As I peruse the sheer mass of media, I become overwhelmed by all the current events that are covered on a day-to-day basis. This drives me to seek knowledge from more authentic sources of thought, such as writers who have trailblazed areas of human understanding.
This led me to writers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Jung, Frederick Douglass, Mary Shelley and Maya Angelou, who championed philosophies of truth and morality. Yet none made me question my understanding of how society can be influenced by outside agents as did George Orwell’s “1984.” In this classic, Orwell depicts an oppressive society with totalitarian control, where the government has the power to rewrite every piece of literature to fit the party’s narrative, making all written information propaganda. Reading “1984” made me ruminate on the media I was consuming daily; it made me realize every social media post could be a complete lie, yet deeply influence my understanding of the world.
With the rise of the internet and digital accessibility, we are affected by propaganda more than ever, as the world is becoming increasingly connected. Social media allows anyone to put out information with no real expertise or resistance, resulting in up to 87% of posts on certain topics containing false information, according to a 2023 Health Affairs Scholar study.
However, key ideas on misinformation date back prior to the digital age. Propaganda is misinformation used to push narratives. Art and history provide the greatest context for this lens and can show us the pervasiveness of propaganda across history. Is all art propaganda? Can history itself be propaganda? By extension, is history an art or a science?
Known for his work on racial and societal issues throughout the 20th century, Harvard essayist Alain Locke once said: “Art in the best sense is rooted in self-expression and whether naive or sophisticated is self-contained.” Art, in its authentic sense, is not propaganda; it is a folk expression. Fundamentally, I believe that art is the product of a desire to create reflections of reality from the perspective of the artist. Whether it is Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” — a physical manifestation of his mental interpretation of a scene — or amateur artists creating murals in a city park, art is the goal in and of itself. The subjective nature of art is no different than the subjective nature of information that the creator creates, and the interpreter interprets.
Locke strives to enlighten us that propaganda is solely partisan; it is most essentially a desire to influence how others think. So it is simplified and prejudiced, with reactionary elements based on the surrounding environment. For example, nationalist parties use propaganda to rile up xenophobic beliefs and garner support by hitting on existing prejudices within society.
William Du Bois pushes us to think that art and propaganda are analogous. He states: “I do not give a damn for art that is not used for propaganda.” In this sense, he meant expressions that pushed for social change. Throughout his works, Du Bois presents the idea that history is an art rather than a science. Consequently, if history is a science, it would be written in a factual and objective manner across time. However, the lack of universally established ethics relegates history to being an art, not a science. For example, Pam Bondi, the former attorney general for the Trump administration, was fired by Trump April 2, due to her handling of the Epstein files. Under Bondi, the Department of Justice had been directed to protect Trump’s allies while leaving victims’ names uncensored — a developing case of modern-day propaganda. Bondi’s calculated manipulation of the files reflects a common thread throughout history: those in power warping prior events to favor themselves.
History is an art, so it cannot escape bias due to its nature of always being subject to interpretation. We can draw this key lesson from Du Bois: do not be so sure that what you read in history was the reality of a person or society. He relates this to the term of history as “lies agreed upon.”
What if the information that becomes history is constantly being fabricated before our very eyes? Will anyone know how the world is now in a hundred years? When one thinks of governmental control or false information, one often thinks of burning and controlling books like “Fahrenheit 451,” but what if the reality of history is more like “1984,” where history is rewritten to fit narratives manufactured by those in power? As Nietzsche wrote, “All things are subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time period is a function of power and not truth.” Counterbalances to propaganda, like independent news and digital literacy, must be emphasized in order to preserve democracy. Knowledge about misinformation and propaganda underscores the sacrosanct importance of the individual’s pursuit of democracy.
Ultimately, individuals must consistently question the media’s basis; we should always ask ourselves how we can better understand other perspectives to not become absolute in our own fantasies. To be ignorant is to waste everything decent that has been built in America, to be ignorant is to let perpetrators — whether purposeful or not — of propaganda twist truth. Will the world’s most mighty democratic republic continue to stand the test of time? Or will it fall like a house of cards in the winds of authoritarianism and polarization of our time?
