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IPFS News Link • Propaganda

"Dismisinfoganda"

• https://www.zerohedge.com, by Robert Wright

The lines between those lies have so blurred that only a neologistic portmanteau, dismisinfoganda, fully captures recent reality.

Like an old hip-hip song, let's break it down:

dis = intentionally wrong claims (lies)

mis = unintentionally wrong claims (error)

dismis(s) = denying a claim without empirically engaging it

info = a claim about the real world

(propa)ganda = that which is propagare, i.e., propagated or spread

Ergo, dismisinfoganda is the politicized spreading or squelching of claims without, or counter to, adequate empirical evidence. 

Dismisinfoganda remains agnostic about motivation, which is often opaque even to the claim's originator. Moreover, what matters most is not the creation of the claim but its propagation. People tend to believe, and pass along, claims that they believe substantiate their ideological views or further their material interests. The selective process (spread or ignore) occurs regardless of the claim originator's intent.

A 1975 book by Tom Burnam updated in 1986 called The Dictionary of Misinformation (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell) now looks rather quaint. Most of its 302 undocumented pages the author used to explain proper usage of words like zeppelin, which, in addition to being in the name of one of the greatest rock-n-roll bands ever, was the only lighter-than-air airship that was both steerable and rigid. Some simply corrected common elisions of history, where phrases like the "Emancipation Proclamation" come to stand in for the Thirteenth Amendment, or misattribution of origins, like Charles Darwin being the first person to elucidate biological evolution. Important stuff for copy editors and fact checkers but harmless for the most part.


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