“Online content can become misleading when an opinion piece is circulated online as objective reporting, when one element of a story is blown out of proportion to attract clicks, or when an entire story is presented by a special interest group as proving or disproving something — when it actually might not do anything of the sort.”
— The real 'fake news': how to spot misinformation and disinformation online, Andrea Bellemare CBC News (2019)
As a trusted Canadian media outlet, CBC News gives us the down low on how to spot misinformation and disinformation online. And while the Hanibal Lector of news media does offer practical tips to spot other grafting connoisseurs, they miss some fundamental concepts when it comes to dismembering propaganda.
I may not be in the same business as the serial media liars over at CBC News, but I discovered some interesting features with the language in state funded propaganda.
“If it is stupid but it works, it isn't stupid.”
― Mercedes Lackey1, Owlknight
Get ready to pass the fava beans and lotion up.
Silence of the Lambs is a psychological horror film about a young FBI trainee, Clarice, who hunts down a serial killer (who skins his female victims) named "Buffalo Bill." But in order to catch a criminal, Clarice must seek the advice of the imprisoned serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter, who is a brilliant psychiatrist, but also a cannibal.2
Much like Clarice, we can use state funded criminal enterprises like CBC to catch perpetrators with their lies red handed. In the following sections, I will reveal 3 principles that you can use to safely read through any information source and avoid trickery. Hopefully, you too will spot the monsters wearing false faces.
1. The truth is imperceivable, everything is a fiction
Every article, news segment or public statement tells a story.
Remember, it’s called a news story. Human beings do not communicate effectively using terse technical language. But what is effective? Storytelling. News cycles, and even government policy, are driven by drama, tension and a lot of bad actors. Most information that breaks into public awareness is played out through characters, narration and a dash of fiction (… and sometimes the cap falls off the shaker).
A character attack (ad hominem) is one method of establishing the protagonist and antagonist in a story. One word can turn polite townsfolk into vicious witch hunters.
Stories are designed to sow or activate beliefs. Take for example the Millennial and Gen Z obsession with social media stardom. These groups grew up on a belief that social media attention brings success, fame, wealth, and also disaster. These beliefs came from stories consumed online. Adolescent minds who practice this belief system fictionalize their own personal lives in an attempt to gain a social media audience.
Our perception of reality is a fiction, where our ego is the main character.
This is also true for older generations who emulate Hollywood stars.
How many fashion themselves based on their favourite actor, musician or commentator?
Storytelling is a powerful sales technique; it creates want when there is no need.
Propaganda is delivered through dramatic fiction. There are good guys, bad guys and lots of drama. Propaganda will not read like stereo instructions or engineering drawings; expect it to be closer to a life or death catastrophe through characterization.
2. Every storyteller has an ego
Story structure can reveal a lot about the storyteller.
If an ego is behind every story, then we should expect ego defence mechanisms used within narrative devices. The purpose of propaganda is to influence behaviour by manipulating emotive beliefs. These malicious tactics are typical of people suffering from personality disorders.
The cleverest trick used in propaganda against Germany during the war was to accuse Germany of what our enemies themselves were doing.
Even today, large parts of world opinion are convinced that the typical characteristics of German propaganda are lying, crudeness, reversing the facts, and the like.
— Goebbels at Nuremberg — 1934, by Joseph Goebbels
Blame, accusation and projection are all common defence mechanisms of personality disorders. Assume propagandists have anti-social tendencies. News stories are safer to read if you pretend the storyteller is a sociopath; never sympathize with a writer, publisher or editor you do not trust. Sociopaths and psychopaths are very charismatic, and use fear or flattery to manipulate others.
Upfront character attacks may initiate narrative conflict, and when used in combination with other techniques like glittering generalities and transfer, it creates concise headlines that lead into dramatic stories.
The headline immediately establishes a protagonist using emotive words “supporters” and “kids,” and foreshadows antagonists with “reports of threats.” The article establishes a narrative that transfers the emotive concept of “threats” onto any person or entity who is not a “supporter.” Consider this device in the following examples.
According to the union, the theatre staff and members have been "bombarded with hateful messages" and have faced "threats of physical violence."
IATSE said a group called Action4Canada had come to the theatre presenting "bogus legal documents" and a petition with thousands of signatures.
— Supporters of drag camp for kids rally outside Vancouver theatre after reports of threats against staff, CBC News (Jul. 4, 2023)
Additional antagonist attributes include “bombard,” “hateful” and “threats of physical violence.” The narration then attempts to transfer these ideas onto Action4Canada to discredit their Notice of Liability as “bogus” through another transfer using the authority from supposed legal experts and an unnamed professor.
