Propaganda, ideology, and democracy: A review of Jason Stanley, How Propaganda Works

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Jason Stanley's book, How Propaganda Works, is a welcome and needed work in social and political philosophy. It creatively weaves political philosophy, social theory, analytic epistemology, feminism, philosophy of language, philosophy of education, formal semantics, and social psychology. The central goal of the book is to explain how propaganda works in a liberal democratic society. Propaganda exists in totalitarian regimes through the mechanisms of social control like the mass media. That is not surprising. But, does propaganda exist in the United States? The fact that propaganda exists in the United States is perhaps not novel; the novelty of Stanley's book is its philosophical explanation of the mechanism behind propaganda. Stanley does this with the rigor, clarity, and depth that you would expect from such a distinguished philosopher. In what follows, I will provide a brief description of the main arguments of each of seven chapters and offer several observations. These observations are an invitation for further reflection and investigation.I begin by situating Stanley's book in the broader literature. How Propaganda Works situates itself in at least three different terrains of philosophical inquiry. First, Stanley's book is a welcome and important addition to the type of theorizing that blurs the distinction between subdisciplines of philosophy. For instance, Miranda Fricker's groundbreaking book Epistemic Injustice blurs the distinction between analytic epistemology (virtue epistemology), and ethics and politics.1 Stanley's work also blurs the line between analytic epistemology and contemporary social and political philosophy. It would be interesting to see analytic epistemologists working on pragmatic encroachment issues (or what Stanley calls interest-relativism about knowledge) to probe the social-political implications of their apolitical postulates. Second, Stanley's book is a welcome addition to the methodological debate in political philosophy regarding the ideal and nonideal theories. The consequence of this methodological commitment leads Stanley to scour the vast fields of behavioral, social, and human sciences to answer the question of “how propaganda works.” Third, and this may be a hopeful speculation on my part, Stanley's work might legitimize marginalized areas of philosophy, including critical theory and pragmatism. Stanley, for instance, though not uncritical of John Dewey, legitimately recognizes Dewey's contribution to democracy and its culture.How Propaganda Works is comprised of an informative introduction and seven substantive chapters. In what follows, I will briefly discuss the main arguments of each of seven chapters.The goal of chapter 1 is to provide a historical account of the prevalence of propaganda in the history of political philosophy, from Plato to Rousseau to the twentieth century. According to Stanley, one of the central reasons philosophers have endorsed democracy is because of its stability over other political arrangements. Democratic ideals demand that a regime affords liberty to all of its citizens. But having liberty makes it possible to use propaganda or demagoguery to seize power that ultimately makes democracy unstable. This classic problem of propaganda drops out in contemporary political philosophy because of its insistence on political ideals. This reveals the central contention of Stanley's book: ideals can be used to mislead democratic discourse. This also reveals the methodology of the book: we need to connect normative political philosophy with social theory.In chapter 2, Stanley defines propaganda as a means by which the language of democratic ideals is used to undermine the very ideal that it is purported to serve. Stanley attempts to undermine the common belief that propaganda must be false and insincerely made. That propaganda can be true is exemplified by an example that “there is a Muslim in the room.” The assertion is true because it is true that there is a Muslim in the room, but this is an instance of propaganda because it elicits fear about Muslims, that is, all Muslims are potentially terrorists. So, propaganda can be true. This point will be picked up in my discussion of chapter 4. That propaganda can be sincerely made is exemplified by the example of Hitler, who asserted derogatory statements about the Jews. Hitler sincerely held this belief, yet it was used as propaganda to elicit the belief that the Jews were a public health menace. The main problem with the claim that propaganda has to be insincerely made is that it “fails to respect the connection between propaganda and ideology” (46). Stanley draws a distinction between supporting and undermining propaganda: Supporting propaganda: A contribution to public discourse that is presented as an embodiment of certain ideals, yet it is of a kind that tends to increase the realization of those very ideals by either emotional or other non rational means.Undermining propaganda: A contribution to public discourse that is presented as an embodiment of certain ideals, yet is of a kind that tends to erode those very ideals. (53) To illustrate the connection between ideology and (undermining) propaganda, Stanley uses a series of examples. Let me just discuss one such example. The neurosurgeon Carl Hart has persuasively shown that the so-called “War on Drugs” is predicated on Black exceptionalism—Blacks have an exceptional reaction to crack cocaine. This ideology of Black exceptionalism led to sentencing disparity between whites and blacks who consume crack cocaine. This example shows the connection between ideology and undermining propaganda: the “War on Drugs” is intended to promote the rule of law and justice, but the sentencing disparity between whites and blacks undermines the rule of law and justice.In chapter 3, Stanley accomplishes the task of explaining why propaganda is a special problem in democracies. But not all forms of propaganda are bad. There are therefore two types of propaganda. The first type of propaganda strengthens the democratic ideal of reasonableness; Stanley calls this ‘civic rhetoric.’ The second type of propaganda undermines the demo- cratic ideal of reasonableness; Stanley calls this undermining propaganda or demagoguery. Stanley argues that the normative ideal of public reason is central to liberal democracy. Following John Rawls's enormously influential account of public reason, reasons offered in public speech or debate ought to be public, or publicly acceptable. The first normative ideal of public reason is theoretical rationality, by which Stanley means “a contribution to a political debate must be justified, and be assessed solely by its impact on the truth of the issues at hand” (94). The second normative ideal of public reason is reasonableness. According to Rawls's account of reasonableness, reasons offered in public political fora have to be reasonable: that is, one should recognize that there are multiple reasonable comprehensive doctrines, and if one were reasonable, then one should recognize that a doctrine (Christian doctrine for instance) can be rejected by others as unreasonable. Stanley's conception of reasonableness is interesting because he incorporates empathy as part of the concept of reasonableness. The problem with the prison system in the United States, for instance, is that the perspectives of the prisoners are excluded in our public political debates about the prison system. For this reason, those laws and policies about the prison system that are enacted without taking into consideration the perspectives of prisoners in public debate are less legitimate and just.Having given an account of how propaganda works in liberal democracies, Stanley, in chapter 4, argues that seemingly neutral language serves as a mechanism of control. Utilizing his insights from formal and pragmatic semantics, Stanley argues that language is context-dependent. For instance, a universal quantifier, “every,” is contextual; if a teacher says “everyone got an A on the midterm exam,” the teacher is referring to everyone in this class, not everyone in the world. Moreover, Stanley distinguishes between “at-issue content” and “not-at-issue content.” The “at-issue-content” is “what is at issue in the debate” (134). On the other hand, “the not-at-issue content of an utterance is not advanced as a proposal of a content to be added to the common ground” (135). An example of “the not-at-issue content” is an utterance like “welfare”; though the assertion appears to be neutral, its “not-at-issue content” is biased. This is because the repeated assertions make it the case that people connect “welfare” to a negative characterization of a group of people. For example, suppose that a politician uses “welfare” in a political debate to advocate for the reduction of entitlement spending. “Welfare” elicits the connection that negatively characterizes a group of people, so his constituents are proportion- ately against welfare spending. This cuts off rational will and public deliberation. So, “welfare” is a propagandistic tool.Stanley, in chapter 5, discusses ideology. Ideology allows people to navigate their social world. In this sense everyone has ideology. While some ideologies are beneficial—one can acquire a tolerant identity by virtue of living in a tolerant world—some are harmful. The conception of ideology that Stanley pursues in this chapter is flawed ideology. Flawed ideology is characterized by the fact that it is hard to rationally revise one's belief in light of counter evidence. This is puzzling because even if there is good evidence to the contrary, people with flawed ideological beliefs do not revise their beliefs. “The ones that are flawed in the relevant sense are the ideologies that are genuine barriers to the acquisition of knowledge.” In this sense, Stanley's point is not that flawed ideology is a moral and political problem, but an epistemological problem. Unlike some theorists who conceptually connect ideology to psychological or mental states, Stanley instead connects ideology to beliefs, and social identities and practices. So, the reason why flawed ideological beliefs are difficult to revise is due to the adherents' social identities. This move allows Stanley to place the problem of ideological belief within the realm of social reality and not merely one's subjective mental state.In chapter 6, “Political Ideologies,” Stanley advances an epistemological argument for political equality in two steps. First, Stanley provides empirical evidence from social psychology to show that negatively privileged people tend to adopt the flawed ideology of the elites; more specifically, those with negative privilege tend to adopt the ideology that justifies the uneven distribution of goods even if doing this would go against their self-interest. Second, Stanley explains the mechanism under which the flawed ideologies of the elites prevent negatively privileged people from obtaining epistemic resources to counter the dominant narratives. Stanley here appeals to the recent literature in pragmatic encroachment in analytic epistemology. He advances the Knowledge-Action thesis, “one can act on p if and only if one knows that p” (252). Knowledge is relative to the practical interests of an agent: “whether or not someone knows that p at a certain time depends upon the practical decisions they face at that time” (252). So, depending on the practical decision one faces, one could “lose knowledge” if the stakes were high. Applying this seemingly remote epistemological principle to politics, along with the account of flawed ideology, we get the following argument for political equality. Negatively privileged people tend to adopt the flawed ideology of the elites. Negatively privileged people face high stakes when it comes to knowledge claims because they are expected to contribute at an equal level as the elites, but this is not possible for the negatively privileged people. The verdict is that privileged people could literally “lose knowledge.” What is novel about Stanley's argument for political equality is that it is an epistemological argument for equality, not a moral one.Chapter 7, the final chapter, provides a fascinating case study of the ideology of elites. Stanley writes: “The ideology of the elites is a flawed ideology that those who possess more than they deserve tell themselves to justify their