Truth or Consequences

Lt Daniel Kaffee: "I want the truth."
Col Nathan Jessup: "You can't handle the truth!"
--A Few Good Men

My sister observes that propaganda is not a phenomenon of Communist regimes only; there is evidence of propagandizing here in the US. Last nite I chewed thru Hayek's (1944) Ch 11 "The End of Truth." In this chapter Hayek discusses the nature of propaganda in socialist regimes.

He argues that a defining feature of socialist propaganda is that it is meant to undermine the sense of and respect for the truth. Myths must be created in order to compel folllowers, and capacity for reason must be stunted in order to motivate compliance.

Hayek argues that the most effective way to get people to accept the validity of a set of arbitrary values is to persuade them that these values are really the same as those which they have always held, but which were formerly misunderstood. Sagely, he observes that the most effective technique to this end is to appropriate old words and change their meaning.

And we have seen just this sort of phenomenon take place over the past century or so. Words such as equality, justice, and, yes, even 'liberal' have had their meanings twisted around. 'Freedom', for example, is reshaped into a concept relating to compliance with the collective. Oxymorons abound.

Hayek suggests that it is difficult to appreciate the degree of confusion which this causes, and the barriers to rational discussion that it creates, without actually experiencing it. I would submit that we are in fact in the midst of such experience, as reflected by the chaotic thought spouted daily by mainstream media.

Hayek notes,

"Gradually, as this process continues, the whole language becomes despoiled, and words become empty shells deprived of any definite meaning, as capable of denoting one thing as its opposite and used solely for emotional associations which still adhere to them."

The weird heuristic seems to be:

a) locate a word important to a freedom loving people
b) change the meaning to something that supports the socialist state
c) keep the word so that people can still feel good about using the word
d) create chaos in processes for rational thought and critical thinking

It is thru rational thought processes that people get closer to the truth.

Socialist regimes need to prevent truth seeking, lest a collective cannot be attained or unchallenged.

To be sure, even in free thinking peoples, only a subset of individuals are likely to engage in independent thought. However, as Hayek observes, intellectual freedom is a prime mover of progress not because everybody may be able to think or write anything, but because any cause or idea may be argued by somebody. As long as dissent is not suppressed, a free society increases the change that some will question ideas ruling over their contemporaries and put new ideas to the test of argument.

Propaganda seeks to overthrow the truth-seeking process.

Reference

Hayek, F. 1944. The road to serfdom. Chicago: The University of Chicago.