1. About ideologies, propaganda and fallacies
Whoever views reality through an ideology acts according to it; so, it’s enough to understand how the prevailing one narrates it to perceive the state of a community and guess its destiny.
An ideology is an understanding of Reality based on how you want it to be rather than on a truthful reading of it; from what, because of logical fallacies, you believe (or you are led to believe) instead of what you observe. If well propagandized, an ideology fixes in the mind of people conditioning their worldview. But whoever views Reality through an ideology acts according to it; so, it’s enough to understand how the prevailing one narrates reality to perceive the state of a community and guess its destiny.
A great propaganda outline unveiling its tricks to children of all ages is the 1943 Chicken Little cartoon1 requested by the US government to Walt Disney.
The short film (less than nine minutes long) tells of a fox who finds a clever way to eat the animals of a courtyard defended by a high fence and the breeder's shotgun: instead of risking its neck storming into it, it persuades them to get out using four "maxims" from a psychology book:
To influence the masses, aim first at the less intelligent.
If you tell ‘em a lie, don't tell a little one, tell a big one.
Undermine the faith of the masses in their leaders.
By the use of flattery, insignificant people can be make to look upon themselves as born leaders.
Four rules broadly explaining the rise of Nazism (and of any other ideology), the reason why the US government asked it to open its citizens’ eyes.
The story is simple. Following the first maxim, the fox, peeking from behind the fence, spots a gullible chick and hits it with a piece of wood painted blue and a star drawn on it. Then, speaking unseen, it says it is the “voice-of-doom” and persuades the chick that it was hit instead by a piece of sky about to shatter (the big lie). The chick, worried, in turn persuades the other animals of the shattering sky phenomenon, too and all start to perceive the courtyard as dangerous. The chaos that breaks out arouses the attention of the rooster, the head of the courtyard, who calms them down by pointing out that the alleged piece of sky is just a piece of wood. The fox understands that without the rooster it would have already achieved its goal; so, from behind the fence, it spreads defamatory rumors (to undermine the faith) in the rooster and then it persuades (an insignificant being like) the chick to challenge the rooster on the supposed shattering sky problem. Then, during a debate with the chick, the fox unseen KOs the rooster with another piece of wood painted blue. All the animals see in it a proof of the chick's thesis and ask it to bring them to safety as in their eyes it is the only one who has a clear vision of what is going on. The chick then, following another voice-of-doom’s suggestion, guides them into a solid cave outside of the courtyard: the fox's den that at ease eats all of them.
Where do the animals go wrong? Instead of analyzing the facts as the rooster does, they allow themselves to be misled by emotions (fear), up to perceive Reality in such a distorted (i.e., ideologic) way to be persuaded to act stupidly. There is just one shield against ideologies: the λóγος (logos or “logic” for us). A term that for the ancient Greeks meant both "word" and "reasoning".
With the logos we face a subject by first checking the starting facts (verifying if they’re true and the “words” chosen to describe them are the right ones); then we elaborate them with strictly consequential and bound passages in the form of statements (the “reasoning”). It goes without saying that only when the starting facts are true (the bullets hitting the chick and the rooster are pieces of wood, not of sky), the reasoning is also true.
Let’s consider the following three famous statements:
Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Such a reasoning only works if you can verify the veracity of each statement (is Socrates a man? Are men mortal?) and everything you speak about has a proper name that positively identifies it, binding the statements together to assure their consequentiality. In the example, the statements 1-2, 2-3 and 1-3 are linked by three words clearly identifying a category (Man/men) and one of its qualities (mortal) and members (Socrates), respectively. A pattern called syllogism that still works changing appropriately category, quality, and member. From the example it’s evident why we must always choose words carefully.
Ancient Greeks also established the rules to avoid logic pitfalls. The rules of
identity (everything is equal only to itself).
non-contradiction (nothing can have both a quality and its opposite one).
the excluded middle (a statement is either true or false).
Such rules allow two kinds of reasoning: the inductive and deductive ones.
I see a living being walking upright and then another and another one and I call them "men". Then I see a dead man and then another and another one and I understand that men are mortal, too. Examples of inductive reasoning used to organize observations on Reality (the facts).
If they now told me “Socrates is a man” (a fact), without seeing him I would know that he walks upright and is mortal. This is instead a deductive reasoning used to infer new knowledge from known facts.
Of course, such a reasoning "works" if and only if:
Socrates is always and only a man while I speak of him (identity).
a man is either mortal or immortal (not contradiction).
each statement is either true or false (excluded middle).
Thus, once more, all in a reasoning must have a name that uniquely identifies it (“heaven” is only for heaven not for wood). Then, the words used in a reasoning are neither good nor bad, just more or less precise, and appropriate. So, there aren’t speeches of hate or love, only true or false, right or wrong ones, from their factual premises to their logical steps and conclusions.
