critical thinking and propaganda

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The Use of Critical Thinking to Identify Fake News: A Systematic Literature Review

Paul machete.

Department of Informatics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, 0001 South Africa

Marita Turpin

With the large amount of news currently being published online, the ability to evaluate the credibility of online news has become essential. While there are many studies involving fake news and tools on how to detect it, there is a limited amount of work that focuses on the use of information literacy to assist people to critically access online information and news. Critical thinking, as a form of information literacy, provides a means to critically engage with online content, for example by looking for evidence to support claims and by evaluating the plausibility of arguments. The purpose of this study is to investigate the current state of knowledge on the use of critical thinking to identify fake news. A systematic literature review (SLR) has been performed to identify previous studies on evaluating the credibility of news, and in particular to see what has been done in terms of the use of critical thinking to evaluate online news. During the SLR’s sifting process, 22 relevant studies were identified. Although some of these studies referred to information literacy, only three explicitly dealt with critical thinking as a means to identify fake news. The studies on critical thinking noted critical thinking as an essential skill for identifying fake news. The recommendation of these studies was that information literacy be included in academic institutions, specifically to encourage critical thinking.

Introduction

The information age has brought a significant increase in available sources of information; this is in line with the unparalleled increase in internet availability and connection, in addition to the accessibility of technological devices [ 1 ]. People no longer rely on television and print media alone for obtaining news, but increasingly make use of social media and news apps. The variety of information sources that we have today has contributed to the spread of alternative facts [ 1 ]. With over 1.8 billion active users per month in 2016 [ 2 ], Facebook accounted for 20% of total traffic to reliable websites and up to 50% of all the traffic to fake news sites [ 3 ]. Twitter comes second to Facebook, with over 400 million active users per month [ 2 ]. Posts on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter spread rapidly due to how they attempt to grab the readers’ attention as quickly as possible, with little substantive information provided, and thus create a breeding ground for the dissemination of fake news [ 4 ].

While social media is a convenient way of accessing news and staying connected to friends and family, it is not easy to distinguish real news from fake news on social media [ 5 ]. Social media continues to contribute to the increasing distribution of user-generated information; this includes hoaxes, false claims, fabricated news and conspiracy theories, with primary sources being social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter [ 6 ]. This means that any person who is in possession of a device, which can connect to the internet, is potentially a consumer or distributor of fake news. While social media platforms and search engines do not encourage people to believe the information being circulated, they are complicit in people’s propensity to believe the information they come across on these platforms, without determining their validity [ 6 ]. The spread of fake news can cause a multitude of damages to the subject; varying from reputational damage of an individual, to having an effect on the perceived value of a company [ 7 ].

The purpose of this study is to investigate the use of critical thinking methods to detect news stories that are untrue or otherwise help to develop a critical attitude to online news. This work was performed by means of a systematic literature review (SLR). The paper is presented as follows. The next section provides background information on fake news, its importance in the day-to-day lives of social media users and how information literacy and critical thinking can be used to identify fake news. Thereafter, the SLR research approach is discussed. Following this, the findings of the review are reported, first in terms of descriptive statistics and the in terms of a thematic analysis of the identified studies. The paper ends with the Conclusion and recommendations.

Background: Fake News, Information Literacy and Critical Thinking

This section discusses the history of fake news, the fake news that we know today and the role of information literacy can be used to help with the identification of fake news. It also provides a brief definition of critical thinking.

The History of Fake News

Although fake news has received increased attention recently, the term has been used by scholars for many years [ 4 ]. Fake news emerged from the tradition of yellow journalism of the 1890s, which can be described as a reliance on the familiar aspects of sensationalism—crime news, scandal and gossip, divorces and sex, and stress upon the reporting of disasters, sports sensationalism as well as possibly satirical news [ 5 ]. The emergence of online news in the early 2000s raised concerns, among them being that people who share similar ideologies may form “echo chambers” where they can filter out alternative ideas [ 2 ]. This emergence came about as news media transformed from one that was dominated by newspapers printed by authentic and trusted journalists to one where online news from an untrusted source is believed by many [ 5 ]. The term later grew to describe “satirical news shows”, “parody news shows” or “fake-news comedy shows” where a television show, or segment on a television show was dedicated to political satire [ 4 ]. Some of these include popular television shows such as The Daily Show (now with Trevor Noah), Saturday Night Live ’s “The Weekend Update” segment, and other similar shows such as Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert [ 4 ]. News stories in these shows were labelled “fake” not because of their content, but for parodying network news for the use of sarcasm, and using comedy as a tool to engage real public issues [ 4 ]. The term “Fake News” further became prominent during the course of the 2016 US presidential elections, as members of the opposing parties would post incorrect news headlines in order to sway the decision of voters [ 6 ].

Fake News Today

The term fake news has a more literal meaning today [ 4 ]. The Macquarie Dictionary named fake news the word of the year for 2016 [ 8 ]. In this dictionary, fake news is described it as a word that captures a fascinating evolution in the creation of deceiving content, also allowing people to believe what they see fit. There are many definitions for the phrase, however, a concise description of the term can be found in Paskin [ 4 ] who states that certain news articles originating from either social media or mainstream (online or offline) platforms, that are not factual, but are presented as such and are not satirical, are considered fake news. In some instances, editorials, reports, and exposés may be knowingly disseminating information with intent to deceive for the purposes of monetary or political benefit [ 4 ].

A distinction amongst three types of fake news can be made on a conceptual level, namely: serious fabrications, hoaxes and satire [ 3 ]. Serious fabrications are explained as news items written on false information, including celebrity gossip. Hoaxes refer to false information provided via social media, aiming to be syndicated by traditional news platforms. Lastly, satire refers to the use of humour in the news to imitate real news, but through irony and absurdity. Some examples of famous satirical news platforms in circulation in the modern day are The Onion and The Beaverton , when contrasted with real news publishers such as The New York Times [ 3 ].

Although there are many studies involving fake news and tools on how to detect it, there is a limited amount of academic work that focuses on the need to encourage information literacy so that people are able to critically access the information they have been presented, in order to make better informed decisions [ 9 ].

Stein-Smith [ 5 ] urges that information/media literacy has become a more critical skill since the appearance of the notion of fake news has become public conversation. Information literacy is no longer a nice-to-have proficiency but a requirement for interpreting news headlines and participation in public discussions. It is essential for academic institutions of higher learning to present information literacy courses that will empower students and staff members with the prerequisite tools to identify, select, understand and use trustworthy information [ 1 ]. Outside of its academic uses, information literacy is also a lifelong skill with multiple applications in everyday life [ 5 ]. The choices people make in their lives, and opinions they form need to be informed by the appropriate interpretation of correct, opportune, and significant information [ 5 ].

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking covers a broad range of skills that includes the following: verbal reasoning skills; argument analysis; thinking as hypothesis testing; dealing with likelihood and uncertainties; and decision making and problem solving skills [ 10 ]. For the purpose of this study, where we are concerned with the evaluation of the credibility of online news, the following definition will be used: critical thinking is “the ability to analyse and evaluate arguments according to their soundness and credibility, respond to arguments and reach conclusions through deduction from given information” [ 11 ]. In this study, we want to investigate how the skills mentioned by [ 11 ] can be used as part of information literacy, to better identify fake news.

The next section presents the research approach that was followed to perform the SLR.

Research Method

This section addresses the research question, the search terms that were applied to a database in relation to the research question, as well as the search criteria used on the search results. The following research question was addressed in this SLR:

• What is the role of critical thinking in identifying fake news, according to previous studies?

The research question was identified in accordance to the research topic. The intention of the research question is to determine if the identified studies in this review provide insights into the use of critical thinking to evaluate the credibility of online news and in particular to identify fake news.

Delimitations.

In the construction of this SLR, the following definitions of fake news and other related terms have been excluded, following the suggestion of [ 2 ]:

• Unintentional reporting mistakes;
• Rumours that do not originate from a particular news article;
• Conspiracy theories;
• Satire that is unlikely to be misconstrued as factual;
• False statements by politicians; and
• Reports that are slanted or misleading, but not outright false.

Search Terms.

The database tool used to extract sources to conduct the SLR was Google Scholar ( https://scholar.google.com ). The process for extracting the sources involved executing the search string on Google Scholar and the retrieval of the articles and their meta-data into a tool called Mendeley, which was used for reference management.

The search string used to retrieve the sources was defined below:

(“critical think*” OR “critically (NEAR/2) reason*” OR “critical (NEAR/2) thought*” OR “critical (NEAR/2) judge*” AND “fake news” AND (identify* OR analyse* OR find* OR describe* OR review).

To construct the search criteria, the following factors have been taken into consideration: the research topic guided the search string, as the key words were used to create the base search criteria. The second step was to construct the search string according to the search engine requirements on Google Scholar.

Selection Criteria.

The selection criteria outlined the rules applied in the SLR to identify sources, narrow down the search criteria and focus the study on a specific topic. The inclusion and exclusion criteria are outlined in Table  1 to show which filters were applied to remove irrelevant sources.

Table 1.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria for paper selection

Source Selection.

The search criteria were applied on the online database and 91 papers were retrieved. The criteria in Table  1 were used on the search results in order to narrow down the results to appropriate papers only.

PRISMA Flowchart.

The selection criteria included four stages of filtering and this is depicted in Fig.  1 . In then Identification stage, the 91 search results from Google Scholar were returned and 3 sources were derived from the sources already identified from the search results, making a total of 94 available sources. In the screening stage, no duplicates were identified. After a thorough screening of the search results, which included looking at the availability of the article (free to use), 39 in total records were available – to which 55 articles were excluded. Of the 39 articles, nine were excluded based on their titles and abstract being irrelevant to the topic in the eligibility stage. A final list of 22 articles was included as part of this SLR. As preparation for the data analysis, a data extraction table was made that classified each article according to the following: article author; article title; theme (a short summary of the article); year; country; and type of publication. The data extraction table assisted in the analysis of findings as presented in the next section.

PRISMA flowchart

Analysis of Findings

Descriptive statistics.

Due to the limited number of relevant studies, the information search did not have a specified start date. Articles were included up to 31 August 2019. The majority of the papers found were published in 2017 (8 papers) and 2018 (9 papers). This is in line with the term “fake news” being announced the word of the year in the 2016 [ 8 ].

The selected papers were classified into themes. Figure  2 is a Venn diagram that represents the overlap of articles by themes across the review. Articles that fall under the “fake news” theme had the highest number of occurrences, with 11 in total. Three articles focused mainly on “Critical Thinking”, and “Information Literacy” was the main focus of four articles. Two articles combined all three topics of critical thinking, information literacy, and fake news.

Venn diagram depicting the overlap of articles by main focus

An analysis of the number of articles published per country indicate that the US had a dominating amount of articles published on this topic, a total of 17 articles - this represents 74% of the selected articles in this review. The remaining countries where articles were published are Australia, Germany, Ireland, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Sweden - with each having one article published.

In terms of publication type, 15 of the articles were journal articles, four were reports, one was a thesis, one was a magazine article and one, a web page.

Discussion of Themes

The following emerged from a thematic analysis of the articles.

Fake News and Accountability.

With the influence that social media has on the drive of fake news [ 2 ], who then becomes responsible for the dissemination and intake of fake news by the general population? The immediate assumption is that in the digital age, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter should be able to curate information, or do some form of fact-checking when posts are uploaded onto their platforms [ 12 ], but that leans closely to infringing on freedom of speech. While different authors agree that there need to be measures in place for the minimisation of fake news being spread [ 12 , 13 ], where that accountability lies differs between the authors. Metaxas and Mustafaraj [ 13 ] aimed to develop algorithms or plug-ins that can assist in trust and postulated that consumers should be able to identify misinformation, thus making an informed decision on whether to share that information or not. Lazer et al. [ 12 ] on the other hand, believe the onus should be on the platform owners to put restrictions on the kind of data distributed. Considering that the work by Metaxas and Mustafaraj [ 13 ] was done seven years ago, one can conclude that the use of fact-checking algorithms/plug-ins has not been successful in curbing the propulsion of fake news.

