being safe within the “us” is magnified by the state terror toward the “they.” As we witness the “they” being disciplined, we want the safety of the group even more.

The bad people—those who threaten the “us”—need be disciplined or eliminated. The threat needs to be contained. This is why Arendt says that concentration camps or a gulag system is necessary for the totalitarian state. We might think that this cannot happen in the United States, but the CECOT prison in El Salvador could be viewed as our first Gulag. We have outsourced our first concentration camp.

On this platform, I have written about the Big Lie of Totalitarianism: The state will not come after you because you will continue to think as the state demands. However, the Big Lie operates on a dangerous and naïve assumption: That the state can accurately recognize the “they,” the enemy, with absolute precision. The state never makes mistakes. It only comes after the “they.” It never comes after the “us.”

But the Big Lie eventually cracks.

Initially, the state claims that it can mark the enemy with precision, but it soon finds out that this is impossible. If the enemy is defined as “the one who has had the wrong thoughts,” then how can the state identify its enemies. How can the state read our thoughts? It cannot. It must seek signs of aberrant thoughts, and the signs must reduce the complexity of human consciousness to a measurable data point.

In Nazi Germany, they identified Jews largely through their communities. When this no longer worked, they resorted to signs: their clothes, facial features, and, with men, their circumcision. In Incident at Vichy, Arthur Miller dramatized how this works.

The Nazis were record keepers. Their greatest villains were bureaucrats and accountants. Now, the state does not need ledgers. It has Big Data. This is why the Tech Bros aligning themselves with Trump is dangerous.

Big Data has already collected in excess of 500 data points on every individual in the United States. Most of us have had online experiences (the kind of ads we are shown) that reveal these data and the assumptions that algorithms generate from the data are often wrong.

To explain this, I used to tell my students that I am Gay on the Internet. I am actually hopelessly heterosexual—not that there’s anything wrong with that. But, on the Internet, I am Gay because I support LBGTQ+ issues. I know this because I receive ads that are directed toward Gay men. The data is correct (I do support LBGTQ+ rights), but the algorithm wrongly assumes that this means I must be Gay. This is, on the face of it, benign. But what if the state uses this process to identify its enemies?

Here is the point—the state is never very good at identifying the enemies within. Even using the latest technology, it will still fail to accurately identity the “they.” This means that none of us can ever be safe in a totalitarian state, even those who are loyal followers of the strong leader.

In fact, as the state learns that it is not efficient at identifying the enemies within, as it mistakenly disciplines the innocent, it also learns that random and arbitrary violence controls the masses even more effectively than a violence that imitates justice. In the end, the state does not want the “us” to feel safe.

Eventually, this will destroy communities and even families. The state soon learns that it doesn’t have to identify the enemy within. All it has to do is reward individuals who inform on their neighbors and families. This is what happens: I am angry at my neighbor because he plays music too loud. I report him to the secret police. I tell the police that he has said nasty things about our beloved leader. The police pick him up and “interview” him until he confesses.

A simple dispute is resolved through betrayal. This is the most effective way to end democratic dialogue. In the end, we will not even feel safe when we are talking, in private, with friends and family.

Is this how we want to live?

If not, we need to build communities. If necessary, from the ground up.

This begins with understanding mimesis—or the imitation and escalation of emotions. If we mirror the anger and fears of others, we become our own worst enemy. We validate everything that they are saying about us. We create a world that even best of us cannot live in.

In the Preface of Humanism and Terror, Merleau-Ponty wrote: “One will never extract a propaganda from an active liberty which seeks to understand other men and reunites all of us.” As Walt Whitman said, via Ted Lasso, “Be curious, not judgmental.”

In other words, the best defense against propaganda and state terror is a healthy community. That is the only way to feel safe.

At the end of each post about propaganda, I will outline a range of political rhetoric related to the topic of that post. This should serve as a summary that can be reviewed. I also hope that it will help us to be more aware of how we might promote democratic dialogue and resist the slow slip into propaganda and totalitarianism.

Democratic Dialogue: A pluralistic, public forum exists where diverse views can be discussed safely. Private spaces exist that are clearly separated from the public forum.

Propaganda Lite: The safety of the public forum is disrupted, often by street thugs. People become cautious about discussing politics.

Propaganda Complete: Only the state ideology is discussed in public. A secret police monitors even private conversations. Friends and neighbors report each other to the secret police.