How Propaganda Works

by Jason F. Stanley

Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us--not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In "How Propaganda Works," Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy--particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality--and how it has damaged democracies of the past.

Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States.

"How Propaganda Works" shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, History, Sociology, Psychology, Political Science

376 pages, Hardcover

First published May 25, 2015

About the author

Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is the author of five books, including How Propaganda Works, winner of the Prose Award in Philosophy from the Association of American Publishers, and How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, about which Citizens author Claudia Rankine says: “No single book is as relevant to the present moment.” Stanley serves on the board of the Prison Policy Initiative and writes frequently about propaganda, free speech, mass incarceration, democracy, and authoritarianism for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Boston Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Guardian.

Reviews

[Noah Weisling · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a required reading for Phil-P 145 at Indiana University. I was not a fan of this book. While he had some decent insights he displayed them in a very partisan manner. He also seemed to talk in circles and used a lot of unnecessary long and different names that all meant the same thing. I am proud to say that we talked our professor out of using this book as a reading in the future.

[Richard Newton · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a ton of great ideas in this book, but it may not be quite the book you expect if you judge it by the title. “How propaganda works” is a rather misleading title as the book is both about something broader and narrower than this. The broader point is that it’s not just about propaganda, but the wider topic of the use of language and concepts aligned to certain ideologies. The narrower: the title won’t tell you this but it is only about the use of propaganda in liberal democracies, and how it supports elites in maintaining unjust and unequal societies masquerading as meritocracies. Important stuff no doubt, but I think many would assume from the title that it might also refer to totalitarian regimes as well.

I guess, having personally worked a lot with publishers, that this was a publisher’s choice of title as anything that really stated what the book was about would probably be unwieldy and unappealing. Publishers, unsurprisingly, love titles that help books sell even if they aren’t quite correct.

There is a really great 5 star book trying to get out from this not-as-good-as-it-could-be book, even if it is misleadingly titled. But Stanley includes so much stuff and his chapters are unwieldy chunks of text that go into all sorts of things without sufficient structure that it can be unnecessarily hard going. A bit more vigorous editing and a shorter book would have been better. Additionally, whilst I think he has some very interesting and enlightening analysis of the problems, I’m not convinced he offers much in the way of useful solutions.

Having said all of this, this is a worthy, thoughtful and powerful read. Whilst Stanley does not structure the material as helpfully as he could, he does have an engaging and authoritative writing style. So if this is the sort of topic you are interested in then it’s worth a go.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Propaganda generally involves an emotional appeal strong enough to overcome rational thinking. People are more or less susceptible to propaganda based on the biases they acquire in life. There, now you don't have to read the book. The author makes the point that emphasizing reliance on experts can be anti-democratic, but most of the book reads like a tortured academic trying to make himself feel special. To wit, a random couple of sentences: "One alternative to sensitivity that has arisen in an analytic epistemology is the notion of safety, developed in different ways most prominently by Ernest Sosa and Timothy Williamson. Because I am convinced by Williamson that there is a general worry with counterfactual analyses, I will adopt his exposition of the safety condition on knowledge."

[Christen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wordy, long and could have edited the author's personal thoughts at the beginning and the end of each chapter and his long-winded descriptions of tactics. His goal was to focus on propaganda in liberal (rights) democratic (equality) society, but the book veered off mostly to the linguistics of liberal democratic politics which in itself the only form of propaganda that occurs in a society that claims to be rights and the equality of its people.

Ideologies are full with loaded wth words/rhetoric that connotes biases but are not slurs. There is a whole part of politics about words like "welfare," "illegal immigrant," vs. "undocumented immigrant," and how to use those words within ideologies. With these loaded words come ideas that are flawed, but the beliefs are real even standing in front of the evidence to prove the flaw ideologies flawed. Then comes down to personal beliefs and not wanting to look bad and keeping the ideas that are obviously wrong, but out of principle and the cycle of propaganda continues.

