Stella Morabito, writing in the Intercollegiate Review, offers ten great questions by which to detect when you’re being targeted by propaganda. They apply, each and every one, to how climate-change alarmists, and environmental alarmists generally, treat anyone who dares question their pronouncements.

Here are the questions, but click through to get her valuable discussion of each:

1. Is your natural curiosity being suppressed?
2. Are you being threatened with slurs or labels?
3. Do you feel you will be ostracized if you ask a question or express a politically incorrect view?
4. Do you notice a “herd effect” as people shift their opinions to adapt to a politically correct opinion?
5. Are you being pigeonholed as a result of your question or opinion?
6. Do you sense that if you express ideas freely, you will be labeled a nutcase? Do you sense relational aggression at play?
7. Will others be “triggered” by your opinion?
8. Are you expected to trade in reality to prop up somebody’s illusion?
9. Are you tempted to self-censor to avoid social punishment? Or are you tempted to falsify what you believe to gain social rewards?
10. Do you sometimes feel like you’re stuck in a cult?

Okay, that’s actually twelve questions, but ….

And the closing paragraph is great:

Perhaps the best way of fighting propaganda is one friendly conversation at a time. As Jacques Ellul wrote in his classic 1965 book Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, “Propaganda ends where simple dialogue begins.”

Hat tip to Joe Bast for bringing Morabito’s article to my attention.

 

 

Featured image “Propaganda” courtesy of Elias Schwedtfeger, Flickr creative commons.