By propaganda I don't mean biased release of facts to show more positive results than negative results or anything like that - but I mean lying and saying anything to influence the people of the country to further the agenda of whoever in the government is releasing the propaganda. I think the government is here to serve the people, not the other way around. I think that such propaganda should be illegal. What do others think? Is it ever necessary for the government to the lie to the people to further some goal?

how much does it cost to spread the propaganda and who's paying for it?

i don't exactly expect them to tell the truth, so they can lie all they want. it's already assumed that they're doing it.

The issue would be proving it while it is happening.

Your point is that if you can't stop the government from lying on the fly then there is no reason to make it illegal? Maybe I misunderstand you but that is how I interpret your post.

could we have some examples of propaganda that you feel should be made illegal because it contains lies? my experience is that they don't explicitly lie, they just don't tell the truth...

um, don't bother if the propaganda is related to global warming...

Sure.
"Political Candidate X has been caught funding terrorists"
"We have uncovered a massive conspiracy in the public education system to overthrow the American government"
"Private Doe fed information to foreign operatives in an effort to undermine the current president's re-election campaign."

There are limitless ways to try and manipulate the public for political gain.

sounds like a typical campaign to get elected or re-elected. let them deal with it using the libel or slander laws.

@Detmer:
*all* governments use propaganda to some degree.
What is "lying" to further an agenda anyway. It's tough to define in many cases.
It's the responsibility of the citizens to take the government to task when they feel they have been mislead or mistreated. A government/country is only as good as its citizens. Ultimately the quality of a government is measured in how well it satisfies the needs and goals of the citizens (note that democracy isn't necessary for this). It goes back to the quote: "people get the government they deserve". Of course one can always cite military dictatorships (or the current situation in Syria) as counter examples.. but my question is: how was this allowed to happen in the first place.

I agree, when someone can say they believed WMDs existed when they quite clearly didn't, it is hard to say what is a lie for propaganda purposes vs idiots trying to make basic interpretations of data. It practically would be difficult to identify what is an outright lie.

Whether or not a ban on intentional government lies was practical is not my question =P

If the government is allowed to lie without discretion, would libel or slander laws override that? Couldn't the government just say the presiding judge was corrupt until they found one who agreed with them? From a theoretical standpoint they could do that anyways, but it would be illegal. If it were legal I think it would almost certainly happen.

I agree it should be illegal and that said i think Obama should be impeached for lying about the health care bill known as Obamacare.

you are talking about people who have taken various oaths to enter the office and serve the people? aren't they actually obligated by those oaths such that they aren't allowed to lie to the people?

i don't care to be honest, my tinfoil hat already blocks government propaganda.

I believe this thread is a response to the bill on the Senate floor regarding propaganda which may be voted on as early as next week and would legalize the use of foreign propiganda at home.

Many of you are aware that we have a CIA, NSA, and other such organizations. On a world scale, the CIA can launch operations that discredit other governments or support other governments in a way that benefits the United States. This is rather straight forward.

The new legislation would allow such operations to be conducted at home. In effect, this would redefine the beneficiary from the people of the United States to the government of the United States (or those in control of the government). This may appear insignificant but it is a major legal reclarification.


Here is a hypothetical example:

A non-profit organization is lobbying for increased government spending on GMO labeling (genetically modified organism). Excluding a tax increase, this means less funding for something else. The majority of the federal government is not interested in this issue. In response the new law is applied and the group, along with other similar groups is defimated. The leader is made to be a massochist, allegations of terrorism are propigated against various members of these groups in the media. Attempts to clear the allegations are thwarted by shielding from the new law. Further legal action to refute the original propiganda could be met with, you guessed it, more propiganda.

Hopefully this helps to quanitfy the effect of the new law if passed into legislation.

is there going to be a law that doesn't let me vote for somebody who has been accused of nasty things via propaganda?

actually that'd get kinda screwy. essentially, it would be made illegal for people to lie, or to state something that they couldn't prove to be true? so, if i mentioned that i thought someone was gay because i heard foot tapping coming from the stall they were in, i could get prosecuted simply for making the statement?

No, it would legalize only lies issued by the government and individuals operating with government authority. Slander would still be illegal. If this sounds like a double standard, it is.

there's a problem where the news agencies report a lot of stuff from anonymous sources that are supposedly government employees, would this fix it so they actually had to reveal the sources of their propaganda?

@Dibs

This would not change journalist privilege on maintaining source anonymity.

would make them accessories to a crime if they propagated the lie.

My point is that a law which can't be enforced is pointless and actually detrimental as it draws attention to the inability to enforce and as a result weakens the legitimacy of the state.

One problem with this is what constitutes a lie and what types of lies are necessary for public or military safety.

For instance, I'm okay with the government lying about military operations if it keeps soldiers on covert missions safe until they're clear from danger.

Government propaganda is evil. Here in Brazil we have a whole sector of the press that is paid and bought by the federal government or its state owned corporations.

It shouldn`t be allowed beside the minimum "this or that governmental program exists and you have to go here or there to use it/get info about it..."

That is what prompted me to make this thread.

That bill sounds awful. It seems like a very poor precedent to set, and then the question becomes how much further will it go? It seems a slippery slope from that form of propaganda to the dystopian societies from popular fiction.

That a bill like that is being proposed is sad, but not unexpected in the current USA (no matter who is in the presidency).

Makes me think more and more of buying that house in Nicaragua, or Ecuador.

