From the host of The David Pakman Show comes a vital look at how right-wing extremism has led to the fall of critical thinking and rise of reactionary politics—and what we can do about it to save democracy.

Known for providing incisive progressive political analysis without being dogmatic, popular radio and podcast host David Pakman delves into the vicious cycle of reactionary political ideology.

If there is one thing the 2024 election cycle showed us, it’s how the right-wing has benefited and capitalized on disinformation and the polarization of US politics. Critical thinking and media literacy are on a rapid decline, and our republic is unable to agree upon a shared set of facts. Infused with Pakman’s signature pragmatic insight, The Echo Machine is not just a critique nor an instruction manual, but an invitation to think, question, and understand how we got to this point and what we can do to mend our broken system.

Deeply researched and accessibly written, readers will learn:

• The underlying issues with political discourse in America today.
• How these issues have led to the intellectual race to the bottom.
• Practical ways to improve discourse through improving critical thinking, media literacy, and public education.
• Examples from real-world debates and discussions to better understand the impact of these issues on our democracy and why leftism is the best path forward.

Pakman calmly cuts through the alarmist noise to inspire readers across the political spectrum to break out of our toxic political echo chambers and ultimately save our democracy.

An exposition and analysis of the development of propaganda, focusing on how the development of radio transformed the delivery and impact of propaganda and led to the use of radio to incite hatred and violence.

Focusing on freedom of speech, this text deals with the perennial problem of how a small country should react in the face of pressure threatening its sovereignty. Should it give way or resist? The author describes in detail how the Soviet Union operated both overtly and covertly in the propaganda war and discusses the reactions of the West, the United States, Great Britain, West Germany and Sweden.

This book demands that we question what we are told about security, using tools we have had for thousands of years. The work considers the history of security rhetoric in a number of distinct but related contexts, including the United States' security strategy, the "war" on Big Tech, and current concerns such as cybersecurity. Focusing on the language of security discourse, it draws common threads from the ancient world to the present day and the near future. The book grounds recent comparisons of Donald Trump to the Emperor Nero in a linguistic evidence base. It examines the potential impact on society of policy-makers' emphasis on the novelty of cybercrime, their likening of the internet to the Wild West, and their claims that criminals have "gone dark". It questions governments' descriptions of technology companies in words normally reserved for terrorists, and asks who might benefit. Interdisciplinary in approach, the book builds on existing literature in the Humanities and Social Sciences, most notably studies on rhetoric in Greco-Roman texts, and on the articulation of security concerns in law, international relations, and public policy contexts. It adds value to this body of research by offering new points of comparison, and a fresh but tried and tested way of looking at problems that are often presented as unprecedented. It will be essential to legal and policy practitioners, students of Law, Politics, Media, and Classics, and all those interested in employing critical thinking.

A new assessment of the debates about Just War in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from the imperial wars of the nineteenth century through the age of total war, the evolution of human rights discourse and international law, to proportionality during the Cold War and the redefinition of authority with the ascendancy of terror groups.

Of all of Soviet cultural myths, none was more resilient than the belief that the USSR had the world's greatest readers. This book explains how the 'Russian reading myth' took hold in the 1920s and 1930s, how it was supported by a monopolistic and homogenizing system of book production and distribution, and how it was challenged in the post-Stalin era; first, by the latent expansion and differentiation of the reading public, and then, more dramatically, by the economic and cultural changes of the 1990s.

"The Thought War" is the first book in English to examine the full extent of Japan's wartime propaganda. Based on a wide range of archival material and sources in Japanese, Chinese, and English, it explores the propaganda programs of the Japanese government from 1931 to 1945, demonstrating the true scope of imperial propaganda and its pervasive influence, an influence that is still felt today. Contrary to popular postwar rhetoric, it was not emperor worship or military authoritarianism that led an entire nation to war. Rather, it was the creation of a powerful image of Japan as the leader of modern Asia and the belief that the Japanese could and would guide Asia to a new, glorious period of reform that appealed to imperial subjects. Kushner analyzes the role of the police and military in defining socially acceptable belief and behavior by using their influence to root out malcontents. His research is the first of its kind to treat propaganda as a profession in wartime Japan. He shows that the leadership was not confined to the crude tools of sloganeering and government-sponsored demonstrations but was able instead to appropriate the expertise of the nation's advertising firms to "sell" the image of Japan as Asia's leader and modernizer. In his exploration of the propaganda war in popular culture and the entertainment industry, Kushner discloses how entertainers sought to bolster their careers by adopting as their own pro-war messages that then filtered down into society and took hold. Japanese propaganda frequently conflicted with Chinese and American visions of empire, and Kushner reveals the reactions of these two nations to Japan's efforts and the meaning of their responses.