[B Sarv · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well it came late in life. The realization that I was duped into believing I was living and growing up in a democracy. The fact that it calls itself the greatest democracy is in fact propaganda. It is clearly an undemocratic system and it was decidedly designed so. The secondary system I was a part of was specifically designed to brainwash its participants to believe that merit was what brought about the conditions in the communities where diverse people lived under very starkly different circumstances. Suffice it to say I feel partially cleansed of the violation of intellect imposed upon me by the flawed ideology that led to my education. I only feel fortunate that I retained enough of myself to be able to now learn and keep learning about what was done.

This book is a must read for anyone who wishes to be an independent thinker. In recent years I have read the following books that I think bear some mention here (you will see why in a few moments). Angela Y. Davis' Women, Race and Class, bell hooks, Race and Representation, John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, Family of Secrets by Russ Baker, False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton by Liza Featherstone, Beyond Banksters by Joyce Nelson, anything by James Baldwin I could find.

This book, How Propaganda Works, demonstrates clearly how propaganda is the One Ring that in the Darkness Binds all of the evils exposed in the reading list above. I have seen the One Ring for what it is, and although preventing exposure to propaganda is difficult at best, I now will know it for what it is. I walk into the later years in my life with my eyes opened. I am grateful for that. While the books above help with that, this book in particular opened my eyes to the One Ring.

[Robert Fairhurst · Rating 1 out of 5]

God this is a woeful, almost unreadable book. I am slugging through it but it is such a struggle. The sentences are so long-winded and seem to be just showing off what he knows rather than actually having a message. There are almost no concrete, modern examples, just examples from Plato or theoretical examples. With a title like this, and with his obvious knowledge, it could have been so much more than what is essentially an academic book review of the semantics of propaganda. It is difficult to express how terrible it is. It takes about 5 minutes to read a page as you have to read and re-read each sentence to try and figure out what he wants to say, and even after that you come away wondering exactly what you have just read.

[Mark Plakias · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an academic book, written by a Yale philosopher for other philosophers and for policymakers (I presume). That said, if you are interested in the current political moment and the growing tide of demagoguery that the coming election cycle will spawn, this will reward a close reading -- but it's hard work.
This is too bad, because Stanley has written a book of vital importance -- and mis-titled it as a tract about propaganda. A better title would be "Lies Elites Tell Us -- and Themselves." His central thesis is that 'flawed ideologies' (ok: lies, propaganda, bulls***) are perpetuated by elites to remain in power, and keep 'negatively privileged' (that's how real philosophers talk) folks not only in their place, but believing in the Great Lie of the Elites. What is the Lie? Meritocracy -- the idea that the elites got to where they are because their smarter and work harder and whatever. Some of the best writing in this book is in skewering the pretensions about meritocracy, and Stanley is at his best calling out the elites on believing their own bullshit.
In this sense, the book is a profound exploration of the metaphysics and semantics of Inequality. A better title might have been one that includes Inequality in it, because its is an invaluable addition to that underserved area of study. I learned a lot from this book (for example, Stanley's attention to the literature on racism and feminism is breathtaking in its clarity, rigor, and respect), but I didn't enjoy most of it -- that said, I'm glad I hung in til the end.

[Jessica Zu · Rating 5 out of 5]

my all time favorite. informative. must read of all humans.

[Anita · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dense and very very complete exploration of the different styles and forms propaganda can take in the world. Kind of important to know in this day and age (once again).

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 1 out of 5]

about as unhinged
as a terrible
philosoph
can
go

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The wilde Amazone

Cannot recommend this book

I am a doctoral candidate in education and have studied propaganda for many years. I found the style of writing unreadable.

Allison P. Hoffman

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This is the most poorly written book in the history of Western civilization

This book lives in the landfill now. I've been to grad school and read many difficult books which offer interesting concepts to consider.

This is not one of those books. If you hate somebody, buy them this book.

Head Chef

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Not Recommend - misleading title with no substance

I have read few books on the topic; so far this is a book that must be avoided.

Don’t waste your time. Excessive verbiage with no substance.

At places you might get bored to stop reading it altogether and think the author is simply trying to fill the pages.

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Jason Stanley's How Propaganda Works is a novel and significant contribution that should revitalize political philosophy.