excessive control over the goods of the society into which they are born” (268). The ideology of elites makes it possible to justify their excessive control over the goods by appealing to natural facts about their intelligence or superiority. Against Plato and Aristotle, who believed that some are naturally intellectual and others are suited for practical activity, Stanley dispels the idea that the distinction is a natural fact.Stanley's book contains deep insights, rigorous argumentation, and interesting case studies that we would expect from such a distinguished philosopher. It is a challenging book because there are a number of intersecting and crisscrossing arguments. It is also a rewarding book because there are many important insights and arguments, as it should be evident from my discussion. In what follows, I would like to focus on three observations and criticisms that may be of interest to the readers of this journal.First, the book is rich in analysis and explanation, but weak on proposals. The book does not have much to offer in terms of solutions to the problem of propaganda that he is articulating. Here I am reminded of the last chapter of Peter Levine's book, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, where he articulates strategies for civic renewal, in addition to articulating facts and values. Stanley does a phenomenal job of articulating facts and values.2 For instance, when he discusses education in the second part of the twentieth century as a mechanism of social control, he argues that democracy is fundamentally about equality and autonomy. The problem with “The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education” (282–88) is that the document talks about secondary education to further the goals of democracy, but democracy is fundamentally about social efficiency. This is a wonderful example of how facts and values are woven together. There is however no strategy here. This criticism cannot be an internal criticism—criticism about the argument of the book—because the explicit aim of Stanley's argument is to provide a theoretical explanation of why and how propaganda arises in a liberal democratic society; that is, his aim is not to provide a strategy on overcoming propaganda in a liberal democratic society. But one may naturally wonder about what we ought to do, given what we know. I propose one answer: in line with Levine's general thesis, a way of overcoming the general malaise when it comes to civic life is not merely the media, education, government, but the citizens themselves who are active and creative agents of their common worlds. Similarly, the way of overcoming propaganda has to include the citizens themselves. This is the reason why the discussion of ideology in chapters 5 and 6 are so trenchant.Second, if what Stanley argues about were true, then it would pose a significant problem for democratic theory, especially the deliberative or epistemic conceptions of democracy. According to the deliberative conception of democracy, the primary purpose of democracy is not voting, but deliberation. Deliberative democracy postulates that citizens are competent, motivated, and capable of publicly deliberating about the common good. However valid these ideals may be, they may be practically infeasible. Chapter 4 shows that language couched in neutral language could still have negative effects in political discourse. One avenue to counter this problem would be to engage with empirical research in deliberative democracy. Indeed the last decade or so has seen a tremendous amount of empirical research in deliberative democracy that attempts to map out whether the ideals of public reason are practically feasible or not. The jury is still out on that project, but it would be interesting to see Stanley engage with that body of literature. Stanley's project also poses a significant problem for epistemic conceptions of democracy. Epistemic democracy argues that democracy is capable of making good decisions and that the reason why we prefer democratic over nondemocratic regimes is that it has the capacity to make better decisions. Though there are different formulations of epistemic democracy, they all assume ideal conditions. For instance, theories inspired by the Condorcet Jury Theorem assume ideal conditions in which voters decide. Ideal conditions are free of ideology. So, the question is: do flawed ideologies cause problems for the voting public reaching the “right” answer? Although I cannot answer that question here, I suspect that the project of epistemic democracy would be considerably more complicated.Third, one of Stanley's main concerns is the ideology of elites (in other places Stanley refers to this as the ideology of technicism). The basic idea is that epistemic authority does not entail practical authority. This poses a significant problem for democracy because the expert's epistemic authority underwrites their practical authority to rule over the rest of us. So, for instance, those with positive privilege tend to invoke epistemic authority to justify their superiority (culture or material) and those in negative privilege tend to believe this, even when there is evidence to the contrary. The negatively privileged people are not only excluded from knowledge acquisition, but they also lose self-respect. This is precisely why the ideology of elites is so virulent: it thwarts the democratic ideal of citizens as equal and autonomous agents. Here I am reminded of what Alasdair MacIntyre dubs “manipulative expertise.”3 One possible response to the ideology of elites can be found in a small, but growing, body of literature that suggest that deliberation among cognitively diverse perspectives is better at solving complex problems than expert deliberation.4 This literature has garnered much attention lately, and it would have been interesting to have Stanley engage in that debate.In conclusion, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in propaganda, social and political philosophy, civic studies, and social theory. This book challenges our conception of democracy and its ideals and causes us to be more cognizant of the ways in which flawed ideological beliefs can color the way we look at the world and interact with one another as equals.