Recently, a friend of mine shared a disapproving article about newly sworn-in Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib referring to Donald Trump as a “motherfucker.” My friend’s comment on the article was, “She said it in front of children,” implying that what she herself disapproved of was not so much the Congresswoman’s words, but who was with her when she said them. Which is fair. Although I certainly have sworn plenty in front of children (mine and everyone else’s), and will almost certainly continue to swear in front of children in the future (probably even more than I do now, depending on whether or not I learn some really nifty new combinations), I acknowledge that other people have a right to find this offensive.
There is a problem with this story, however: Tlaib didn’t swear in front of children. She was in a bar, well into the evening when she uttered those remarks, leading me to believe that any children present at that time were probably too deep into their third cocktail to have given the word “motherfucker” a second thought. Of course, my friend didn’t know this detail, because the article she shared had only contained the fact that Tlaib swore, and an (unrelated) picture of Tlaib standing with a group of children. In other words, it was propaganda.
Propaganda is biased information that is distributed with the intent of influencing people’s opinions. It has been around for a long time. And it can be deadly. In 1994 the propaganda that was broadcast unceasingly from anti-Tutsi radio stations was directly responsible for the 100-day genocide in Rwanda that wiped out nearly a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Beginning by simply slandering the characters of Tutsis in general, the radio stations eventually directed people to kill their Tutsi neighbors, giving names and addresses. In fact, the genocide only stopped when the radio station was destroyed.
As I mentioned before, propaganda has been around for a long time—the earliest written record of it is from Persia in 515 BCE. So it’s not like we as a species are unfamiliar it, or unfamiliar with how to combat it. But, as happens so much with modern technology, the solutions we have always used have not kept pace with the problems we have created. One of the solutions that used to work against propaganda was education—any form of education. This was because for many years the more subtle forms of propaganda were limited to people who could read, and therefore to people who had obtained a modicum of critical thinking skills. Radio changed that dynamic, and then film, and then television, and now, finally, the internet. Now propaganda can reach into everyone’s home, everyone’s pocket, with just the click of a “like” or “share,” no special skills (or thinking) required And they don’t even have to pay us to spread it—we do it for free.
Before the internet, spreading fake news to a large number of people took genuine effort: think leaflets dropped out of planes, handbills pasted in high traffic areas, or newspapers with a dedicated following. There was a physical aspect to this propaganda, and consequently, a physical cost. Even after the internet came along (but before social media), spreading disinformation was mostly limited to chain emails forwarded by your paranoid Great Uncle, and so its reach was, again, somewhat limited—mostly to the current-affairs impaired.
Not anymore.
The propaganda we are seeing today is flashy and hip. It has enticing pictures and provocative headlines like, “Can You Believe…” and “You Don’t Want to Miss…” It counts on our love of the new, the shocking, and the terrible to get us to view it. But it counts on our love of judgement and superiority to get us to share it. Which are the exact same traits the radio stations in Rwanda were counting on when they broadcast their own propaganda.
Some people have told me that they don’t see the “harm” in sharing propaganda (AKA “fake news”). That, sure, the articles might not be 100% accurate, but they contain a little bit of truth, or they made you think about the issue, or even, they were kind of funny. But the truth is that in the end your non-malicious intent in spreading propaganda probably will not matter to the people it hurts. And it definitely won’t matter to the people it kills.
Look, no one is asking you to stop sharing stories. All we really want is that the next time you are tempted to share a piece of “news,” do the world a favor and consider (and research) the source, even if it takes an extra few minutes of your time.
Four-hundred thousand Rwandan orphans would really appreciate it if you did.