Persuasion

More than 2,000 years ago Aristotle outlined a formula on how to master the art of persuasion in his work Rhetoric. To become a master of persuasion yourself and successfully sell your own ideas, try using these five rhetorical devices that Aristotle identified in your next speech or presentation:
1) Ethos or “Character” - establish that you are committed to the welfare of others by building credibility
2) Logos or “Reason” - Why should your audience care about your idea? Use data, evidence, and facts to form a rational argument.
3) Pathos or “Emotion” - wrap the big idea in a story that is authentic & relatable
4) Metaphor - turn words into images that help others gain a clearer understanding of  their ideas
5) Brevity - An argument should be expressed as compactly and in as few words as possible. Start with your strongest point.

Propaganda—communication designed to manipulate thought or behavior—is the opposite of persuasion. It’s running amok, juiced by social media clicks, dopamine hits, cable TV, and, as always, advertising.  It involves prejudice, scare tactics, and faux intimacy. The brain hacks of propagandists short-circuit followers’ ability to think rationally; they stir emotion, scapegoat the innocent, enforce group identity, and arouse suspicion without evidence.

This Bloomberg article exposing sketchy rhetorical tricks of politicians, celebs, and con men—and how they work starts with this interesting opening -

I’m not saying (Paralipsis, or bringing up a statement or thread solely to disassociate oneself from it)

only total losers (Ad hominem statement, or denigrating a person or people instead of grappling with their arguments)

would skip this story, but a bunch of people did warn me. 

If you read on, you’ll discover how only I (Authoritarian appeal to fear)

can protect you from the shadowy groups  (Appeal to conspiracy)

peddling lies (Projection technique, or falsely accusing enemies of using one’s own unethical tactics) 

to control your children. (Authoritarian appeal to fear)

Propaganda experts break down some of the most dangerous stealth assaults, which—once identified—give us the best shot at defusing them - 

Narrative laundering - While money laundering obscures the origin of criminal income, narrative laundering hides the originators of stories. Mainstream media won’t usually run a false and destructive narrative put out by an extremist group. But stories can slip into public discussion bit by bit, gaining respectability with each retelling, often through opaque intermediaries. Textbook Case: The Soviet Union in the 1980s seeded false stories around the world suggesting that the U.S. created HIV/AIDS.

False Equivalence - A comparison among two or more people, events, or things that share something superficial but basically have nothing important to do with each other; the intent is to diminish the relevance of one element. Textbook Case: Comparing anyone (and anything) who isn’t actually a genocidal dictator to Hitler and his movement. 

Faux Intimacy - A form of manipulation resulting from the imagined “parasocial relationships” people form with movie characters and celebrities. The distantly adored can take advantage of their personal appeal to further their vanity, corruption, or worse—now often goosed by social media, which exacerbates the illusion of intimacy. Textbook Case: Gwyneth Paltrow leapt from Hollywood ingenue to wellness mogul, leading her $250 million Goop empire and its devotees down some scientifically dubious paths. 

Appeal to Misplaced Authority - Someone hangs the truth of their statements on someone who sounds like an expert but isn’t. Textbook Case: A former MTV personality and anti-vax crusader publicly defended a physician who retracted his 1998 paper about autism and the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine as a victim of “a remarkable media campaign engineered by vaccine manufacturers.”

The Big Lie - A simple falsehood so bold and repeated so frequently with such blinding power that followers are dissuaded from challenging its absurdity. Recent Moment: “We won this election, and we won it by a landslide.” —Donald Trump, Jan. 6, 2021

Appeal to Fear - It conjures the specter of a threat, harm, or evil to gain support. Recent Moment: During the Brexit debate, Vote Leave campaigners warned that by staying in the European Union, “we cannot stop criminals entering Britain from Europe,” and used discriminatory rhetoric to single out Turkish people.

Butterfly Attack - Bad actors impersonate members of a social group, commonly on social media, to confuse the discourse, inject disinformation, and stoke racism.

Data Voids - Co-opting phrases people can search for online that have never been uttered before or that rarely garner much attention. These terms are then seeded with misinformation or disinformation. Someone prompted to search for them will be greeted with pages of falsehoods or biased information. The term was invented in 2018 two Microsoft researchers. Recent Moment: In March 2020, Chinese officials began creating a connection between the origin of Covid-19 and Fort Detrick, the U.S. Army research lab in Maryland that’s long inspired urban myths.

Black Propaganda - Material fabricated so that it appears to be written or produced by the victims of the propaganda. Textbook Case: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a notoriously fraudulent 1903 work, originally published in Russian, that purported to be written by Jewish people looking to control the world. Courts and scholars labeled it a libelous forgery in the 20th century, but Hitler encountered it and made it a foundation of the Nazis’ big lie against Jewish people.