How to Out-Propaganda Propaganda

Writing tips for the hopeless

I was going through my files on propaganda to prepare for a lecture on Monday, and I found a five-year-old “how to” essay on this topic that I never published. Five years ago I was a 9/II conspiracy theorist and was facing the kinds of indignities that C0VID \/@x conspiracy theorists face today.

My tone in this old piece is rather cynical and impatient, because I was fed up. And now you are too. So enjoy.

Want to reach people who are so brainwashed by propaganda they think up is down? Don’t use logic and facts on them—not alternative, true, statistical or otherwise. Lead with “the truth,” only if you want to see a collective eye roll.

Remember that five-paragraph essay format you learned in high school? with the introduction that culminated in your provocative thesis statement that let everyone know precisely what you were about? the five-paragraph essay with three body paragraphs, each detailing an incontrovertible fact to support your bold thesis? And the concluding paragraph that felt just like dusting your hands off after a job well done? Don’t do that.

You may like to learn new things; you may like to be told when you make mistakes; you make like it when someone points out just how wrong you have been. But you’re weird. You belong to a very small minority of open-minded, agnostic, curious, imaginative, mavericks, who never went along with group-think, who always questioned everything your parents told you, who never followed fashion or was a member of any club. And you have a message you want to deliver to people who are nothing like you. Preaching to the choir will probably just further alienate you from the rest of the www.

Strategize. You have options.

1. Fake it. Pretend to speak with your audience’s voice. Use their favorite cliches. Lull them into listening by praising what they praise, criticizing what they criticize, then slip in one small fact in that they need to know. Do it in a way that plays down its controversial nature, for example, say it in a subordinate clause, not in the man clause. If you’re writing to Democrats and want to convince them to oppose the War on Terror, piggyback your message onto climate change: “While ending wars would be the best way to stop climate change, new wind farms and solar fields could create green jobs.” You want this article to be all about wind farms and solar fields and only allude to the phony war on terror once or twice. Alternatively, you can include your anti-war plug in a list of items, allowing readers or listeners to pass over without thinking too much about it, subconsciously including it in the category of those other items: “A number of small activist groups have been essential to climate change fight, Sierra Club, 350.org, Code Pink, and Union of Concerned Scientists.” This is for the long-game, for those who have kids to think about and a mortgage to pay and who can’t write themselves out of a job.

2. Think like a Hollywood agent. The original “making the world safe for democracy” propagandist, Edward Bernays, discovered that product placement in a movie was more effective than a TV ad. Hey maybe we need an activist fashion article showing the latest look in protest eyewear featuring Bono, Meryl Streep, Richard Gage, Matt Damon, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

3. Use parody. Use the voice of your target audience, but do it in such a way that it makes them seem hysterical. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is a the text-book example of the way to make your point by showing just how ridiculous your adversary is. Stephen Colbert made a career out of pretending to be Bill O’Reilly. Rachel Maddow and Keith Olberman are coming very close to doing self-parody and it’s a perfect time to show how silly they are. NPR mentions that “Russia annexed Crimea” once every fifteen minutes. Did I mention the Russia annexed Crimea? Well, they did. Russia annexed Crimea. Up next, Wait, wait don’t tell me, Russia annexed Crimea.

4. Laugh about tragedy. Seeking sympathy, being earnest is weak. Make your audiences feel uncomfortable they that are not in on the joke. James Corbett’s five-minute video “9/11: A Conspiracy Theory” started more conversations than all the facts discovered under Harrit et al.’s electron microscope.

Most importantly, know your audience. You are not writing for yourself or your friends. You are doing outreach to people who think you are a nutcase loser. Keep that in mind. Try not to sound anything remotely like a nutcase loser. You have to understand your audience’s values, quirks, and prejudices and speak accordingly. Just be careful not to engage in any of the hateful or stupid things that your audience does. Don’t associate your message with bad shit. For example, if you want to woo a Trump supporter, be supportive of U.S. industry and energy independence, but don’t bash immigrants. You will have to write differently for different groups and you might think about using different names so that you won’t seem schizo.

And don’t forget to periodically post pets on FaceBook and Instagram.

Also, to set an example, I wrote a satirical novel I want you to read called, Locus Amoenus, about a 9/11 widow whose son, Hamlet, becomes depressed when she remarries. You get the idea.

-V.N. Alexander