Propaganda Prop: Emotionalizing

In the episode called “Patterns Of Force” on the original Star Trek series, the Enterprise crew beams down to a planet that is modeled after Nazi Germany, complete with swastikas and “heil Hitler” type salutes. When they hear the supposed charismatic leader (who actually is being controlled by others) deliver an oration to rouse the rabble, Spock comments that the speech really makes no sense; it’s just a string of ideological soundbites — which nonetheless have the effect of stirring their hearers to carry out the ideology’s nefarious agenda. This aptly epitomizes the nature and the effect of emotionalizing, the next in our series of propaganda props.

If Spock was surprised to discover the vacuity of the Fuhrer’s rhetoric, then he was unduly naive. Ideologically charged rhetoric seldom if ever sounds rational. It’s not supposed to. Indeed, the less sense it makes, the more likely it is that the audience will take the bait — provided it’s delivered in an emotionally charged style.

It makes no sense, for instance, to characterize a campaign against gay marriage as a “defense of marriage” because it’s trying to do just the opposite — i.e., make marriage inaccessible for certain individuals. But that’s exactly how the crusaders frame it, and their supporters buy it.

Likewise, Republican efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election were branded as an attempt to protect “election integrity” by eliminating “fraud”. They actually did exactly the opposite. But the frenzied MAGA cultists who howled to “Stop the steal”, while in fact supporting an attempted heist, didn’t bother with getting the facts or rationally analyzing the cockamamie conspiracy theories they were swallowing. They didn’t need to — they had powerful feelings about the topic, so they just “knew” they were in the right.

The gist of the matter is simple, obvious, and unsurprising: emotionalizing bypasses reason, and tempts the brain like a drug to join in the chorus.

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