Unit 16 · Propaganda, Extremism and Civic Life

In 1622 the Catholic Church set up an office in Rome to spread the faith in distant lands. Its Latin name included the words de propaganda fide, meaning for spreading the faith. For centuries the word propaganda simply meant spreading a message. It did not sound sinister. That changed in the twentieth century, when governments used mass media to shape the minds of whole nations.

Today most scholars use propaganda to mean organized, one-sided communication aimed at a large audience. Its goal is to change what people believe or do. It often works on emotion more than on evidence. It leaves out facts that do not help its cause. The American political scientist Harold Lasswell studied the posters and news of World War I. In 1927 he described propaganda as the management of opinion through symbols.

Not all persuasion is propaganda. A public health ad that urges you to wash your hands is trying to persuade you. So is a candidate’s speech or a charity’s letter. The difference is often one of degree. Useful questions include these. Does the message give you real evidence? Does it let you see the other side? Does it respect your right to decide? The more a message hides facts and stirs up strong feelings, the closer it moves to propaganda.

During World War I, British and American posters often showed the German army as a hulking ape or a brutal beast. One famous American recruiting poster showed a snarling gorilla in a German helmet carrying off a woman. The artists did not show German farmers, teachers or families. They showed a monster. The message was simple: this is what we are fighting.

Scholars call this an enemy image. It takes a group of people, whether a nation, a class, a religion or an ethnic group, and presents them as one dangerous thing. Individual differences disappear. The enemy is shown as cruel, sneaky or less than human. Soviet posters in the 1930s pictured the kulaks, better-off peasants, as fat, greedy spiders. Nazi posters pictured Jews through ugly, hateful caricatures.

An enemy image does two jobs at once. It gives people someone to blame for real problems such as hunger, defeat or unemployment. It also pulls the rest of society together against a common foe. That is why it is so powerful and so dangerous. When a group is no longer seen as human beings, violence against them becomes easier to accept. The Soviet campaign against kulaks and the Holocaust both followed years of such images.

After Germany lost World War I in 1918, many Germans could not accept the defeat. A story spread that the army had not really lost. It had been betrayed at home, stabbed in the back, by socialists, liberals and Jews. Historians have shown the story was false. Germany’s own generals had asked for an armistice because the army could no longer fight on. Yet the Nazis repeated the myth for years.

In his book Mein Kampf, written in the mid-1920s, Hitler described the idea of a big lie. He claimed that ordinary people could be fooled more easily by a huge lie than a small one. They would not believe anyone could invent something so bold. He accused Jews of using this method. In fact, Nazi propaganda under Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda from 1933, used it constantly.

Psychologists have since found something that helps explain why repetition works. People tend to rate a statement as more believable after hearing it several times, even when it is false. Researchers call this the illusory truth effect. It was first reported in a study in 1977. The lesson for a citizen is plain. Hearing something often is not evidence that it is true. What matters is where the claim came from and what supports it.

In 1937 a group of American teachers and journalists founded the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in New York. They worried that radio and newspapers were being used to stir up hatred at home and abroad. So they wrote short guides for schools that named common tricks. Their list included name-calling, glittering generalities, testimonials and the bandwagon.

The bandwagon says, in effect, everyone is doing it, so you should too. The name comes from the wagon that carried the band in a parade. People jumped aboard to be part of the crowd. Huge rallies, like the Nazi Party rallies at Nuremberg, were built to create this feeling. A lone doubter in a sea of cheering faces feels strange and alone. Joining seems natural, even safe.

Fear appeal works alongside it. A message warns that disaster is coming unless you act now. Fear can be honest. A warning about a real storm saves lives. But propaganda uses fear to cut thinking short. It exaggerates the threat, names a scapegoat and offers only one solution: follow us. A helpful habit is to slow down when a message makes you very afraid. Ask what the evidence is and what the message wants you to do.