This book illuminates, and ultimately defends, attitudinal hypocrisy within the personal politics of Americans by utilizing statistical analyses within political history, social psychology, public opinion, and political science. Within a simple and parsimonious model of political attitudes, along with a novel method of calculating and operationalizing what attitudinal hypocrisy is, the book argues that the wielding of conflicting attitudes is a necessary characteristic of the American electorate. It uses an innovative multidisciplinary approach to answer some of the most pervasive questions in American politics: Why do conservatives preach the value of economic libertarianism, but decry the lack of government involvement in social issues and the military? Why do liberals extol the virtues of a regulatory economic state, but not a cultural or military state?

Written by a group of distinguished security experts, these eight previously unpublished papers focus on the hostile actions of the Soviet Union against the West in the form of psychological operations, power politics, and blackmail. Addressing military professionals, strategists, and international security specialists, the contributors examine the most effective measures the United States and its allies can take to counteract such measures. This is particularly important in the Gorbachev era, when Western security is perhaps more than ever dependent upon knowledge of Soviet psychological operations and political warfare. The book also explores the background of East European resistance to Soviet dominance and the subsequent Soviet countermeasures. Wide-ranging in coverage, the papers explore psychological operation in the United States, Poland, West Germany, France, and Latin America.

Following the editor's introduction to psychological operations, the contributors address such topics as the history and future of U.S. military psychological operations, new thinking and influence activities in the Gorbachev era, terrorism as a political strategy, and contemporary insurgent political and psychological warfare. A case study of the Polish experience illustrates communist regimes' psychological warfare against their own societies. The remaining papers discuss psychological operations and political warfare in long-term U.S. strategic planning, the French experience with Soviet hostile actions, and the argument that psychological warfare is no longer necessary in the age of perestroika and glasnost. The contributors are united in their belief that psychological operations and political warfare will not be eliminated by the sweeping changes affecting the Soviet Union and that the Western democracies are by their very nature particularly vulnerable to such operations. However, given the changing nature of external threats to the West, the contributors call for a reevaluation of strategy in the area of psychological operations, political warfare, and low intensity conflict.

This text investigates the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party's crucial goal of using the propaganda system to consolidate its power within the domestic political environment and its prominent recent attempts to use propaganda overseas to increase China's international power.

This book analyzes the unique psychological appeal of the airship worldwide and shows how this appeal was exploited for ulterior political purposes. They were used by Count Zeppelin to advance German militarism, American Admiral Moffett to fight US Army aviation ambitions, British Lord Thomson to foster Socialism and strengthen Empire ties, Mussolini to promote Italian Fascism, Stalin to foster world Communism, and Hitler to promote Nazi ideology. As airships roamed worldwide, they carried these political influences with them.

Evangelical Christians are perhaps the most polarizing—and least understood—people living in America today. In his seminal new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, journalist Tim Alberta, himself a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor, paints an expansive and profoundly troubling portrait of the American evangelical movement. Through the eyes of televangelists and small-town preachers, celebrity revivalists and everyday churchgoers, Alberta tells the story of a faith cheapened by ephemeral fear, a promise corrupted by partisan subterfuge, and a reputation stained by perpetual scandal.

For millions of conservative Christians, America is their kingdom—a land set apart, a nation uniquely blessed, a people in special covenant with God. This love of country, however, has given way to right-wing nationalist fervor, a reckless blood-and-soil idolatry that trivializes the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Alberta retraces the arc of the modern evangelical movement, placing political and cultural inflection points in the context of church teachings and traditions, explaining how Donald Trump's presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated historical trends that long pointed toward disaster. Reporting from half-empty sanctuaries and standing-room-only convention halls across the country, the author documents a growing fracture inside American Christianity and journeys with readers through this strange new environment in which loving your enemies is "woke" and owning the libs is the answer to WWJD.