In an email to CBC News, Action4Canada shared a notice of liability that the group said is "not a legal document at this point," but aims to inform theatre management of potential liability.
Legal experts have questioned the value of notices of liability, with one University of British Columbia law professor telling CBC News in 2021 that such documents appear to be nothing more than assertions of what someone believes the law to be.
— Supporters of drag camp for kids rally outside Vancouver theatre after reports of threats against staff, CBC News (Jul. 4, 2023)
Of interest, however, is the statement concerning police who are “monitoring the situation for criminal behaviour.” Oddly enough, the claimed "threats of physical violence" is not mentioned in the police statement, which would warrant police investigation.
Vancouver police said they are aware of the protests and officers are monitoring the situation "should anything criminal arise."
— Supporters of drag camp for kids rally outside Vancouver theatre after reports of threats against staff, CBC News (Jul. 4, 2023)
Notice the contrast between antagonist and protagonist in the following lines.
[Action4Canada:] "In this case it is both unlawful to sexually exploit children and is causing them harm," said the email.
[Drag Artist:] "For us it's about, we are here and we want to just live our lives," Calderon said. "To have that opposition, to have that bigotry against us and the community, is not a healthy thing for a society."
— Supporters of drag camp for kids rally outside Vancouver theatre after reports of threats against staff, CBC News (Jul. 4, 2023)
This article is explicitly attacking the reader.
By creating a polarized narrative with distinct protagonists and antagonists, the reader is forced to sympathize with one side or another. In doing so, the reader may develop a bias against particular claims. For example, assume the reader sympathizes with the theatre and ‘drag artists,’ then assertions of “sexually exploit children” or “causing them harm” may be dismissed if it comes from an antagonist associated character.
The article is not designed to consider the protester’s perspective.
A story skeptic needs to rephrase sentences to defuse narrative devices. A powerful technique is called turnarounds, which rephrases sentences containing emotive words using antonyms, synonyms, hypernyms (generalizations), antecedents (prerequisites) and subject / object reversals.
Turnarounds are an emotional intelligence and therapeutic technique.
(See appendix for an example.)
Turnarounds are an underutilized analysis technique.
Noun / verb antonym reversals can reveal subject bias, projection or generalization.
Synonyms help emotionally defuse a sentence.
Generalizing sentences with hypernyms may reveal a higher level spirit to the story.
Antecedents may reveal if a statement is consistent in the context of causation.
Subject / object reversals may show the classic confession by projection.
Try re-reading the above CBC article using turnarounds to discover the variety of hidden perspectives. It is a powerful technique, and can reveal the storyteller’s projections by defusing their narrative devices.
3. No one speaks the same language
Of all the passages religious enthusiasts take literally, this is perhaps one that should garnish more attention, because it is a shockingly useful and empowering concept.
The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
In a previous article, I described how formal languages are defined, and how they differ from natural language in the context of perception management.
In a subsequent article, I provided a model hypothesizing that “individuals have their own lexicon, grammar and interpretations. Every statement is clear and precise with no ambiguity, but only to the individual.” This premise yields the consequent “communication between individuals therefore produces misinterpretations.”
The English language is an interchange medium between individual languages, which acts as a signalling system through a shared lexicon using a suggested grammatical structure and interpretation.
Individual languages must adapt over time by modifying mental symbols and interpretations. These changes occur gradually through social and emotional interaction.
But there is an exploitable problem with this kind of communication system.
One exploitable problem is doublespeak.
Doublespeak is the complete opposite of plain and simple truth.
It distorts words and phrases, often in order to conceal the truth. For example, if a pharmaceutical company said something like, "There are some minor side effects," when they should clearly be stating, "This drug may cause a heart attack," they're using doublespeak and communicating in a deceptive manner.
— Examples of Doublespeak, Mary Gormandy White, M.A.
Doublespeak is used to distort the perception of a reader. The author hides inconvenient meanings by relying on misinterpretation. This device takes advantage of natural language ambiguity, where shared symbols can represent multiple meanings depending on context. Propaganda techniques using this phenomenon include euphemisms, inflated language and jargon.
From the prior CBC article, take into consideration “hateful,” “threats” and “threats of physical violence.” The first two are extremely ambiguous. Not recognizing that individuals communicate in separate languages, one may make the mistake of referring to a dictionary to interpret these words. We do not use a dictionary every time we speak. Our meaning is always projected based on context and our individual interpretation. To properly assess what these claims mean, emails and statements would be required to accurately assess the assigned labels of “hate” or “threat.”