In the Soviet Union of the late 1930s, Stalin’s portrait hung in offices, schools and train stations. Poems praised him as the father of the peoples. Towns were renamed for him. Children thanked him for their happy childhood. At the same time, his secret police arrested hundreds of thousands of people. Many were shot and many more were sent to the Gulag labor camps.

This worship of a living leader is called a cult of personality. It presents one person as wise, kind and nearly all-knowing. Every success belongs to the leader. Every failure belongs to enemies or traitors. The cult is not only about vanity. It makes criticism feel like disloyalty, or even like a crime. Similar cults surrounded Hitler in Germany, Mao Zedong in China and the Kim family in North Korea.

In 1956, three years after Stalin died, the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave a closed-door speech to the Communist Party congress. It became known as the Secret Speech. Khrushchev condemned the cult of personality around Stalin and described some of his crimes against party members. The speech shocked many listeners. It showed that even inside the system, people could see how much damage a cult had done.

Soviet posters of the 1920s and 1930s often showed muscular workers and smiling farm women. Bright red dominated. Factories smoked, wheat fields shone and the leader looked on with a calm smile. The message was that communism was building a fair and modern future for the working class. Posters were a key part of agitprop, the Soviet term for agitation and propaganda.

Nazi posters showed a different ideal. They pictured blond families, marching youths and soldiers under swastika banners. The message was that the German nation, united under Hitler, was reborn and strong. Nazi ideology rested on racial hatred. So its posters also pushed out anyone the regime called an outsider, especially Jews.

Put side by side, the two styles share a clear visual rhetoric. Both used a heroic leader, bold colors and simple shapes. Both showed crowds in perfect agreement and a hopeful future. Both used an enemy, whether the capitalist, the kulak or the Jew. The ideas differed deeply. Soviet posters spoke of class, Nazi posters of race and nation. But the methods of persuasion looked much alike.

In April 1917, days after the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson created the Committee on Public Information. The journalist George Creel led it. It produced posters, films and pamphlets. It also sent tens of thousands of volunteer speakers, called Four Minute Men, to give short talks in movie theaters. The goal was to build support for the war in a country that had been divided about joining it.

In World War II the United States set up the Office of War Information in 1942. Britain had its own Ministry of Information. These agencies urged people to buy war bonds, save food and keep military secrets. Some of their work was honest and useful. Some was not. American media often pictured Japanese people through racist caricatures. In 1942 the government removed about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast to camps, most of them U.S. citizens.

So how is democratic propaganda different? Supporters of wartime messaging say a free people facing a real enemy must be informed and united. Critics answer that even in a democracy, one-sided messages can feed prejudice and silence dissent. The key differences lie in the system around the message. In a democracy, a free press, courts and elections allow citizens to challenge the government’s story. Later, the United States formally apologized for the camps in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

Imagine a video that shows a crowded beach and says a new law has banned swimming. It looks convincing. Before you believe it, try three questions. First, who made this? That is the source. Second, why did they make it? That is the purpose. Third, what supports the claim? That is the evidence. These questions come from historians, who use them on every old letter or poster.

The source matters because some makers have a stake in what you believe. A company, a campaign or a foreign government may benefit from your reaction. That does not make their claim false. It means you check it more carefully. The purpose matters because a message meant to inform looks different from one meant to sell, anger or recruit.

Evidence is the hardest test. Good evidence can be checked by someone else. It names where numbers came from, links to original documents, or quotes people who can be identified. Weak evidence leans on anonymous insiders, blurry clips with no date, or phrases like everyone knows. None of this requires cynicism. It requires the habit of asking before believing, which is what careful readers of every political view share.

Researchers at the Stanford History Education Group, led by Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew, ran a study published in 2017. They watched three groups judge websites: history professors, Stanford undergraduates and professional fact-checkers. The fact-checkers did best by far. Their secret surprised the researchers. They spent very little time on the website itself.

Instead, they opened new browser tabs and searched for the group behind the site. Who funds it? What do reporters and encyclopedias say about it? This is called lateral reading, reading across many sources instead of down one page. The professors and students often did the opposite. They read carefully from top to bottom and were fooled by a polished design, an official-sounding name or a long list of footnotes.