Accessing the highest echelons of the American evangelical movement, Alberta investigates the ways in which conservative Christians have pursued, exercised, and often abused power in the name of securing this earthly kingdom. He highlights the battles evangelicals are fighting—and the weapons of their warfare—to demonstrate the disconnect from scripture: Contra the dictates of the New Testament, today's believers are struggling mightily against flesh and blood, eyes fixed on the here and now, desperate for a power that is frivolous and fleeting. Lingering at the intersection of real cultural displacement and perceived religious persecution, Alberta portrays a rapidly secularizing America that has come to distrust the evangelical church, and weaves together present-day narratives of individual pastors and their churches as they confront the twin challenges of lost status and diminished standing.

Sifting through the wreckage—pastors broken, congregations battered, believers losing their religion because of sex scandals and political schemes—Alberta asks: If the American evangelical movement has ceased to glorify God, what is its purpose?

This timely book spotlights how various entities are using the Internet to shape people's perceptions and decision-making. Also describes detailed case studies as well as the tools and methods used to identify automated, fake accounts. This book brings together three important dimensions of our everyday lives. First is digital-the online ecosystem of information providers and tools, from websites, blogs, discussion forums, and targeted email campaigns to social media, video streaming, and virtual reality. Second, influence-the most effective ways people can be persuaded, in order to shape their beliefs in ways that lead them to embrace one set of beliefs and reject others. And finally, warfare-wars won by the information and disinformation providers who are able to influence behavior in ways they find beneficial to their political, social, and other goals. The book provides a wide range of specific examples that illustrate the ways people are being targeted by digital influencers. There is much more to digital influence warfare than terrorist propaganda, "fake news," or Russian efforts to manipulate elections: chapters examine post-truth narratives, fabricated "alternate facts," and brainwashing and disinformation within the context of various political, scientific, security, and societal debates. The final chapters examine how new technical tools, critical thinking, and resilience can help thwart digital influence warfare efforts. Integrates interdisciplinary perspectives from security studies, psychology, sociology, criminology, information technology, and several other fields of study Examines the ways in which terrorists, governments, politicians, corporations, and many others use online technology to influence beliefs and behaviors Offers detailed case studies to illustrate how people succumb to the digital influence warfare efforts of governments, terrorists, politicians, corporations, and others Explains the tools and methods used to identify automated, fake accounts on social media ("bots") as well as efforts to delete or suspend users for offensive content or attempts to spread disinformation Provides clear explanations of technical terms and tools used by those who engage in these digital influence efforts

Political Warfare against the Kremlin provides a comparative study and holistic review of American and British propaganda policy toward the Soviet Union during the first fifteen years of the Cold War, ranging from the role senior policymakers played in setting propaganda policy to the West's radio broadcasts to the Soviet Union.

Conventional warfare-clashes between large military forces-defined twentieth-century power. But today, facing a dominant American military, principal adversaries Russia, China and Iran, have adopted a new style of competition. Cyber attacks, covert action, proxy conflicts, information and disinformation campaigns, espionage and economic coercion-these are the tools of irregular or asymmetric warfare, which will increasingly reshape international politics. In Three Dangerous Men, defence expert Seth G. Jones profiles pioneers of irregular warfare in Moscow, Beijing and Tehran who adapted American techniques and made huge gains without waging traditional warfare. Drawing on interviews with dozens of US military, diplomatic and intelligence officials, such as CIA directors Michael Hayden and David Petraeus, the author demonstrates why the US abandoned its own irregular capabilities and is thus steadily losing ground to its global adversaries. Jones argues the US must significantly alter how it thinks about-and engages in-competition before it is too late.

"This book has no scholarly equivalent in English." . Choice

The Nazis saw film as a major vehicle for both indoctrination and escapist pacification of the "masses"; in fact, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels tried to create a German counter-Hollywood. This highly acclaimed study, by one of Germany's leading commentators and authors on cultural policy, analyses the pictorial and spoken language of the various film genres in the Third Reich, including news reels, documentaries, feature and "cultural" films. It shows how a powerful and sinister propaganda machine emerged which, by deploying a wide range of psychological techniques, exerted a strong fascination on the masses. These methods were so successful that they continue to serve as models for totalitarian regimes to this day.

How do governments that do not enjoy formal diplomatic relations use propaganda? When a government is denied recognition by the international community, it must explore every avenue of publicity available to project its image and policies. For such actors, propaganda can become diplomacy out of necessity. The Republic of China on Taiwan is such a government, and its predicament is the subject of this book. It discusses the relationship between diplomacy and propaganda from an exciting new perspective, illustrated by a fascinating case-study.