Fake News and Student Research.

There were a total of four articles that had a focus on student research in relation to fake news. Harris, Paskin and Stein-Smith [ 4 , 5 , 14 ] all agree that students do not have the ability to discern between real and fake news. A Stanford History Education Group study reveals that students are not geared up for distinguishing real from fake news [ 4 ]. Most students are able to perform a simple Google search for information; however, they are unable to identify the author of an online source, or if the information is misleading [ 14 ]. Furthermore, students are not aware of the benefits of learning information literacy in school in equipping them with the skills required to accurately identify fake news [ 5 ]. At the Metropolitan Campus of Fairleigh Dickson University, librarians have undertaken the role of providing training on information literacy skills for identifying fake news [ 5 ].

Fake News and Social Media.

A number of authors [ 6 , 15 ] are in agreement that social media, the leading source of news, is the biggest driving force for fake news. It provides substantial advantage to broadcast manipulated information. It is an open platform of unfiltered editors and open to contributions from all. According to Nielsen and Graves as well as Janetzko, [ 6 , 15 ], people are unable to identify fake news correctly. They are likely to associate fake news with low quality journalism than false information designed to mislead. Two articles, [ 15 ] and [ 6 ] discussed the role of critical thinking when interacting on social media. Social media presents information to us that has been filtered according to what we already consume, thereby making it a challenge for consumers to think critically. The study by Nielsen and Graves [ 6 ] confirm that students’ failure to verify incorrect online sources requires urgent attention as this could indicate that students are a simple target for presenting manipulated information.

Fake News That Drive Politics.

Two studies mention the effect of social and the spread of fake news, and how it may have propelled Donald Trump to win the US election in 2016 [ 2 , 16 ]. Also, [ 8 ] and [ 2 ] mention how a story on the Pope supporting Trump in his presidential campaign, was widely shared (more than a million times) on Facebook in 2016. These articles also point out how in the information age, fact-checking has become relatively easy, but people are more likely to trust their intuition on news stories they consume, rather than checking the reliability of a story. The use of paid trolls and Russian bots to populate social media feeds with misinformation in an effort to swing the US presidential election in Donald Trump’s favour, is highlighted [ 16 ]. The creation of fake news, with the use of alarmist headlines (“click bait”), generates huge traffic into the original websites, which drives up advertising revenue [ 2 ]. This means content creators are compelled to create fake news, to drive ad revenue on their websites - even though they may not be believe in the fake news themselves [ 2 ].

Information Literacy.

Information literacy is when a person has access to information, and thus can process the parts they need, and create ways in which to best use the information [ 1 ]. Teaching students the importance of information literacy skills is key, not only for identifying fake news but also for navigating life aspects that require managing and scrutinising information, as discussed by [ 1 , 17 ], and [ 9 ]. Courtney [ 17 ] highlights how journalism students, above students from other disciplines, may need to have some form of information literacy incorporated into their syllabi to increase their awareness of fake news stories, creating a narrative of being objective and reliable news creators. Courtney assessed different universities that teach journalism and media-related studies, and established that students generally lack awareness on how useful library services are in offering services related to information literacy. Courtney [ 17 ] and Rose-Wiles [ 9 ] discuss how the use of library resources should be normalised to students. With millennials and generation Z having social media as their first point of contact, Rose-Wiles [ 9 ] urges universities, colleges and other academic research institutes to promote the use of more library resources than those from the internet, to encourage students to lean on reliable sources. Overall, this may prove difficult, therefore Rose-Wiles [ 9 ] proposes that by teaching information literacy skills and critical thinking, students can use these skills to apply in any situation or information source.

Referred to as “truth decay”, people have reached a point where they no longer need to agree with facts [ 18 ]. Due to political polarisation, the general public hold the opinion of being part of an oppressed group of people, and therefore will believe a political leader who appeals to that narrative [ 18 ]. There needs to be tangible action put into driving civil engagement, to encourage people to think critically, analyse information and not believe everything they read.

Critical Thinking.

Only three of the articles had critical thinking as a main theme. Bronstein et al. [ 19 ] discuss how certain dogmatic and religious beliefs create a tendency in individuals to belief any information given, without them having a need to interrogate the information further and then deciding ion its veracity. The article further elaborates how these individuals are also more likely to engage in conspiracy theories, and tend to rationalise absurd events. Bronstein et al.’s [ 19 ] study conclude that dogmatism and religious fundamentalism highly correlate with a belief in fake news. Their study [ 19 ] suggests the use of interventions that aim to increase open-minded thinking, and also increase analytical thinking as a way to help religious, curb belief in fake news. Howlett [ 20 ] describes critical thinking as evidence-based practice, which is taking the theories of the skills and concepts of critical thinking and converting those for use in everyday applications. Jackson [ 21 ] explains how the internet purposely prides itself in being a platform for “unreviewed content”, due to the idea that people may not see said content again, therefore it needs to be attention-grabbing for this moment, and not necessarily accurate. Jackson [ 21 ] expands that social media affected critical thinking in how it changed the view on published information, what is now seen as old forms of information media. This then presents a challenge to critical thinking in that a large portion of information found on the internet is not only unreliable, it may also be false. Jackson [ 21 ] posits that one of the biggest dangers to critical thinking may be that people have a sense of perceived power for being able to find the others they seek with a simple web search. People are no longer interested in evaluation the credibility of the information they receive and share, and thus leading to the propagation of fake news [ 21 ].

Discussion of Findings

The aggregated data in this review has provided insight into how fake news is perceived, the level of attention it is receiving and the shortcomings of people when identifying fake news. Since the increase in awareness of fake news in 2016, there has been an increase in academic focus on the subject, with most of the articles published between 2017 and 2018. Fifty percent of the articles released focused on the subject of fake news, with 18% reflecting on information literacy, and only 13% on critical thinking.

The thematic discussion grouped and synthesised the articles in this review according to the main themes of fake news, information literacy and critical thinking. The Fake news and accountability discussion raised the question of who becomes accountable for the spreading of fake news between social media and the user. The articles presented a conclusion that fact-checking algorithms are not successful in reducing the dissemination of fake news. The discussion also included a focus on fake news and student research , whereby a Stanford History Education Group study revealed that students are not well educated in thinking critically and identifying real from fake news [ 4 ]. The Fake news and social media discussion provided insight on social media is the leading source of news as well as a contributor to fake news. It provides a challenge for consumers who are not able to think critically about online news, or have basic information literacy skills that can aid in identifying fake news. Fake news that drive politics highlighted fake news’ role in politics, particularly the 2016 US presidential elections and the influence it had on the voters [ 22 ].

Information literacy related publications highlighted the need for educating the public on being able to identify fake news, as well as the benefits of having information literacy as a life skill [ 1 , 9 , 17 ]. It was shown that students are often misinformed about the potential benefits of library services. The authors suggested that university libraries should become more recognised and involved as role-players in providing and assisting with information literacy skills.

The articles that focused on critical thinking pointed out two areas where a lack of critical thinking prevented readers from discerning between accurate and false information. In the one case, it was shown that people’s confidence in their ability to find information online gave made them overly confident about the accuracy of that information [ 21 ]. In the other case, it was shown that dogmatism and religious fundamentalism, which led people to believe certain fake news, were associated with a lack of critical thinking and a questioning mind-set [ 21 ].

The articles that focused on information literacy and critical thinking were in agreement on the value of promoting and teaching these skills, in particular to the university students who were often the subjects of the studies performed.

This review identified 22 articles that were synthesised and used as evidence to determine the role of critical thinking in identifying fake news. The articles were classified according to year of publication, country of publication, type of publication and theme. Based on the descriptive statistics, fake news has been a growing trend in recent years, predominantly in the US since the presidential election in 2016. The research presented in most of the articles was aimed at the assessment of students’ ability to identify fake news. The various studies were consistent in their findings of research subjects’ lack of ability to distinguish between true and fake news.

Information literacy emerged as a new theme from the studies, with Rose-Wiles [ 9 ] advising academic institutions to teach information literacy and encourage students to think critically when accessing online news. The potential role of university libraries to assist in not only teaching information literacy, but also assisting student to evaluate the credibility of online information, was highlighted. The three articles that explicitly dealt with critical thinking, all found critical thinking to be lacking among their research subjects. They further indicated how this lack of critical thinking could be linked to people’s inability to identify fake news.

This review has pointed out people’s general inability to identify fake news. It highlighted the importance of information literacy as well as critical thinking, as essential skills to evaluate the credibility of online information.

The limitations in this review include the use of students as the main participants in most of the research - this would indicate a need to shift the academic focus towards having the general public as participants. This is imperative because anyone who possesses a mobile device is potentially a contributor or distributor of fake news.

For future research, it is suggested that the value of the formal teaching of information literacy at universities be further investigated, as a means to assist students in assessing the credibility of online news. Given the very limited number of studies on the role of critical thinking to identify fake news, this is also an important area for further research.

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Strengthen Media Literacy to Win the Fight Against Misinformation

If the world is going to stop deliberate or unintentional misinformation and its insidious effects, we need to radically expand and accelerate our counterattacks, particularly human-centered solutions focused on improving people's media and information literacy.

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By Kristin M. Lord & Katya Vogt Mar. 18, 2021

The deliberate or unintentional spread of misinformation, despite capturing widespread public attention, remains as rampant as ever, showing up recently in the form of false claims about COVID-19 vaccines , the Capitol riot , and many other topics . This “ infodemic ” is polarizing politics , endangering communities , weakening institutions , and leaving people unsure what to believe or whom to trust . It threatens the foundations of democratic governance , social cohesion , national security , and public health .

Misinformation is a long-term problem that demands long-term, sustainable solutions as well as short-term interventions. We've seen a number of quicker, technological fixes that improve the social media platforms that supply information. Companies like Facebook and Twitter, for example, have adjusted their algorithms or called out problematic content . We've also seen slower, human-centered approaches that make people smarter about the media they demand to access online. Evidence-driven educational programs, for instance, have made people better at discerning the reliability of information sources, distinguishing facts from opinions, resisting emotional manipulation, and being good digital citizens.

It hasn't been enough. If we're to stop misinformation and its insidious effects, we need to radically expand and accelerate our counterattacks. It will take all sectors of society: business, nonprofits, advocacy organizations, philanthropists, researchers, governments, and more. We also need to balance our efforts. For too long, too many resources and debates have focused on changing the technology, not educating people. This emphasis on the supply side of the problem without a similar investment in the demand side may be a less effective use of time and energy.

While technology-centered, self-policing solutions—filtering software, artificial intelligence, modified algorithms, and content labeling—do have the ability to make changes quickly and at scale, they face significant ethical, financial, logistical, and legal constraints.

Are you enjoying this article? Read more like this, plus SSIR's full archive of content, when you subscribe .

For one, social media business models thrive on engagement, which incentivizes emotionally charged and freely flowing content. Tech leaders like Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, hesitate taking action over concerns about free speech and have tried to avoid political debates until pressed . When they do take action, they face scrutiny for an inconsistent approach. Additionally, research shows that some of the most commonly employed methods for combatting misinformation on social media—such as banners that display fact-checks—have little impact on people’s likelihood to believe deliberately misleading news, and some even backfire. And because people often have a deeply held desire to share what they know with others—particularly information that seems threatening or exciting —tech companies can only go so far to regulate content. There is also the challenge of volume. Tech platforms struggle to keep pace with the many forms and producers of disinformation. Stopping them resembles a high-stakes, never-ending game of Whac-A-Mole.