Noam Chomsky

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Painfully biased; should have been titled - How Marxism Works

I was really looking forward to this book. It did include some useful insights and examples, but the value that it might otherwise offer to the student of propaganda was deeply undermined by the unacknowledged bias toward Marxism and Marxist theory.

I don't per se mind that the author is a Marxist; I mind that he presents Marxist ideas, categorizations, and terminology as assumptions, as if they were established truth.

For instance, right at the beginning (page 3) he introduces (but fails to define) his concept of 'flawed ideology', implying some ideologies are flawed, and others are not.

He then proceeds to say: "When societies are unjust, for example, in the distribution of wealth, we can expect the emergence of flawed ideologies... In a society that is unjust, due to unjust distinctions between persons, ways of rationalizing undeserved privilege become ossified into rigid and unchangeable belief."

This is basically Marx's theory of class identity and class-based struggle.

Characterizing differences in prosperity as "the distribution of wealth" and differences in philosophy as "ways of rationalizing undeserved privilege" implies fundamentally Marxist assumptions about the nature of wealth (something "distributed" by the system) and class identity ("undeserved privilege").

You can certainly make an argument for these things-- as indeed, innumerable Marxist scholars have, but they are NOT self-evident truths to be tabled without critical examination.

Such an intellectual presentation that fails to acknowledge its obvious intellectual pedigree would fail any decent dissertation committee.

The bigger flaw, though, is that by building in a whole host of untenable Marxist assumptions about class and race and politics and human nature, the author makes this exploration of propaganda into just another long diatribe about social justice and dialectical materialism.

"Good" propaganda is something oppressed people do, and "bad" propaganda is something privileged people do.

In Stanley's conception, the morality or immorality of propaganda is derived from the class identity of the one doing the propaganda work.

(This again is classic Marxism-Leninism.)

The full explication of this deeply flawed and dangerous idea comes in pages 76-77, in which he basically admits that he is not attempting to be unbiased.

"It might be thought that my project in this book requires a neutral stance, a nonideological perspective... The fact that there is no neutral stance cannot lead us to political paralysis, or to skepticism about political and moral reality."

This totally undermines the legitimacy of his whole book, because what he's saying here is that this is self-consciously a work of ideology.

There's a difference between a *perspective* (a lens through which to examine something) and an *ideology* (a self-referential set of beliefs).

How Propaganda Works is, sadly, an ideological work, not really that different from the kinds of studies commissioned by the Communist Party in China.

Go back and read Bernays or Ellul, or (more recently) Peter Pomerantsev. Let this one go.

dm

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Not very insightful - look elsewhere

I assigned this book for a college course on the history of theory and propaganda, but I will not make that mistake again.

The author is clearly erudite and well read in his field, but the book greatly suffers from the author's choice to stay wholly within the cloistered world of analytic philosophy.

What we get here is a sort of ideal-type abstracted meditation on what propaganda might or should be in theory, and yet one that has absolutely nothing to say about what propaganda has meant and functioned in practice.

For instance, Stanley argues himself into a corner in saying that there can be no such thing as a propaganda ministry in a proper liberal democracy such as the U.S.

Of course, the U.S. had one - the Committee on Public Information, during which a generation of admen and PR professionals cut their teeth in emotion management and the manipulation of symbols.

A truly deep, insightful history of propaganda requires a properly historical approach, one that shows all of the sordid manifestations of mass persuasion across a variety of contexts - not this extremely limited, insular and hermetic thought-experiment in analytic philosophy.

Matthew Ellis

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Philosophical and linguistic

I find the title misleading because I expected much more: The book does not explain and certainly does not work for interested laymen like propaganda, but is a very theoretical, philosophical-linguistic treatise.

As is clear in the introduction, Stanley does not want to provide a “manual of propaganda”

but rather show “how effective propaganda exploits and strengthens flawed ideology”.

There are some good considerations, but after reading, I do not know any more than before how propaganda works and works in practice.

Alex, Germany

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his book reads like the first draft of a college thesis

Stanley identifies and discusses some important aspects of how propaganda functions in our modern, media-saturated society.

However, his book reads like the first draft of a college thesis, including typos and insufferably awkward grammar.

