Propaganda
I keep hearing people (notable Eric S. Raymond) talking up the notion of propaganda and describing themselves as "propagandists". Firstly, I always assumed that propaganda was deliberate lies told in order to prevent damaging truths about "the party" (or open source software, communism, facism, toasters etc.) from being exposed to "the people". The idea being that "the party" was so inevitably right that lies were justified in order to protect it. The problem being that this leads so a lack of useful oversight of "the party", a "party" that cannot be meaningfully criticised even when it is wrong and, in it's error, peoples suffering would increase rather than decarease.
Surely calling yourself a propagandist (even taunting people with it) is effectively calling yourself a liar and a cheat? Who in their right mind would trust someone like that?
Secondly, even if you deny that you are a propagandist for propaganda to be effective you must be the only source of information. As soon as people discover that there are other possible answers they will throw your views into question.
Just something I wanted to get off my chest, there.
Linkage Constructed by David Gentle on 09/15/05 14:58:42