Given these challenges, we need to invest more into human-centered solutions focused on improving people's media and information literacy. They not only demonstrate a much deeper and longer-lasting impact, but also may be easier and cheaper to implement than commonly believed.

Research from the RAND Corporation and others shows media and information literacy improves critical thinking , awareness of media bias , and the desire to consume quality news —all of which help beat back misinformation. Even brief exposure to some training can improve competencies in media literacy, including a better understanding of news credibility or a more robust ability to evaluate biases . Media literacy has a stronger impact than political knowledge on the ability to evaluate the accuracy of political messages, regardless of political opinion. Digital media literacy reduced the perceived accuracy of false news, and training remains effective when delivered in different ways and by different groups .

Media literacy training has lasting impact. A year and a half after adults went through a program from IREX (a nonprofit where the authors work), they continued to be 25 percent more likely to check multiple news sources and 13 percent more likely to discern between disinformation and a piece of objective reporting. In Jordan and Serbia, participants in IREX's training also improved their media literacy skills up to 97 percent . 

Media literacy programs can also be affordably and extensively delivered through schools. Finland and Sweden incorporated media literacy into their education systems decades ago with positive results, and Ukraine is beginning to do the same . In Britain, youth who had training in schools showed an improvement in media literacy skills .

Critics may say that improving people's media literacy and other human-centered solutions are resource-intensive and will not address the problem quickly enough or at sufficient scale. These are real challenges, but the long-term efficacy of such programs is exactly what is needed in the never-ending battle with misinformation. We need to invest more in them while continuing to pursue technology solutions, or we may never create and sustain the accurately informed citizenry that healthy democracies demand.

The effort will require all sectors of societies across the globe collaborating to fully understand and solve the problem. We need nonprofits and advocacy organizations to raise the alarm with the people they serve. We need philanthropists to step up with funding to scale solutions. We need more researchers to provide evidence-based answers to the full scope of the problem and the efficacy of fixes. We need governments to integrate media literacy standards into schools and incentivize training. We need tech companies to do more than tweak their platforms—they need to invest in educating the people who use them, too.

The tools to blunt the power of misinformation are in our hands, but we have to work smarter and faster or risk losing an ever-intensifying fight. Much learning, coalition-building, scaling, and communication remains to be done to " emerge from information bankruptcy ." Solutions are complex but within our reach. And the consequences of inaction are dire: the increasingly severe and invasive destabilization of our societies and daily lives as lies trample the truth.

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Read more stories by Kristin M. Lord & Katya Vogt .

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Propaganda and the Importance of Critical Thinking

Propaganda is present in most types of modern media. It is ever more important to develop critical thinking skills to discern and analyze contentious topics so one may be resistant to their influence.

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Media Education is discussed in relation to critical thinking and the need to promote teaching and learning environments which form independent, empowered persons. The paper discusses the interplay between the Theory of Critical Thinking and Media Education. It demonstrates how the teaching of media education can be used as an effective means to promote a critical attitude and facilitate the process of registering, reflecting and exchanging knowledge thus enhancing the understanding of how the media can be related to broader social and economic changes. It also suggests how the media itself, in this paper through weblogs, can be used in teaching and learning contexts to promote critical thinking.

J. Adam Edwards

In the post-truth era we are constantly bombarded with " news " which is fabricated, distorted, and massaged information, published with the intention to deceive and mislead others. Such " news " has come to be known as " fake news ". The influence of fake news can have profound socio-political and cultural effects when translated into action. The ability to distinguish between real facts, fabricated stories, rumours, propaganda, or opinions is of paramount importance. The rapid proliferation of information through social media is now the norm. In this paper we consider the challenge of preparing students, in developing skills for recognising mis-information, dis-information and mal-information. We argue that critical thinking for evaluating information should now be considered a basic literacy, equally important to literacy itself, as well as information and information technology literacies. In this paper we revisit Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive skills and represent what a learner can achieve at each level. We customise the traditional moral and ethical concepts suggested by the US Content Subcommittee of the ImpactCS Steering Committee to flag the ethical concerns over mis-information, dis-information and mal-information. We report on current levels of awareness and practices at the authors' five higher education institutions, and reveal varying levels of awareness of the significance of critical literacy and different practices in each location. The paper concludes with an outline of future work.

Russell Blackford

Journal of Management Information and Decision Sciences

Anna Shutaleva

Advances in Media, Entertainment, and the Arts

Masato Kajimoto

This study examines how college educators in Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Malaysia adopted and adapted lessons gleaned from a news literacy curriculum developed by journalism instructors at Stony Brook University in New York. In doing so, the chapter situates the emerging field of news literacy within parameters of its parent field, media literacy, and current trends in digitization, globalization, and information freedom. Details on how educators in Asia made a pedagogy designed for American citizens relevant to their students and how they negotiated country-specific social, cultural, and political contexts are included. Future directions in research include more in-depth and comparative understandings of the processes at work in localizing media literacy frameworks as well as an exploration of what media literacy educators in the United States and other democracies can learn from their counterparts in countries where accessing, creating, and disseminating information could be considere...

Renee Hobbs

Contemporary propaganda is ubiquitous in our culture today as public relations and marketing efforts have become core dimensions of the contemporary communication system, affecting all forms of personal, social and public expression. To examine the origins of teaching and learning about propaganda, we examine some instructional materials produced in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA), which popularized an early form of media literacy that promoted critical analysis in responding to propaganda in mass communication, including in radio, film and newspapers. They developed study guides and distributed them widely, popularizing concepts from classical rhetoric and expressing them in an easy-to-remember way. In this paper we compare the popular list of seven propaganda techniques (with terms like “glittering generalities” and “bandwagon”) to a less well-known list, the ABC’s of Propaganda Analysis. While the seven propaganda techniques, rooted in ancient rhetoric, have endured as the dominant approach to explore persuasion and propaganda in secondary English education, the ABC’s of Propaganda Analysis, with its focus on the practice of personal reflection and life history analysis, anticipates some of the core concepts and instructional practices of media literacy in the 21st century. Following from this insight, we see the “wisdom of the crowds” as a historically-informed approach for exploring propaganda in the context of formal and informal learning. Crowdsourcing may help create increased informational clarity for consumers because ambiguous, incomplete, blurry and biased information actually inspires us to have conversations, share ideas, and listen to each other as a means to find truth.

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What is it?

Merriam-Webster defines propaganda as "ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause".

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Propaganda. In  Merriam-Webster.com dictionary . Retrieved July 20, 2020, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/propaganda

How to avoid it

• 10 Ways to Spot Online Misinformation Check out this article to learn ways to avoid propaganda.
• << Previous: Roadblocks to Thinking Critically
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• URL: https://infoguides.wtamu.edu/criticalthinking

Skills for Life: Media Literacy and Critical Thinking

Definition of Propaganda

Propaganda is a bit like a magician’s trick – it’s all about steering your attention so you see what someone wants you to see, and miss what they don’t want you to notice. It’s a way to share information, but in a sneaky way. It’s not always lies but can stretch the truth really thin. For the first simple definition: Propaganda is when someone uses certain facts, ideas, or rumors to paint a picture that benefits their goals, and they do it in a sneaky, sometimes misleading way. The second one is: Propaganda is the clever mix of truth, half-truths, and sometimes even lies, all bundled up to convince you to think or act a certain way, usually in politics or ads.

Types of Propaganda

There are many flavors of propaganda, like different ways to prepare potatoes, each method changing the taste. Here are the types:

• Bandwagon: This one says, “Join the crowd! Don’t get left out!” It makes you want to be part of the group.
• Testimonials: Like when a basketball star tells you to eat at a restaurant — it’s them lending their shine to something else.
• Name-calling: It’s basically like playground teasing, but grown-ups using it to make their opponents look bad.
• Glittering Generalities: Uses fancy, yet empty words like ‘freedom’ and ‘honor’ to jazz up something pretty ordinary.
• Plain Folks: When the big shots pretend they’re just regular people, so you’ll like them and think they understand you.
• Card Stacking: Like a magician, they only show you the cards they want you to see, hiding the rest.
• Transfer: Connecting something you respect (an emblem or a national flag) with what they want you to buy into.
• Fear: Suggesting something scary will happen if you don’t listen to them, trying to control you through your worries.

Examples of Propaganda

• Ads that portray politicians as heroes, ignoring any of their missteps, make them seem flawless to win your support. This is an example of propaganda because it’s designed to influence you by showing only the best parts and hiding anything negative.
• Speeches that hammer in catchy phrases until you can’t forget them are using repetition to make their point seem more important or true than it might be.
• Social media posts that push the idea that one group is a threat or another is perfect are spreading half-truths to shape public opinion.
• News channels that only say good things about one political side and ignore or criticize the other are controlling the story to sway your views.

Why is it Important?

Propaganda can be like junk food for your brain: it’s everywhere, can look good, but isn’t always good for you. It’s important to know about because it can affect what you believe and how you vote. For example, a politician might use propaganda to convince people they’re the best, even if they’ve made mistakes before. This matters because it could lead to people in power who aren’t the best choices. When we learn about propaganda, we become better at making decisions that match what we really believe, instead of what someone else tells us to believe. It’s like having a mental filter, so you can sort out the noise and find the truth that matters to you.

Origin of Propaganda

The word “propaganda” has roots older than the country itself, starting with a church group back in the 1600s. But don’t let the old-timey start fool you — it’s evolved into a big part of the game in US politics. It’s become a tool for shaping people’s thoughts and votes.

Controversies Surrounding Propaganda

Not everyone agrees on propaganda. Is it merely a way to spread ideas, or is it a sneaky trick? The lines between being persuasive and misleading are not always clear, causing heated arguments about whether it’s right or wrong.

Spotting Propaganda: A How-to Guide

If you want to be on the lookout for propaganda, think of it like being a detective. You’re trying to find clues that show if someone’s trying to pull the wool over your eyes. Look for signs like messages that only tell one side of the story, or phrases that get stuck in your head because they keep getting repeated. Try to see if endorsements by celebrities really hold water or are just for show. Your best bet is to gather information from lots of different places so you can see the whole picture, not just a piece of it.

Critical Thinking and Propaganda

Being a critical thinker is your best shield against propaganda. It means asking questions, digging for the full story, and checking the facts. It’s not accepting anything at face value, but doing your own detective work to find the truth.

Propaganda in Everyday Life

Propaganda isn’t only about political ads and speeches. It shows up in TV commercials, songs, and movies. It sneaks into our ideas about what’s cool, what to buy, and what’s right or wrong. That’s why recognizing it is like a superpower — it helps us decide who we want to be and what we believe in based on what’s real, not just what we’re told.

In conclusion, propaganda is a big player in the show of US politics and beyond, shaping how we view the world and the choices we make. Understanding propaganda is crucial because it equips us to see beyond the smoke and mirrors. We can dodge the mental traps and choose paths based on our true beliefs and facts.

Related Topics

• Media Literacy: This is about learning to think critically about what you see and hear in the media, separating fact from fiction.
• Advertising: Like propaganda, advertising often uses similar tactics to persuade you to buy products.
• Public Relations: PR manages the spread of information between organizations or individuals and the public, which can sometimes overlap with propaganda techniques.
• Cognitive Biases: These are like mental shortcuts that can affect our judgment, and propaganda often takes advantage of these biases.
• Disinformation: A more dangerous cousin of propaganda, disinformation is when false information is deliberately spread to deceive people.

