1C Presentation for 4-21-20: Essay 3 Choices
Essay 3 (1,000 words) Due 5-5
Minimum of 2 sources for your MLA Works Cited page.
Choice A
Read New Yorker writer Joshua Yaffa’s essay “The Kremlin’s Creative Director: How the television producer Konstantin Ernst went from discerning auteur to Putin’s unofficial minister of propaganda” and develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the role of media in producing a new type of “postmodern propaganda” that shatters critical thinking.
Important Source That Will Help Your Essay
As another source, you might want to consult “How Hitler Conquered Germany” by Nicholas O'Shaughnessy.
Critical Thinking Objectives:
When does a media outlet fail to serve the citizens and rather become a lackey or a toady for the state by throwing reason, logic, and facts out the window and become a propaganda machine for the government?
Is Channel One from Russia “state TV,” a propaganda arm for the government?
Is Fox News a propaganda arm for the government?
Are Russia’s Channel One and America’s Fox News honest players or are they dishing out weaponized misinformation in the service of creating a totalitarian state?
Introduction to This Discussion:
I hate debating politics. I’m not a political ideologue. I hate cheerleading for one political party over another.
For me, the discussion about propaganda and news services that use propaganda is about The War on Science and Facts.
I’m more interested in siding with science and facts than I am with political parties.
If I say critical things about Fox News or the self-promoting troll Alex Jones, both who deal with shambolic conspiracy theories, I do so out of their contempt for credible evidence, not out of some political ideology that I have.
Excerpts from Yaffa’s Essay:
One. How did Ernst learn to combine TV spectacle with politics? We read:
In the lead-up to the election, Channel One, under Ernst, portrayed Putin as Yeltsin’s inevitable successor, and relentlessly attacked his rivals, presenting them as infirm, corrupt, even murderous. Putin’s poll numbers began rising by four or five points in a week, and he quickly went from an unknown entity to the most popular politician in the country.
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Channel One used spectacle to turn Putin into a Cult Hero. In other words, a TV channel can use spectacle to elevate a politician to a Cult Leader, what we call The Cult of the Personality.
Two. How did Ernst sell-out to conspiracy theories and how are these conspiracies a threat to democracy?
Russia will hide their guilt in attacking Ukraine or shooting down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 by throwing out conspiracy theories and even hiring actors to “grieve” and act as victims or Ukranian soldiers.
In Timothy Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom, the professor observes that Russia put Ukranian uniforms on Russian soldiers to make the war in the Ukraine look like it was a civil war and that Russia “intervened to save Ukranians.”
We read in The New Yorker essay:
According to reports in the Russian press, Ernst, in private discussions with Putin, encouraged one of the more noxious conspiracy theories floating around the Kremlin: that a number of the grieving women shown on television were actors.
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Role of Conspiracy Theories:
If you flood people’s brains with conspiracy theories, their brains become numb and they don’t know what to believe anymore. The line between fact and fiction becomes blurry. That’s the objective of an authoritarian leader.
Conspiracy theories make us doubt everything, so that there is no truth.
Conspiracy theories give totalitarian leaders an “alternative reality” in order to not be accountable to the truth.
Conspiracy theories confuse people and become in essence a form of gaslighting.
Conspiracy theories provide a convenient scapegoat to deflect attention from the failure of government. Take for example Covid-19. There are many lame conspiracy theories and hoaxes spreading in social media. One is that billionaire Bill Gates created the virus to make money. As we read in The New York Times:
Mr. Gates, 64, the Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist, has now become the star of an explosion of conspiracy theories about the coronavirus outbreak. In posts on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, he is being falsely portrayed as the creator of Covid-19, as a profiteer from a virus vaccine, and as part of a dastardly plot to use the illness to cull or surveil the global population.
The wild claims have gained traction with conservative pundits like Laura Ingraham and anti-vaccinators such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Mr. Gates has emerged as a vocal counterweight to President Trump on the coronavirus. For weeks, Mr. Gates has appeared on TV, on op-ed pages and in Reddit forums calling for stay-at-home policies, expanded testing and vaccine development. And without naming Mr. Trump, he has criticized the president’s policies, including this week’s move to cut funding to the World Health Organization.