What little one gleans from his musings is not worth the considerable effort of wading through this poorly written book.

I say this as someone who would probably put himself to the left of the author, and reads mostly academic prose. It's just not worth it.

ADT

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Little to no original argument presented

I think Stanley tries to do a lot in this book and unfortunately accomplishes very little. I think the link for equal distribution and epistemic inequality could use more focus.

This book was a bit annoying to read, he went from referencing one philosopher to then referencing a sociologist to referencing another philosopher and then inserting premises as he sees fits, ergo the organization and format of this book was poor.

I feel like I was reading a book from someone who simply studied philosophy and does not philosophize.

no name

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I expected a discourse on propaganda but this devolved into linguistics instead.

Stanley spent too much time writing about what he would be doing and not enough time doing it.

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[Damon Gontarek · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because of our current political situation in Washington DC. I don't want to be part of the problem, I want to be informed on Propaganda; I think it explains it pretty well. I don't want to put this country into a hole, but instead preserve it. I think it's well informed, but doesn't quite hit the mark. I would read in conjunction with 'The Communist Manifesto' by Karl Marx.

[Chris Osantowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

This feels like it could be shorter if it were slightly less repetitive, but that being said any time he talked about John Dewey was super fascinating and engaging. I liked this book, but not as much as How Fascism Works.

[Bettie]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/26/boo...

[Ira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather academic and corrective to start with, the author is in dialogue with a discipline, advocating some sense of interdisciplinarity, which is always commendable, but still belonging to a particular debate. The book is written in the first person, there are many references to the author's experiences and role in public discourse, sometimes verging on the self-important. The argument is not organised very methodically or logically and reads as a collection of reflections, non-linear, with some repetition. Many are the references to Du Bois and Rawls. All examples are US based. It would be wrong to read this book looking for a theory. It is a collection of opinions, many of them well informed though slightly partial to their limited context, and at points interesting and insightful; but predictable and liberal in the main.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Propaganda > Slopaganda

Very advanced book.

Liked it a lot. But very heavy vocabulary and thought.

Could have been a bit more relevant to the huge influx of propaganda and disinformation we have been seeing lately from a couple countries. Either way, it is still a good read.

I have been really enjoying the YouTube channel lately named China Fact Chasers. They do an amazing job at deconstructing China's attempts at propaganda lately.

4.0/5

[Paula Adams · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was the author paid by word? My book club is slogging through this. It is annoying to be told what the author is going to tell us, and then what he told us, several times. The essence of the subject is overwhelmed by the surfeit of explanation.

All in all, this is not an easy book to read, I think the point could have been made in far fewer words. With a national election upon the US, and all the political yammering, I wanted tools to make sense of what I'm hearing. The book was helpful for that, but the message might be buried under all the supporting details.

It is a challenging read. Yes, I think it was worth it, but definitely not for the fainthearted.

[Tom Eckhardt · Rating 1 out of 5]

Complete disappointment. I had high hopes for this book but wish I would have read the reviews before hand.

I have a minor in philosophy so I was able to follow the book, but honestly this was a poor attempt at a philosophical book. Wasn't fun to read and I don't think I am any smarter for reading it. One the worst things I have read

[Salem · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for anyone without a high tolerance for formal philosophy.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author is trying to do something important here: informing us how propaganda erodes democratic norms and how "beliefs" are the areas of our thinking most resistant to adjustment due to new data/facts. Starting from an inherited cache of relevant tomes, the author explains technical aspects of semantics and the way propaganda tuned to human psychology empowers dangerous and effective demagoguery. It feels like while working in real world examples there is a fear of naming current right wing/Republican trends and this contributes to an ineffectiveness of the book. This just didn't reach me like I think it could.

The most interesting parts, to me, were the historical analysis of the evolving technique of "dog whistles" in the morphing of racist language from overt and coarse words to triggering phrases such as "welfare queen", "Inner city", etc.

[Rajiv Chopra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought the book with high expectations but the book disappointed me. Jason Stanley spent considerable space discussing ideology and flawed ideology.

However, how do you define a flawed ideology in unambiguous terms? It all depends on your perspective.