The Will to Doubt: Bertrand Russell on Free Thought and Our Only Effective Self-Defense Against Propaganda

By maria popova.

“We must believe before we can doubt, and doubt before we can deny,” W.H. Auden observed in his commonplace book . Half a century earlier, Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970), the great poet laureate of reason, addressed the central equation of free thinking in his 1922 Conway Memorial Lecture, later published as Free Thought and Official Propaganda ( public library | free ebook ) — a short and searing book charged with Russell’s characteristic intellectual electricity, the immense power of which melts an entire century into astonishing timeliness speaking directly to the present day.

Three decades before he was awarded the Nobel Prize for “his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought,” Russell writes:

When we speak of anything as “free,” our meaning is not definite unless we can say what it is free from . Whatever or whoever is “free” is not subject to some external compulsion, and to be precise we ought to say what this kind of compulsion is. Thus thought is “free” when it is free from certain kinds of outward control which are often present. Some of these kinds of control which must be absent if thought is to be “free” are obvious, but others are more subtle and elusive.

Writing three years after the magnificent Declaration of the Independence of the Mind , which he signed alongside luminaries like Albert Einstein and Jane Addams, Russell points to two primary meanings of “free thought” — the narrower sense of resisting traditional dogma and a broader sense that encompasses all forms of propaganda pervading public life. A patron saint of nonbelievers , Russell writes:

I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out. I do not believe that, on the balance, religious belief has been a force for good. Although I am prepared to admit that in certain times and places it has had some good effects, I regard it as belonging to the infancy of human reason, and to a stage of development which we are now outgrowing. But there is also a wider sense of “free thought,” which I regard as of still greater importance. Indeed, the harm done by traditional religions seems chiefly traceable to the fact that they have prevented free thought in this wider sense.

He considers the three essential elements of this wider conception of free thought:

Thought is not “free” when legal penalties are incurred by the holding or not holding of certain opinions, or by giving expression to one’s belief or lack of belief on certain matters… The most elementary condition, if thought is to be free, is the absence of legal penalties for the expression of opinions. […] Legal penalties are, however, in the modern world, the least of the obstacles to freedom of thoughts. The two great obstacles are economic penalties and distortion of evidence. It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search.

Echoing the essence of Descartes’s twelve tenets of critical thinking , penned three centuries earlier, Russell returns to the centerpiece of free thought — the willingness to doubt:

William James used to preach the “will to believe.” For my part, I should wish to preach the “will to doubt.” None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error. The methods of increasing the degree of truth in our beliefs are well known; they consist in hearing all sides, trying to ascertain all the relevant facts, controlling our own bias by discussion with people who have the opposite bias, and cultivating a readiness to discard any hypothesis which has proved inadequate.

Half a century before Richard Feynman’s terrific meditation on science vs. religion and why doubt is essential for morality , Russell extols science as the domain of human knowledge that best exemplifies the fruitfulness of this “will to doubt”:

Every man of science whose outlook is truly scientific is ready to admit that what passes for scientific knowledge at the moment is sure to require correction with the progress of discovery; nevertheless, it is near enough to the truth to serve for most practical purposes, though not for all. In science, where alone something approximating to genuine knowledge is to be found, men’s attitude is tentative and full of doubt. In religion and politics, on the contrary, though there is as yet nothing approaching scientific knowledge, everybody considers it de rigueur to have a dogmatic opinion, to be backed up by inflicting starvation, prison, and war, and to be carefully guarded from argumentative competition with any different opinion. If only men could be brought into a tentatively agnostic frame of mind about these matters, nine-tenths of the evils of the modern world would be cured. War would become impossible, because each side would realize that both sides must be in the wrong. Persecution would cease. Education would aim at expanding the mind, not at narrowing it. Men would be chosen for jobs on account of fitness to do the work, not because they flattered the irrational dogmas of those in power.

He points Einstein and the relativity theory he had formulated just seven years earlier as an epitome of this disposition:

His theory upsets the whole theoretical framework of traditional physics; it is almost as damaging to orthodox dynamics as Darwin was to Genesis . Yet physicists everywhere have shown complete readiness to accept his theory as soon as it appeared that the evidence was in its favour. But none of them, least of all Einstein himself, would claim that he has said the last word… This critical undogmatic receptiveness is the true attitude of science.

Indeed, we have seen a supreme testament to this in the recent landmark detection of gravitational waves — something Einstein saw as a purely theoretical concept of unimaginable empirical corroboration .

Russell offers a disquieting thought experiment of sorts:

If Einstein had advanced something equally new in the sphere of religion or politics … the truth or falsehood of his doctrine would be decided on the battlefield, without the collection of any fresh evidence for or against it. This method is the logical outcome of William James’s will to believe. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is its exact opposite.

He considers the core obstacles to this vital rational doubt:

A great deal of this is due to the inherent irrationality and credulity of average human nature. But this seed of intellectual original sin is nourished and fostered by other agencies, among which three play the chief part — namely, education, propaganda, and economic pressure.

Russell examines each of the three in turn, beginning with education — a subject he would come to consider closely four years later in his masterwork on education and the good life . Education’s formal institutions, he argues, are set up “to impart information without imparting intelligence” and designed “not to give true knowledge, but to make the people pliable to the will of their masters” — a seedbed of political and cultural propaganda that begins in elementary school, with the teaching of a history told by those in power, and results in the widespread manipulation of public opinion. Lamenting “the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought,” he envisions the remedy:

Education should have two objects: first, to give definite knowledge — reading and writing, languages and mathematics, and so on; secondly, to create those mental habits which will enable people to acquire knowledge and form sound judgments for themselves. The first of these we may call information, the second intelligence.

He then turns to propaganda — the concerted manipulation of public opinion by those in power. Having previously advocated for the blurring of the line between intuition and the intellect , he writes:

Too much fuss is sometimes made about the fact that propaganda appeals to emotion rather than reason. The line between emotion and reason is not so sharp as some people think. […] The objection to propaganda is not only its appeal to unreason, but still more the unfair advantage which it gives to the rich and powerful. Equality of opportunity among opinions is essential if there is to be real freedom of thought; and equality of opportunity among opinions can only be secured by elaborate laws directed to that end, which there is no reason to expect to see enacted. The cure is not to be sought primarily in such laws, but in better education and a more sceptical public opinion.

Turning to the final impediment of free thought — the economic pressures of conformity, under which one is rewarded for siding with and adopting the dogmas of those in power — Russell writes:

There are two simple principles which, if they were adopted, would solve almost all social problems. The first is that education should have for one of its aims to teach people only to believe propositions when there is some reason to think that they are true. The second is that jobs should be given solely for fitness to do the work.

Nearly a century after Kierkegaard argued for the power of the minority and a generation before Hannah Arendt’s case for outsiderdom , Russell urges:

The protection of minorities is vitally important; and even the most orthodox of us may find himself in a minority some day, so that we all have an interest in restraining the tyranny of majorities. Nothing except public opinion can solve this problem.

It’s a sentiment of enormous poignancy and prescience, illustrating both how far we’ve come — Russell is writing more than three decades before the zenith of civil rights and the Equal Pay Act — and how far we have yet to go in a culture where, a century later, sexism and racism are far from gone and many workplaces are still systematically discriminating against minorities like Muslims and the LGBT community.

The cultivation of public opinion that advances equality and justice rather than upholding oppressive power structures has to do with the “will to doubt” at the heart of Russell’s case. He writes:

Some element of doubt is essential to the practice, though not to the theory, of toleration… If there is to be toleration in the world, one of the things taught in schools must be the habit of weighing evidence, and the practice of not giving full assent to propositions which there is no reason to believe true.

The role of the educator, he argues, is to teach young minds how to infer what actually happened “from the biased account of either side” and to instill in them the awareness that “everything in newspapers is more or less untrue” — a task all the more urgent today, when the old role of the newspapers has been largely taken over by incessant opinion-streams barraging us online and off with the certitude of their respective version of reality masquerading as truth.

Russell returns to the basic human predicament obstructing freedom of thought and envisions its only fruitful solution:

The evils of the world are due to moral defects quite as much as to lack of intelligence. But the human race has not hitherto discovered any method of eradicating moral defects; preaching and exhortation only add hypocrisy to the previous list of vices. Intelligence, on the contrary, is easily improved by methods known to every competent educator. Therefore, until some method of teaching virtue has been discovered, progress will have to be sought by improvement of intelligence rather than of morals. One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instruction as to the prevalent forms of mendacity.

Writing nearly a century ago, even before Walter Benjamin’s increasingly timely meditation on the challenge of extracting wisdom from the morass of (mis)information , Russell once again reveals his extraordinary prescience:

Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.

He concludes by considering what it would take for us to implement these two pillars of free thought — an education system that fosters critical thinking rather than conformity and a meritocratic workforce where jobs are earned based on acumen rather than ideological alignment with power structures:

It must be done by generating an enlightened public opinion. And an enlightened public opinion can only be generated by the efforts of those who desire that it should exist.

Complement the timelessly terrific Free Thought and Official Propaganda with Galileo on critical thinking and the folly of believing our preconceptions , Ursula K. Le Guin on power, oppression, and freedom of mind , and Carl Sagan’s indispensable Baloney Detection Kit , then revisit Russell on what “the good life” really means , why “fruitful monotony” is essential for happiness , the nature of time , and the four desires driving all human behavior .

— Published May 18, 2016 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/05/18/bertrand-russell-free-thought-propaganda-doubt/ —

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Propaganda Techniques

What are Propaganda Techniques?   They are the methods and approaches used to spread ideas that further a cause - a political, commercial, religious, or civil cause.

Why are they used?   To manipulate the readers' or viewers' reason and emotions; to persuade you to believe in something or someone, buy an item, or vote a certain way.

What are the most commonly used propaganda techniques?  See which of the ten most common types of propaganda techniques you already know.

Types of Propaganda Techniques:

Errors of Faulty Logic

Errors of Attack

Errors of Weak Reference

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Fallacies and Propaganda

TIP Sheet FALLACIES and PROPAGANDA

It is important to be able to evaluate what you read and hear. If you did not sort the credible from the incredible, the serious from the playful, the essential from the nonessential, the world would be full of conflicting and bewildering messages. Critical thinking enables you to distinguish between fact and opinion and distinguish sound from faulty reasoning.

One kind of faulty reasoning is a fallacy , a breakdown of logic. A fallacious argument is one that tries to argue from A to B, but because it contains hidden assumptions or factual irrelevancies, reaches an invalid conclusion.

Another kind of faulty reasoning results from substituting emotion for thought. Propaganda is an indirect message appealing primarily to emotion. It is aimed at forming opinions rather than increasing knowledge. Propaganda intends to persuade without offering a logical reason to adopt a particular view or take a particular action. While the word itself carries rather a negative connotation (implying intent to mislead or deceive) the techniques can be used in good causes as well—a Cancer Society fundraiser, for example. At least some propaganda techniques are used occasionally by non-profit organizations, advertisers, churches, news organizations, governments, and instructors.

For good or ill, makers of propaganda typically select facts most appropriate to their purpose and omit facts that do not help them achieve that purpose. Because some propaganda uses facts (albeit selectively), it can look like a reasoned argument. But because it fails to make a logical case, propaganda is often fallacious as well as emotional.

Fallacies and propaganda devices are slippery by nature; they overlap, are often used in combination, and do not always fit neatly into one category or another. Following are examples.

