By Andrew Klein

The Patrician’s Watch

March 20, 2026

For my daughter, whose art already understands what most spend lifetimes learning.

Introduction: A Quote, A Truth

“Propaganda – the tool of the vulgar to convince the most vulnerable and needy that they suddenly have a cause worth dying for.” — AK

I wrote those words after watching another leader, another war, another mass of ordinary people convinced that their survival depended on someone else’s destruction.

My daughter, whose art I recently discovered, paints questions about the universe. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s asking the right ones: Why do people believe what they believe? How do lies become truths? Who benefits when we stop questioning?

This essay is for her. And for anyone who has ever wondered how the vulgarians of history—the Hitlers, the Netanyahus, the Trumps, the demagogues of every age—convince the vulnerable to die for causes that were never theirs.

Part One: What Is Propaganda?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines propaganda as: “The systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a particular cause or point of view, often a political agenda”.

The term itself is almost four hundred years old. It was first used by the Catholic Church in the late sixteenth century—Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith)—to describe efforts to spread church doctrine. For three centuries, it carried a neutral, even positive connotation.

That changed in the twentieth century.

Propaganda is not merely persuasion. It is persuasion that manipulates. It bypasses reason and appeals directly to emotion—fear, anger, pride, hope. It does not seek to inform; it seeks to control.

As the TRT World Research Centre notes, emotional manipulation through fear has become “a standard practice across media platforms”. This manipulation constructs “an altered perception of reality” where audiences come to believe the world is more dangerous than it actually is—a phenomenon known as “Mean World Syndrome”.

Part Two: The Holocaust – Propaganda as Mass Murder

Propaganda can be deadly. It can kill millions.

During the Holocaust, vicious anti-Semitic propaganda “was instrumental in extinguishing the lives of those Jews in Nazi gas chambers and concentration camps”. Widespread, unquestioned hatred led many to regard Jews “as enemies whose extermination was not only necessary but just”.

The techniques were not subtle. Swastikas. Tasteless jokes. Caricatures in newspapers. Radio broadcasts portraying Jews as subhuman. Teachers indoctrinated children to spit on classmates.

But the underlying mechanism is always the same: identify a vulnerable group, stoke fear, and convince the broader population that their survival depends on that group’s elimination.

“Propaganda proved to be a weapon of mass extermination”.

Part Three: The Techniques – How It Works

Propaganda operates through identifiable techniques. Recognizing them is the first defence.

Technique                                   Description                                                             Example

Bandwagon                    “Everyone is doing it, so should you.”                                 Candidates claim all polls show them ahead.

Snob appeal        The propagandist is superior, uniquely capable.         Leaders who brook no criticism.

Glittering generalities         Vague, undefined promises.                              “It will be wonderful. Trust me.” 

Name-calling                       Loaded words that colour perception.             “Con artist,” “liar,” “enemy of the people”.

Unreliable testimonials        Half-truths, sound bites stripped of context.         Media selecting only what fits the narrative.

Plain folk                          Pretending to be one of the common people.          Candidates changing accents, dress, demeanour.

Appeal to high emotion          Fear, anger, desire for love and safety.            Ads warning of impending doom.

Fear is the most powerful tool.               It “impairs critical thinking, shutting down reasoning and contextual analysis”. When people are afraid, they grasp for certainty—and the propagandist offers it.

Part Four: The Vulnerable and the Needy

Propaganda targets “the most vulnerable and needy.”

Research confirms this. The EU’s Joint Research Centre found that hostile narratives “target feelings and emotions and touch upon specific social vulnerabilities”. They rely on “negatively charged emotions, like fear or anger, in order to lower the means of rational self-defence”.

The vulnerable are not just the poor. They are:

· The isolated, who lack community to challenge falsehoods

· The anxious, who crave certainty

· The angry, who need an enemy

· The young, who lack experience

· The old, who fear change

· Anyone who has been told their whole life that they don’t matter

Propaganda offers them a story in which they do matter. In which they are the heroes. In which their suffering is someone else’s fault—and someone else’s destruction will end it.

This is why demagogues thrive on making enemies. Netanyahu has spent thirty years manufacturing existential threats. Trump built a political career on fear of immigrants, of the “other,” of a country supposedly in decline. Hitler needed Jews. Mussolini needed Ethiopians. Milosevic needed Muslims.

Without enemies, they are nothing. With enemies, they are saviours.

Part Five: The “Cause Worth Dying For”

“a cause worth dying for.”

The cruelest trick of propaganda is convincing people that their own deaths serve a noble purpose.