The links between the concepts was difficult to follow and the link to propaganda was tenuous.

His next book, "How Fascism Works" is much better.

[Graham Butler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid. Clunky in the introduction, especially, but the book provides a good framework for analyzing propaganda more broadly than just WWII, mass-media campaigns. Draws on Du Bois well. The tight focus on modern liberal democracy is a bit of a weakness, but to broaden out would push the page count ridiculously high, perhaps.

[Jeremy Hadfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read (almost all of it) for PHIL 50: Propaganda seminar with John Kulvicki. Insightful and well-written, but could use a little more concision in some places and detail in others.

[scriptedknight · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

[Linda Vituma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kā propaganda strādā. Nejauki. Strādā. Pret visiem. Un turēties tai pretī ir grūti. Teju neiespējami. Īpaši, kad esi labuma guvējs no tās. Un tik bieži mēs esam. Pat līdz galam to neapzinoties.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extremely interesting but after reading How Fascism Works, I expected this book to be similar yet it reads more like a dissertation and is not as easy to consume as HFW.

[Cecil Paddy Millen · Rating 4 out of 5]

All of Stanley’s other books have been more accessible. This was some true philosophy professor stuff. Interesting, but not an ideal entry point to his work.

[Kai Van · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/4☆~ information is great and useful. full of examples & overall a very good resource. the presentation, however, is quite repetitive & textbook-esque which can make it harder to get through. I think Stanley's followup, How Fascism Works, was written in a much more concise way that I wish this one had been. still highly worth the read, either way, I think!

[Andrew Molitor · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is yet another not very good book by another academic philosopher.

For starters it is extremely poorly written, a maze of repetition and sentence fragments. It feels very much as if it was written by a ghostwriting service using speech-to-text, starting from an extensive set of notes, and then edited heavily but not enough. He uses the "I'm going to tell you what I'm going to say, then say it, then tell you what I said" construct many, many times, as if he were writing for people unfamiliar with any of these topics (and as if his intended audience was frankly a bit dopey) but also tends to wander off into fairly technical weeds. Sometimes. His. Sentences are. Very short and. Fragmented. At other times, he can write long sentences with actual subordinate clauses, and every now and then he writes one so long that he clearly got lost in the middle and now it has two verbs for some reason.

Ok, whatever, set that aside I guess. It is at least a pretty easy read, although you do have to stay a little sharp. He introduces a lot of unnecessary technical terms being careful to italicize them, but at the same time tends to use common words like "know" in fairly technical ways without letting on. More than once I read for several pages thinking that Stanley was getting more and more wrong before realizing that he was using some ordinary word in a pretty technical way but had either not mentioned this or had barely mentioned it.

Given his penchant for telling us what he just told us, I'd expect more pedantic clarity of the form "OK I AM USING 'know' IN A TECHNICAL WAY PAY ATTENTION" but nope.

With those caveats, though, it truly is a pretty straightforward read. What it is not is a primer on how propaganda works. In fact as we shall see it barely touches on propaganda, despite devoting two chapters to the topic.

The argument he makes is not particularly well formed, but even if we accept it as is, it has this curious property: it demonstrates that affluent white liberal dudes like Stanley (and like me) are exactly right about absolutely everything we think. It is astonishing and unlikely that a rigorous analysis of how The Elites Control Everything and Liberal Democracy is Under Fire By Ideologues would uncover no errors whatsoever. That is to say, if you step back and take a breath, you realize more or less immediately that this is less of an argument and more of a rationalization.

What is this argument?

Well, he begins with an idea of "liberal democracy" which he defines as, essentially, all groups within such a society are equally respected, equally heard, get a fair vote, or whatever. He allows a certain amount of wiggle room here, but there is a general idea of every group, however small, being equally able to make itself heard with an expectation of respect.

Despite his claims, this is a pretty non-standard definition of liberal democracy, but whatever. It's a pretty good, if extremely murky, idea. Stanley wisely avoids trying to sort out the problem of how minorities are actually supposed to, in practice, get taken care of in a democracy. He waves his hands at words like "respect" and "reasonable" and leaves the room.

