5 ms·

An interesting article for sure. There were all kinds of things done by the various nations during the war to control the information available to the populous

An interesting article for sure. There were all kinds of things done by the various nations during the war to control the information available to the populous and to try and influence their beliefs. I do think it is interesting that this article never uses the word "propaganda" to describe what was being done by the newspapers here. It undoubtedly was propaganda, but in the modern world that word carries a very negative connotation so it is only described as counter- or anti-propaganda.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Is fighting fiction with fact really propaganda?
- ochoseis 3y ago
  In reality, it’s often cherry-picked facts fighting each other.
- Andrex 3y ago
  Facts can be paired with other facts in a way deliberately designed to mislead.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    That's true but I think it's disingenuous to say that countering enemy propaganda must also be propaganda. It doesn't have to be.
    - DinaCoder99 3y ago
      Nobody is forcing you to call it anything—you could just as easily call it "marketing" or "news". Anyway, "fact" is a convenient fantasy in most cases when you actually mean "strong belief grounded in sources you trust".
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
        Words are all the same or meaningless and there is no truth or facts? Thanks for imparting some wisdom comrade.
        DinaCoder99 3y ago
        I think that "strong belief grounded in degrees of trust" is a much more powerful concept than "fact" in practice, not to mention one that's much more difficult to attack from a theory of knowledge perspective especially in a post-Wittgenstein world, but I understand why this is such a controversial concept when there's such a focus on folks actively undermining this.
- WesleyLivesay 3y ago
  I think this ties into the negative connotation I mentioned: propaganda does not have to be false, it just has to be biased. One thing I noticed in the article was that all of the rumors being discussed were negative rumors. The goal was to take rumors that might bring down morale and "set them right". I wonder if positive rumors were treated the same way.
  - doktrin 3y ago
    Technically true, but popular connotation matters, and in this case I’d argue it matters more than the dictionary definition. It’s a bit like “racism” : I honestly have no idea if the current academic definition is “prejudice + power” or just “prejudice” - but to a significant extent it doesn’t really matter since the common understanding is the one that matters when communicating.
- DinaCoder99 3y ago
  I'm sure that's how literally everyone wants you to view their propaganda.
- simpletone 3y ago
  Yes. Facts are often used as propaganda and in fact can serve as the most potent form of propaganda because they often lack context and humanity. The rise of science and statistics in the 20th century was accompanied by the most racist and evil regimes for a reason. Most of the genocides, eugenics, racism, etc of the US, Britain and Germany in the 20th century was pushed by progressives wielding facts and science as blunt instruments.
  - whatshisface 3y ago
    ...mixed with a large part of fiction, because genocidal movements are corrupt well beyond the "power of science."
    - simpletone 3y ago
      > because genocidal movements are corrupt well beyond the "power of science." Science was central to the genocidal movements in the US and Germany. In many ways, science was the cause of the genocidal movements. Eugenics was a scientific movement championed by scientists. What changed wasn't science. It was culture and politics that changed. The horrors of the 20th century led philosphers, politicians and ordinary citizens to lose their blind faith and trust in science and progress. The rise of science and social darwinism of the early 1900s is similar to rise of AI and technocracy. Hopefully we won't as foolish to place blind trust on it and history doesn't repeat itself.
diggan 3y ago
> An interesting article for sure. There were all kinds of things done by the various nations during the war to control the information available to the populous and to try and influence their beliefs. It's interesting to me that you said "were" instead of "is", we're still seeing exactly the same things played out today (by all nations, not just the "bad" guys), although it doesn't feel like much is being done to fight it, compared to what was outlined in the article.
- WesleyLivesay 3y ago
  Absolutely still happening, I used past tense to refer to the exact events discussed in the article (newspapers printing anti-rumor columns)
shadowgovt 3y ago
It's also worth noting that it's, in this case, grassroots propaganda. I don't doubt some of the newspapers had back-channels to what the War Department wanted reported or withheld, but the distributed nature of the activity and the apparent desire of the activists not to toe a party line, but pursue the truth, is worth observing. People who think of structures of control as centralized often miss how a specific meme (be it pursuing the truth, defending democracy, or claiming the legacy of the Aryan people) can act as an organizing tool for a decentralized network of supporters and control nodes. In essence, systems like that survive not on the strength of the king but on the willingness of the people to follow him.
AnimalMuppet 3y ago
To me, this looks more like snopes than propaganda. I mean, I'm sure it was snopes-in-service-of-the-war-effort, but it still seems different. Or maybe we could call it negative propaganda ("don't believe that") rather than positive propaganda ("believe this").
- trimethylpurine 3y ago
  >more like snopes than propaganda Aren't those the same thing? An opinion piece about a set of facts is still an opinion. Snopes largely covers political topics. Combined, that's definition propaganda.
  - Aunche 3y ago
    Snopes at least seems to try to not have an agenda, even if they may be ideologically biased. The rumor clinics had an expressed interest of supporting America during WWII, so I'd consider it propaganda, but that shouldn't come with a negative connotation.
    - not_really 3y ago
      Snopes absolutely does have an agenda.
kouru225 3y ago
All PR used to be called propaganda. Now it’s a dirty word. The father of PR, Edward Bernays, quite literally wrote a book about what his job was called “Propaganda.”
- subtra3t 3y ago
  Is the book worth reading, for an average lurker of HN?
  - walthamstow 3y ago
    More interesting is the Adam Curtis documentary about Bernays, The Century of the Self.
    - kouru225 3y ago
      Agreed
cjs_ac 3y ago
'Propaganda' is just a Latin gerundive meaning 'thing needing to be propagated'. The word was used in Germany and the Soviet Union, whereas the United Kingdom had a Ministry of Information in the World Wars doing the exact same things. The Anglophone world has negative connotations for the word 'propaganda' purely because our enemies used that word more than us.
- briantakita 3y ago
  > The Anglophone world has negative connotations for the word 'propaganda' purely because our enemies used that word more than us. Who is "our" & "us"? If it's not me, am I "the enemy"?
  - panzagl 3y ago
    The Anglophone world is "our" and "us". Since our enemies "used" that word, you are only one if you also live in the past tense.
    - briantakita 3y ago
      > Since our enemies "used" that word, you are only one if you also live in the past tense. Kindof like the English speaking people of Japanese descent in the Western US circa 1940. Stripped of their property & sent to internment camps. I hope history does not repeat itself in present & future "propagation" efforts. But hope & reality are two different things. I would love to meet the "we" or "us" that is doing the propaganda. To propagate what I think about their efforts of course.
- slowturtle 3y ago
  Just because "we" are from English-speaking countries doesn't mean "we" have the same "enemies", and the idea that people are assigned a list of enemies based on where they're born is insane. Being born on the same patch of dirt doesn't mean I have anything to do with you.
  - margalabargala 3y ago
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2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