This method assumes the intellectual honesty, a full and honest sharing of
all the starting facts.
all the steps bringing to the result.
The Scientific Method is a brilliant application of all this.
So, we must pay attention to logical fallacies, to intellectually dishonest reasonings only apparently right but wrong in some parts, sometimes in a so subtle way to be psychologically very persuasive, catching the listener with the guard of his critical sense down. Tricks since always exploited to promote ideologies, beginning with the ancients Athen’s sophists responsible who prided themselves on being able (for money) to persuade an audience on any subject and, even worse, to train others to do so, transforming their democracy in a regime of chatting and then fiercely fought by Socrate/Plato. Tricks such as:
Argumentum ab auctoritate, when you accept a reasoning just because you suppose honest and competent and then trust who proposes it.
Argumentum ad baculum, when you accept a reasoning because you are scared.
Argumentum ad nauseam, when you accept a reasoning because they repeat it tirelessly, “ad nauseam”.
Argumentum ad populum, when you accept a reasoning because you think that many fellow citizens or doctors or scientists... are in agreement.
Fallacy of common practice, when you accept a reasoning because it describes a wrong but widespread habit/belief.
Tricks passing opinions as facts. Because, as Gaston Bachelard said:
“Le réel n'est jamais ‘ce qu'on pourrait croire’ mais il est toujours ce qu'on aurait dû penser” Reality is never ‘what one might believe’ but it’s always what one should have thought about" because “L'opinion pense mal; elle ne pense pas: elle traduit des besoins en connaissances” Opinion thinks badly; it doesn’t think at all: it turns needs into knowledge.2
And ideologies turn opinions into (false) knowledge! An example? Up until a century ago, without a shred of evidence, most astronomers described the universe as stationary, eternal, and probably infinite, so common people considered it an established fact. In 1912 Vesto Slipher discovered, however, that all galaxies seem to move away from the Milky Way (our one). A fact incompatible with the idea of a stationary universe and explained by Georges Lemaître in 1927 when he demonstrated that the General Relativity published by Albert Einstein in 1916 does not describe a stable universe but an unstable one, i.e. an expanding (or contracting) one, suggesting that the universe was initially concentrated in a "primeval atom" and at a certain moment it began to expand, creating the space-time where we live in. The skepticism of most of the scientific community towards this unexpected development of physics is evident in the name with which it has gone down in history: not theory of the Primeval Atom (as it should have been) but of the Big Bang, proposed by the great astronomer Fred Hoyle as a blatant mockery. A hypothesis (they say) also rejected by Einstein, considering it too similar to the biblical “fiat lux” tale, and he himself later judged as his biggest blunder when such hypothesis was confirmed in 1964 after the recording of the Cosmic noise, the echo of that event. A mistake not for rejecting a theory that we know will one day be outdated like any other, but because he had ideologically rejected verifiable facts: the solution of his equations and the measurements of the speed of galaxies. However, many scientists did not like the idea of an absolute beginning either and hypothesized that the expansive thrust was decreasing, that one day it would stop and then reverse itself until all matter would find itself again concentrated in a single point, triggering a new Big Bang. And so endlessly. An opinion we studied at school as the right one as prevailing among scientists (Argumentum ad populum), also important ones (Argumentum ab auctoritate), at least until 1998 when it was discovered that the expansion rate of the universe increases instead, so it will never stop. What does this story teach? That hearing men of science (cosmologists, climatologists, infectious disease specialists or epidemiologists is the same), it is difficult for non-experts to understand when they express simple opinions or theories based on facts because, in communicating, they do not have the intellectual honesty to clarify it; and if men of science win people's trust, they will lower their critical sense towards them.