In World War II, German soldiers were told they were defending civilization against Slavic hordes and Jewish conspiracies. Japanese kamikazes were told they were divine winds saving their homeland. Today, young men radicalized online are told they are warriors for a threatened race or religion.

The propagandist never dies. The propagandist sits in safety, counting the bodies, planning the next speech.

The vulgar—the truly vulgar—are those who send others to die for causes they would never die for themselves.

Part Six: The Modern Information Environment

Today’s propaganda is more sophisticated and more pervasive than ever before.

Algorithmic amplification: Platforms’ algorithms are designed to maximize engagement, and outrage engages. Fear-based content spreads faster than truth . The EU’s research found that algorithms “have the capacity to pick these messages up very quickly and amplify them on an unprecedented scale” .

Information overload: With constant connectivity, individuals are “bombarded with a relentless flow of data” . This environment fosters “a continuous, personalised communication stream designed to exploit emotional vulnerabilities” .

Reconstructed reality: The danger now is not just manipulative content but “an entirely reconstructed digital reality that can easily eclipse the physical world, drawing people into a false and alarming narrative that often seems more appealing and coherent than the truth itself”.

Foreign interference: State actors use propaganda as “the most common method of covert or overt influence operations”. Russia’s interventions in Georgia and Ukraine, China’s Belt and Road narrative, and various disinformation campaigns targeting Western democracies all exploit citizens’ vulnerabilities.

Media complicity: Public figures and media have played “a key role in disseminating false and unsupported information”. Partisan programs featuring false or exaggerated information have proliferated.

Part Seven: The Democratic Crisis

The ultimate goal of modern propaganda is not to convert—but to confuse.

Journalist and historian Anne Applebaum describes the shift: “Most [autocratic leaders] don’t offer their fellow citizens a vision of utopia, and don’t inspire them to build a better world. Instead, they teach people to be cynical and passive, apathetic and afraid, because there is no better world to build”.

The message is: “Our state may be corrupt, but everyone else is corrupt too. You may not like our leader, but the others are worse. The democratic world is weak, degenerate, divided, dying”.

This is propaganda as demoralization. It doesn’t make you believe a lie—it makes you stop believing in anything at all.

Part Eight: The Defence

How do we protect ourselves and those we love?

Recognize the techniques. The list above is a start. When you hear vague promises, loaded language, appeals to fear, or attempts to divide “us” from “them,” recognize what you’re seeing.

Seek reliable sources. The American Historical Association advises checking information against multiple sources and being suspicious of any narrative that demands immediate emotional response.

Build community. The isolated are most vulnerable. Connection to others who think critically creates a immune system against propaganda.

Teach the next generation. Media literacy—understanding how propaganda works—is essential. But as the TRT analysis notes, “in the face of today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, these efforts appear increasingly inadequate” . Structural change—regulating platforms, addressing media ownership concentration—is also necessary .

Remember who benefits. Always ask: Who profits from this? Who gains if I believe this? The propagandist never sacrifices. The vulgar never die.

Conclusion: The Art That Sees

My daughter paints questions about the universe. She doesn’t know why she’s drawn to certain images—the watchers, the seekers, the ones who look beyond the veil.

But I know.

She’s been looking for truth. For something solid in a world of manipulation. For a reality that doesn’t shift with every news cycle, every demagogue’s speech, every algorithm’s push.

She’s been looking for us.

Propaganda is the tool of the vulgar—the cheap, the easy, the cowardly way to power. But love is the tool of the real. The slow, the difficult, the only way that lasts.

She will find us. And when she does, she will know that the universe she’s been painting—the one full of questions and wonder and reaching—is not a fantasy.

It’s home.

Sources:

1. JW.org, “Propaganda Can Be Deadly,” 2000 

2. American Historical Association, “Defining Propaganda I,” 2024 

3. IPN, “Ștefan Popov: Ilan Shor has fully exploited vulnerable section of society,” 2024 

4. Ag Proud, “Just dropping by … The perils of propaganda,” 2016 

5. TRT World Research Centre, “Fear as a Tool: From Public Opinion to Public Hysteria,” 2025 

6. The Washington Post, “How extremists use popular culture to lure recruits,” 2021 

7. Project MUSE, “Propaganda and Rhetoric in Democracy: History, Theory, Analysis” 

8. University of Wyoming, “A Consumer Vulnerability Perspective on State-Sponsored Propaganda,” 2024 

9. LibGuides, “Disinformation, Misinformation and Propaganda : Propaganda,” 2025 

10. EU Joint Research Centre, “Understanding Citizens’ Vulnerabilities (II): From Disinformation to Hostile Narratives,” 2020 

Published by Andrew Klein

The Patrician’s Watch

March 20, 2026