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The term propaganda has long been associated with authoritarian regimes, lies, and manipulation. Nathan Crick, a professor of rhetoric and philosophy at Texas A&M University, wants us to see it in a different light.
Crick, who has been teaching his students about propaganda for 20 years, defines it as “a value-neutral set of techniques for mass persuasion.” These techniques are everywhere today, he says. Most of us both devour and invent propaganda every day without knowing it.
In his book Propaganda: The Basics, published earlier this year, Crick writes that propaganda is a fundamental feature of living in a society saturated with mass media and argues that if people are trained to read media critically and to develop strong personal ethics, they will be able to resist manipulation and use propaganda themselves to better the world. He wants to help people, especially young people, recognize propaganda more easily and learn to use it for good.
I spoke with Crick about Benjamin Franklin, Jimmy Kimmel, climate change narratives, and what it means to wear a T-shirt emblazoned with the logo for A-1 steak sauce.
You say the meaning of the word propaganda has changed over time. Why has that happened?
It comes from the Catholic Church, where it refers to a way of propagating the faith. It’s an agricultural metaphor, propagation is seed spreading, which actually comes out of the gospels. So it had a positive connotation. Propaganda takes on a different tone after World War I. It becomes associated with war propaganda and the mass mobilization of citizens for violence in the early 20th century.
And that’s where it basically stays: Propaganda is the tool of the enemy to destroy you. It’s connected with lies. It really has never lost that connotation over the years. Why does that word stick around? Because it’s just so effective as a piece of propaganda itself. The word propaganda is an amazingly effective tool for undermining the claims of your opposition, labeling it something that is not worth paying attention to, a fabrication.
You write that propaganda has become an inescapable part of modern life. Why is it more inescapable now than, say, 50 years ago?
That’s largely the social media dynamic of our 24/7 age. It’s in the vested interest of people selling ideas to mark certain products and social groups like territory: That thing is mine. You code it in a certain way to say, if you consume this, you’re a part of this group and not this other group. So you create these little oppositions wherever you go, and that actually serves both you and your opponent.
For instance, our secretary of education confused artificial intelligence for A-1 the steak sauce, saying, “Every school should have access to A.1,” and now a certain group takes this and runs with it. It becomes a really attractive brand meme. Suddenly now a mention of A-1 steak sauce is understood as a critique of the Trump administration’s department of education. So the next day I get a T-shirt that says A-1 steak sauce with nothing else on it. I’ve automatically made this a political statement, which profits A-1 steak sauce and makes me funny, which is social currency.
When Jimmy Kimmel mocks conspiracy theories, this is relying on propaganda to debunk such claims.
What are some historical examples of propaganda being used for good?
If you look at it from a media history perspective, and go back to the American Revolution, you know modern democracy is a product of the printing press. It’s a technological phenomenon that’s grounded in the publication of the Declaration of Independence, one of the first mass-produced political documents in the United States. It was produced on broadsheet through printing presses and distributed to individual towns, and then spoken out loud for people to gather around and share. That’s why it was made as a single document, to allow all the people across the eastern part of the country to imagine themselves as a single entity.
So, nationalism in the 19th century, this idea that we are the state, and that we are linguistically unified, was a product of propaganda. One of the reasons Benjamin Franklin was so powerful is because he understood the power of this press. He was a printer. So democracy is a product of propaganda.
How can we use propaganda ethically?
When we mention propaganda, attention immediately turns to the negative. Propaganda is what is done to us, which attacks us from the outside, invades our consciousness, and spreads lies. But propaganda is also what we do in response.
When I teach, I like to show people how complex it is—that when I create propaganda, it has effects far beyond the initial moment. Sometimes what makes people do unethical things is that they just haven’t thought through the downstream impacts. With my students, I always have them do these reflective pieces at the end where they’ve been involved in propaganda and ask them, “What do you think about it?” They’ll take things that they’re involved in: fraternities, churches, work, school groups, innocuous things. But often they tell me, “I didn’t realize this was a strategy I was using to get my grandparents to buy all this junk that they didn’t need.” That awareness is the most important thing.
What are some recent examples of propaganda that we might not be aware of?
When Jimmy Kimmel creates satirical videos mocking conspiracy theories, this is also relying on the techniques of propaganda to debunk such claims. It was a global campaign of state propaganda that encouraged mask wearing and vaccinations during COVID-19. Pride parades and rainbow flags were once considered agitation propaganda. The recent “No Kings” rallies and subsequent coverage were organized propaganda on a mass scale. And every time a user reposts a news article or editorial on social media to “share widely” some important idea, they are functioning as a vehicle for the dissemination of propaganda.
