Epistemic infringement and the wrong of propagandizing

Abstract

Abstract The first part of this paper presents a dilemma for arationalism about propaganda. Arationalists hold that propaganda is constitutively reliant on bypassing audience-side rationality. According to the twin pillars of arationalism, then, propaganda is distinguished by the arationalism of audience-side uptake, and criticizable for its circumvention of audience-side rationality. Here, I argue that if the twin pillars of arationalism hold, then arationalists must either deny that bald-faced propaganda is propaganda or deny that bald-faced propaganda is objectionable qua propaganda. Against arationalism, I argue that propagandizing is apt to epistemically infringe on an audience. Propagandizing constitutively involves the systematic contravention of the norms typifying the relationship between communicator and audience, with the characteristic effect of eroding the audience's epistemic agency. The epistemic harm of propaganda is that it has the power to alienate its audience from itself both epistemically and politically by illegitimately constraining what is epistemically possible for its audience.