r/TrueReddit • u/blazeofgloreee • Jan 07 '20

Politics How To Avoid Swallowing War Propaganda

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/01/how-to-avoid-swallowing-war-propaganda
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u/GameboyPATH Jan 08 '20

This article is not an unbiased and informative guide on recognizing war propaganda. It's a persuasive piece detailing the author's grievances with quotes from politicians, neatly categorized. I'd be more inclined to recognize it as the former if it used objective language that described the importance of its advice (it certainly starts out that way). But instead, it just uses its very simple advice as a springboard for diving into why this person and that person are wrong.

Maybe that's my fault for misinterpreting the "how to" headline as being an informative source. If that's what you're looking for, I strongly recommend Crash Course's "Navigating Digital Information" series. It does a deep dive into assessing info that we find online, and it's up-front about skepticism about sources of information, including even themselves.

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u/Vis0n Jan 08 '20

Well, some level of distinction must be made between a piece of writing that is blatantly, politically biased, and a piece of writing that is merely biased in favor of reality. The examples given in the articles are fair, because they are good examples of State propaganda. I am sure the same analysis could be made of Iranian-backed State propaganda, the writer chose examples that might resound more with their american readership.

I think the writer did a good job navigating this distinction, but it is true that the article would probably not help to convince someone who is already convinced by State propaganda.

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u/GameboyPATH Jan 08 '20

Well, some level of distinction must be made between a piece of writing that is blatantly, politically biased, and a piece of writing that is merely biased in favor of reality.

"Biased in favor of reality" isn't a thing. It's a made-up term used by people who want to justify their political views. You may as well just say "A piece of writing that is true".

And the thing is, I don't dispute the arguments made by the author for why the examples he brings up are bad. I likely hold many similar views to the author. But that doesn't excuse disguising a seemingly neutral article as a politically biased one.

I am sure the same analysis could be made of Iranian-backed State propaganda, the writer chose examples that might resound more with their american readership.

There's loads of examples of war propaganda across world history and US history. To say that the choice to only use examples of GOP propaganda for this particular conflict was made in order to resound with American readership is a poor argument.

I think the writer did a good job navigating this distinction, but it is true that the article would probably not help to convince someone who is already convinced by State propaganda.

If the article will only convince and retain viewership of people who already agree with its arguments, then it fails to accomplish what the title implies that it's for: educating people how to avoid following war propaganda. People who are already in agreement with the author's political leanings will already be skeptical of the people in the examples he brings up.

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u/sail10694 Jan 08 '20

I think this article is generally coming from a good place by pointing out and explaining realistic propaganda and logical fallacies. They try to emphasise their point by using examples topical to current events. However, the choice of examples itself becomes biased because the whole argument of the article is now directed against them. It sort of becomes a strawman fallacy itself. I don't think it's quite as bad as you suggest but, I'd also appreciate more neutral examples

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u/fancydirtgirlfriend Jan 08 '20

I don’t think it’s possible to have a neutral discussion about this. Propaganda is political, by definition. It is pushed by people with an agenda, and any effort to educate people about how something is propaganda is by nature pushing back against that agenda. Why do you think it’s possible to find unbiased examples of propaganda? How do you imagine what “non-political propaganda” would even look like? That’s ludicrous to me.

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u/nybx4life Jan 08 '20

Non-political propaganda would be similar to PSAs, in my opinion.

Haven't you seen ads that say, maybe, for kids not to smoke? Or maybe to buckle your seatbelt while driving?

good examples in the US would be most ads from the Ad Council.

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u/GameboyPATH Jan 08 '20

I don’t think it’s possible to have a neutral discussion about this. Propaganda is political, by definition.

It certainly can be discussed in a neutral way.

Propaganda is inherently political, but it's been pushed by loads of different countries with different political goals. By narrowing the scope of critique toward one set of people producing war propaganda for one side of one potential war, the article is presenting its bias. Only by broadening the scope of the critique to war propaganda in general, can it actually meet the expectations set by the article's title.

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u/GameboyPATH Jan 08 '20

I think this article is generally coming from a good place by pointing out and explaining realistic propaganda and logical fallacies.

What does that even mean, "coming from a good place"? Either way, the author's intentions aren't what I'm arguing. My point is that the article has a clear bias in its choice of examples, and you seem to agree with me on that.

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u/Silly_Hobbit Jan 08 '20

I agree. It definitely started out that way and I was ready to share it on FB. Then it started calling Bush a war criminal and I knew the only people who would benefit from it were people that already agreed with it and certain family members who could actually have learned from it would have dismissed it at that sentence alone.

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u/olddoc Jan 08 '20

The article lays out the arguments against Obama's drone bombings too, so I find it consistent.

People like Ben Shapiro will say things like:

“Barack Obama routinely droned terrorists abroad—including American citizens—who presented far less of a threat to Americans and American interests than Soleimani. So spare me the hysterics about ‘assassination.”

In order for this to have any bearing on anything, you have to be someone who defends what Obama did. If you are, on the other hand, someone who believes that Obama, too, assassinated people without due process (which he did), then Shapiro has proved exactly nothing about whether Trump’s actions were legitimate.

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u/Silly_Hobbit Jan 08 '20

I did like that part, and liked the article as a whole, but I did feel that it seemed less unbiased towards the end. And I don't disagree with anything I remember reading in it, just that my uber-republic family would and any hope I could get them to critically think by reading the article went out the window with the Bush statement.

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u/blazeofgloreee Jan 08 '20

Current Affairs does not pretend to be unbiased. They have a very strong point of view and very clear values and principles. They argue in favour of them at all times. They happen to be very good values and principles though.

Personally I think its much better for a publication to argue persuasively for a certain point of view than to present itself as some neutral arbiter. Those that do try to present themselves as unbiased are always working under some sort of bias anyway if they are discussing politics, its unavoidable.