by Propaganda
“your truth” and “my truth.” Stephen Ward has provided excellent arguments for why
the notion still retains legitimacy. He introduces the idea of pragmatic objectivity.
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There are certain procedures that we know are conducive to truth in public life.
There are stances we take toward others that are conducive to good ethical behaviour
towards others.
Each profession will have its own pragmatic rules conducive to ethically good
belief and behaviour. As an example, for journalists it is important to interview people
with different perspectives on a controversial measure. Global empathy is important
to avoid national biases in news propagation. Fact-checking is important for good
journalism, and a relativist who took the attitude that facts don’t exist and so don’t
matter would likely have at best a short career in a reputable news outlet. For Ward,
objectivity begins with an “objective stance” where a person has dispositions towards
open rationality, partial transcendence (meaning transcending one’s own concerns and
viewpoint), disinterested truth, and intellectual integrity.72 From these dispositions,
one arrives in time at standards, which include empirical standards. These acknowledge
such things as that we are likely to have a better view of things in clear light than in fog.
There are also standards of coherence, requiring that we not contradict ourselves, and
standards of rational debate, which relate to whether we have allowed other opinions to
challenge our own (more of this in Chapter 6 below). Journalists don’t have to suppose
the existence of some ethereal reality-in-itself in order to be objective. It is already being pragmatically objective if they have in mind making “rhetorical debate on public issues
as rational, inclusive and objective as possible.”73 The adherent to the subjectivist “my
truth is not your truth” attitude needs to recognize that there is an influence of rational
attitudes on the “evolution of a person’s values.”74 Ward writes:
Pragmatic objectivity asks: do the facts of the case support the value judgement?
Does the value judgement cohere with my other values and goals? Have I come to my
judgement with a sufficient degree of critical distance and impartiality?75
This will give some indication of what is in its entirety a very thorough undercutting of
widespread scepticism about the possibility of objectivity in journalism. The same or
similar arguments are applicable to the ethical evaluation of instances of propaganda,
insofar as the question of objectivity is involved.
ConCLUSIon: PRoPAgAnDA AnD AUTonoMy
Propaganda, in the light of the definition we have adopted, involves manipulation
of some kind. That is to say, it involves some form of misleading communication,
emotional pressure, appeals to the subconscious, and suchlike. In all such cases, the
autonomy of individuals is infringed, unless it is clear that these same individuals give
approval to this activity. For example, as we have already seen, just as someone may
prefer not to know the whole truth about his or her disease, so also someone may
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wish, in time of war, to be presented with believable atrocity stories in order to remove qualms and stimulate more enthusiasm among the troops, thus increasing the odds of
winning. A Kantian defence of conscription refers to what a rational person would
be deemed to accept. Autonomy in that way is not to be infringed, even though the
demand that you lay down your life for the state seems the antithesis of autonomy.
A similar argument can be made in defence of propaganda under very special cir-
cumstances, such as where preservation of the state is involved. A key assumption
of this argument is that the individual rationally accepts both the need for preserv-
ing the state and, therefore, the obligation to come to its defence when under attack.
However, if an individual feels that the state has too much power, that the war benefits
the wealthy class and not the poor, and that all in all the state as so constituted is not
worth defending, at least by this or that disadvantaged individual, then there is a real
objection mountable on the basis of autonomy-violation.
The reverse side of this picture is the all-too-willing acceptance of propaganda
under circumstances when it is unworthy to do so. Some people do not want to have
the agony of decision-making. They would rather leave the problems of religion, life,
and morality to institutions such as the church hierarchy or to some political saviour.
So they give their assent to propaganda. This is one of Ellul’s dominant themes: so
many people want life to be simpler, and propaganda in its nature provides the illusion
they want. Assuming this to be so, does the argument for condemning propaganda by
reason of its autonomy-violation still have force? On the surface, the people targeted
give their assent, and, as the saying goes, volenti not fit injuria—“to the consenting no wrong is done.” However, it may be argued there is a wrong done against oneself in
forfeiting an aspect of autonomy that should always be retained. If that is so, the pro-
pagandist becomes a co-conspirator in the joint effort to, in effect, partly enslave some
willing people. Of course, in reply it can be argued that religious people sometimes
surrender their autonomy to an abbot, and it would be presumptuous to regard this
religious life as less moral than others. But there is, or ought to be, a difference in moti-
vation. The religious calling places a life of prayer above all else and sets aside those
things that, for such an existence, are a distraction. Such things include the continual
openness to competing life choices and the constant study of challenging opinions
from the irreligious. This approach is a reasoned one, and if one accepts the validity
of a religious existence, it genuinely preserves the autonomy of what would otherwise
be a loss of autonomy. In much the same way, a husband and wife give up aspects
of autonomy in order to give rise to a new expression of their autonomic choices.
Without such a reasoned justification, willingness to be propagandized does not auto-
matically legitimize the propaganda. More will be said on autonomy in the context of
arguments from John Stuart Mill in the next chapter.
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notes
1 See for example Leviticus 20:10–18, contrasted with Leviticus 19:18 and with Matthew 5:43–44 and Matthew 7:1–5.
2 Plato, The Republic, I, 331c–332a; John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971) 48–50.
3 David Nyberg, The Varnished Truth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
4 Sisella Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
5 St. Augustine of Hippo, “On Lying,” in Treatises of Various Subjects, vol. 16, ed. Roy J. Deferrari, Fathers of the Church (New York: Catholic University of America Press, 1952) 56.
6 Augustine, “Against Lying,” in Deferrari, Treatises of Various Subjects 162.
7 Augustine, “On Lying” 57–58.
8 Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
9 It can also mean the propensity to dogmatically proclaim one’s own beliefs to be true regardless of what anyone else may say. See Michael Winship, BuzzFlash, “We Hold This Truthiness to Be Self-Evident,” AlterNet, February 8, 2006,
10 The issue is nicely explored in Sybil Wolfram’s “Ethics and Belief,” The Canadian Journal of Rhetorical Studies 3 (September 1993): 124–32.
11 Augustine, “On Lying” 61 and 102.
12 Augustine, “Against Lying” 173.
13 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947) 2.2 ques. 110, arts. 2 and 3, 1664–67.
14 Adapted from Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H.J. Paton (New York: Harper and Row, Harper Torchbooks, 1964) 89–90.
15 Immanuel Kant, “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Altruistic Motives,” in Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy, ed. and trans. Lewis White Beck (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949) 346–50.
16 Grotius,
On the Law of War and Peace, trans F.W. Kelsey (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1925), bk. 3, ch. 1, XI.
17 Grotius
XII, XIII.
18 Plato,
The Republic, Book III, 389c and Book V, 459c.
19 See Kant, “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Altruistic Motives,” excerpted in Bok 268–69. His foil was Benjamin Constant, but the ideas were similar to Grotius’s.
20 The idea of “doing the truth” is fully explored in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (London: Fontana Library, 1966) 363–72, though he there makes use of the expression “living truth.” He uses the former phrase in, for example, “Truth Is to Be Done,” a meditation on John 3:21. What gives special poignancy to Bonhoeffer’s words is that his speaking out against Hitler in wartime Germany cost him his life. See Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I Want to Live These Days with You: A Year of Daily Devotions (Westminster: John Knox Press, 2007) 158.
21 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, Vol. 1 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985) 18.
22 Edward Dicey, “The Ethics of Political Lying,” Nineteenth Century (June 1889): 789–94. Direct quotes below are taken from this source.
23 New York Times, February 25, 1996.
24 Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1907); excerpted in Bok 273.
25 Bok 60.
26 Bok 24.
27 Bok 105.
28 Nyberg 25 and 5. The Steiner quotation is from George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) 224. Curiously, Steiner invokes Socrates in defence of his view, claiming that Socrates’ case in the Lesser Hippias is that “the man who utters falsehood intentionally is to be preferred to the one who lies inadvertently or involuntarily” (230). The dialogue is clearly a reductio of the view that doing wrong intentionally is better than doing it involuntarily, and Steiner himself recognizes that the dialogue might have been “ironically a contrario,” as he puts it (230). The dialogue puts clearly on the map the distinction between being skilled at doing something and using this skill for a good purpose. Steiner papers over this distinction with the word “preferred.” Socrates clearly cannot accept 180 PROPAGANDA AND THE ETHICS OF PERSUASION
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that the man who utters falsehood is the better person and thus is to be preferred overall, even though he recognizes that such a man may be preferred for his skill.
29 Nyberg 59–60. Virginia Woolf, interestingly enough, was the niece of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen and thus biographically linked with the circle of thinkers mentioned earlier for whom the question of lying was a recurring preoccupation.
30 Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988).
31 Jonsen and Toulmin 205.
32 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge (1888; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960) 523.
33 Nyberg 151, quoting Samuel Oliner and Pearl Oliner, The Altruistic Personality (New York: Free Press, 1988) 107. A fictional treatment of this kind of problem of deception is included in Hilda van Stockum, The Borrowed House (Bathgate, ND: Bethlehem Books, 2000).
34 Nyberg 49, 50.
35 Nyberg 50.
36 See Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, trans. Daphne Hardy (1941; New York: Signet Books, 1956) 117.
37 Weber 77–128.
38 Weber 125, 126.
39 Weber 127, 128.
40 Albert Camus, The Rebel (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1962); Caligula and Three Other Plays (New York: Knopf, 1958).
41 Michael Walzer, “Political Action and the Problem of Dirty Hands,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2, no. 2
(1973): 180. Hoederer is the exponent of the untrammeled ethic of responsibility in Jean-Paul Sartre’s play, Les Mains Sales ( Dirty Hands), publ. as Crime Passionel, trans. Kitty Black (London: Methuen, 1949).
42 Frank Knopfelmacher, “The Ethic of Responsibility,” in Liberty and Politics, ed. Owen Harries (New South Wales: Pergamon Press, 1976) 38–47.
43 New York Times, March 11, 1986: A25.
44 Knopfelmacher 43.
45 Plato, The Republic V, 414c ff; V, 459d ff; III, 389bc.
46 President’s Special Review Board (John Tower, Chairman), The Tower Commission Report (New York: Bantam Books, 1987) passim; and National Security Archive (Scott Armstrong, Executive Director), The Chronology (New York: Warner Books, 1987) passim.
47 Clive Ponting, The Right to Know: The Inside Story of the Belgrano Affair (London and Sidney: Sphere Books, 1985) passim.
48 Canada, Commission of Inquiry Concerning Certain Activities of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Third Report, Certain RCMP Activities and the Question of Governmental Knowledge (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, August 1981) 7–8.
49 Halberstam 167–68.
50 FAIR, November 15, 2001. See
51 Hans Classen, “Who Is in Charge of the Nation?” The Time Is Never Ripe (Ottawa: Centaur Press, 1972) 179, 180.
52 See the valuable table drawn up by William Brennan in Dehumanizing the Vulnerable: When Word Games Take Lives (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1995) 7.
53 See Bradley Graham, “Enemy Body Counts Revived,” The Washington Post, October 24, 2005.
54 Paul Grice, “Logic and Conversation,” Studies in the Way of Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989) 22–40, 28.
55 Example taken from Trudy Govier, ed., Selected Issues in Logic and Communication (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1988).
56 Fred Landis, “CIA Psychological Warfare Operations,” Science for the People (January/ February 1982) 6–37.
57 Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, written with McCarthyism in mind, drew attention to the chilling effect this kind of attack could have. Anyone who spoke out against the use of this tactic found themselves targeted, and fear worked to dampen expression of revulsion, as some potential targets became more interested in avoiding damaging associations or drawing attention to their own possible vulnerability. Of course, there are many different ways in which to make use of associations. Miller’s play itself associates McCarthyism CHAPTER 4: ETHICS AnD PRoPAgAnDA 181
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with early American witch-hunts. The ethical question revolves around whether the claimed associations are legitimate or not. See Arthur Miller, The Crucible, ed. Gerald Weales (New York: Viking Press, 1971).
58 This comes from J.L. Austin, “Performative Utterances,” in his Philosophical Papers, ed. J.O. Urmson and G.J. Warnock (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961). See also J.L. Austin, How to Do Thing
s with Words (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962).
59 Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975). See, especially, the translator’s very helpful introduction, xiii-xxiii. Direct quotes in this text are taken from this source.
60 Richard Whately, Elements of Rhetoric, 7th ed. rev. 1846. Direct quotes below are taken from this source.
61 The material in this subsection is taken from Richard Whately , The Use and Abuse of Party Feeling in Matters of Religion, lectures given at Oxford, 1822. I have occasionally paraphrased and added comments, but the phrasing is mostly in Whately’s own language. I would like to thank the library at Trinity College, Dublin, for enabling me to discover and have access to this material.
62 Gustav Le Bon, Les opinions et les croyances (Paris: Flammarion, 1911) 231–32.
63 Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, (New York: Schocken Books, 1983) 31.
64 See “The Battle for Justice: M Anatole France Appeals to His Countrymen,” The Manchester Guardian (1901–
1950): June 3, 1913. ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian (1821–2003) and The Observer (1791–2003),
65 Aristotle,
Rhetoric 1408a.
66 Richard Lanham, Style: An Anti-Textbook (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974) 1.
67 The relevant texts of Kierkegaard are Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. D. Swenson and W. Lowrie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941); “Communication,” Journals and Papers, ed. H.H. Hong and E.H. Hong, assisted by G. Malantschuk (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1967); and The Point of View of My Work as an Author, trans. W. Lowrie (1939; New York: Harper and Row, 1962).
68 Whately, Elements of Rhetoric 34. Cf. Aristotle, Rhetoric 1404b; and Richard Lanham, Literacy and the Survival of Humour (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983) 20.
69 John J. Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie: The Truth about Lying in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
70 Mearsheimer 66–67.
71 Walton 125.
72 Stephen Ward, The Invention of Journalism Ethics: The Path to Objectivity and Beyond (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004) 281.