His mission now is, basically, to exclude all the groups he (and I) disagree with. You can't be having Nazis with equal voices, after all. And, to be fair, he does a reasonable job of assembling the components of something like an argument that excludes Nazis and includes BLM.

He starts out with politics and propaganda. He's mostly interested in what he calls "undermining propaganda" which is political speech that represents itself as being in support of some liberal democratic ideal, but which contains dog whistles (roughly) that undermine that self-same ideal.
He makes a not-very-convincing argument that these sorts of statements "work" on society because the society had embedded within it "flawed ideologies" which are non-rational idea clouds with the specific property that by holding them a person is blocked from knowledge of the world.

(this is really where he gets the Nazis excluded, they hold ideas that are wrong in the sense that they obscure the real world, whereas good liberals like us, and BLM, hold ideas that do not obscure the real world -- Stanley never really makes this argument, and it is another area where he is wise to simply step out of the room. This is legitimately difficult territory, and it's not at all clear you can make a rigorous, rational, argument here. Sometimes it's OK to just think Nazis are dicks.)

At this point he's done with propaganda. He might, if pressed, declare that he no longer needs to examine propaganda because he has in effect reduced it to the problem of flawed ideologies, which, eh, maybe? Given, again, his penchant for telling us what he told us, I was genuinely expecting a big wrap-up summary in the chapter named Conclusion in which he walked backward through the argument to show us how it hangs together now that we've seen the details. He does not. He just stops writing. See also the ghostwriter theory. The repetition is not, I think, for clarity but for word count.

So, anyways, onwards to flawed ideologies. There's only one that he's really interested in, which is that people who have a lot of shit tend to think they earned it whether they did or not. On the flip side, poor people tend, apparently, to believe that the rich people earned it too. Mmmmmaybe.

If you take the time out to walk backward you can kinda see it: if we all kinda believe in meritocracy, that rich people deserve/earned their wealth, then we are more susceptible to "welfare queen" dog whistles, and so that language works on us, and that's why the Republicans keep winning seats? This is, basically, what Stanley seems to want to say. The GOP keeps using these darn dog whistles on us, and they work because the schools have indoctrinated us with a flawed ideology, because the schools are controlled by the elites, who want the GOP to keep winning. Whether this is an emergent phenomenon or a conspiracy is left undiscussed, but this is in fact the substance of the book. This is the pat explanation of why liberals can't just take over the USA that the book is transparently rationalizing.

Me? I think it might be a little more complicated.

He has a lot of details, and lots of examples and quotations from other philosophers and documents, but one cannot help but suspect he's cherry picking a lot, and it's very clear that he's constantly narrowing his scope. His sections on propaganda are largely concerned with reducing the scope to smaller and smaller zones, until he is down to: statements made, in language (speech or writing, so not photos or films or graphics etc) which claim to embody an ideal, X, while using language that has connotations that undermine specifically X. This is a very very very narrow part of propaganda.

In his discussion of "how language works" he is clearly using toy models of language, and is in fact constantly saying "and now look, that model doesn't even address this sentence" "so let's drag out another toy model which doesn't cover much of anything, but does hit this one case" and around and around. At no point does he make a serious attempt to explain things in terms of, you know, how language actually works.

On several occasions he attempts to show how general his argument is, by dragging out three (always three) other philosophers or academics. They always say essentially the same thing, with minor variations that are probably relevant in the context the quotations came from but which are not relevant here. Then Stanley says "look, my argument works in all three cases, how general it is!" leaving the attentive reader wondering what just happened. His argument does work, but only because from our position all three statements are identical, so of course if it works on one, it works on all.

One wonders who Stanley is *not* quoting.

Essentially, Stanley is attempting to do sociology by lashing together some philosophy, some toy linguistics, and some amateur sociology. His dad was an actual sociologist, so I dare say Stanley feels like he's also a competent sociologist for all practical purposes. He's seen it done, after all, and that ought to be enough.

This is one of those books that's madly trying to confirm everything guys like me think, and if I were not a pretty rigorous guy, I'd buy it lock stock and barrel. I'd still complain about the writing, but the substance would strike me as Very Intelligent and On Point.

