Propaganda / Rhetorical Fallacies

Propaganda

Propaganda refers to the deliberate attempt to influence a mass audience to act or think a certain way.  Usually the term is associated with an intent to deceive.

Slogans

A catchy slogan is more easily remembered than a complicated and perhaps more accurate explanation

Repetition

When a message is “drummed” into a listener's consciousness, it tends to be remembered.  A group can be trained to repeat the slogan so loudly and long that all rational thought becomes impossible

Loaded Words

Certain words - like peace, patriotism, moral, terrorist, socialism - arouse such strong emotional responses that they are called loaded words (they are loaded with feelings beyond the simple definition of the word.)

powerful Images

Just as there are loaded words, certain images are loaded with powerful emotional associations.  Gardens, rainbows, sunshine, clear streams, beautiful people - these images tend to make us “feel good.”  Also, images that are just the opposite tend to make us feel bad

Appeals To Our Fears

A powerful propaganda technique is to play on a listener’s fears. The message says, in effect, that if you don’t do a certain thing (or if you don’t think in a certain way), something that you fear very much will happen

Appeals To Our Basic Desires And Needs

All human beings need food, drink, clothing, and shelter in order to survive.  We also have emotional needs: we need to be loved and cared for, to have meaningful work, to have a sense of dignity and self-worth.  These can be used to shape a group’s opinions

Card Stacking

A technique that seeks to manipulate audience perception of an issue by emphasizing one side and repressing another.

Bandwagon

Since most people like to part of the crowd, the propagandist can win over many followers if he can convince his listeners that everyone else is following a certain trend

Transfer Device

A propagandist can create the impression that his cause possesses virtues comparable to the virtues of a symbol, idea, or person that the people already respect and admire. They hope to get a group’s feelings about one thing transferred to another thing.

Plain Folks

A propagandist can convince people that he is one of the “plain folks” who is one of the common citizens rather than a leader who is not part of the general group.  The people will believe that since he claims to be one of them, he is trustworthy and has their best interests at heart

Equality

sameness; giving everyone the same thing

Equity

fairness; giving everybody what’s fair so they can all have access to the same opportunity

Rhetoric

is the art of speaking or writing effectively and persuasively

Fallacies

are common errors in reasoning that will undermine the logic of your argument. Fallacies can be either illegitimate arguments or irrelevant points, and are often identified because they lack evidence that supports their claim. Avoid these common fallacies in your own arguments and watch for them in the arguments of others.

Emotional fallacies

are rhetorical fallacies characterized by the manipulation of the recipient's emotions in order to win an argument, especially in the absence of factual evidence

Red herring

is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue. It may be either a fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion

Either/Or Choices (aka: false dichotomy, false dilemma, false duality)

reduce complicated issues to only two possible courses of action

False Need

arguments create an unnecessary desire for things

Slippery Slope

arguments suggest that one thing will lead to another: This is a conclusion based on the premise that if A happens, then eventually through a series of small steps, X, Y, Z will happen. So, if we don't want Z to occur, A must not be allowed to occur either

Ethical fallacies

detract from the credibility of the speaker/writer

Ad Hominem

arguments attack a person’s character rather than that person’s reasoning

False Authority

 asks audiences to agree with the assertion of a writer based simply on his or her character or the authority of another person or institution who may not be fully qualified to offer that assertion

Moral Equivalence

compares minor problems with much more serious crimes

Guilt by Association

calls someone’s character into question by examining the character of that person’s associates

A logical fallacy

is an error in reasoning or a false assumption that might sound impressive but proves absolutely nothing. Sometimes they are completely unintentional, but more often than not they are used by people during debates, arguments, or presentations to mislead you

Faulty Causality (or Post Hoc, ergo propter hoc, Latin for “after this, therefore caused by this”) 

arguments confuse chronology with causation: one event can occur after another without being caused by it

Hasty Generalization

is a conclusion based on insufficient or biased evidence. In other words, you are rushing to a conclusion before you have all the relevant facts. It’s also known as “small sample size

Gas lighting

manipulation technique in which a person tries to convince someone that their reality is untrue

Guilt trip

to intentionally make them feel guilty, usually to manipulate them into doing something they don't want to