Misinformation about Mr. Gates is now the most widespread of all coronavirus falsehoods tracked by Zignal Labs, a media analysis company. The misinformation includes more than 16,000 posts on Facebook this year about Mr. Gates and the virus that were liked and commented on nearly 900,000 times, according to a New York Times analysis. On YouTube, the 10 most popular videos spreading lies about Mr. Gates posted in March and April were viewed almost five million times.
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These conspiracy theories offer an “alternative reality” that political tribalists can feed off in their social media bubbles.
As we read in The New Yorker:
Baldly false stories, in the right doses, are not disastrous for Channel One; in fact, they are an integral part of the Putin system’s postmodern approach to propaganda. In the Soviet era, the state pushed a coherent, if occasionally clumsy, narrative to convince the public of the official version of events.
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Overwhelm the Senses to Fight Against Credible Media
But private media is too big to fight, so instead of offering a contrary narrative, just flood the senses with dozens of narratives simultaneously. As we read:
But private media ownership and widespread Internet access have made this impossible. Today, state outlets tell viewers what they are already inclined to believe, rather than try to convince them of what they can plainly see is untrue. At the same time, they release a cacophony of theories with the aim of nudging viewers toward believing nothing at all, or of making them so overwhelmed that they simply throw up their hands. Trying to ascertain the truth becomes a matter of guessing who benefits from a given narrative.
Three. How does Ernst rationalize his propaganda?
He says he is a loyal statist, a defender of the state. As we read:
Under duress, Berezovsky fled to England, where he hardened into a strident, although not always reliable, critic of Putin. (He died, apparently by suicide, at a manor house outside London, in 2013.) However, he never managed to develop a real hatred of Ernst. “Ernst could not exist without relying on the state,” he told Kommersant, from exile. “He made a choice not so much against me personally but for Putin. It was a choice in favor of power.”
Ernst considers himself a gosudarstvennik—a statist—a term many in Russia’s ruling class, including Putin, use to describe their belief in the inherent virtue of the state. “It would be strange if a channel that belonged to the state were to express an anti-government point of view,” Ernst told me.
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A real journalist is loyal to the truth and the justice that arises from holding political leaders accountable. But Ernst sees his role as being loyal to whatever spin his leader wants him to perform.
Four. What logical fallacy does Ernst use when confronted with the credible Dutch news report that Russia shot Malysian Airlines 17?
He uses at least 2: non sequitur, an illogical answer to a question, and Red Herring, a distraction from the question: As we read:
In this case, the state’s approach seems to have worked: a year later, a poll showed that only about five per cent of Russians blamed their government or the separatists for the disaster. When I asked Ernst about the official Dutch report, he told me that our disagreement came down to a matter of belief: “You believe the Dutch report is true, and I believe the Dutch report is unprofessional.” It was as if we were arguing about religion or aesthetics rather than a set of facts.
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To argue down a false rabbit hole is a form of gaslighting.
We’re not talking about “belief”: we’re talking about credible evidence.
Six. Why is the “carnival” or grotesque spectacle preferred to reasonable discourse in debate?
Propaganda needs to be more spectacle, entertainment, and freak show in order to distract us from logic and the facts. As we read:
Even my most forceful protests made issues of fact seem muddy and unknowable, proving that everything is a question of perspective and allegiance. The program offers viewers a crude carnival sideshow: one of its co-hosts is famous for having once brought out a bucket labelled “Shit” and daring a Ukrainian guest to eat from it. (It turned out to be chocolate.) I had a hard time imagining Ernst, the discerning auteur, being pleased with such antics; they seem to embody the ways that his channel has changed to accommodate the mood of the new era.
***
Presidential rallies in the United States could be described as “crude carnival sideshows” with calling people from other countries criminals, chanting, “Lock her up,” calling the news media “the enemy of the people,” and so on.
Propaganda from Hitler’s Germany Similar to Totalitarian Cults today:
One. Tribalism
As we read in “How Hitler Conquered Germany” by Nicholas O'Shaughnessy, deception is not as important as reinforcing loyalty to the tribe. As we read:
The purpose of Nazi propaganda was not to brainwash ordinary Germans, and it was not intended to deceive the masses even though it did enable the movement to gain new recruits. The principal objective, according to historian Neil Gregor, was “to absorb the individual into a mass of like-minded people, and the purpose of the ‘suggestion’ was not to deceive but to articulate that which the crowd already believed.”