Unfortunately, I am pretty rigorous, and Stanley is not.

This book.. sucks.

[Leonard Janke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jason Stanley's How Propaganda Works is required reading in a college course on propaganda that I am taking. Of all the readings assigned, I found this book to be the most insightful. Its greatest strengths are 

1. its focus on how propaganda works in a liberal democracy;
2. its greater formality compared to texts such as Propaganda and Persuasion by Jowett and O'Donnell; and
3. the introduction it provides to current thinking on epistemology and linguistics. 

Unfortunately, the book is not without its weaknesses. In particular, writing with an eye to style and accessibility has historically been an area of weakness for many philosophers. Although Stanley is far from being in league with the worst, the book could have easily been improved with greater attention here.

Stanley’s Central Theses

Stanley argues that in authoritarian societies, propaganda will not escape notice. Indeed, it will often be recognized as such but not taken seriously. As an example, Stanley describes a German citizen recounting that he knew that what the Nazis were saying about the Jews was exaggerated but that he thought they were just saying it to score political points and that it was not anything they were going to act on. By contrast, Stanley believes that in a democracy, propaganda will be taken seriously but not recognized as such. His goal in the book is, thus, to make the mechanisms of propaganda in liberal democracies more apparent.

One way Stanley attempts to show how propaganda works in a liberal democracy is through linguistics. Stanley considers statements that, when viewed in isolation, seem to merely be true statements. Often, obviously so. Although true, Stanley argues that some of these statements carry loaded meaning. The loaded meaning comes about through past propaganda. Stanley gives the example of the word welfare, which he says has come to be associated with black people through past conservative propaganda such as campaigns against “welfare queens.” 

Central to Stanley's arguments is that past propaganda was successful because of appeals to flawed ideologies within the culture: In the case of welfare with the notion that black people are inherently lazy and prone to criminality. Stanley thus believes that because the words now contain coded meanings, even an attempt to discuss welfare policies objectively will simply reinforce the false ideology that black people are inherently lazy.

The second main thrust of Stanley’s theory is that propaganda works by attacking liberal democratic society epistemologically: that is, literally preventing citizens from acquiring knowledge or losing it once gained. Stanley discusses a couple of ways this happens:

One mechanism is through flawed ideologies, causing negatively privileged members of society not to be taken seriously by elites.

The second mechanism is undermining the confidence of negatively privileged citizens as to when they have acquired knowledge. Stanley cites social science research showing that when the stakes are high, as they are for those struggling for the basics in society, although you are likely to act more rationally, the bar to feeling you are confident enough that you know something to act is higher than when you live the easier life of an elite. 

Assessment of Arguments

Stanley's overall case of how propaganda works is compelling, especially given the social science research he presents to back it. This prevents his conjectures from being "pure theory," as some philosophy seems prone to become. Also strengthening the case is that his definitions tend to be quite precise. Stanley is also proactive in showing the practical limitations of his theories. For example, sometimes, it will only be apparent in retrospect when something is a flawed ideology. Going even further, for some ideologies, such as religions, it may never be known whether or not they are flawed. 

Although the arguments are compelling overall, some of Stanley's examples are dubious. With regard to welfare, for instance, Stanley claims that using the word does not invoke notions of poor white Appalachians. This seems dubious since many actually will think exactly of them or "trailer trash" when they hear the word. 

The actionability of Stanley's conclusions could also be improved. For instance, how does one know when something has a "coded meaning" due to past propaganda and when it just means what it says? Indeed, many conservatives feel that accusations of racism by “the woke” for instance, are often meritless and due to people simply reading too much "hidden meaning" into something that can be better understood to just mean what it says. 

Also problematic and important to some arguments is that Stanley presents whether control of wealth in society is fair as a binary. Most, however, would see wealth control in America as something neither entirely fair nor completely unjust. Also problematic on this subject is that Stanley mostly avoids discussing to what extent a "cure" here might be worse than the disease. 