Ad Hominem Fallacy

An ad hominem fallacy redirects the discussion of an issue to a discussion of one of the subjects—to his or her personal failings, inconsistency, or bias. For example, in a discussion of the pros and cons of privatizing Social Security, it would be an ad hominem attack simply to declare your opponent a parasite feeding on the lifeblood of the working class. Similarly, you would be guilty of an ad hominem attack if you exclaimed, “How can you claim to be a born-again Christian?” (pointing out an inconsistency of position) or “Of course you would say that—you’re a Libertarian!” (pointing out personal bias). None of these response addresses the actual pros and cons of the proposal to privatize Social Security.

A preemptive ad hominem attack, launched before the discussion fairly begins, is called “Poisoning the Well” (below).

Ad Nauseum Fallacy

Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, said that if only you repeat something often enough, people will come to believe it. Ad nauseum repetition is the stuff urban legends are made of. Less harmless than urban legends is the indoctrination (“brainwashing”) of cult groups, which aims to create belief by aiming sheer, ad nauseum repetition relentlessly at an exhausted subject.

Fallacy Based on Appeal to Belief, Common Practice, or Expertise

An appeal to belief suggests that, since most reasonable people (of your sort) believe something, you should believe it, too. “Educators fear that vouchers will undermine funding for public schools.” Educators in particular might be inclined to conclude that this fear is universal among educators, and identify with the belief because they identify with the group.

Appeals to common practice suggest that most everyone does it, and furthermore that it is therefore okay; “Nobody in California comes to a full stop. That’s why they call it ‘the California Stop.’”

An appeal to expertise dares you to pit your own ignorance against experts making a value claim (a Grammy award-winning country singer publicly endorses a political candidate, for example). Now, specialists agreeing on objective claims about matters within their field of expertise are reasonably to be believed, but specialists making value judgments outside their field might not. (For more, see the TIP Sheet “Objective and Subjective Claims.”)

Phrases like the following might signal an appeal to belief, expertise, or common practice:

“Ask anyone…” “Everyone knows…” “Any reasonable person would…” “It’s obvious that…”

Fallacy Based on Appeal to Indignation or Anger

The problem with the appeal to indignation or anger is that anger is a poor substitute for reasoning. On the contrary, anger clouds thinking. Certainly anger is sometimes justified, when it follows an argument that gives me grounds for anger, but anger is not the way to reach that conclusion. And anyway, sometimes we are angry for irrational reasons.

For example: “The governor is cutting education funds!” may cause a reaction of anger, followed by the conclusion, “The governor is a dolt and a fascist!” (see “Name-Calling,” below). Anger short-circuits the reasoning process, whereby we might have examined the figures and learned (much to our surprise) that education funding is up from last year—just not up as much as originally hoped.

Fallacy Based on Appeal to Pity

Who has not seen the heartbreaking pictures of starving orphans with the request for donations to ease their plight? A valid appeal to pity has a direct link between the object of pity (starving children) and the desired action (the money that can help feed them).

Appeal to pity becomes a fallacy when there is no logical link between the arousal of pity and the desired action: “Please give me a break, Professor. If I don’t pass this class I’ll lose my financial aid.” Whether this student is qualified to pass the class depends on the quality and quantity of work completed, not on financial need. There is no relevant connection between the student’s need on the one hand, and the quality of work she has (or has not) performed on the other.

Fallacy Based on Appeal to Popularity or Bandwagon

Appeal to popularity exploits the human desire to belong to a group. While there is nothing wrong with belonging to a group, some decisions are not group decisions, should be made without taking a head count, and should be held to even if they are unpopular. For example, my softball team’s consensus should probably not be the determining factor in my decision to take a cut in pay in return for more flexibility in my working hours. My softball team’s disapproval (they think I should go for the higher salary) should be irrelevant.

“Jumping on the bandwagon ” is supporting a cause or position merely because it appears to be popular or winning. Politicians who waver from one position to another are sometimes trying to protect their jobs by appealing to the greatest number of voters based on changing poll information. Of course, it is reasonable sometimes to change one’s mind; it is just usually preferable to base the change on reason.

Fallacy Based on Appeal to Ridicule

Sarcasm is always hostile. Ridicule, sarcasm, and the “horse laugh” are the persuasion techniques of bullies. Appeal to ridicule tries to convince you to accept an argument in order to avoid becoming the butt of the joke. The laugh might be at the person (see “Ad Hominem,” above) or at his position (see “Straw Man,” below). Whether it is blatant or subtle, ridicule essentially denies discussion.

Apple Polishing Fallacy

Apple polishing is connecting compliments to unrelated issues. It urges someone to accept a claim in the afterglow of pleasure at the compliment. “You are by far the best math teacher I’ve ever had. You made me love math! I think I may change my major to math. I want to be just like you. Oh—I haven’t finished that chapter review; you don’t mind if I hand it in late?”

Fallacy Based on Begging the Question

Begging the question is a type of circular reasoning that presents as a true premise an assertion that actually requires its own proof. This leads to a “conclusion” that has already been pre-supposed or implied. For example, a student complains bitterly that he failed the English composition exit exam. “The test is bogus! I’ve taken it twice now, and they won’t pass me!” The student concludes that the test is bogus. His implied premise is that his essay is, in fact, good enough to pass. But whether his essay is good enough to pass is, itself, the question. Asserting that it is (or implying that it is) is not sufficient to prove that it is. (Application of the test rubric, by trained test scorers—twice—would appear to conclude that it is not.)

Distribution Fallacies: Composition and Division

Distribution fallacies arise two ways: In the composition fallacy , I know the characteristics of the whole, and (wrongly) attribute those characteristics to each of its parts. Stereotyping of individuals may result from a composition fallacy. Suppose I have read statistics that attribute very strong business ambition to a certain demographic group. I then attribute business ambition to each person of that group, without respect for individual variations (See also “Hasty Generalization,” below).

In its converse, the division fallacy , I know the characteristics of an individual or part, and (wrongly) attribute those characteristics to the whole. However, the parts are not necessarily representative of the whole. Broad stereotyping of a group may result from the division fallacy. Suppose I have become acquainted with a man from Taiwan who is an extremely talented electrical engineer. I mistakenly conclude that all Taiwanese, as a group, are amazing electrical engineers.

False Dilemma Fallacy

The false dilemma fallacy limits responses to those which serve the ends of its user (“Yes or no?”), implicitly denying the middle ground (“Maybe…”) or any qualified response (“Yes, but…”) . In a discussion on illegal immigration from Mexico to the U.S., for example, there is a vast middle ground of discussion between the extremes of building a very high fence on the one hand, and allowing uncontrolled immigration with its associated high social costs on the other. To suggest that a discussion on immigration is simply a choice between the two extremes is a false dilemma.

Political surveys frequently pose questions positing false dilemmas, using loaded questions that are worded in such a way that the desired attitude is suggested in the question. The responder is thus “steered” toward the desired response.

Guilt by Association Fallacy

The guilt by association fallacy muddles the process of fairly evaluating an idea, person, or group by interjecting irrelevant and misleading negative material. Think of it as a kind of red herring (below). This fallacy tries to connect ideas or persons to something unsavory or untrustworthy in order to discredit them. Take, for example, this claim made by an individual running against the incumbent for the office of sheriff: “Our sheriff has breakfast every single week with the head of a white supremacist group.” The fact that this weekly breakfast is attended by thirty-five local businessmen, including the head of the white supremacist group, is selectively omitted here (See also “Stacking the Deck, below). Be on guard when you see phrases like these:

“has ties to…” “connected with” “is the parent company/subsidiary of…” “was a member of…”

Hasty Generalization Fallacy

A hasty generalization draws an unwarranted conclusion from insufficient evidence (see also “Distribution fallacies,” above). It often happens when the sample is too small to support the conclusion. For example, data compiled from 1,000 households, all in Nebraska, would probably be insufficient to accurately predict the outcome of a national election. Hasty generalization occurs, as well, when the sample is too biased to support the conclusion: Ten million households, selected from all fifty states, but all of them Libertarian (or Democrat, or Republican), may also be insufficient to predict the result of a national election.

Another kind of hasty generalization occurs as the result of misleading vividness . For example, a man in Tonga who watched many American daytime dramas (“soap operas”) might conclude that people in the U.S. were more materially prosperous, more well-dressed, more vicious, more self-centered, and more immodest than most of them are.

Name Calling

Name-calling is not so much a fallacy (see “Ad hominem,” above) as it is a propaganda technique, a crude attempt to make mud stick. It does not pretend to thoughtfully address issues or prove anything.

“The femi-Nazis want to eliminate gender.” “We don’t need any more right-wing theocrats (or leftist, activist judges) on the bench.” “This administration is a bunch of lying, neo-Fascist colonialists (or liberal, atheistic social engineers).” “America is the Great Satan.”

Negative Proof Fallacy or Argument from Ignorance

The negative proof fallacy declares that, because no evidence has been produced, that therefore none exists. For example, a theist might declare, “You atheists cannot prove God does not exist, therefore God exists.” On the other hand, the atheist declares, “You deists cannot prove that God exists, therefore God does not exist.” First of all, the lack of proof one way or the other does nothing to prove or disprove God’s existence; the deist and the atheist may just as well make simple assertions: “God exists,” and “God does not exit.” Second, the general rule is that the person who asserts something has the burden of proof to provide evidence to support that something. It is not sufficient to make the assertion and then shift the burden of proof to the listener to prove you wrong.

Poisoning the Well Fallacy

Poisoning the well is an ad hominem attack (see “Ad hominem,” above) on a person’s integrity or intelligence that takes place before the merits of a case can be considered. It redirects a discussion to the faults of one of the parties. “Of course she will oppose the tort reform bill—she’s a lawyer, isn’t she?” The speaker suggests that something (greed? law school?) has corrupted the lawyer’s thinking to a degree that she cannot evaluate the tort reform bill on its own merits. Now the discussion is no longer about the merits of the tort reform bill at all, but about the personal qualities and motives of the other party.

Questionable Cause Fallacy

A questionable cause fallacy is the result of incorrectly identifying the causes of events either by oversimplifying or by mistaking a statistical correlation for a cause. Oversimplifying occurs when complex events with many contributing causes are attributed to a single cause: “School shootings happen because bullying makes students ‘snap.’” Since at least some bullied students do not shoot their classmates, this would appear to be oversimplified. Mistaking correlation for cause can happen when unrelated events occur together, either by chance or because they are actually both results of yet another cause. For example, does eating more ice cream in the summer cause an increase in crime rates? The rates for ice cream eating and violent crime both rise each summer. However, the statistical correlation notwithstanding, eating ice cream does not cause violent crime to increase. Rather, ice cream eating and crime may rise together as a result of a common cause—hot weather.

There may be an evolutionary advantage to discerning cause and effect; we’re hard-wired to look for causes, even if wrongheadedly. The tendency for humans to “see” a pattern where none exists is called the clustering illusion , demonstrated by the Texas sharpshooter fallacy: The Texas sharpshooter fires a hundred shots randomly into the side of barn. He then paints a target around the thickest cluster of holes. He has taken statistically non-significant, random data and attributed to it a common cause. The perennial attempts to find meaningful, hidden codes in the works of Shakespeare or the Bible (or the works of Leonardo da Vinci) illustrate the clustering illusion.

Fallacy Based on Scare Tactics or Appeal to Fear

Scare tactics create appeal from emotion. For example, the following appeal to fear requires me to accept a certain standard of “businesslike” attitude and behavior on grounds of fear:

This company expects a high level of commitment; be here in the office finishing the proposal through the weekend. Don’t forget your employee review is Monday.

Whether we can agree on what an acceptably “high level of commitment” is will have to wait for another time, since my immediate problem is avoiding the implied threat of a poor employee review. A warning differs from scare tactics because a warning is relevant to the issue. For example, it would be foolish to ignore the following warning:

No late research papers will be accepted; you cannot pass the class without a passing grade on this paper.