And no, that kind of propaganda should never be legal.

yes, TRUST ME, we will only use it for your own good

Since the success of the Manhattan project, there has been an argument for open technological sharing, differentiated from past needs by the inherent danger of the technology. Niels Bohr, a famous physicist, petitioned both Roosevelt and Churchill and wrote an open letter to the UN describing this. It is brief and you can read it here:
http://www.atomicarchive.com/...s/Deterrence/BohrUN.shtml

Propiganda is a necessary tool in combating the ideas of Bohr and those who likewise share his will to proliferate modern technologies worldwide. If you couple this idea with the fact that most of the world's wealth lies not in physical ownership but rather in intagibles, propiganda supporting the establishment is all the more necessary.

Bohr's most famous contribution to physics is the classical model of the atom that anyone who has taken hs physics would have seen.
I didn't realize until now that he participated in the manhatten project, although given when he was alive and where he was that would make sense.

In Canada the practice of lying and propaganda to further political objectives has become institutionalized with our current government (who mimic the US neo-Cons as well as anybody).

Consider over the past 2 years alone:

- Outright lies about receiving privacy complaints about the long form census. (alledged thousands. further investigation revealed what? a dozen?)

- Outright denial about funding a bank bailout (later found to have injected over 110 billion into the CDN banks, although it is not complete giveaway).

- Lies about cost of warplanes (they still maintain this lie in the face of an abundance of evidence that they intended to mislead).

- Lies about consulting other parties regarding new changes to employment insurance, environmental and fishing regulations (no provincial governments were even talked to... they are the biggest stake holders).

- Forcing scientists to have any public comments passed through a media spokespeople (scientists must clear what they say before speaking to the media, essentially stiffling any possibility of reporting results contrary to the government's plans).

- Framing a SOPA like bill giving authorities the ability to access all your internet history from ISPs without a warrant as protection against child pornographers (if you don't support us you support child pornography).

- Recently associating environmental activist groups with words like terrorists and reporters as professional agitators (Maude Barlow, who they labeled a 'professional agigatator', makes her living by essentially compiling and reporting the actions of all the political and big business suspects that make her radar. Her books are amazing in their capacity to throw at you hundreds of pieces of information sourced from everywhere. Too Close For Comfort (2005) is an absolutely prescient in its display of where the neo-Cons have since taken North America).



Then you have the US government releasing job and employment reports that alter the statistics and accountings used to make numbers fit the picture they wish. You've got, as apo outlined, the bill to make propaganda a legal tool for domestic use. You've got The Atlantic magazine with a big picture of Bernanke and the word 'HERO' on the front page. What's the motive behind that one?


In all I do not see how any of this propaganda offers a benefit to the vast majority of people. I'm not privy to all the workings that pump out such propaganda and I can't tell the original intent or strategy behind it. Mostly you hear the word trust used, which is laughably naive as the public's trust is virtually non-existant.

I just don't see the benefit. If the 'managers' using the propaganda seemed to be working for the benefit of the people I'd be more inclined to let it be legal - with the consent and knowledge of the public. I guess we can all swallow some amount of lying and the accompanying dissonance if we know there is a purpose behind it.

But to deceive, lie to and manipulate people in order to normalize propaganda and gain a complacent public's apathetic, and unwitting consent. That is wrong and any propaganda legalized in that manner is wrong. I would never consent to its legality in that situation (which is odd, as that situation you would not consciously consent).

I must have missed this, have you ever seen any piece of evidence that suggests the government/Bush administration did not thoroughly believe there were WMDs in Iraq?

My point is just that - I think Bush was so stupid that he truly believed that Iraq had WMDs. If I were to have gone to war with the information presented, it certainly would have been under false pretenses. Bush may have truly believed there was a threat.

Here's a thought...
A law like this could POTENTIALLY be used to change the US presidency into a dictatorship. Think about it. It's getting close to election time, so the government of the day begins to abuse said new law to discredit and remove political opposition. of course, they end up getting voted back in etc etc... it's a bad and dangerous slope that the US is embarking on right now...

Just imagine something like Fox News, but much worse, but funded by republican governments paid propaganda.

So basically just swap republicans for democrats and call it NPR?

@oats: yes they are scumbags in that respect. They also pay employees to post comments on message boards to respond to "inaccurate information". I think they simply let the SOPA like bill die though. Fortunately the vast majority of things that really matter to ones individual life are not controlled by the federal government (at least if you live in a large province).

Regarding the US government propeganda thing.. one only needs to study US history from the late 1940s/1950s to see that type of thing in action.. Amongst many things: effectively censoring comic books... common.

They are just setting us all up for the Chinese takeover. The new Siberia will be up in the Yukon. Welcome to Facebook!

we'd be getting run over by tanks if we had to prep for a Chinese takeover.

It would be extremely hard for China to land any tanks.

why would they have to land tanks when they have rigged the computer chips? err, wait, it's the fake Chinese chips that don't work right in our military equipment...

10 million kung fu guys with plastic AK47s, plus biowarfare out of the chinese restaurant in every little town.

Goverments never outright lie, they just stretch the truth til if loses all meaning and send it on its way, every goverment does this... every. I don't think there will ever be a goverment that doesn't do this.

How do you know what information he was presented? As I recall, the CIA was making a pretty damning case against Iraq.

Am I the only one here that finds it rather ironic that those who have argued for years that a larger government would help the people now find it appalling that they would lie to the people?

The only given of this entire equation is that government will lie to the people. It's just a matter of to what scale.

The government is a tool for the people. They can use it to do grand and great things or they can not. They can also use it to their benefit or their detriment. There is no irony in wanting a government that serves society and wanting to keep it accountable to the people.

So yes, you are probably the only one who finds it ironic.

+1

Detmer, that all sounds hunky dory, but it simply doesn't happen. Try as the people might, a government with power will always use it and always in its own interest, not the interest of the people. Only a government that can actually be kept in check by the people can be held accountable, and thus the irony of the situation.