Using recently declassified sources, this book provides the first detailed analysis of British and American propaganda, targeting the countries of the Middle East, during the years of increasing international tension and regional instability, immediately following the end of the Second World War. Considering British and American propaganda within the framework of the Cold War crusade against Communism and the Soviet Union, and the developing confrontations between Arab nationalism and the West, the book investigates the central questions of Anglo-American partnership and rivalry in the period when primary responsibility for 'policing' the Middle East passed from one to the other.

Forged over the course of a century, the connections between war and media run long and deep. As this book reveals, the history of war and its telling has been a battle over public perception. The selection of which stories are told and which are ignored helps justify past battles and ensure future wars. Narratives of protest and pain, defeat and suffering, guilt and abuse struggle to be heard amid the empowering myths of war and heroism. As Robin Andersen argues, the history of struggle between war and its representation has changed the way war is fought and the way we tell the stories of war. Information management, once called censorship and propaganda, has developed in tandem with new media technologies. Now, digital imaging creates virtual battlefields as computer-based technologies transform the weapons of war. Along the way, images on the nightly news, on movie screens, and in video games have turned war into entertainment. In the grip of virtual war, it is difficult to realize the loss of compassion or the consequences for democracy.

This book offers an examination of the signature weapon of Barack Obama's presidency: his speeches. It provides an in-depth, analytical look at the words of Barack Obama through the social and cultural contexts that made the content of his speeches timeless. The book draws on the oral tradition of the Black church in order to help explain aspects of the president's speaking style and to establish a direct link between the president's words and actions.

Is this how democracy dies?

The Coming Storm is Gabriel Gatehouse’s brilliant exploration of how conspiracy theories are tearing America apart. It’s a story that takes you down a rabbit hole - one that both the US as a nation and he as a journalist fell through - to unpack an epochal shift in political culture that starts in the earliest years of the Clinton administration and reached a crescendo on 6 January 2021 with the storming of the US Capitol. But that event wasn’t the wild finale of a chaotic Trump presidency many hoped for - it was only the beginning.

A compelling mix of research and reportage, The Coming Storm gets under the skin of these conspiracy theories to show us a radical new kind of politics emerging, a movement that has coalesced around a loose alliance of tech bros, internet trolls and white supremacists. At a perilous moment in the history of American democracy, Gatehouse tells us some dark truths about our present, and provides clues about our future.

The Coming Storm marks the debut of a major new voice in political journalism.

Arming Americans to defend the truth from today's war on facts.Disinformation. Trolling. Conspiracies. Social media pile-ons. Campus intolerance. On the surface, these recent additions to our daily vocabulary appear to have little in common. But together, they are driving an epistemic crisis: a multi-front challenge to America's ability to distinguish fact from fiction and elevate truth above falsehood. In 2016 Russian trolls and bots nearly drowned the truth in a flood of fake news and conspiracy theories, and Donald Trump and his troll armies continued to do the same. Social media companies struggled to keep up with a flood of falsehoods, and too often didn't even seem to try. Experts and some public officials began wondering if society was losing its grip on truth itself. Meanwhile, another new phenomenon appeared: "cancel culture." At the push of a button, those armed with a cellphone could gang up by the thousands on anyone who ran afoul of their sanctimony. In this pathbreaking book, Jonathan Rauch reaches back to the parallel eighteenth-century developments of liberal democracy and science to explain what he calls the "Constitution of Knowledge" our social system for turning disagreement into truth. By explicating the Constitution of Knowledge and probing the war on reality, Rauch arms defenders of truth with a clearer understanding of what they must protect, why they must do so and how they can do it. His book is a sweeping and readable description of how every American can help defend objective truth and free inquiry from threats as far away as Russia and as close as the cellphone.

This book examines the idea of fake news through an analysis of the work of early to mid-twentieth century press critic George Seldes. By examining fake news - also known as propaganda and misinformation - from this period it becomes evident that it is a phenomenon that emerges in response to particular social, political and economic conditions. It is, therefore, not a new process but always a feature of the media ecosystem. Seldes' work makes evident that contemporary anxieties about the role, function, future and credibility of journalism were expressed in the 1930s and 1940s. The same fears were circulated about the consequences of fake news and propaganda on democratic debate. The same concerns were also expressed about how technology extends the circulation of propaganda and fake news, and affects journalism practices. An analysis of Seldes' media criticism of the fake news, lies and propaganda in daily newspapers in the 1930s and 1940s exposes the historical nature and impact of fake news on public debate, and affirms the critical role of journalists in exposing fake news.