Slippery Slope Fallacy

Slippery slope arguments conclude that, if an eventual, logical result of an action or position is bad, then the original action or position must be bad. It is characteristic of a slippery slope argument that the final badness arrives in increments; thus, even though the badness could have been foreseen and may even have been inevitable, most of us are taken by surprise. Slippery slope arguments are common in social change issues.

A slippery slope argument is not necessarily a fallacy. It becomes a fallacy when the chain of cause and effect breaks down. If I cannot show you the reason why a causes b, and b causes c, and c causes d, my argument is fallacious. Typically, the (fallacious) chain of “logical” intermediate events becomes improbably long and unlikely, exponentially increasing the unlikelihood of the final result.

Often a historical precedent is cited as evidence that the chain of increasingly bad effects will occur. For example, there exist several historical precedents for the confiscation of guns by oppressive governments: in both Marxist and Nazi states, for example, the government confiscated the guns of citizens based on the registration records of those guns. Gun aficionados in the U.S. argue that gun registration anywhere will inevitably lead to confiscation of guns by the government. However, as a simple matter of logic, a historical precedent alone does not make those results necessary (or even probable) in every case. Gun registration opponents could avoid the slippery slope fallacy if they could show the reason why registration leads inevitably to confiscation. Or, if gun registration opponents could demonstrate that the principle that favors registration of guns is the same principle that would allow confiscation of guns, the fallacy may be avoided.

Smokescreen or Red Herring Fallacy

The smokescreen fallacy responds to a challenge by bringing up another topic. Smokescreen or red herring fallacies mislead with irrelevant (though possibly related) facts:

“We know we need to make cuts in the state budget. But do you really think we should cut funds for elementary physical education programs?”

“Well, we have to cut something. This governor has turned a million-dollar surplus into a billion-dollar shortfall. And what’s up with that shady software deal he made?”

Why red herring? A herring (a salt-cured fish) has a very strong odor; drag one across the trail of an animal and tracking dogs will abandon the animal’s scent for the herring’s. (A satirical fictitious example is the “Chewbacca Defense,” first used on the television show South Park in 1998, in which a lawyer convinces a jury to convict (and later to acquit) by misleading them with irrelevant facts about Wookies; for more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewbacca_Defense .)

Stacking the Deck Fallacy

Stacking the deck is a fallacy of omitting evidence that does not support your position. Like the card shark who “stacks” the cards before dealing to favor his own hand, a person who stacks the deck of an argument is cheating. All the cards favor him, because he has arranged them so. On the contrary, honest treatment of a discussable issue should evaluate evidence both for and against one’s own position. Stacking the deck can achieve short term wins against the unwary, but eventually a card stacker’s credibility will suffer.

For example, look again at the claim made above (see “Guilt by Association”) by the person running against an incumbent for the office of sheriff: “Our sheriff has breakfast every single week with the head of a white supremacist group.” This assertion might win the challenger some votes; note that the incumbent cannot truthfully deny it and independent investigation would confirm it. However, the challenger has selectively omitted the fact that this weekly breakfast is attended by thirty-five local businessmen, including the head of the white supremacist group. Should someone effectively expose the cheat before the election, the challenger will appear in an unfavorable light.

Straw Man Fallacy

If I take a complex position and oversimplify it in order to more easily overcome it, I am guilty of the straw man fallacy. In a sense, a straw man fallacy is a type of red herring (above), in that it misleads by misrepresenting the opponent’s position. Complex ideas about family planning are misrepresented below:

“The nuns taught us family planning was a sin. We would have to keep having babies because babies were a blessing, no matter how many of them already were in the house.”

The speaker may go on to demonstrate how unnatural and medieval such ideas are, defeating the straw man he himself has created. Instead of defeating his opponent’s best argument, he takes a weak argument, falsifies it, and then “overcomes” it. Political parties often demonize each other, painting extreme caricatures of each other’s actual, more thoughtful, positions in order to argue more easily (in marketable sound-bites) against them.

The straw man fallacy works best if the characterization closely resembles the real one; that is, if I choose to misrepresent your position, I should not be too obvious about it.

Subjectivist or Relativist Fallacy

The subjectivist or relativist fallacy turns all disagreements into matters of opinion by claiming that what is true and what is false are different for different people. In matters of fact, such a claim cannot be made without making nonsense. In matters of opinion, however, there exists no single standard to prove one or another claim conclusively true or false. The rightness or wrongness of either opinion might very well depend on where you stand. But even for matters of opinion, if there is no “truth,” then any opinion seems as good as any another and all opinions seem essentially groundless and equally meaningless. On the contrary, it is a virtue of a “good” opinion that it has a basis in evidence and logic. For more, see the TIP Sheets “Objective and Subjective Claims” and “Deductive, Inductive, and Abductive Reasoning.”

A subjectivist fallacy on a factual matter puts an end to rational discussion:

A: “The earth is roughly spherical, and goes once around the sun in about 365 days. B: “That may be true for you, but it’s not true for me. And I have a right to my opinion.”

But a subjectivist claim even on a subjective matter (“It may be wrong for you, but it’s right for me!”) makes further discussion difficult by eliminating the common ground for discussion.

Fallacy Based on Transfer

Transfer is an emotional appeal that associates something or someone known (and therefore implied “good”) with a product, idea, or candidate. Celebrity endorsements are an example. Well-known objects and images can be used the same way, evoking an emotional response that sponsors hope will transfer to their cause. For example, images of Arlington National Cemetery might be used to help raise money for veterans’ groups. The image of Mount Everest is often used to help sell outdoor products (though relatively few of the products’ users will ever actually attempt to climb Everest).

Wishful Thinking Fallacy

Wishful thinking is choosing to believe something is true because we really, really want it to be true. We usually perpetrate wishful think on ourselves, but it also underlies many “positive thinking” philosophies: to believe in your dream is to make it come true. Though wishful (positive) thinking followed by action may help me achieve my goals, wishful thinking alone achieves nothing. Wishful thinking promotes comfort, but it does not promote reasoning.

2005 by Rosemary McKeever

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A global effort to counter extremism through education

Subscribe to the center for middle east policy newsletter, madiha afzal madiha afzal fellow - foreign policy , center for middle east policy , strobe talbott center for security, strategy, and technology , center for asia policy studies.

Monday, January 25, 2021

• 25 min read

This brief is part of the Brookings Blueprints for American Renewal & Prosperity project.

A review of Obama and Trump administration policies

Policy recommendations.

This brief argues that we should productively use the current moment of reckoning with the post-9/11 era to redefine our paradigm for countering extremism and terrorism around the world in a manner that is both comprehensive and cost-effective.

Taking stock 20 years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, it is clear that the global position of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group (IS) has weakened, owing to successful (and enormously costly) counterterrorism efforts led by the United States. Yet other groups that are more locally and regionally focused, in many cases splinters of al-Qaida and IS, are resurging or ascendant. Terrorism remains a problem around the world, and the extremism that fuels it remains largely unaddressed.

Efforts undertaken to counter extremism over the last 20 years were belated when they began, and were never as concerted as the effort to counter terrorism.

Efforts undertaken to counter extremism over the last 20 years were belated when they began, and were never as concerted as the effort to counter terrorism. They were also fragmented and focused on a bottom-up approach, when research informs us that extremism is in many ways driven from the top down, via country-level education systems, laws, and politics.

This Blueprint therefore proposes a new paradigm for countering extremism, based on a top-down, country-level approach that focuses on education and equipping citizens with critical thinking skills to counter extremist propaganda. To be specific, I propose a U.S.-led, United Nations-centered, global effort to counter extremism through education and the media. One way to operationalize this would be to have member states sign a U.N. convention on education and extremism, and have them, under that framework, reach an agreement according to which signatory countries would commit to making formal education systems and media compliant with a set of guidelines — including removing hate material from curricula and teaching tolerance, teaching critical thinking, teaching how to counter extremist propaganda, and teaching how to decipher the credibility of information seen or received through both mainstream and social media. The benefits of this approach would extend to countering all forms of extremism.

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Nineteen years after the attacks on September 11, 2001 and the declaration of the subsequent U.S.-led “war on terror,” the devastation wrought by the global coronavirus pandemic has forced an American reckoning with the post-9/11 era. This reckoning had already begun in recent years, with the effort to wind down the “forever wars,” especially the war in Afghanistan, and a consideration of the enormous costs — in lives and money — that they have entailed. That the daily domestic death toll of the pandemic has been consistently exceeding that of the 9/11 attacks, puts the concern into sharp relief — as do the events of January 6, with pro-Trump extremists staging an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — lending an urgency to the desire to turn the page . The underlying argument is that we should focus instead on long-ignored and urgent domestic problems — socioeconomic inequality, persistent racism and the threat of white supremacy, preparing for the next pandemic — and contend with other pressing foreign policy concerns, including the rise of China .

But with this urgency, there is a danger that we will move on without absorbing the lessons learned from the last two decades — and perhaps worse, shelving lessons yet unlearned — and without a concerted approach to tackling the twin problems of terrorism and extremism, which remain significant globally. In 2019, nearly 8,500 terrorist attacks took place around the world, almost the same number as in 2012. What’s more, the extremism and ideologies that fuel these attacks remain intact. This brief argues that we should productively use the current moment of reckoning with the post-9/11 era to redefine our paradigm for countering extremism and terrorism around the world in a manner that is both comprehensive and cost-effective.

Over the past two decades, American efforts have focused disproportionately on countering terror — and have seen success in protecting the U.S. homeland. But the effort at countering violent extremism (CVE), when it finally began during the second Obama administration, was belated, and based on a bottom-up approach that was piecemeal, fragmented, and ultimately insufficient to counter extremism in any comprehensive way. This Blueprint proposes a new paradigm for countering extremism, based on a top-down, state-level approach that focuses on education and equipping citizens with critical thinking skills to counter extremist propaganda. This is based on research across contexts which shows that the most important policies that affect attitudes and can lead to extremism are driven from the top down — via education systems, laws, and politics — and not the bottom up.

I recommend reform of national education policies to counter extremism, but recognize that targeting specific countries, or using bilateral approaches, is a non-starter. Therefore, I propose a U.S.-led, United Nations-centered, global effort to counter extremism through formal education and the media. One proposal to operationalize this would be to have member states sign a U.N. convention on education and extremism, and have them, under that framework, reach an agreement according to which signatory countries would commit to making education systems and media compliant with a set of guidelines. This approach, ambitious though it is, would be analogous to that followed by the Paris agreement to counter climate change. One could use a less transformative model as well, such as subsuming these guidelines and recommendations under the education goal of the Sustainable Development Goals, but that less visible approach could prove less effective. The positive externalities of focusing on education would extend beyond their effect on extremism: This would also counter disinformation campaigns and the phenomenon of fake news, and the effect on attitudes could in turn have far-reaching effects on various forms of violence.

One note — the arguments made here are based on research on jihadist extremism, but the solutions proposed are universal, and apply to other forms of extremism, including right-wing extremism in the United States, as well.

Assessing the jihadist threat around the world

The exact total cost of the post-9/11 wars to date is disputed, but the upper-bound estimate , from the Costs of War project at Brown University, posits that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and money spent on homeland security have cost the United States $6.4 trillion through 2019. If that is an overestimate, it is difficult to argue that the amount spent isn’t at least half that number. If success can be measured in terms of preventing a large-scale terrorist attack on the United States, the huge resources expended on counterterrorism, intelligence and the homeland security architecture after the attacks of September 11 have yielded results: just over 100 people have been killed in jihadist attacks in the United States since then.