A "place" where many have the guard of their critical sense down because they assume to meet there honest and competent people, so they are prone to take their opinions as facts, is the virtual one of the media, full of skilled storytellers, of sophists, of intellectually dishonest hired promoters of some ideology as they do not declare to be such. In this regard it is worth reading a 1916 timeless editorial by the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, founder and first secretary of the Italian communist party [Bolds are mine]:
These are the days of subscription campaigns. The editors and administrators of bourgeois newspapers tidy up their display windows, paint some varnish on their shop signs and appeal for the attention of the passer-by (that is, the readers) to their wares. Their wares are newspapers of four or six pages that go out every day or evening to inject in the mind of the reader ways of feeling and judging the facts of current politics appropriate for the producers and sellers of the press. We would like to discuss, with the workers especially, the importance and seriousness of this apparently innocent act, which consists in choosing the newspaper you subscribe to. It is a choice full of snares and dangers which must be made consciously, applying criteria and after mature reflection. Above all, the worker must resolutely reject any solidarity with a bourgeois newspaper. And he must always, always, always remember that the bourgeois newspaper (whatever its hue) is an instrument of struggle motivated by ideas and interests that are contrary to his. Everything that is published is influenced by one idea: that of serving the dominant class, and which is ineluctably translated into a fact: that of combating the laboring class. And in fact, from the first to the last line the bourgeois newspaper smells of and reveals this preoccupation. But the beautiful – that is the ugly – thing is this: that instead of asking for money from the bourgeois class to support it in its pitiless work in its favor, the bourgeois newspapers manage to be paid by...the same laboring classes that they always combat. And the laboring class pays; punctually, generously. Hundreds of thousands of workers regularly and daily give their pennies to the bourgeois newspapers, thus assisting in creating their power. Why? If you were to ask this of the first worker you were to see on the tram or the street with a bourgeois paper spread before him you would hear: “Because I need to hear about what happening.” And it would never enter his head that the news and the ingredients with which it is cooked are exposed with an art that guides his ideas and influences his spirit in a given direction. And yet he knows that this newspaper is opportunist, and that one is for the rich, that the third, the fourth, the fifth is tied to political groups with interests diametrically opposed to his. And so every day this same worker is able to personally see that the bourgeois newspapers tell even the simplest of facts in a way that favors the bourgeois class and damns the working class and its politics.3
We can explain newspapers unanimity on telling "even the simplest of facts in a way that favors the bourgeois class" as very expensive for the community but a source of income for their masters, listening to the advice of Giovanni Falcone, the Italian magistrate killed by the mafia, to "follow the money"4 in order to understand organized crime. Indeed, unanimity alone on very expensive subjects for the community should alarm “readers”.
Today, besides newspapers, "bourgeois" also have social media “to inject in the mind of [each] reader [interested] ways of feeling and judging the facts” profiling them individually thanks to the artificial intelligence, to wisely convey to each of them the contents that more likely influence their opinions.5 A practice called microtargeting, inaugurated in policy by Barack Obama for his presidential campaign of 2008 and improved in the 2012 one:
this is beyond J Edgar Hoover's dream. In its rush to exploit the power of digital data to win re-election, the Obama campaign appears to be ignoring the ethical and moral implications.6
A soft power suitable to promote everything7[7] and they already do it, always following the same scheme: the pounding of foxes hidden behind the fence of the media (Argumentum ad nauseam) giving voice only to hired sophists and complacent experts (Argumentum ab auctoritate) alarms the majority (Argumentum ad baculum) by making popular (Argumentum ad populum) baseless claims (Fallacy of common practice) persuading them that "believing in Science" means "believing in scientists" and not "believing in the Scientific Method" which requires verifying all their claims.
Following we will see that pandemic and climate alarmism are ideologies propagandized applying this schema. Then, that they are just examples of the more general ideology of globalization aimed to make the rich richer and poorer the poor, explaining what “whoever views Reality through an ideology acts according to that ideology, so, it is enough to understand how the prevailing one narrates reality to perceive the state of a community and guess its destiny” means. Moreover, we’ll address an unresolved issue of this chapter: how can parents and educators teach their children and learners to recognize and avoid ideological traps, interested interpretations of Reality?
One last note: several examples and data I’ll use refer to Italy; since we Italians are not better or worse, stronger or weaker, cleverer or dumber than others, I pretty sure that they’ll easily call to mind of non-Italian readers analogies with one's own Reality.
P.S. I am Italian and I try hard to write in English, too. Any comment on improper use of language or advice to improve my style is welcome! Thanks in advance.
Chicken Little by Clyde Geronimo, USA, 1943
(1/31/2021)
Bachelard, 2004. Bachelard, Gaston, La Formation de l'esprit scientifique, Vrin, Paris. p. 16
https://books.google.it/books?id=E1iPyMlagS8C (1/24/2021)
Gramsci, 2016. Newspapers and the Workers. Translated by Mitchell Abidor
Fondazione Falcone, 5/22/2018: “Follow the money”: il metodo Falcone in un docufilm.
Another technique they often use (especially before elections) is censoring dissident voices, preventing users from hearing unwelcomed opinions.
Jeff Chester quoted in Pilkington, 2/7/2012. Pilkington, Ed e Michel, Amanda: Obama, Facebook and the power of friendship: the 2012 data election
A good explanation of soft power is “Government's an affair of sitting, not hitting. You rule with the brains and the buttocks, never with the fists” of Mustapha Mond, one of the 10 controllers of the technocratic world state conditioning in many ways its citizens behavior from birth and dominate [(Huxley, 1932), chap. 3].
Huxley, 1932. Huxley, Aldus: Brave New World, London: Chatto & Windus