This document discusses the topic of propaganda and provides examples. It begins by defining propaganda as having the purpose of persuasion in a public or communal context. It then discusses key principles of propaganda, including appealing to shared beliefs, values, and civic religion to establish credibility and appear natural or "untempered." Examples are given of how propaganda relies on collective memory and norms. The document also discusses how the structures of society, like economic conditions, influence cultural output and the use of propaganda.

1. Propaganda
Keren Wang, SP 2022

2. I. WRITING (weeks 1-3)
II. COMPUTATION (weeks 4-6)
III. SURVEILLANCE (weeks 7-8)
IV. VISUALIZATION (weeks 9-10)
V. PROPAGANDA (weeks 11-12)
VI. DISINFORMATION (weeks 13-15)

3. CAS 175 - Persuasion and Propaganda

4. What is
Propaganda?

5. What Isn’t Propaganda?

7. Propaganda Fide
Left: Propaganda Fide HQ (Sacra Congregatio
de Propaganda Fide, “Sacred Congregation for
the Evangelization of Peoples”) in Rome
Established by the Catholic Church in 1622 by,
to promote the spread of Catholic faith
non-Catholic countries

8. What is
Propaganda?
Purpose: Persuasion
Context: Public /
Communal / Civic
Keren Wang CAS 420 Lecture Slides

9. Zhèng míng
● The Analect: “If names be not correct, language is not in
accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in
accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be
carried on to success.”
● Audience would judge an argument first and foremost by
its conformity to shared norms, beliefs, and values.
Ethos
● Aristotle’s Rhetoric: “Persuasion is achieved by the
speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken
as to make us think him credible… This is absolutely true
where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are
divided.”
Zhèng míng
&
Ethos

10. ❖ Collective
Memory
❖ Values
❖ Norms
Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law by Rembrandt (Wikimedia Commons)
Keren Wang 2022

11. Codex Hammurabi -
Prologue:
When Anu the Sublime, King of the Anunaki,
and Bel, the lord of Heaven and earth, who
decreed the fate of the land, assigned to
Marduk, the over-ruling son of Ea, God of
righteousness, dominion over earthly man, and
made him great among the Igigi, they called
Babylon by his illustrious name, made it great
on earth…
Keren Wang 2022

12. Henry VIII’s
Act of
Supremacy,
1534
”[T]he king, our sovereign lord, his
heirs and successors, kings of this
realm, shall be taken, accepted,
and reputed the only supreme head
in earth of the Church of England”
Keren Wang 2022

13. Constitution of the Empire
of Japan (1890), Preamble
We, the Successor to the prosperous Throne of
Our Predecessors, do humbly and solemnly
swear to the Imperial Founder of Our House and
to Our other Imperial Ancestors that, in
pursuance of a great policy coextensive with the
Heavens and with the Earth, We shall maintain
and secure from decline the ancient form of
government.
Keren Wang 2022

14. The Birth of
Taxation as
Ritual
Offering
Warka Vase, c. 3200
BCE, Uruk site
Image: Wikimedia Commons

15. Maximilien Robespierre,
The Festival of the
Supreme Being (1793)
● French Revolution and First French
Republic
● “Reign of Terror”
● Cult of the Supreme Being
● Second attempt to establish a secular
civic religion for the new republic after
the failure of the “Cult of Reason”
introduced by the atheistic faction
Keren Wang CAS 420 Lecture Slides

16. Keren Wang
CAS 420
Lecture Slides

17. The Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David (1804)
Keren Wang CAS 420 Lecture Slides

18. Civic Religion
Unifying values of a nation, as expressed
through public rituals, symbols (e.g. national
flag), and ceremonies on sacred days and at
sacred ground (e.g. monuments, battlefields,
or national cemeteries).

19. Left: Luxor Obelisk (Ramesses II, c. 1250
BC)
Middle: One of the two obelisks for the
Mausoleum of Augustus
(28 BC)
Right: Washington Monument, Washington
DC (1884)

20. Left: Temple of Hadrian, Rome, completed in 145 AD
Right: Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC, completed in 1922

21. Fidel Castro
laying a wreath
at the Lincoln
Memorial
during his visit
to the United
States, 1959.

23. “In God We Trust”
Adopted by the U.S. Congress in
1956, replacing
E pluribus unum, as the official
motto of the U.S.

24. “The virtuous will be sure to possess proper
rhetoric, but those whose rhetoric is persuasive
may not always be virtuous.”
Confucius, The Analects - Xian Wen 4 (c.480 BC, transl.
Keren Wang.)
… ...
“He then, who being ignorant of the truth aims at
appearances, will only attain an art of rhetoric
which is ridiculous and is not an art at all?”
Plato, Phaedrus (c. 370 BC, transl. Benjamin Jowett)
Confucius &
Plato, on the
proper use
of rhetoric:

25. Persuasion by not persuading -
Wú wèi & Bù zhēng
● Centrality of wú wèi (inexertion) & bù zhēng
(non-adversarial) in Daoist philosophy on persuasion.
● “Those who are wú wèi are without voice and shape,
and those without voice and shape can see without
being seen, hear without being heard. How splendid!”
《文子》
● How effective would a piece of propaganda be if its
target audience could easily recognize it being
propaganda?