The same group found a related weakness in a 2016 study of students. Many could not tell a sponsored article, an ad made to look like news, from a real news story. The lesson is not that young people cannot think. It is that the web rewards new habits. A good design is easy to buy. A reputation, earned over years in the eyes of others, is much harder to fake.

When you open a social media app, you do not see every post in the order it was made. A computer program called an algorithm ranks posts. It chooses what to show first based on what you and people like you have clicked, watched or shared. The goal is usually to keep you on the app. Posts that spark strong feelings, including anger, often keep people watching.

In 2011 the writer Eli Pariser described a filter bubble. He argued that personalized feeds quietly show us more of what we already agree with. A related idea is the echo chamber: a space where people mostly hear their own views repeated back. A widely cited 2018 study in the journal Science, by Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy and Sinan Aral, found that false news stories spread farther and faster on Twitter than true ones.

Researchers still debate how strong these effects are. Some studies find that many people see a fairly wide mix of news. Others find that a small, very active group lives in sharply one-sided feeds. Most agree on a few helpful habits. Follow sources from more than one point of view. Notice when a post makes you angry, and pause. Remember that your feed is a selection, not a picture of what everyone thinks.

Picture a shocking photo of a flooded city with the caption: this happened today. Within an hour it has thousands of shares. Later someone finds the same photo in a news story from years earlier, from a different country. Nobody who shared it meant harm. They just moved too fast. This is how much false information travels. It is often called misinformation when shared by mistake and disinformation when spread on purpose.

The digital literacy educator Mike Caulfield offers four moves, called SIFT. Stop, and notice your reaction. Investigate the source: who is behind this? Find better coverage: are trusted outlets reporting the same thing? Trace claims, quotes and media back to the original context. A reverse image search, which looks for earlier copies of a picture, often solves a photo like the flood in seconds.

These moves take about a minute. They protect you, and they protect the people who trust what you share. They also work in every direction. A careful reader checks claims that fit their own views as hard as claims that do not. That is often the hardest part. It is also what makes a citizen harder to manipulate by any propagandist, from any side.

In 1928 the Nazi Party won less than 3 percent of the vote in German national elections. Then the Great Depression struck. By 1932 millions of Germans were out of work, and banks and businesses had failed. In the July 1932 election the Nazis won about 37 percent and became the largest party in the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament. The Communist Party, on the far left, also grew during these years.

Scholars of extremism often begin with grievance. A grievance is a feeling of having been wronged, whether by poverty, humiliation, unfair treatment or loss of status. Many grievances are real. The Germans of 1932 really were suffering. Extremist movements do not invent the pain. They offer an explanation for it and a target to blame.

That is the key move. Instead of complex causes, such as a world economic crisis, the movement names a simple enemy. For the far right in Weimar Germany, it was Jews, Marxists and the leaders of the republic. For the far left, it was capitalists and the so-called bourgeois state. Both promised that removing the enemy would end the suffering. Both despised the slow compromises of parliamentary democracy.

Researchers who interview former members of violent groups often hear a story like Daniel’s. The first draw was not a book or a speech. It was people. A group offered friends, a place to go, a uniform or a nickname. It offered a clear role and the feeling of being part of something important. For a young person who feels invisible, that can be powerful.

Scholars call this the search for belonging and significance. The psychologist Arie Kruglanski and his colleagues have argued that a strong wish to matter, especially after a humiliation or loss, can make people open to extreme groups. Other researchers stress social networks: people usually join because a friend, relative or partner is already inside.

This helps explain why arguing about ideas alone often fails to pull someone out. Their friendships, routines and sense of self are tied to the group. Leaving can mean losing everything at once. It also suggests where help can start. Families, teachers, coaches and mentors who offer real belonging and purpose give people another place to stand. That is true whatever the group’s ideology, left or right.

