Jackson Hancock
Propaganda in Democracies
When you hear the word propaganda you probably think, "The thing the Nazi's used to kill the Jews." These negative connotations are often accompanied by the ignorant notion that the individual is not susceptible to propaganda. However, propaganda has been a part of society for hundreds of years and has not always been a negative thing. In fact, the word propaganda stems from the word "to propagate" as in to spread. At its core, it is a tool in the same way that fire is a tool—it can be used for productivity or destruction. Only after the second world war did propaganda gain its negative connotations, as the government revealed how the Nazi regime convinced its people to commit the atrocities that they did—often done while engaging in their own forms of propaganda. In this sense, modern democracies did not escape propaganda but merely rebranded it. America, ironically, is home to perhaps the most pervasive and sophisticated propaganda. The combination of it being capitalistic and a democracy makes it an environment uniquely suited to breeding effective propaganda. This presentation argues that propaganda is paradoxically an unethical and insidious threat to democracy as well as a necessity that democracies cannot succeed without.
WATCH HERE
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When you hear the word propaganda you probably think, "The thing the Nazi's used to kill the Jews." These negative connotations are often accompanied by the ignorant notion that the individual is not susceptible to propaganda. However, propaganda has been a part of society for hundreds of years and has not always been a negative thing. In fact, the word propaganda stems from the word "to propagate" as in to spread. At its core, it is a tool in the same way that fire is a tool—it can be used for productivity or destruction. Only after the second world war did propaganda gain its negative connotations, as the government revealed how the Nazi regime convinced its people to commit the atrocities that they did—often done while engaging in their own forms of propaganda. In this sense, modern democracies did not escape propaganda but merely rebranded it. America, ironically, is home to perhaps the most pervasive and sophisticated propaganda. The combination of it being capitalistic and a democracy makes it an environment uniquely suited to breeding effective propaganda. This presentation argues that propaganda is paradoxically an unethical and insidious threat to democracy as well as a necessity that democracies cannot succeed without.
WATCH HERE
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