Al-Qaida as an organization is far weaker than it once was, owing to U.S. counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan — including as many as 540 targeted drone strikes during the Obama administration. While the ungoverned vacuum left in Iraq led to the rise of the Islamic State group (IS), the concerted fight against it begun by the Obama administration and continued during the Trump presidency largely dismantled its “caliphate.” U.S. and international efforts in response to IS’s recruitment of foreign fighters have severely hindered the ability of foreign fighters to travel and thus of terrorist organizations to recruit them. Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi have been killed. A key al-Qaida leader, Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was killed in Iran in an Israeli spy operation in August 2020.

The fiscal costs of all of this to the United States have been extraordinary, and the loss of life significant, but the American homeland is, for now, undeniably safer. With the fall of the IS “caliphate” and the decimation of al-Qaida’s leadership, the major terrorist threat the United States faces domestically is no longer jihadist, but white supremacist . Indeed, those who contend that the war on terror must no longer occupy a central position in our national priorities point to the fact that the direct jihadist threat to the U.S. has abated. (In December, though, the Trump administration dismantled a Pentagon office focused on IS, a worrying action that may have led to gaps in the provision of counterterrorism information to the incoming administration).

Yet jihadist terrorism remains a significant problem globally, including from regional al-Qaida and IS affiliates that have proven lethal to their local populations. Two devastating terrorist attacks on the same day in November 2020 in Vienna and Kabul attest to this. On the morning of November 2, 2020, three gunmen stormed Kabul University, one of the oldest universities in Afghanistan, killing 35 students and professors. Sixteen of the students killed were studying policy and public administration , hoping to help build their country’s future. A local IS affiliate, Islamic State – Khorasan Province (IS-K), claimed responsibility for the attack. In Vienna, Austria that evening, a 20-year old man shot and killed four people in a crowded district; he had been convicted of attempting to join IS in the past. IS claimed responsibility for his attack.

Al-Qaida still survives in Afghanistan, and recent reports have noted its resilience ; a spate of al-Qaida leaders was killed in special operations in Afghanistan and Syria during the last week of October 2020. Regional affiliates, including al-Shabab in Somalia, operate from the Maghreb to East Asia. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claimed an attack on the Pensacola naval air base in Florida in December 2019.

The Taliban, which gave haven to al-Qaida in Afghanistan in the run up to 2001, is now a legitimate political actor domestically in that country and internationally, having militarily held off the United States and signed a peace deal with it in February 2020. It is at its most powerful since 2001. Despite the main condition of the U.S.-Taliban deal signed in Doha for the Taliban being counterterrorism commitments in exchange for a complete American withdrawal, the U.N. reports that the Taliban has not cut ties with al-Qaida. It is also worth noting that the Doha deal, seen in the region as a victory for the Taliban and as “ America’s surrender ,” is perceived as a boon to the jihadist movement at large. Al-Qaida said the deal signified the “enemy acknowledging its defeat” and congratulated the Taliban on its “great victory” over America and its allies.

In Nigeria, the terrorist group Boko Haram has waged a deadly insurgency in the country’s northeast since 2009, and in recent years in the Lake Chad region at the meeting point of Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, and Niger. A splinter group, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), declared allegiance to IS in 2015. It is Boko Haram’s more brutal faction. Boko Haram and ISWAP have inflicted more violence on state actors in Nigeria since 2018 than at any other point in the insurgency.

The Pakistani Taliban (also known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP) killed tens of thousands of Pakistanis between 2007 and 2015, using Pakistan’s alliance with the U.S. in its war in Afghanistan as justification for its insurgency. The TTP was in retreat after an extensive Pakistani military operation that began against it in 2014, but has reconsolidated and reemerged in 2020 in its former strongholds in the country’s northwest. TTP militants killed at least 40 Pakistani soldiers between March and September 2020.

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Finally, attacks by individual actors who draw inspiration from global jihadist groups — lone wolves — have continued in the U.S. and Europe. In October, an attacker at the Notre Dame church in Nice, France, killed 3, in the aftermath of the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad by the magazine Charlie Hebdo. (The investigation is ongoing, but no credible group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, leading to speculation that the attack was inspired and not directed.)

Taking stock, the position of core al-Qaida and IS, terrorist groups that focus on a global jihad — and thus pose a direct threat to the United States — has weakened. Other groups that are more locally and regionally focused, in many cases splinters of al-Qaida and IS, are resurging or ascendant. There are factions and differences within the jihadist movement; there is no one leader it looks to, as it did to bin Laden, and later Baghdadi to an extent.

Yet the ideological overlap across various jihadist groups remains, and fighters often cross from one group to the other. In Pakistan, they switched from the Afghan jihad to the Kashmir-focused jihad in the 1990s. Those Talibs who are unhappy with the U.S.-Taliban deal are now being recruited by its rival, IS-K. In assessing threats to the United States, we cannot rule out local and regional terrorist actors that can cross lines to boost groups that may directly target America.

The question of extremism

Extremism and terrorism are twin problems: extremism can lead directly to violence and it also gives terrorist groups oxygen by providing them an environment for survival, in terms of logistical and financial support, potential recruits, and most broadly, ideological space. Yet while significant resources have been spent on countering terrorism, the project of understanding and tackling the root causes of jihadist extremism around the world largely remains incomplete.

There are several questions relevant to understanding extremism: who becomes a terrorist, and what leads people to support terrorist groups? Considerable attention was paid to this topic in the aftermath of 9/11. The initial conventional wisdom — that the poor and uneducated become terrorists and support terrorist groups — was debunked, and replaced with an amalgam of correlates of extremism, often not lending themselves to quick resolution or simple explanation: grievance, alienation, deficiencies in human rights, lack of political representation. Not enough attention was paid to the ideological appeal of jihadism. Neither was there a focus on understanding attitudes on a spectrum of extremism to violent extremism. The Obama administration’s approach to CVE, as the name suggests, only looked at the latter. It thus missed the structure and determinants of non-violent support —logistical, ideological, and financial — for extremist groups.

In interdisciplinary research on views on the Pakistan Taliban and Boko Haram, I have studied what drove support for these groups among the population in Pakistan and Nigeria respectively, and how it relates to education. In my work on Pakistan, I found that extremism in the population is driven by the decisions taken by the Pakistani state. The state’s curricula, its laws, and its politics have fostered in its citizens a worldview that aligns with terrorist group propaganda and thus makes them vulnerable to it. The Pakistani government education system, in particular, is a vehicle used to impart a biased, one-sided view of the world, one that victimizes Pakistan and places the blame for its problems on the rest of the world and fosters an “us-versus-them” mindset. This, I found, is a particular problem in high school history textbooks — in which information is presented without sources, and a one-sided historical narrative with half-truths and errors is presented as fact. Schooling in Pakistan focuses on rote memorization and does not teach critical thinking, which would allow students to recognize and counter propaganda when they see it. As a result, when Pakistanis encounter extremist propaganda, in many ways consistent with the exclusionary view of the world they find in their history textbooks, they buy into it. In interviews I conducted in Pakistani high schools, I met two students with views sympathetic to an extremist group who had been influenced directly by fundamentalist propaganda from that group, and found themselves unable to counter it. Other students had bought wholesale into videos or photos they had seen online which purported to show people being trained in America to attack Pakistan, a conspiracy theory.

Bangladesh, a country similar to Pakistan (and once its eastern half), offers a striking counter to Pakistan in terms of the prevalence of extremism and terrorism in the country. I’d argue it is the decisions taken by the Bangladeshi state that have ensured extremism remains checked in the country, from the structure of the constitution to its politics and education system. In a non-democratic context, Morocco also provides an example of how much the state matters: its monarchy ensures — often heavy-handedly — the espousal of a “tolerant” Islam in the population.

In the Nigerian case, I found that citizens’ support for Boko Haram rests on grievances in Nigeria’s north against the state-imposed Western system of education — one seen as insufficiently representative and responsible for the north’s backwardness (because it was imposed on an unfamiliar population after independence as part of Nigeria’s “federal character”) — and associated with the elite’s corruption.

In each of these contexts, formal education systems and curricula — in particular, those in secondary or high school – play a large role in defining attitudes in the population. (University education, I found, was less of a problem, and also countered the problematic curricula taught in high school.) Education policy, of course, is entirely endogenous, and is determined by any country’s notions of nationalism and identity. The education system can also be a clear venue and indeed the tool to address the roots of extremism and violent extremism, by promoting tolerance and teaching critical thinking.

Both Pakistan and Nigeria have focused on defeating terrorist groups militarily, and have left the roots of extremism in their countries unaddressed . This helps explain the stubborn resilience and resurgence of the TTP and Boko Haram despite military attempts to defeat them — and why those attempts succeeded only temporarily.

Closely connected to identifying the root causes of extremism is the question of the ideological appeal of jihadism: an ideology which typically centers around establishing a stringent Islamic system of governing — whether across countries or more locally — and emphasizes an existential opposition to Western values and policies (though with Donald Trump’s presidency and the rise of China, the focus on targeting America as a superpower to be attacked may have lost some of its ideological appeal). As I mentioned above, in many ways such ideological propaganda was consistent with the worldview presented in Pakistani textbooks. The Obama administration’s CVE approach focused on counter-messaging against extremist propaganda and on making it harder to access it, including by targeting group messaging apps such as Telegram. Yet there is still a preponderance of fake news and conspiracy theories — of all forms, but especially on social media and on messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, etc. — that serve the purposes of extremist propaganda. One way that extremism can be countered is if individuals are able to identify such misinformation when they receive it. This can be accomplished by teaching students the ability to evaluate information based on its sources, and critical thinking skills in schools. The applicability of this approach to countering right-wing extremism in the United States should also be clear.

In a 2016 piece calling for more attention to be paid to efforts to counter extremism, Michael Morell, Sandy Winnefeld, and Samantha Vinograd, senior intelligence, defense, and national security officials in the Obama administration, wrote that countering violent extremism “efforts have paled in comparison to our ‘hard’ counter-terrorism operation”:

“For every 1,000 hours we spent in the Situation Room talking about how to stop existing extremists from attacking us, we spent perhaps one hour talking about how to prevent the creation of terrorists in the first place. And, for every million dollars the U.S. government spent on stopping those trying to attack us, we spent perhaps one dollar on countering radical extremism.”

During the second Obama administration, there was a flurry of activity on CVE on the part of both the State Department and the White House. A White House Summit was held in February 2015, and a Leaders’ Summit was held in New York City in September 2015 with representatives from multilateral institutions and governments and civil society organizations around the world. The key themes around the CVE approach were that it should be centered at the local, community level, identifying communities vulnerable to extremism; that local leaders — and governments and civil society organizations — should be involved in tailored interventions; and that there needed to be a focus on building resilience. Youth engagement was a key component, and there was a call for women to be involved in CVE efforts.

But what did all of this really mean? Behind a well-intentioned effort and sensible-sounding concepts, this approach did not clearly identify the drivers of extremism beyond recognizing that grievance was important. And ultimately, by concentrating on the ground up, it missed the fact that the most important policies that affect attitudes in the broad population are driven from the top down — via education systems, laws, and politics.

Anything else — focusing on local or grassroots or community-level interventions — is missing the forest for the trees, or taking action that is too piecemeal and narrowly targeted, akin to putting out small individual fires.

President Barack Obama recognized the importance of country-level factors during his speech at the White House summit, where he said : “When governments oppress their people, deny human rights, stifle dissent or marginalize ethnic and religious groups, or favor certain religious groups over others, it sows the seeds of extremism and violence.” Despite that recognition, the focus of CVE efforts remained a grassroots one — perhaps partly out of pragmatism and a recognition that this approach would be more palatable than to have governments sign up for a wholesale reconfiguration. The administration’s CVE efforts also lumped thinking about homegrown threats with thinking about international and regional threats.

