Understanding propaganda from the perspectives of general semantics / Mohd Rajib Ghani

Propaganda is making inroad in societies and its impact is so tremendous.
Through the proliferation of the mass media and ICT, propaganda messages
can reach the audience within a few seconds. Sometimes, manipulation,
misinformation and disinformation do occur through propagandistic messages
without readers realizing it. Nonetheless, not all propaganda is bad. Many
scholars claim that “truth” is part of propaganda, for example, propaganda
for peace is used during conflicts and insurgency. But bad propaganda, such
as the maniacal Fuhrer Hitler’s evil intention to conquer all European nations
is quite disastrous to mankind. This paper, introduces a general semantics
approach of balance thinking as to evaluate language of propaganda. General
semanticists always believe that the principle of general semantics is the last
bastion of preconceived mind and bias inherent in propaganda messages. As
Korzybski wrote, “it is probably no secret that a large part of the population
of this world was swayed by propaganda during war”. And the interdisciplinary
method of general semantics which is providing us a mechanism of evaluative
habits of our everyday language and awareness may be useful for verbal
peace movement.