Always ask, where are the receipts? Bitch.
The claim “threats of physical violence” is very specific, and would normally warrant a police followup (also the threat would be made public). That omission should cause readers to pause and question this narrative. What statements specifically are “threats of physical violence”? The inclusion of the word ‘physical’ in the claim is interesting, and as a skeptic, I want to see the exact statement inferring physical acts of harm.
The ambiguous words “hate” and “threat” are used in a specialization of ad hominem that I ironically call ad homonym. These are words that sound or spell the same, but have different meanings, which get used in character attacks to confuse an audience. Hate may mean “a conflicting idea,” and threat may mean “persecution.”
Oh why do you hate me with your threatening visage!3
Character attacks often include doublespeak via an ad homonym. How do we know what an author means? Without gathering additional information to compare allegations against accusations, there is no way to know. In the absence of this information, the best tactic is to rephrase the narrative with turnarounds.
Concluding remarks
We can use serial media liars like CBC News to help protect ourselves, and our children from ‘artists’ like Buffalo Bill; a predator who wears the skin of his female victims. Do not be fooled by egalitarian righteousness and fictional self-images.
Along with a recognition of typical propaganda techniques:
Look for an emotional narrative told through a story.
Develop as many perspectives as possible through phrase reversals.
Pay careful attention to the plural interpretations of words.
Learn to ‘watch yourself’ as you consume information.
Turnarounds are an emotional intelligence technique, because propaganda takes advantage of emotional misinterpretations. Remember that a propagandist is a malicious monster, and you must protect yourself from language games and fantastical fiction. Influencing people to act on misleading or false information is the true danger of information warfare and propaganda.
The solution to propaganda is not to stifle speech, but to openly challenge narratives and pull audiences out of delusional fictions. Tyranny is often replaced over time by parallel systems, and while we continue to develop these parallel systems, we must protect ourselves from malevolent state actors spinning divisive fictions. If you are in the information war frontlines, then you need to learn to write compelling stories that reveal the truth and dispel these harmful fantasies.
Believe none of what you hear, and half of what you see.
Appendix: Turnaround Example
This comment appeared on an MSNBC video.
The example turnarounds will replace specific proper nouns in the blanks below.
As long as chaos rules communities, totalitarianism can step in saying it's the only way to stop the violence. (a.)_____ was hoping that the violence of (b.)_____ would make it legit to declare martial law. That is what these (c.)_____ laws are meant to do. Increase violence to the point where martial law overtakes democracy.
Consider an antonym turnaround using a Conservative’s vernacular.
(a.) The Democratic Party
(b.) BLM/Antifa
(c.) Democrat
Because the same statement works for either left or right wing political slants, the antonym turnaround reveals a glittering generality and transfer.
As long as chaos rules communities, totalitarianism can step in saying it's the only way to stop the violence. (a.) The Democratic Party was hoping that the violence of (b.) BLM/Antifa would make it legit to declare martial law. That is what these (c.) Democrat laws are meant to do. Increase violence to the point where martial law overtakes democracy.
Another turnaround can use hypernyms to align closer with the word ‘totalitarianism.’
(a.) The corporate / government syndicate
(b.) paid activist groups
(c.) safety
As long as chaos rules communities, totalitarianism can step in saying it's the only way to stop the violence. (a.) The corporate / government syndicate was hoping that the violence of (b.) paid activist groups would make it legit to declare martial law. That is what these (c.) safety laws are meant to do. Increase violence to the point where martial law overtakes democracy.
This turnaround ties in totalitarianism with the nefarious angle of public / private partnerships, as well as the inverted semantics of how safety laws increase violence. The revised statement eliminates ad hominems, glittering generalities and transfer.
Consider how the variety of these turnarounds reflect in current news stories.
News sources have reported that martial law has been established in at least ten urban areas in northern France.
— Establishment of night martial law in some cities of France, Afghan Voice Agency (AVA) (Jul. 3, 2023)
Mercedes Ritchie Lackey (born Jun. 24, 1950) is an American writer of fantasy novels.
IMBD (2023). The Silence of the Lambs. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102926/
Translation: Don’t disagree with me with your judgmental glare.
Nice post. I think a post about how people talk past each other using their own definitions of words needs a discussion of Wittgenstein, though! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations#Themes
I'm reminded of something useful. When reading the newspaper decades ago, how often would I read a story that was absolutely ridiculous then bounce to the next one which I found very reasonable. Why would the newspaper be competent in one subject but not another?
In truth, their incompetent with everything. Especially today.