In the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966, young Red Guards were told to attack the four olds: old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas. People were sorted into revolutionary and counterrevolutionary. Teachers, writers and even parents could be labeled class enemies. There was no middle ground. Many Red Guards later described the fear of being judged not red enough.

This way of thinking is called us-versus-them thinking, and at its extreme, Manichean thinking. The word comes from an ancient religion that saw the world as a battle between pure light and pure darkness. In politics, it means one side is wholly good and the other wholly evil. Anyone who asks questions or seeks compromise is treated as a traitor.

Us-versus-them thinking appears on both extremes. Far-left movements have usually drawn the line by class: workers against capitalists, the people against the bourgeoisie. Far-right movements have usually drawn it by nation, race or religion. Healthy democracies depend on the opposite habit. They treat opponents as fellow citizens who can be argued with, voted against and, next time, perhaps worked with.

In Rwanda in 1993 and 1994, a radio station called RTLM broadcast music, jokes and news. It also called Tutsi people inyenzi, which means cockroaches. It told listeners that the Tutsi were a threat that had to be removed. In April 1994 a genocide began. In about one hundred days, extremists killed hundreds of thousands of people, most of them Tutsi, along with Hutu who opposed the killing.

Describing people as vermin, insects, germs or animals is called dehumanization. It strips away the sense that the victims are human beings with families, names and feelings. Nazi propaganda called Jews parasites and rats. Soviet propaganda under Stalin called class enemies vermin to be exterminated. Scholars of genocide, the attempt to destroy a people, see this language as a common warning sign.

Dehumanizing words do not always lead to violence. But they lower the barriers that normally stop ordinary people from harming others. A helpful civic habit is to notice this language and name it, whoever uses it, including people on your own side. After the genocide, an international court convicted several RTLM leaders in 2003 of inciting genocide, showing that words can carry legal responsibility.

On March 16, 1978, gunmen ambushed a car in Rome. They killed five bodyguards and kidnapped Aldo Moro, a former prime minister and leader of the Christian Democrats. The kidnappers were the Red Brigades, a far-left armed group founded around 1970. They held Moro for 55 days. In May 1978 they killed him and left his body in a car in central Rome.

The Red Brigades saw themselves as revolutionaries. They believed Italy’s democracy was a mask for capitalist power and that violence could spark a workers’ uprising. Italians call this era, from the late 1960s into the early 1980s, the Years of Lead. Far-right groups also carried out deadly bombings in those years, including the attack on the Bologna train station in 1980 that killed 85 people.

The uprising never came. Most Italian workers and unions rejected the Red Brigades, and the Communist Party of Italy condemned them. Police work, trials and laws that rewarded members who cooperated broke the groups apart during the 1980s. Many historians argue that Moro’s murder turned public opinion sharply against political violence of every kind.

Between 2000 and 2007 a small cell called the National Socialist Underground murdered ten people in Germany. Nine were immigrants or of immigrant background, mostly Turkish, and one was a police officer. For years police wrongly treated the killings as crimes inside immigrant communities. The truth came out in 2011. A long trial ended in 2018 with a life sentence for the surviving member.

Neo-Nazi means new Nazi. It refers to groups that revive Nazi ideas, especially racial hatred, antisemitism and the worship of Hitler. Such groups have appeared in Europe, North America and elsewhere since 1945. Most are small. Some spread hateful music and online material. A few have committed murder and bombings.

After the Nazi years, West Germany wrote its 1949 Basic Law to defend democracy against its enemies. Scholars call this a militant democracy. Its constitutional court banned a neo-Nazi party in 1952 and the Communist Party in 1956, both as threats to the democratic order. Supporters say a democracy need not allow its own destruction. Critics warn that banning parties can be misused against legitimate opposition. The debate continues.

In May 1980, on the eve of Peru’s first national election in years, members of a small group burned ballot boxes in the Andean village of Chuschi. It was the first act of the Shining Path, or Sendero Luminoso. Its founder, a philosophy professor named Abimael Guzman, followed a strict version of Maoism. He believed a peasant war could destroy the old society and build a communist one.

