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When did nation-states first start institutionalizing their propaganda efforts? Find out in this video tutorial on the Origins of State Propaganda by political science instructor Barbara Howe at the University of Florida. Part of her Fall 2024 advanced political theory course POT 4936: Democracy and Propaganda.
You can find more of Barbara Howe’s instructional videos on international relations and political science theories on her YouTube channel.
In 2015, the political theorist Jason Stanley wrote a book called How Propaganda Works. The book explains the ideological dimension of political speech (propaganda) and how it can either support or undermine a particular ideology.
You can find more of Barbara Howe’s instructional videos on international relations and political science theories on her YouTube channel.
I had an incredible day yesterday with our first in-person class back on the Tampa campus. We are reading Plato in my special topics class, POT 4936 Democracy and Propaganda, and I realized that a big part of the reason why teachers let themselves be exploited as workers, working far more hours than we get paid for, is because we love learning so much. I thought I had a good understanding and appreciating of Plato before this but there’s nothing like teaching Plato to really start seeing all these new connections I never noticed before such as how incredibly cool the dialectic (Socratic method) is and how cleverly it is demonstrated within a dialogue like Gorgias. Previously I would’ve said that the people Socrates talks with in Plato’s dialogues are “defeated” by Socrates’ indefatigable logic but now I realize that it’s not a vanquishing of an opponent so much as it is a collaboration with a colleague. In the Gorgias dialogue Socrates asks Gorgias, an itinerant teacher of rhetoric to say what rhetoric is exactly and Gorgias tries multiple times to define the word. I asked students to list all the ways he tries to define it and what we found was this: first, Gorgias says 1.) rhetoric is speeches, then he has to refine that a couple of times when Socrates points out problems with that definition so Gorgias refines his definition by saying 2.) rhetoric is speeches about things that don’t produce handiwork but then Socrates says that still includes arithmetic and geometry (and we wouldn’t call those things rhetoric would we?). So then Gorgias has to try again and he says 3.) rhetoric is speeches about “the greatest of human affairs.” Finally, Gorgias has to refine the definition even further to say 4.) rhetoric is about political affairs. But even that is still not enough though because when Socrates asks who rhetoric is likely to convince, Gorgias has to admit it doesn’t work on everyone, only on “those who don’t know.” So ultimately, for those who don’t know [much about politics], rhetoric works to convince them of political things.
That’s the definition of rhetoric that they (Socrates and Gorgias) come up with in the first part of the dialogue. It’s not a vanquishing at all, is it? It’s a collaborative endeavor to discover the truth. This truth-discernment process takes a long time and involves quite a lot of work. It would be so much faster if Socrates just told us what rhetoric is in the first place. But if he did that, why should we believe him? Socrates is not God. His is not a divine truth delivered to us from on high. He’s just some dude who lived a long time ago. Sure, he is revered today, but that’s no reason why we should just take his word on faith, is it?
Fortunately we don’t have to rely on faith. Logical reasoning never relies on faith or emotional manipulation to convince us of the truth. By showing us how the dialectic works collaboratively with a partner to build up a definition that proceeds slowly and methodically by adding one premise to another only after everyone has agreed to the previous, Plato shows us an incredibly amazing thing: a universal truth –logic. It’s the method, not its conclusions, that would work in any culture, at any time. It’s absolutely brilliant and not least because it’s so ancient, but because it works.
That’s the power of the dialectic that I am just beginning to appreciate at a new level of understanding this week, all because I got to teach a special topics class at my university. This is why teachers will give up so much in order to be able to share their love of learning with a new generation of human beings. There is nothing more essential to the human race than this and some or many of us will let ourselves be underpaid, go without health care benefits or retirement funds, even live in poverty because this work is so important.
Remember this on Teacher Appreciation Day whenever that is. And also support your local teacher’s union fighting for better working conditions for teachers everywhere.