Is fighting fiction with fact really propaganda?

ochoseis 3y ago
In reality, it’s often cherry-picked facts fighting each other.
Andrex 3y ago
Facts can be paired with other facts in a way deliberately designed to mislead.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  That's true but I think it's disingenuous to say that countering enemy propaganda must also be propaganda. It doesn't have to be.
  - DinaCoder99 3y ago
    Nobody is forcing you to call it anything—you could just as easily call it "marketing" or "news". Anyway, "fact" is a convenient fantasy in most cases when you actually mean "strong belief grounded in sources you trust".
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
      Words are all the same or meaningless and there is no truth or facts? Thanks for imparting some wisdom comrade.
      - DinaCoder99 3y ago
        I think that "strong belief grounded in degrees of trust" is a much more powerful concept than "fact" in practice, not to mention one that's much more difficult to attack from a theory of knowledge perspective especially in a post-Wittgenstein world, but I understand why this is such a controversial concept when there's such a focus on folks actively undermining this.
WesleyLivesay 3y ago
I think this ties into the negative connotation I mentioned: propaganda does not have to be false, it just has to be biased. One thing I noticed in the article was that all of the rumors being discussed were negative rumors. The goal was to take rumors that might bring down morale and "set them right". I wonder if positive rumors were treated the same way.
- doktrin 3y ago
  Technically true, but popular connotation matters, and in this case I’d argue it matters more than the dictionary definition. It’s a bit like “racism” : I honestly have no idea if the current academic definition is “prejudice + power” or just “prejudice” - but to a significant extent it doesn’t really matter since the common understanding is the one that matters when communicating.
DinaCoder99 3y ago
I'm sure that's how literally everyone wants you to view their propaganda.
simpletone 3y ago
Yes. Facts are often used as propaganda and in fact can serve as the most potent form of propaganda because they often lack context and humanity. The rise of science and statistics in the 20th century was accompanied by the most racist and evil regimes for a reason. Most of the genocides, eugenics, racism, etc of the US, Britain and Germany in the 20th century was pushed by progressives wielding facts and science as blunt instruments.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  ...mixed with a large part of fiction, because genocidal movements are corrupt well beyond the "power of science."
  - simpletone 3y ago
    > because genocidal movements are corrupt well beyond the "power of science." Science was central to the genocidal movements in the US and Germany. In many ways, science was the cause of the genocidal movements. Eugenics was a scientific movement championed by scientists. What changed wasn't science. It was culture and politics that changed. The horrors of the 20th century led philosphers, politicians and ordinary citizens to lose their blind faith and trust in science and progress. The rise of science and social darwinism of the early 1900s is similar to rise of AI and technocracy. Hopefully we won't as foolish to place blind trust on it and history doesn't repeat itself.