The war that followed was terrible. The Shining Path killed village leaders, farmers who refused to support it, and people it called class enemies. Government forces also committed massacres and torture. Poor, rural, Quechua-speaking communities suffered most. Many villages formed their own self-defense patrols, called rondas, to resist the Shining Path.

Police captured Guzman in Lima in 1992, and the movement collapsed soon after. In 2003 Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated that about 69,000 people died in the conflict between 1980 and 2000. It found the Shining Path responsible for the largest share of deaths. It also documented serious crimes by the armed forces, and it urged the country to remember all the victims.

In the 1830s the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville traveled across the United States. He was struck by how often Americans formed associations: church groups, town meetings, clubs and societies for every purpose. In his book Democracy in America he argued that these groups taught people to work together and to govern themselves.

Modern scholars call this web of groups civil society. It includes congregations, unions, sports leagues, volunteer fire departments, neighborhood councils and many more. In his 2000 book Bowling Alone, the political scientist Robert Putnam argued that Americans had joined fewer such groups since the 1960s. He worried that this weakened trust. Other scholars debate how large the decline is and what has replaced older groups.

Voting is another source of strength. When people believe elections are fair and their votes count, they have a peaceful way to fix grievances and remove leaders. Extremists on both sides often tell people that voting is useless. A community with active civic groups and wide participation offers belonging and a voice, two needs extremist movements try to meet in destructive ways.

In the National Socialist Underground case, it was reporters and a public inquiry that exposed how badly the police had failed. In Peru, journalists documented massacres by both the Shining Path and the army during the war. In many countries, a free press has shown the public what powerful people, and violent groups, wanted to hide.

A free press means news outlets can report and criticize without government control or punishment. Independent courts means judges decide cases by law, not by orders from leaders or crowds. Together they are part of the rule of law: the idea that the same laws bind everyone, including the government. They let democracies punish political violence through fair trials, not revenge.

Extremist movements and authoritarian governments often attack these institutions first. They call journalists enemies and judges traitors. That is why many political scientists treat attacks on the press and courts, from any direction, as warning lights for a democracy. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, lists free expression among every person’s rights.

Researchers who study leaving call it disengagement when a person stops taking part in violence, and deradicalization when they also give up the extreme beliefs. The two do not always happen together. Some people leave because they are tired, afraid or disappointed in the group’s leaders. Others leave because a relationship, a child or a new job gives them something to lose.

Doubt often grows from small moments that do not fit the group’s story, like the kind doctor in Daniel’s account. In Germany, a program called EXIT-Deutschland has helped people leave the far-right scene since 2000. Similar programs exist in other countries for people leaving far-left, far-right and religious extremist groups. Many are run with help from former members, who understand the fear of leaving.

Leaving is often lonely. A person may lose friends, face threats from the group and feel shame about the past. What helps is a new place to belong, practical support like work or schooling, and people who treat them as capable of change. Experts debate which programs work best, since careful long-term studies are still limited. But nearly all agree that isolation makes leaving harder.

Picture two students from families with very different politics assigned to lead a class debate on taxes. At first they talk past each other. Then their teacher gives them a rule. Before either one argues, each must explain the other’s view so well that the other says, yes, that is what I mean. The room gets quieter. The debate gets better.

This rule is sometimes called steelmanning: stating an opponent’s argument in its strongest form, the opposite of attacking a weak straw man. It is one part of civil discourse, meaning respectful public disagreement. Civil discourse does not mean being bland or avoiding conflict. It means arguing hard about ideas while treating people as fellow citizens.

Democracies depend on this skill. Elections, legislatures and courts are ways to settle disagreements without violence. They work only if people accept that losing a vote is not the end of the world and that opponents are not enemies. Groups across the country run dialogue programs that bring people with different views together to listen. Disagreeing well is a skill anyone can practice, one conversation at a time.