My bio describes me as an "aspiring propagandist" because I do consider some of what I do "propaganda". I try to provide compelling & persuasive narratives that convince people to think & act in certain ways. I am trying to reach people emotionally & use every tool I have to persuade them

I just happen to also be committed to not persuading anyone of anything I don't sincerely believe myself, & I try to continually educate myself & think carefully to be sure I'm not leading anyone astray.

I call what I do "propaganda" because I don't actually want to deceive anyone about what I am doing.

I *am* trying to appeal to you emotionally. I *am* trying to shape how you see the world. I *am* trying to encourage you to take action.

I don't fucking lie. I don't obfuscate the truth. But I will use every persuasive tool I can use *honestly* to convince people to see what I see. No shame in it.

But I'm dipping my toe into the real shit. The shit where they DON'T want you to know what they are doing.

And this is scary nasty stuff.

So hopefully I will be able to share some insights & knowledge while I work through it.

First tip for recognizing propaganda: before reading something that is supposedly factually informative about a topic you know little about—like a geopolitical situation you're not informed on—start by searching the person's name & see what else they've written & where they have worked.

If you're going to read a book on Iran by Daniel Kovalik & when you search him, you see he writes for RT & has defended Russia's invasion of Ukraine, you know you're in for some bullshit.

#RecognizingPropaganda

I don't think THIS specific book is probably too dangerous for lefties, but there is another book I'm going to be looking at by Medea Benjamin, & I think I may be able to get into what the dangers are for those of us in leftist spaces who are targeted by foreign propaganda from countries like China & Iran.

Hating the US Empire is totally reasonable. That doesn't mean that you can trust everyone pushing anti-America narratives. I'd hope it would be obvious, but I think there is real danger here.

You can hate the US Empire without backing dictatorial regimes elsewhere.

Power to the people. ALL power to ALL the people.

No power for oligarchs from ANYWHERE.

@artemis

Add to this checking methodology of studies, both scientific and sociological.

Lots of cited studies in mainstream news articles are manufactured and have significant methodological problems that skew the results to a desired outcome. But if you don't dive into them, they look really convincing.

Neofascists perfected the art of "data as propaganda" because they realized that if "the data" says it, there's no need to argue.

@johnzajac
Becomes extremely problematic when you gain enough expertise in methodology to realize that wide swaths of everything in science is methodologically dead on arrival.

There have been some useful articles written to highlight this, standard methodology, and clearly (intentionally) broken studies.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC61047/

https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094

@artemis

@dlakelan @artemis

Well, you turn "Data is Good" to "Data is God" and all the people who want to be God start making as much data as possible.

Thanks for posting these!

I remember the infamous Cochrane review indicating "masks not effective" in 2022, which is refuted by things like "physics" and "engineering", and how it turned out the authors had focused on baggy blues, excluded key studies, and used conditionals to obfuscate meaning.

https://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity/transmission/2023/10/17/what-went-wrong-with-a-highly-publicized-covid-mask-analysis/

@johnzajac @dlakelan @artemis
Similar use AIUI of unreasonable standards for studies so as to exclude some 700 clinical, non-RCT, studies from consideration by the Cass Review on transgender medical care for children.

#CassReview #PoliticizedScience