diggan 3y ago

> An interesting article for sure. There were all kinds of things done by the various nations during the war to control the information available to the populous and to try and influence their beliefs. It's interesting to me that you said "were" instead of "is", we're still seeing exactly the same things played out today (by all nations, not just the "bad" guys), although it doesn't feel like much is being done to fight it, compared to what was outlined in the article.

WesleyLivesay 3y ago
Absolutely still happening, I used past tense to refer to the exact events discussed in the article (newspapers printing anti-rumor columns)

shadowgovt 3y ago

It's also worth noting that it's, in this case, grassroots propaganda. I don't doubt some of the newspapers had back-channels to what the War Department wanted reported or withheld, but the distributed nature of the activity and the apparent desire of the activists not to toe a party line, but pursue the truth, is worth observing. People who think of structures of control as centralized often miss how a specific meme (be it pursuing the truth, defending democracy, or claiming the legacy of the Aryan people) can act as an organizing tool for a decentralized network of supporters and control nodes. In essence, systems like that survive not on the strength of the king but on the willingness of the people to follow him.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago

To me, this looks more like snopes than propaganda. I mean, I'm sure it was snopes-in-service-of-the-war-effort, but it still seems different. Or maybe we could call it negative propaganda ("don't believe that") rather than positive propaganda ("believe this").

trimethylpurine 3y ago
>more like snopes than propaganda Aren't those the same thing? An opinion piece about a set of facts is still an opinion. Snopes largely covers political topics. Combined, that's definition propaganda.
- Aunche 3y ago
  Snopes at least seems to try to not have an agenda, even if they may be ideologically biased. The rumor clinics had an expressed interest of supporting America during WWII, so I'd consider it propaganda, but that shouldn't come with a negative connotation.
  - not_really 3y ago
    Snopes absolutely does have an agenda.

kouru225 3y ago

All PR used to be called propaganda. Now it’s a dirty word. The father of PR, Edward Bernays, quite literally wrote a book about what his job was called “Propaganda.”

subtra3t 3y ago
Is the book worth reading, for an average lurker of HN?
- walthamstow 3y ago
  More interesting is the Adam Curtis documentary about Bernays, The Century of the Self.
  - kouru225 3y ago
    Agreed

cjs_ac 3y ago

'Propaganda' is just a Latin gerundive meaning 'thing needing to be propagated'. The word was used in Germany and the Soviet Union, whereas the United Kingdom had a Ministry of Information in the World Wars doing the exact same things. The Anglophone world has negative connotations for the word 'propaganda' purely because our enemies used that word more than us.

briantakita 3y ago
> The Anglophone world has negative connotations for the word 'propaganda' purely because our enemies used that word more than us. Who is "our" & "us"? If it's not me, am I "the enemy"?
- panzagl 3y ago
  The Anglophone world is "our" and "us". Since our enemies "used" that word, you are only one if you also live in the past tense.
  - briantakita 3y ago
    > Since our enemies "used" that word, you are only one if you also live in the past tense. Kindof like the English speaking people of Japanese descent in the Western US circa 1940. Stripped of their property & sent to internment camps. I hope history does not repeat itself in present & future "propagation" efforts. But hope & reality are two different things. I would love to meet the "we" or "us" that is doing the propaganda. To propagate what I think about their efforts of course.
slowturtle 3y ago
Just because "we" are from English-speaking countries doesn't mean "we" have the same "enemies", and the idea that people are assigned a list of enemies based on where they're born is insane. Being born on the same patch of dirt doesn't mean I have anything to do with you.
- margalabargala 3y ago

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