Download The 13 Evil Techniques

13 Evil Propaganda
Techniques
Sophistry to overcome any
audience
Tie-in to Cold War
“By the skillful and sustained use of
propaganda, one can make a people see
even heaven as hell or an extremely
wretched life as paradise.”
~Adolf Hitler
Tie-in to Cold War
“Our country is now geared to an arms
economy bred in an artificially induced
psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant
propaganda of fear.”
~Douglas MacArthur
Tie-in to Cold War

The Marine Corps is the Navy's police
force and as long as I am President that is
what it will remain. They have a
propaganda machine that is almost equal
to Stalin's.
Harry S. Truman
"The essence of propaganda
consists in winning people over to
an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that
in the end they succumb to it utterly
and can never escape from it.”
-Goebbels (Minister of Propaganda
and National Enlightenment)
Propaganda by Pathos/Heart

Tribal Appeals

“Oh, you don’t have a date to prom?”
Propaganda by Pathos

Appeals to Emotions:
Fear, Pity, Shame on
You, Joy, Anger

“If you don’t pay
attention in my class
you will end up
working at McDonalds
for the rest of your
life.”
Twisted Pathos: Fear
1. Bandwagon/Snob Appeal

Join the crowd or “Only for a special few”

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
“Everyone else is working quietly.”
“Maybe City High does that, but we are West
High, one of the top schools in the nation.”
Which is better? “Operators are standing by”
or “If you get a busy signal, keep calling”?
Twisted Pathos
2. Fear: Bargain/Exigency

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I’ll give you a good deal/
Do it now or else!

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“I only have one Black SUV left and I have
two people coming to look at it today.”
“If you work hard on this now, there won’t be
any homework tonight.”
Twisted Pathos:
3. Fear: Slippery Slope
 It may not seem bad now, but it
will set off a chain of negative
events.

“If I let you go to your car, then I’ll have to
let everyone go, then we won’t get any work
done and someone might get hurt.”
Twisted Pathos
4. Transfer

If you like/dislike that, then you have to
like/dislike this too.


Why show the President in front of a flag?
Can you tell from the image what Mike
Huckabee is “transferring”?
Twisted Pathos
5. Pride: Flag-waving

If you don’t do this,
you are not an
American


“Why aren’t you
wearing green on
Friday? Don’t you like
West High?”
Flag Pins
Propaganda by Ethos/Gut

Ethos = Argument through Character


The way you look, the words you use, your
experience, etc.
Look out for wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Twisted Ethos:
6. Name-calling

Attack the person, not the idea

EX: “Obama’s foreign policy can’t be good for
America, the man is a hippie community organizer.”
Twisted Ethos:
6. Name-calling

Other Variations of Name-calling:

Humiliation: An argument that sets out only to
debase someone, not to make a choice.
 Innuendo: “No one has ever asked to
See my birth certificate” ~Mitt Romney
Twisted Ethos:
7. Just Plain Folks
I’m just like you are
so believe me.

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
“I’m not a witch… …
I’m you.” ~Christine
O’Donnell
Heinrich Himmler and two
other S.S. officers collecting
wildflowers for a little girl that
he is going to visit.
Twisted Ethos:
8. Testimonial/Wise-Man Fallacy

Just because someone is famous does
not mean they have credibility.

Bill Gates believes that the war must stop
because it is not justified.
Propaganda by Logos/Brain

Because logos means persuading through
logic, in order to use logos for propaganda
you have to be lying or “twisting” logic to
suit you.


It’s important to detect them, just as you
should spot any kind of persuasive tactic used
against you.
Another reason to understand fallacious logic:
you may want to use it yourself.
Twisted Logos
Twisted Logos
How to Twist Logos
Deductive Logic
 Premise A: Women like good smelling men.
 Premise B: Axe body spray makes you smell
good.
 Conclusion C: Therefore if you use axe body
spray women will like you.