26. US Surgeon General:
A Case Study of
Zhèng míng
Right: Vivek H. Murthy, MD. 19th and 21st
Surgeon General of the United States. Note
the uniform and insignia of a vice admiral.

27. “Valley of the Shadow of Death” – a case study of
wú wèi and ziran

28. Alexander Gardner,
The home of a Rebel
Sharpshooter,
Gettysburg (1863)
– a case study of
wú wèi and ziran

29. Wú wèi and the
Memorial to the Murdered
Jews of Europe, Berlin

31. Previous Week What is Propaganda?
➔ Purpose: Persuasive
➔ Target audience: Public
Basic principles:
➔ Explicit message draws upon tacit beliefs,
memories, values, and civic religion
➔ Zhèng míng and Ethos: perceived credibility of
the rhetor and platform
➔ Wú wèi & Bù zhēng: propaganda no longer
effective if its target audience recognizes the
information being propaganda
➔ Zìrán: the importance of appearing “natural”
and “untempered”

32. Benjamin: The Work of Art
in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction
“But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases
to be applicable to artistic production, the total
function of art is reversed. Instead of being based
on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice
– politics.”

33. Superstructure
&
Substructure
Superstructure: art,
culture, media, music,
education, law…
Substructure: economic conditions,
labor, raw material, technology, mode
of production…

34. Superstructure and Substructure
Cinnabar, a highly stable red pigment
widely used in Roman art and architecture,
was a by-product of its large scale mercury
mining and refining industry.
Roman artistic output was supported by
the labor of miners (who were
predominately slaves), and the demand for
pigments also maintains the mode of
production of Roman mining industry.

35. 31 May 1859

36. Right: Coverage of various topics in ABC, CBS and NBC nightly newscasts in 1994:
Rwandan genocide took place April 7 - July 15, 1994, when O.J. Simpson trial dominated US news media coverage.
Left: 2004 Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda, grossing $33,882,243 in box office revenue.
Source: Livingston, S. and D. Stephen. “American Network Coverage of Genocide in Rwanda in the Context of General Trends in International News” (1998).

37. Lincoln
Memorial:
Completed in
1922
Price tag: $3 million USD ($40
million in 2012 Dollars)

38. 1910 - Museum of
Natural History
1912 – John Paul Jones
Memorial
1922 – Lincoln
Memorial
1923 – Reflecting Pool
1924 –Ulysses Grant
Memorial
1927 – National
Arboretum
1929 – Constitution Hall

39. Substructure: Economy of the
Progressive Era (1900s - 1920s)
Stronger central government and regulatory
measures to counter exacerbating inequality,
environmental destruction, corruption, and
awful working conditions from preceding
Gilded Age (c. 1870s - 1900)
Superstructural changes: the National Mall,
antitrust laws, women’s suffrage, Department
of Labor, Federal Employees' Compensation Act

40. Adorno and the
Power of Criticism
“One should not study the attitude of listeners,
without considering how far these attitudes reflect
broader social behavior patterns and ...how far
they are conditioned by the structure of society
as a whole. This leads directly to the problem of a
social critique of radio music, that of discovering its
social position and function.”
- Adorno, “A Social Critique of Radio Music”
Portrait of Theodor W. Adorno, by Leandro Gonzalez de Leon
Keren Wang CAS 420 Lecture Slides

41. Adorno’s Axioms of
Cultural Consumption
(a) “We live in a society of commodities”
(b) Tendency towards “monopolized mass
production of standardized goods”
(c) Tendency towards maintaining existing
political and economic interests
(d) Quantity over quality

42. Digital poster for
N17 Mass Direct
Action by
OccupyWallSt.ORG
(Nov. 14, 2011)

43. Substructure:
Accelerating “Main St vs
Wall St” disparity
Wang, Keren. Atlas of Sacrifice,
Ch.6, 2018

44. Collective
Memory,
Values and
Norms?

45. The “Tank Man”
Image source Wikimedia
Commons, 2020

46. Wú wèi and the art of tacit persuasion - reconstructing poster’s color arrangements in
creating a “menacing” sensorium… (1)

47. “Menacing” sensorium? - reconstructing poster’s color arrangements… (2)

48. Keren Wang, April 2019
“Menacing colors” - tapping into a transnational subconscious memory trigger

49. Vexillology and
civic religion:
Pre WWII
Image source Wikimedia
Commons, 2020

50. Vexillology and
transnational
subconscious
memory :
Post-WWII
Image source Wikimedia