The propaganda of climate activism tends to be parasitic on current events.
You say that propaganda may be essential to combat global challenges like climate change where collective action and behavior modification are essential. What kind of propaganda do you envision playing a role in combatting climate change?
We have long known that resistance to climate change policies was spearheaded by the energy industry with massive, coordinated, covert propaganda that spread three basic ideas: first, that climate change was not real; second, that even if climate change might be happening, it wouldn’t have damaging impacts; and third, that even if climate change was real and a genuine threat, the effects of environmental policies would be far worse. Climate activists had to argue the opposite—that the catastrophic impacts of global warming were real and that “green” policies were feasible and beneficial.
Climate propaganda vacillates between apocalyptic and utopian myths. On the one hand, every news report of an environmental catastrophe—from heat waves in Alaska to Canadian wildfires to Texas floods to Indian drought to bark beetle infestations—becomes another opportunity for a vivid appeal that evokes fear and anger at the avoidable collapse of civilization. On the other hand, every technological innovation and progressive policy that makes use of carbon capture, clean energy, or sustainable development is compressed into a simplified idea, connected to a personal identity, and used to stimulate desire for a new way of life in harmony with nature.
The propaganda of climate activism tends to be parasitic on current events. When the news is bad, it gasps “See? It’s happening!” And when the news is good, it exclaims “See? It’s possible!” These extremes are unavoidable, however, because a complex, scientific “middle ground” may be more correct, but it is also ineffective propaganda.
You have written that “fascism exists globally today as a self-augmenting, self-propagating rhetorical phenomena on social media.” How did this happen?
Ever since the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, political and social history has been the story of increasing forms of self-organization. We all know the utopian version of this story because it is a celebrated myth of the technology industry. With the development and spread of accessible communication technologies, individuals become emancipated from state-sanctioned tutelage and begin to form autonomous, creative, and cooperative networks that culminate in non-hierarchical democratic politics.
But the dystopian myth exists alongside the utopian one.
In this story, state and corporate interests realize that it is far more efficient to control populations through propaganda than through force. The same forces that promote democracy also allow carefully crafted messages to spread effortlessly through populations, provided they satisfy certain basic needs—the need to belong, to exert power, to feel superior, to place blame, to acquire resources.
In a technological society, social, political, economic, and religious identities all gradually fuse together until one ends up with just two basic antagonistic groups: “us” and “them.” We call this “partisanship” but it is really “sectarianism” because it is all-encompassing. What makes this so inescapable today is the ease by which any event can be labeled and incorporated into this binary system. And it occurs quite naturally. The mistake is to think there is some Wizard of Oz behind the scenes making this all happen. It is usually quite the opposite.
Certainly, covert propaganda exists and there is no absence of state-sanctioned propaganda. But more often than not, and especially, in a non-authoritarian society, most everything happens out front. Leaders are really more like the conductors of orchestras. They simply take the ideas, biases, and connections already present and help them form a coherent whole with a certain tendency. In today’s culture, we all participate together in the segregation of ourselves into two competing groups because we fundamentally enjoy it.
Where do we go from here?
The only way out of such a system is through it. One cannot return to some version of the past. This desire is itself exploited by propaganda. Ironically, many who participate enthusiastically within this system also despise it. They are fundamentally unhappy because fascism is institutionalized loneliness. Unfortunately, we cannot fight fascism simply by tuning out. We have to somehow get to a point at which the actual effects of this system on our lives becomes proof that this life has become unsustainable. But what do we do then? The answer to that question, for better or worse, is still going to be provided for us by propaganda.
And the only hope that the answer we get from the propaganda of the future will be better than the answers we are given now is that very ancient faith that human beings do have an instinct for the truth, however long it might take to be realized. If we do not believe that people can learn from experience and have some sense of justice, then fascism is not something we pass through. Fascism becomes the culmination of human history and the end of civilization itself. I don’t believe this is the case.
I think most of the time, when people act, it’s that enduring sense of who we are and want to be, what we can take credit for and feel proud of, that is the most important thing. It’s not what I do to someone else. It’s what I do for myself. And that is why I ultimately have faith in the next generation of activists and influencers to make better propaganda that calls us to our better selves. 
Lead art: Master1305 / Shutterstock