Despite the concerns, as Stanley correctly points out, just recognizing a problem does not mean one must know how to solve it. I can know that my knee hurting is a problem without knowing what to do about it. Even if the doctor does not know either, that still does not mean it is not a problem. As such, it is somewhat reasonable for Stanley to leave to future research how to know when a phrase has "hidden meaning" versus just meaning what it says. 

Style and Accessibility

As mentioned, the most significant weaknesses of this book are its writing style and accessibility. Although I generally appreciated that this book attempted to be more formal than other works on propaganda, it often veered off into needless pedantry. This often came in the form of Stanley explaining how he had established what he set out to prove when it was clear that he had: no explanation needed. At other times, there was hair-splitting on finer points not critical to the argument.

In addition to the pedantry, and sometimes a consequence of it, the book could have been made much more concise. Some more rounds of review and rewriting would likely have caught this. As it stands, however, there is considerable unnecessary repetition. 

Finally, in terms of stylistic issues, some may see the level of formality as a bad compromise. It is definitely not formal mathematics or logic, so not going far enough for some, but, simultaneously, it likely goes far enough to lose many readers in places. My estimate is that the book would be a moderately challenge read at the third or fourth-year undergraduate level.

Conclusion 

Stanley has contributed significantly to understanding how propaganda works in liberal democracies. A side effect of reading this book is that it also provides a good introduction as to where some areas of linguistics and epistemology currently stand. 

In some cases, although Stanley uses different wording, he comes to the same conclusions as Marxists, for example, regarding what they call false consciousness. In others, he comes to some of the same conclusions as post-modernists although he, however, avoids that phrase. An example is his conclusion regarding how the power dynamics of society can put up epistemological barriers to the less powerful feeling that they know well enough to act. 

Although Stanley is open about his leftist bias, by approaching propaganda through analytic philosophy and by making frequent references to empirical research, many of his conclusions should be more palatable to conservatives. 

Finally, compared to other major works on propaganda, such as Bernays's Propaganda or Chomsky's Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Stanley's is the most precise in his definitions. He also provides the most detailed elaboration on the theory of how it all works. This book is, thus, a must-read for those hoping for a book that will deliver on the promise in this book's title of explaining "How Propaganda Works." 

[Dr. Lloyd E. Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jason Stanley is most interested in propaganda that threatens democracy. Propaganda delivers messages as to how people can reach their goals, deceiving people as to there own self interests. Let me give you one example of propaganda appealing to conservative people and one example appealing to liberal people to whet your appetite. Both sides agree the U.S.A. Is a wonderful place and both sides agree democracy in the U.S.A. Is threatened. Applying Stanley’s idea to the current presidential campaign, Trump runs commercials claiming America will no longer be America if Biden is elected president. Chaos will prevail. Biden runs commercials claiming America will no longer be America if Trump is elected president. With no restraints on Trump, the disparity in material wealth will increase. Chaos will prevail.
These ideas are fed to us by people wanting to promote their agenda. Reading my above examples you will think one side or the other is propaganda while the other message is fact. Insider/outsider dynamics are promoted as an appeal to basic values held to be important by some citizens. In this election the value conflict emphasized is the value of security versus the value of justice. Appealing to the value of security, Trump emphasizes civil unrest and how Biden is demonizing of the police. Appealing to the value of of social justice, Biden emphasizes injustice and how Trump is demonizing of people of color. The conservative bias is to maintaining the positive things we have. A strong military, a strong police presence, walls around borders are all necessary. The liberal bias is to change now to make things more equal. The disparity in wealth should be substantially diminished, consistent enforcement of quality rules, strong relationships with our allies, limiting police power by better selection, better training and consistent follow up of rule enforcement of police, e.g., using body cams, control of who and how guns can be used, more porous borders.
One of the most effective and persistent forms of propaganda has to do with personal responsibility. The wealthiest people assume their wealth is the result of their effort. They perpetuate the myth they are responsible because they are wealthy. The poorest people are convinced their poverty is the result of their laziness. The myth that poor people are poor because they are irresponsible is also perpetuated by the wealthy. This framing of the problem is difficult to change.
This is a book worth reading. I have barely scratched the surface. I am not implying that propaganda from both sides is equivalent. It’s not.