The Fox News Schtick--White Victimization
Fox News uses the principle, giving their audience what they want to hear: White people are discriminated against. In truth, white people have ten times more financial assets than people of color, but the white victimization myth plays well at Fox News.
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Two. Repetition
In addition to tribal and loyalty, fascists use repetition. As we read:
“The essence of the Nazi propaganda method was repetition. Goebbels argued that the skill of British propagandists during the Great War resided in the fact that they used just a few powerful slogans and kept repeating them.”
Fox News Examples: The War on Christmas and Covid-19 Liberal Plot
Fox News spends huge chunks of their segments making the false claim that there is a war on Christmas.
They also make fake claims that there is an “Alien Invasion” with criminals crossing the border.
They are currently claiming that Covid-19 is a hyped-up liberal plot to take down their leader. And they’re being sued. They don’t quote credible sources. They begin their reports with “Some people say . . .”
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Three. Fatigue Into Submission
Similar to repetition, fatigue the mind into submission. As we read:
The message penetrated the barriers of inattention through the massive insistence on its replication. Goebbels was a proponent of the “repeated exposure effect.” The mass mind was dull and sluggish, and for ideas to take root, they had to be constantly re-seeded: recognition, comprehension, retention, and conviction are different stages in the cognitive process, and repetition can facilitate them. It is important to remember, therefore, that what Nazi propaganda also offered was the dubious benefit of sensory exhaustion. The citizen was not a target to be persuaded so much as a victim to be conquered, ravished even. They wanted internal commitment, not just external compliance.
Four. Replace reason with the emotion of spectacle
We read:
Another core part of Nazi grand theory was the dethronement of reason and the celebration of emotion. Nazism felt rather than thought, and therefore the nature of its propaganda appeal was also to feeling rather than thinking. The mobilization of emotion lay at the heart of everything the Nazis did; propaganda’s operational formula. For Goebbels, the role of the propagandist was to express in words what his audience felt in their hearts.
Fox News creates emotional spectacles:
They show fake immigrant “caravans” crossing the border and claim that immigrants are spreading diseases to America with no scientific evidence.
Ironically, Fox New viewers are violating Covid-19 lockdown orders from governors, like in Michigan, as MAGA rioters scream “lock her up,” referring to governor Gretchen Whitmer.
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Five. Don’t appeal to the Higher Self; rather, appeal to the Pig-Dog.
As we read:
For this reason, propaganda had to be primitive, appealing to what Hitler described as man’s inner Schweinehund (“pig dog,” thereby a sort of deprecatory idiom for one’s inner self).16 Typically brutally “either- or,” the propaganda appealed to the audience’s primitive desire for simplification, thus: “There are … only two possibilities: either the victory of the Aryan side or its annihilation and the victory of the Jews.”17 The Nazis believed a formulaic propaganda methodology must be applied even at the cost of alienating the sophisticated.
Fox News Incites the Racist Pig-Dog
Claiming that white people are victims and that the country is being taken over by people of color and immigrants, Fox News is encouraging that their audience get in touch with their Inner Pig-Dog.
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Six. Have a highly visible enemy, The Other, to be demonized.
As we read:
Hitler understood, as few others had ever done, the need for the serial creation of enemies. He was a political entrepreneur possessed of the truly devastating insight that all recent enemies could eventually merge into the one super-enemy, the Jews. Here was an intuitive understanding of how self-definition is achieved through other-rejection, that solidarity, identity, and community are in essence gained at the expense of others and appeals based on the brotherhood of man (as, in a sense, even Communism did) would always ultimately fail. His construction of tribal passion could arouse the emotions and therefore render people vulnerable to any kind of visionary persuasion or invocation to epic quest.
Fox News Enemies:
Immigrants
Anyone outside of their political tribe: “Own the libs.”
Fox News has become state TV like Channel One.
The Essay Assignment:
Read New Yorker writer Joshua Yaffa’s essay “The Kremlin’s Creative Director: How the television producer Konstantin Ernst went from discerning auteur to Putin’s unofficial minister of propaganda” and develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the role of media in producing a new type of “postmodern propaganda” that shatters critical thinking.