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Not Valid: A + B doesn’t necessarily = C. (Alternate
Explanations)
Not Sound: A or B isn’t true. (Bad Evidence)
Twisted Logos
What’s Wrong with This?
Premise A: Ice Cream Sales increase in summer
Premise B: Drownings increase in summer.
Conclusion C: Therefore ice cream causes drowning
Why is this Wrong:
1.
2.
Not Valid: A + B doesn’t necessarily = C.
(Alternate Explanations)
Not Sound: A or B isn’t true. (Bad Evidence)
Twisted Logos
What’s Wrong with This
Premise A: Unicorns are imaginary
Premise B: All unicorns have horns
Conclusion C: Therefore all imaginary animals have horns.
Why is this Wrong:
1.
2.
Not Valid: A + B doesn’t necessarily = C.
(Alternate Explanations)
Not Sound: A or B isn’t true. (Bad Evidence)
Twisted Logos

Bad Proof: The argument’s commonplace or
principle is unacceptable, or the examples are
bad.

False Comparison: Two things are similar, so they

Hasty Generalization: Uses too few examples and

Misinterpreting the Evidence: Takes the exception

must be the same.
interprets them too broadly.
and claims it proves the rule.
Fallacy of Ignorance: Claims that if something has
not been proven, it must be false.
Twisted Logos

Bad Conclusion: We’re given too many choices, or not
enough, or the conclusion is irrelevant to the argument.
 Many Questions: Squashes two or more issues into a
single one.

False Dilemma: Offers the audience two choices when

Fallacy of Antecedent: Assumes that this moment is


more actually exist.
identical to past, similar moments.
Red Herring: Introduces an irrelevant issue to distract or
confuse the audience.
Straw Man: Sets up a different issue that’s easier to argue.
Twisted Logos

Disconnect Between Proof and Conclusion:
The proof stands up all right, but it fails to lead
to the conclusion.

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

Tautology: A logical redundancy; the proof and the
conclusion are the same thing.
Reductio ad absurdum: Takes the opponent’s choice
and reduces it to absurdity.
Slippery Slope: Predicts a series of dire events
stemming from one choice.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc (The Chanticleer Fallacy):
Assumes that if one things follows another, the first
thing caused the second one.
Twisted Logos:
9. Oversimplification

Either/Or fallacy
“Either you do your homework now, or you
fail this class.”
 “Either you are part of the problem, or you
are part of the solution.”
 Why must you be either a
Democrat or a Republican?
Why not…

Twisted Logos
10. False cause-effect

Acting like one thing leads to another
(speaker knows it is not true)

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“Drowning in the U.S. increases dramatically at the
same time that ice cream sales increase dramatically.
Therefore, ice cream kills.”
The non-partisan research office for Congress -shows that "there is little evidence over the past 65
years that tax cuts for the highest earners are
associated with savings, investment or productivity
growth."
Twisted Logos
11. Card-Stacking


Only tell your side of the story
“We know that there are terrorists working
right now to kill Americans. We know that
Saddam has helped these terrorists in the
past. We know that people are suffering
in Iraq and that we can help them by
overthrowing their repressive government.
There is nothing more that we need to
know.”
Twisted Logos:
12. Repetition

As Hitler’s propaganda ministry said: Make
the lie big enough and often enough and
they’ll believe anything.

President George W. Bush said, "See in my line of
work you got to keep repeating things over and over
and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of
catapult the propaganda.“ ~Wiki
Twisted Logos
13. Glittering Generality

Use words that sound great but the words are
so general that you can’t pin down exactly what
is being promised.

“The politics of failure have failed. We should be
going forwards, not backwards; upwards, not
forwards; and always twirling, twirling to the future.”
~Kodos
Metaphors/Similes

“Our country has been issued a check
marked ‘insufficient funds’” ~MLK
Parallelism


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Pattern of phrasing that allows your
listeners to anticipate what will be said
next.
“I will not eat them in a box. I will not eat
them with a fox. I will not eat them here
or there. I will not eat them…”
“I have a dream… I have a dream… From
the rolling heights… From every mountain
and mole hill…”
Antithesis
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Say the negative/opposite, then say the
positive.
“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask
what you can do for your country.”
“I have a dream. That one day people will be
judged not on the color of their skin, but on the
content of their character.”
“You call this a sandwich with mayo on the
side, this is mayo with a sandwich on the side.”