POT 4936 Democracy and Propaganda is an advanced political theory course I designed around my dissertation, “Propaganda and Strategic Narratives of Great Power States: Political Rhetoric and the Making of World Orders.” The course begins with some articles discussing the current situation (la coyentura) in the world today: the rise of populism, skepticism of science, and the erosion of democratic institutions and liberalism. It then begins probing the concept of propaganda: what is propaganda exactly? Is it good, bad, or benign? Can or should democracies use propaganda? We read Walter Lippman, W.E.B. DuBois, Edward Bernays, Jacques Ellul and Jason Stanley in this part of the course. The second half of the course switches from inquiring into the nature of propaganda to inquiring into the nature of truth, and how democracies depend upon a particular epistemological stance that everyone can have access to the knowledge required to participate in self-government.
The course ends with a case study in which students apply the concepts they’ve learned over the course of the semester to an argument for the US to have a truth and reconciliation committee on the issue of slavery.
I have made an online version of this course accessible to the general public through my Youtube channel. There you can listen to a playlist of various lectures and video tutorials addressing each of the readings included in the syllabus. For those of you who found this online course through Youtube here is a complete list of the readings discussed in the course:
- Erwin Fellows article 1959 “Propaganda History of a Word”
- Sophia Rosenfeld article “Truth and Consequences“
- David Kamens article “Globalization and the Growth of Radical Populism and Unreason
- “The Death of Expertise” by Tom Nichols (introduction, chapter 1, and the conclusion)
- Ed Bernays’ 1928 book “Propaganda” Chapters 1 and 2 only
- W.E.B DuBois 1926 article “Criteria of Negro Art”
- Walter Lippman Public Opinion 1922;
- Jacques Ellul (students read an article about him, but if you want to read Ellul directly the relevant works are The Technological Society and Propaganda: The formation of men’s attitudes.
- Jason Stanley 2015 book, How Propaganda Works
- Plato’s dialogue Gorgias
- Hannah Arendt’s 1964 article “Truth and Politics”
- Martin Breul article 2022 “Lies, Bullshit, or Propaganda?”
- Sophia Rosenfeld’s 2019 book, Democracy and Truth
- Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò 2023 book, Does the US need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission? A philosophical investigation