I am teaching a summer school class called Problems of Democracy. I am on the chapter that deals with propaganda.

I thought I would share it and add in the question, can you debate without falling back on these propaganda techniques?

(From Current Issues in American Democracy by Antell, Harris, and Dobkin, published by Amsco, (NY) p.31)

1. name-calling: Calling someone a racist, a Communist, or many other names often ends intelligent discussions. A reason for using this technique is to discredit one's opponents. If a name sticks in other people's minds, then the person who was called a name is thought of unfavorably by others.

2. Glittering Generalities: broad and meaningless statements with which almost anyone would agree. For instance a political party might proudly and loudly say that their candidate supports "freedom and democracy."

3. Identification: Use a well-known personality to support a candidate or issue

4. Card Stacking: Tell only bad things about the opposition and only good things about the position or supported candidate.

5. Bandwagon: Gain wide support by claiming everybody is already doing it.

6. Transfer: Use a person's loyalty to one thing to make that person loyal to something else. For example, if you can convince someone that all loyal Americans favor a particular idea, then the individual might think that to be against this idea is to be un-American.

It seems to me that debating would be easier without all but card-stacking and it would be more honest without card stacking. Although I have seen examples of all, I think we accuse each other most often of card-stacking. (I.e. the if Clinton was Justified type threads)

I can't answer the question effectively away from home, because my little library is there and I am vacationing in Utah.
But, I did read an interesting essay on how the term propaganda was in common use in this country until around WWI and II when we used it in a negative connatation to describe our enemies methods of spreading lies.
The article goes on to say that the term used now is Public Relations, or PR. The writer says it is a relatively new industry, and is used to control the minds of those who you cannot use physical methods against. Think Madison Avenue, the home of advertising and marketing and you have other forms of propaganda. Your class may benefit from that concept.
It may be Noam Chomskey, but until I research it some, can't verify that.

We are going to the library an ten minutes to go on a scavenger hunt for one of each type of propaganda technique used in advertisement. The book does not enforce a negative value on propagandists it focuses more on making people aware of who opinion makers are and what they are trying to do.

That is a great break down of propaganda techniques, Eeyore. Thank you for sharing it.

The one part I noticed that is missing, and it happens too often in debates, are people setting up "strawman" arguments, meaning an attempt

Sadly this happens all the time when people debate. And if I may, kudos to Platypus for knocking down more strawmen than anyone else here at AD

To be honest I see nothing wrong with card-stacking in debate. I support my position with arguments favoring my point of view. It is my opponents job to counter with arguments supporting his own.

Hmmm... I thought threads like "If Clinton was justified..." would qualify more as transfers. Rather than criticizing Clinton (for a change), threads like that almost seem to be begging for support by claiming, "well, if you supported Clinton than you'll just love what Bush is doing..."


Another hit that I've noticed in recent weeks as a result of not finding WMDs (at least not yet) is bandwagoning. "Well no, we haven't found any weapons yet and it does appear that Bush may have fibbed a bit, but look at these polls... practically nobody in America cares, so neither should you!"


A very helpful post, Eeyore
I will certainly try my best not to engage in such tactics, and should I find myself doing so, I will try to correct it immediately.

Card stacking doesn't bother me either. A little propoganda never killed anyone.

CP

You probably believe in an adversarial (vs. inquisitorial) justice system too, then. That's all well and good so long as everyone agrees, but what happens when someone who believes in partisanship is debating with someone who believes in cooperatively finding the truth? The cooperator gets screwed, of course (and I'm using that term fully aware of its game-theory meaning). A "victory" achieved purely through a greater willingness to distort the truth in one direction seems hollow indeed to me.

It has nothing to do with distorting the truth. In a adversarial debate both sides will state their positions. With two or more good debaters the pros and cons of both sides of the issue will come out. Any intelligent debater knows both sides of the issues coming in. Does not mean he should argue points that do not favor his side. Kinduv kills debate.

It has everything to do with distorting the truth. That's what card-stacking is. You might say it's OK because it should be assumed that the other side is distorting it in a compensatory manner, but ignoring or subverting evidence contrary to one's thesis is distortion. It's entirely possible to have a lively and even highly partisan debate without doing those things. I do it all the time, though not with people who insist on playing the rougher (and IMO less advanced) form of the game.

I guess it is just where you draw the line, yes you can leave out facts that would tend to mislead an uninformed individual. I don't believe facts should be intentionally distorted in debate. Of course one man's facts is often another man's opinion.

Of course the most popular tactic is to ignore the gist of someone's argument and pick on some insignificant detail to argue.