From: hal@finney.org
Date: Tue Jun 19 2001 - 16:36:21 MDT
Anders writes:
> On Mon, Jun 18, 2001 at 11:46:09AM -0700, hal@finney.org wrote:
> > Can't you draw the opposite lesson from this, though? It is a bad sign if
> > you find yourself resorting to propaganda in order to make your policies
> > acceptable. If the most successful propaganda states were Nazi Germany
> > and Communist Russia, are you sure you want to advocate joining them?
>
> Waldemar's point was not that propaganda is important, but that these
> regimes spent a lot of energy on developing their philosophies. Then
> they distributed that as propaganda, of course.
It's still not clear to me how that lesson applies to us. I am not
comfortable with the thought that we should borrow from the tactics
of these groups. Yes, they had a degree of effectiveness, but it was
built on a completely false foundation. If your system is built on a
lie, you need to work in a certain way to get it accepted. But we are
surely starting from a completely different point.
Imagine an honest man seeking to go into business and be successful.
Should he copy from the techniques of the Mafia? They're successful,
they make a lot of money. Should he threaten his potential customers and
try to frighten them into doing business with him? Of course we agree
he should not. The methods of a movement built on sound principles must
inherently be of a completely different nature than those of one built
on falsehoods.
> If you have a badly thought out system propaganda will not help you
> beyond a certain point, since people will easily poke holes in it. But
> if you have strong arguments (even if they are eventually wrong) the
> propaganda is amplified, and you might actually get on with less
> propaganda than you otherwise might have needed.
Yes, this is consistent with what I was saying, but I took it farther.
I said we could get by with no propaganda at all.
I understand that people look at the world and see many groups advocating
positions different from our own. Some of those movements are gaining
momentum. This raises the concern that our perspectives are losing
ground, that they will be lost, that we will not move into the future
world which we hope to see.
I presume that this is what motivates the desire to engage in propaganda.
It is a pragmatic observation that, to put it bluntly, we seem to
be losing. We need to take different steps since our current path is
not working.
Now, I do not agree with this argument. But perhaps it is a straw man
and does not represent the views of those who feel that we need to take a
more active role in trying to persuade people of the merits of our cause.
So I will not try to argue against it until I get a better understanding
of why people think we need to engage in propaganda.
Hal
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