Rhetoric is "the art of persuasion", essentially the art of changing people's minds through words and has systematically studied since the ancient Greeks, at th

Rhetoric is "the art of persuasion", essentially the art of changing people's minds through words and has systematically studied since the ancient Greeks, at the least. Propaganda exists when large scale bureaucratic organizations attempt to persuade - ie, it's an extension of rhetoric and it has existed in a modern form since you have had modern bureaucratic states and organizations (large ancient organizations arguably wielded it). The thing here is that the various labelings of the rhetoric-by-large-organization, from journalism to public relations to "information warfare" to disinformation etc, that have surfaced over the last, idk, 150 years, are themselves rhetorical forms. Our side "provides journalism", their side "spits out propaganda". Moreover, finding a new colorful phrase for instances of propaganda has a couple important rhetorical uses - it gets people's attention and it makes people think some new and somewhat isolated phenomena is happening. "The big lie", "disinformation", "fake news", "extremist information" etc all might have a slightly different flavor to them, focusing on a given era, a given enemy and so-forth but they generally conceal more than they reveal. They're certainly rhetorical and I'd generally see them as propaganda. And the topic of the current article? That too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric