Staying Ahead of the Next Thing: A Cognitive Journey into Counterpropagandalo
A wise man recently told me that we humans are “closed systems”; we know what we know based on reference points from only the things we have seen or heard about, things that we have experienced with the five senses. In other words, we are incapable of formulating truly unique ideas without references to other ideas that others have already presented. Metaphysical implications aside, I believe this is an accurate way to describe why nobody is immune to propaganda. If you think about it, people, in general, are neither dumb or smart. We can conclude this because our side wants us to believe that the other side is dumb and that we are the smart ones. Logically, this ought to (but oftentimes doesn’t) lead into a discussion of why there are sides, what the other side actually believes, who made it to where there has to be sides, and why the sides are diametrically opposed to one another by design. However, you may only have the ability to answer maybe the first question based on what reference points are available to the best of your recollection.
To put this into a more specific scenario, I originally intended to write an article on U.S. Military retention figures, defense spending, and what they really mean beyond what the propaganda spin machine will put out. Upon further inspection, the article was less an “article” that others would want to read and more of a logical odyssey leading to a conclusion that has already been concluded. In retrospect, 95% of it was just an opportunity to backhand the DoD and call them out for their blatant corruption. Nobody wants to read that because it’s old news; the case is closed. 4% was spent writing about the Military Industrial Complex. Again, it’s already been done and there’s an entire book on it, specifically War is a Racket by Lt. Gen Smedley Butler. The other 1% was a discussion on how these figures and other topics such as wokeness in the military, mission readiness, and the evolving doctrine on combatting near-peer threats are nothing more than random shiny objects designed to distract the masses. Yet again, nothing groundbreaking or novel here. It’s only been discussed at length by the independent media for the last decade or so.
But yet I could not completely put the topic to rest. What’s the military’s most powerful weapon? It isn’t the jet fighters, the PATRIOT missile batteries, the nukes, the tanks, or the divisions of infantry. It’s propaganda. Without it, the military can’t sustain any operation in a foreign country. Without it, they can’t recruit and retain Servicemembers. Without it, they can’t maintain favorability within the American public. While some of us do know the truth about the government, others are blissfully unaware while others are all for it, what we’d call the “govern me harder, daddy” crowd. I thought it would be worth discussing how those sorts of people got to where they are at and how you can personally fight back against it.
- Understanding Logical Fallacies
To be perfectly honest, this is by far the hardest thing to do due to the simple fact that it has the tendency to shatter your opinions of others that you thought favorably of. It doesn’t matter what side of the argument you subscribe to, everyone is guilty of using logical fallacies–everyone without exception. Whether or not they are aware of it is another matter all together.
Some may take this to mean that we need to point out the fallacies of the “opposing side” and call them out to make them look bad. However, I mean this to say you should be looking for logical fallacies on both sides. This can be difficult since we have the tendency to cognitively give more credence to a personality that we like compared to someone that we don’t.
One notable example of this was the time between November 3rd, 2020 and January 6th, 2021. Right-wing independent media was in full spin mode attempting to outline a Hail Mary scenario by which the election can be decertified, corruption can be rooted out, and things can be made right. Sidney Powell was going to “Release the Kraken” (at least before Deep Stater Jenna Ellis sabotaged Trump’s legal remediation attempt), Mike Lindell was going to personally run audits in multiple states, and QAnon foretold of a vague EO that would allow Trump to put the coup plotters on trial for treason.
What had happened is that right-wing content creators collectively found themselves in a position where they had to either 1) face up with reality, say what people don’t want to hear, and lose subscribership as a result, or 2) double down and stretch the truth with the assistance of many logical fallacies. From a rhetorical standpoint, doubling down is never an sustainable position due to the fact that logical fallacies tend to become more apparent over time.
Why would these content creators lie to us? Aren’t they independent for a reason? From a pure financial standpoint, doubling down is far better than having to face up with reality because a content creator’s livelihood is dependent on their subscribership. Even though much of the independent media is funded by small donations rather than accepting corporate help like much of the mainstream media, they’re still beholden to someone. On the other hand, it doesn’t mean people are always wrong, even if they’ve been wrong once or twice in the past. We oftentimes see the inverse of this maxim if we catch a Liberal saying something factual in what we would attribute to a “broken clock is right twice a day” scenario. In that regard, they can just wait for the dust to settle before coming out and saying “yeah, I was wrong” since they didn’t say anything that the audience didn’t want to hear, maintaining favorability among their fans as a result.
What this situation tells us is that both sides, whether it comes in the form of independent or corporate funded media, will engage in propaganda. Identifying local fallacies is the first step towards understanding that both sides have a job to do, and more oftentimes than not, they’ll use logical fallacies to make the truth more palpable. At the same time, we must also be cognizant of the fact that not everything a media source puts out is propaganda and be able to discern from the two. Even CNN is capable of sometimes, albeit rarely, telling the truth in what alcoholics would refer to as a “moment of clarity”.
If that feels like a tall order, you’re gut feeling is right because it is. The only way to properly do this is to learn the logical fallacies, see them in action, and train yourself to pick up on them over time. Luckily, it’s never too late to start; you can start learning yourself by covering the basics here.
2. Separating Emotion from Logic
It’s a common trait of humanity to feel a certain way about something, whatever that may be. When approaching a situation that needs to be analyzed logically and rationally, feelings get us into trouble. For example, one of the top criticisms that the right has of the left is that the left forms arguments and dictates polity based on feelings rather than facts and logic. In parallel to the uses of logical fallacies noted above, it’s not that the “right wing” so-called doesn’t attempt to rile up it’s subscribership and invoke emotions, it’s just they do it far less than their opponents.
In the previous example concerning election fraud, we found that content was created by right-wing independent media sources to appeal to our sense of justice which acts upon our emotions in two ways. First, it sets up the expectation that “good” will prevail in the end over the forces of evil, a feeling that the online community would later called “hopium”. This also has the unintended side-effect of eliciting great disappointment when it is ultimately revealed that the proposed scenario will never play out in reality. Secondly, the situation is utilizing the contempt we feel for the opposition to mentally disengage us from utilizing facts and logic to properly assess a situation.
What about content creators making the decision to double down and engage in fantasy to spare their viewership? Turns out that they’re fully aware that most people, in general, have a hard time separating emotions from any given situation. To be fair, tensions were high and the integrity of our election system were at stake; nobody wants to live in the country that goes from being the world’s only superpower to a third-rate banana republic seemingly overnight. Because they know that it’s such an emotionally charged situation, they know they have everything to lose by telling the truth and everything to gain by just simply following the zeitgeist.
A more recent example involves the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. There are several accounts being reported by the mainstream media the Russia is bombing out schools and hospitals in addition to committing other assorted warcrimes. If somebody asks “where’s the proof?”, the opposition will just shriek like banshees, say that you lack empathy or something along the lines of “how could you ignore XYZ” and “you must support those filthy Ruskies!”. First of all, these people are engaging in gaslighting and should be ignored entirely since they’ve already mentally worked themselves into a temper tantrum. Secondly, there is nothing wrong with demanding proof. If proof is delivered and it is determined that the allegation is true, then you have every right to be angry because the time for logic and reason has come to an end. If the proof provided is not sufficient, you have every right to ask for additional proof until the claim is adequately proven. The truth is, however, both sides are complicit in producing as much propaganda as possible as quickly as possible. Because of the structure of our media system, we are only going to get one side of the story. However, it’ll be a few years until we get down to brass tacks and figure out what the ground truth actually was.
Until then, it’s best that we emotionally disengage from the situation and wait for the dust to settle. But how? As with the first step, it’s far easier said than done. However, one has to ask themselves whether or not what is going on will affect them. Chances are, it won’t. In some cases, such as with the election fraud surrounding the 2020 election, it has affected us to the tune of an 8%+ inflation rate and the potential of a looming recession. Yes, you have a right to be angry about that. For the other 99% of the time, you can safely ignore AOC’s rantings about cow farts and trans-Pacific railways.
3. See through the First Account Bias
People are naturally impressionable to new information, almost to the point that anything else we hear on the topic gets filed away in our mind as a secondary source.
Here’s an example: we know that there were a number of UN reports that specified that Bashar al-Assad was not responsible for gassing his own people during the ongoing Syrian Civil War. While I would not generally trust the UN on most matters, they have nothing to gain from releasing this report. Additionally, we know that the Obama Administration had funded terrorist groups such as the Free Syrian Army and the Al-Nursra Front in opposition to Assad forces. In fact, we know out of this that ISIS was simply NATO’s proxy against the Russo-Syrian alliance. These are facts that have been proven through a preponderance of circumstantial or direct evidence. However, if you ask your average American today, they’ll still be under the impression that Bashar al-Assad gassed his own people and that he’s a ruthless dictator that needs to go.
The effects of this strategy becomes even more subtle when someone engages in political analysis outside of a debate setting when your opponent doesn’t has an immediate opportunity to refute your point. When it’s just a guy talking at a webcam or a panel of “pundits” reacting to a given situation, they can say anything they want, factual or not. As the famous Mark Twain quote goes, “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes”. What makes this point even more poignant is that, psychologically speaking, those who make the first point leave a greater impression. It doesn’t matter if the subject of the lies eventually gets around to making a response video some time down the line, their argument will be less impressionable because they’re rhetorically late to the party.
Also, if you haven’t figured it out yet, this is why the friend you have had for decades blocked you on Instagram (or Facebook for the Gen Xers) because you told them that you don’t support the current thing. The many-tentacled specter of the media-government propaganda complex got to them first. While your argument may be logically sound, well spoken, and mean well in the grand scheme of things, none of that actually matters any more. Low information individuals are so impressionable that they will simply incorporate the first thing they hear on a new topic into their current worldview; for anyone to challenge them or say otherwise would be considered a personal attack.
By the way, we do it too. Remember that thing I discussed earlier about the 2020 election and all of the QAnon rumors? People believed them. When they were disproven, those same people had a hard time facing up with reality. Nowadays it’s easy to look back on that and say “I can’t believe people fell for that garbage”, but that’s easy to say now that much of the QAnon hype had been jettisoned out of the right-wing consciousness. Chances are that you have believed something just as ridiculous. I know I have.
4. Avoiding the “Us vs. Them” Mentality
Interestingly, I did not plan it this way, but Tristan discusses this topic in some detail here.
Overall, the point is that there really isn’t a left wing and a right wing. This is a false dichotomy that the establishment elite want you to believe in; the more divided and hostile towards each other we are, the more they win since they can use our fear of the “other side” “winning” in some way to either grift for campaign money, promote their corporate sponsors, or get votes.
Come to find out, people’s beliefs are far more nuanced than what we may believe at first glance. Is there a core of fundamental beliefs that many share? Of course. Politicians exploit this all the time to create a platform that people will vote for. However, you’ll find that when it comes to how to actually get things done, the jury is split more often than not. For example, many will voice their satisfaction with the status quo. On the other hand, some might want a strongman dictator much in the fashion that Trump was supposed to be in the imaginations of some. How is that any different than the leftist authoritarians wanting the establishment government to retain more power? I’ll discuss that in my next article about the Swinging Pendulum.
Nonetheless, you don’t belong to the side. The cheerleaders, the flag bearers, the leaders, the movers, and the shakers for those “sides” don’t have your best interest in mind, only their own. In a way, you can almost bet that any politician, whether they mean to or not, is almost trying to short-circuit our logical faculties by appealing to our tribal instincts of eons past. People forget that the developments in technology over the last 500 years are recent when compared to the days when we lived in tribes of hunter gatherers; we still have a sense of obligation to associate with and stick with our tribe. In a sense, nothing feels better than “be one of us, let’s be against one of them”.
So how do you become immune to propaganda? Easier said than done. The best advice I can offer is that 1) you’ll fail in your endeavors at some point, so don’t get discouraged if you fall for something “dumb” and 2) it’s a journey of a lifetime without a destination. Perhaps, with enough interest, I’ll write more about it in the future. In the meantime, stay sharp, stay aware. Think for yourself and question everything.