As another source, you might want to consult “How Hitler Conquered Germany” by Nicholas O'Shaughnessy.
Sample Introduction and Thesis
Journalism should be an independent entity that has the freedom of speech to be critical of the government, but when it engages in cheerleading for its “team” leaders, it becomes in effect state TV engaging in the same types of propaganda techniques Goebells perfected to champion fascism in Nazi Germany.
Also using Goebell’s fascist techniques are Russia’s Channel One and America’s Fox News, which repeat lies over and over, exhaust their audience with hundreds of crackpot conspiracy theories that leave their viewers numbed so that everything feels like a moral equivalency, replacing reasoned discussion with emotionally-charged spectacle, appealing to humans’ lower nature, the Pig-Dog, and creating a highly visible enemy.
Choice B
What Is the Role of Logical Fallacies in Global Warming Denial?
Critical Thinking Objectives: Show the connection between logical fallacies and moral bankruptcy.
Read the online essay "It's been hot before" by John Cook and write an argumentative essay about the role of logical fallacies in the dangerous denial of global warming and global drought. For another source, you can use Netflix Explained, "The World's Water Crisis." This essay requires a counterargument-rebuttal section.
Logical Fallacies in Global Warming Denialism:
Logical Fallacy One: Faulty Comparison (death from previous weather events don’t compare to today’s in terms of scale and severity)
"We've had heat waves before" is both a faulty comparison of previous heat waves to today's, which are five times worse and a non sequitur because they don't address the current cause of heat waves.
Logical Fallacy 2: Red Herring & Whataboutism (that people died of cancer before cigarettes is an attempt to distract from the fact that cigarettes cause cancer. People make the lame argument: “But what about other cancers? People have always died from cancer long before cigarettes,” but this idiotic statement doesn’t refute the spike in cancer from cigarette smoking.
"People died of cancer before cigarettes were invented."
Logical Fallacy Three: Non Sequitur: Throw in a lame argument that has no logical connection to the issue at hand. “It’s been hot before” is a non sequitur that fails to address the cause and effect connection between carbon emissions and global warming, a connection that has been established by the scientific community.
Logical Fallacy Four: Cognitive Bias happens when people double-down or engage in the backfire effect when facts don't conform to their reality bubble. Many people are too narcissistic to accept truths that prove to be "inconvenient" to their comfortable false reality.
See The Backfire Effect, according to The Oatmeal.
Sample Outline and Thesis
Paragraph 1, your introduction, write an explanation of the existential crisis posed by global warming.
Paragraph 2, pivot to a thesis that argues that in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence, there is a Cult of Denialism that relies on logical fallacies to reject the science.
Sample Thesis:
In spite of overwhelming scientific evidence that we are facing an existential threat from global warming, there is a Cult of Denialism that relies on logical fallacies to support their distorted worldview. These fallacies include _______________, ________________, ___________________, and ______________________.
Paragraph 3-6 are your supporting paragraphs.
Paragraph 7 is your counterargument-rebuttal.
Paragraph 8, your conclusion, is a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Choice C: Epidemic of Loneliness and Mukbang
Critical Thinking Objective: Explore the causes and effects of loneliness in a digital society and how this loneliness develops symbiotic relationships with those who are clever enough to exploit the digital landscape.
The Assignment: Read Jasmin Barmore’s essay “The Queen of Eating Shellfish Online” and Judith Shulevitz’s essay “Why You Never See Your Friends Anymore,” and see The New Yorker’s “History of Loneliness” use the essays to support or refute the contention that mukbang addresses the depression and anxiety of loneliness. This essay requires a counterargument-rebuttal.
Choice D
Read “The Coddling of the American Mind” and “Have Smartphones Ruined a Generation?” and develop an argument about the authors’ claim that a “coddling culture” is creating a generation of dysfunctional people.
April 21 Go over “The Coddling of the American Mind.” Homework #11 is to read “Have Smartphones Ruined a Generation?” and explain in 200 words how smartphones are part of a coddling culture that is impeding the emotional growth of young people.
April 23 Go over “Have Smartphones Ruined a Generation.”
April 28 Chromebook Objective: Write first half of your essay.
April 30 Chromebook Objective: Write second half of your essay.
May 5 Essay 3 due on turnitin.
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