If you know the name Hannah Arendt, it’s probably because you know her most famous book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, but did you know she also wrote for the New Yorker Magazine in the 1960s? It’s true. A popular magazine in the United States used to regularly publish articles written by a philosopher! Not only that, they published an article by her in 1967 called Truth and Politics in which she elaborates upon different kinds of truths, explains why facts are the most vulnerable kind and tells us how to regain our sense of reality in a political context in which significant numbers of people no longer believe in factual truth. In this video instructor Barbara Howe of the University of South Florida introduces you to who Arendt was and the context in which she wrote that now famous article, which can still be found on the New Yorker’s website. If you read it and find yourself not understanding what she’s talking about, let Barb walk you through the key points of the first three sections. You’ll be able to then read the last two sections on your own and get her main point which is not to lose hope! Facts are resilient even in the face of political opposition
You can find more of Barbara Howe’s instructional videos on international relations and political science theories on her YouTube channel.
I think this is the most inspiring book I’ve read so far this year, very thought-provoking and what a neat way to describe John Rawls’ work! Makes me kinda want to go back and re-read that guy, but you don’t need to be familiar with Rawls’ A Theory of Justice or Political Liberalism to get a lot out of Lefebvre’s book (btw, for English-speakers, apparently that ‘b’ in Lefebvre is silent so I’ll spell it phonetically in this review). It all hinges on the idea that instead of being liberal plus some other group identity (say, religious), Lefevre says you can be liberal “all the way down.” In a world where so many are rejecting institutionalized religion, this actually makes the most sense and we should think of it as an option. Lefevre argues that our society is steeped in liberal values (despite not living up to those values much of the time, a fact which only reinforces his point: that we get so outraged about injustice is itself indication that we really value justice). Liberalism is, Lefevre says, our “background culture.”
That’s the first part of the argument. The second part (the so-called “self-help” part) is about how to actually do that, that is, if you’re going to fully embrace liberalism and liberal values, that means you have to actually work towards achieving a more fair and just world. In other words, don’t be a hypocrite (and we’re all hypocrites in this sense). When we tolerate injustice, we’re not being good liberals. We can learn and practice being better, just like learning how to swim. Lefevre is great at metaphors. (There’s a reason the picture on the cover is of people swimming!)
I’m not sure what I think about the fact that I now know (from reading a political theory book of all things!) what the most popular type of pornography is, but there is that factoid in this book too! (I won’t spoil it for you but personally I had no idea! lol) Lefevre uses lots of examples from popular culture to make his points. Some may enjoy that more than others. I don’t mind.
Two points: One, this book pairs well with Jason Stanley’s book How Propaganda Works and also with Adam Gopnik’s A thousand small sanctities. Two, for those interested in political theory, there’s an extra reward in reading the subtext here: political theory should be normative. That is its purpose: to figure out how to live. This is how the ancients thought about philosophy and it’s very different from the way modern thinkers think about it. Most recently, in the past hundred years or so since the rise of behavioralism in political science there has been an attempt to make our field more “science-y” and “objective” “descriptive rather than prescriptive.” It led many people to despair in the 1950s about the death of political theory. Nowadays people talk about the death of liberalism in much the same way. I think they are talking about the same thing (when the latter aren’t confusing liberalism with US hegemony): it is the loss of what Sheldon Wolin calls “vision” for the future, an imagining of how to make our world better. Humans need this sort of thing and we’ve thrown it away. Lefevre is telling us liberalism can help with this problem, if we embrace it. I agree.
Needless to say, this book, like others before it, is taking on the laudable Sisyphean task of trying to define liberalism, a word which seems to encompass so many things (sometimes contradictory things) that no one seems to know what it means anymore. I think it succeeds. Lefebvre gives us a more concrete way to think about what liberalism is, using Rawls as a springboard. It’s not just an intellectual treatise on liberalism, it’s a sort of roadmap for how to live. I enjoyed this book and highly recommend it for anyone who feels disillusioned with modern life.
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