This approach focused on putting on the brakes on at the cusp of violence (by definition), and not earlier on the extremism spectrum; it also included deradicalization by incorporating reintegration and rehabilitation programs for former extremists. All of this is necessarily costly and fragmented. The focus in many ways was on treatment, rather than prevention. Domestically, the approach also faced criticism that it singled out Muslim communities for surveillance and looked upon them with suspicion.

The Trump administration didn’t fully dismantle the Obama administration’s CVE approach, but it did not follow through on it either. It did away with the term CVE — which it considered too “politically correct” — and replaced it in terms of rhetoric with “radical Islamic terrorism,” and on paper with counterterrorism. The Trump administration’s counterterrorism strategy in 2018, though, did acknowledge the importance of prevention “to thwart terrorist radicalization and recruitment,” adding that “prevention works.” The Trump approach ultimately was characterized more by “a lack of consistent leadership, strategy, coordination, coherence, and prioritization” than a systematic dismantling of the Obama strategy. The Obama CVE policy thus essentially stalled during the Trump presidency.

All in all, the U.S. approach to CVE resulted in an effort in which the whole did not add up to the sum of its parts, which focused on the wrong level, and which ultimately never really took off.

The main recommendation of this paper is a proposal to comprehensively address the root causes of extremism, especially as they relate to the early stages of the extremism spectrum, such that we can effectively block the later stages from developing. Crucially, it is an approach in which the main costs need not be directly borne by America.

Firstly, I propose reform of national education policies — focusing on formal schooling systems, specifically history curricula in elementary and secondary schools — to counter extremism. Country legal systems could be another potential target — say blasphemy laws — but those are all but impossible to change, as the Pakistani case makes clear. Education may be the most practical place to begin reform, but it is still likely to receive pushback. Curriculum reform flies in the face of countries wanting to use their education systems to inculcate their own sense of nationalism, sometimes narrowly defined and exclusionary, which in turn can sow the seeds for extremism. There is a reason those countries choose the curricula they do — it is in service to their own nationalism. This recommendation thus needs to be operationalized not bilaterally, nor by focusing on specific countries — which would receive clear backlash for being a “Western agenda” — but by working through the United Nations with its unique platform to bring countries around the world on board.

The biggest hurdle would be for the states to recognize with urgency that formal education is key to addressing extremism — it can foster it, and conversely, is the key tool to counter it — and that the benefits of ratifying this agreement would accrue to the states themselves.

The best model to follow might be the Paris agreement to counter climate change, which was signed in 2016 within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change . The goal would be near universal membership of a parallel U.N. convention on education, and an agreement reached according to which signatory countries would commit to making educational systems compliant with a set of guidelines. The biggest hurdle would be for the states to recognize with urgency that formal education is key to addressing extremism — it can foster it, and conversely, is the key tool to counter it — and that the benefits of ratifying this agreement would accrue to the states themselves (with positive externalities for others).

The way could be led by the developed world, including by the United States, but any bloc of countries could join the U.S. in being initial signatories. Within the U.S. government, the State Department could lead the charge on this work.

This agreement would include countries committing to a full audit of national and subnational curricula (given that curriculum formation may be a subnational responsibility) in elementary and secondary education, to removing hate material and teaching tolerance, to teaching critical thinking, to teaching how to counter extremist propaganda, and to teaching how to determine the credibility of information seen or received through both mainstream and social media. History, social studies, and civics curricula should be a central focus, but intolerance and propaganda can seep in across subjects, including in language curricula. The education component of this should extend beyond formal education to adult education, potentially through the media, with education campaigns on television and in print. A television ad campaign could, for instance, teach citizens what “fake news” looks like and how to recognize it. The externalities would extend beyond countering extremism to being able to recognize and counter all manner of disinformation campaigns.

The U.N. Security Council has put forward a number of resolutions over the past decade to deal with extremism and terrorism, including on CVE (incorporating some of the same bottom-up community-led initiatives the Obama administration had proposed in its CVE strategy), but resolutions limit themselves to “encouraging” or “urging” member states to take action. My proposed approach of an agreement within a U.N. framework would, by definition, go further and would require signatories to commit to taking action.

There would be another element to this agreement, which would require investment in country-level research to understand how each country’s particular education system might foster extremism and might be improved, so that tailored solutions can be employed. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) could also potentially develop a proposed curriculum framework to be adopted by countries. Much as in the Paris agreement, one component would ensure transparency, implementation, and compliance from the signatories.

A less ambitious, less visible version, but perhaps more easily doable, would be to subsume this under the Sustainable Development Goal on education. SDG 4 on quality education has a specific component, 4.7, which already begins to address this:

“By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development.”

However, the disadvantage of a less visible approach is that it may be less likely to be implemented.

In addition, to counter regional and local terrorist groups — and to do so in a cost-effective, non-military manner as much as possible, in keeping with reducing the budget allocated to international counterterrorism efforts — I propose a second policy tool. U.S.-led action at the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) — a multilateral body which can place a country on a “grey list” for enhanced monitoring for terrorist financing, that in turn hinders foreign investment into the country — has been effective in recent years in encouraging Pakistan to act against militant groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba (the FATF listing has worked better to induce Pakistan to take action than using U.S. aid as a carrot). Beyond America being directly involved in counterterrorism (at great cost), this is an effective tool that places the onus and the cost on the countries themselves to take action against militant groups. It can be used far more widely to target local and regional terrorist groups that do not pose a clear threat to America.

Wide, systematic FATF targeting across countries would also counter worries from states like Pakistan who argue that their FATF status changes are politically motivated and perceive them to be unfair. America can take the lead on this front, but would have the cover of a multilateral body as the implementer.

In our current moment of reckoning with the post-9/11 era in the wake of a global pandemic and the threat of domestic right-wing extremism, it would be a mistake to turn away from the lessons of the last two decades on fighting extremism and terrorism around the world. Instead, we have an opportunity to redefine our paradigm for countering extremism and terrorism, and to do so at once comprehensively and cost-effectively: through leading the way on an international shift in education systems and curricula, and doing so as we reengage with the world in the Biden administration. We should take up the challenge.

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"Classical History" w/ Brett "Classical Learner" Pike The Oto Gomes Crypto Show

Episode Summary Brett Pike, also known as Classical Learner, discusses his journey in creating Classical Learner and Homeschools Connected. He emphasizes the importance of teaching children critical thinking and discernment, especially in the face of media literacy education that promotes outsourcing thinking to authority. Brett shares his unique approach to education, which includes teaching history, logical fallacies, and propaganda. He also talks about the launch of Classical Learner Publishing and the expansion of their curriculum. Brett's goal is to provide alternative education options and empower parents and children to think for themselves. The conversation covers various topics including the impact of new technology, such as AI, on education, the replication crisis in modern science, the importance of teaching children financial literacy and entrepreneurship, and the need for individuals to take control of their own education and build alternative systems. The conversation also emphasizes the power of grassroots movements and individual actions in creating positive change. Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Background 03:47 Teaching Critical Thinking and Discernment 06:11 Creating a New Path in Education 10:35 Building an Alternative Education System 25:54 The Journey of Classical Learner 30:38 Exploring Blockchain and Cryptocurrency in Education 37:25 Teaching Practical Skills and Critical Thinking 39:16 The Impact of AI on Education 43:20 The Replication Crisis in Science 49:43 Homeschooling and Building Generational Wealth 55:15 Empowering Children to Create and Make Things 01:00:01 Taking Control of Education If you are a new parent, planning to become one or know someone with kids under the age of 12, this is a POWERFUL way to educate and teach the history of history and how to use discernment in the real world! CONNECT WITH BRETT IG - https://instagram.com/classicallearner Web - https://books.classicallearner.com/partner/11/ 10% OFF CODE: FreedomOto

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Two Minutes of Hate in 1984: Manipulative Propaganda

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Study finds universities lack in promoting critical thinking skills.

Students may not be getting their money’s worth out of their increasing expensive educations, according to “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,” a 2011 book by sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roska.

Arum and Roska claim that four-year undergraduate students receive little to no learning in four-year universities, based off a study that included an essay-based critical thinking, analytical reasoning and communication skills test called the Collegiate Learning Assessment.

In their study, Roska and Arum had a sample of four-year undergraduates take the CLA during their freshman year. The same students then took the test again during their senior year, and their scores saw very little improvement.

On average, scores improved less than one-half of one standard deviation from the students’ freshman year, with one-third of students improving by less than a single point out of a 100-point scale.

A follow-up study of the same students found that two years later, 7 percent of them were unemployed and 16 percent were underemployed after graduation.

At the UA, a gauge of critical thinking skills is not a general requirement to enter the university.

The admissions process differs depending on the type of application filled out, according to Kasey Urquidez, associate vice president of student affairs and dean of undergraduate admissions.

There are two different applications for prospective undergraduates: the basic undergraduate application and the application for the Honors College. The basic undergraduate application and honors application both have essay questions, but the questions are very different.

“The undergraduate essay is more of the student telling us about their self,” Urquidez said, “but the Honors College does ask a critical thinking question.”

This year’s critical thinking question was based on the idea of basic human rights and how an education at the UA would contribute to knowledge of and engagement with those rights.

Urquidez said she believes the reason critical thinking questions only appear on the honors applications is not because the university does not care about critical thinking skills, but because university research has shown that other areas correlate more to a higher graduation rate.

“Students must have critical thinking skills to be successful in the real world,” Urquidez said, “but we are just not there yet. GPA s and test scores have worked well in telling us who will successfully graduate.”

Susan Miller-Pinhey, marketing and events manager at Career Services, said that graduates at the UA have a better opportunity than most at landing a job.

“Employers love us,” she said. “I would be surprised if that study was talking about us.”

According to this year’s Career Services Employer Guide, 6,494 students received bachelor’s degrees during the 2012-2013 academic year. Meanwhile, according to the Career Services statistical year review, 1,673 students reported acceptance of a job. The same report also showed that 1,075 students reported admission into graduate school.

Students at the UA have different opinions on whether their time at the university has improved their market appeal and their critical thinking skills.

Clinton Ewell, a vocal performance freshman, said he believes that his critical thinking will improve and hopes the UA will help him become successful.

“Students and the university must maintain an incentive for increasing our critical thinking skills,” Ewell said. “That is why I am trying to incorporate business as my minor.”

Ethan Posey, an anthropology senior, said that while happy with his education, he has some doubts about whether the university has helped him prepare for the job market.

“I have learned a lot about doing research and understanding the world critically,” Posey said, “but I don’t know if the university has prepared me for real 9-to-5 work expectations. But I won’t know ‘til I am out there.”

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Lift students’ critical thinking skills with digital connectivity push

The critical thinking skills of students could be improved with strong digital connectivity amid technological advancements in education, according to think tank Stratbase ADR Institute. This photo shows Angeles City Mayor Carmelo Lazatin Jr. (standing, 3rd from left), other officials, and students watching a multi-media presentation during the inauguration of the modern computer laboratory at the Angeles City National Trade School on August 6, 2024. | PHOTO: Angeles City government

MANILA, Philippines — Strong digital connectivity could help students develop their critical thinking skills as technological advancements in education offer more learning opportunities, especially in the areas of math, science, and reading.

Stratbase ADR Institute pointed this out, emphasizing that Filipino students should improve their critical thinking so they can better analyze the credibility of information, make sound decisions, and solve problems.

According to Victor Andres Manhit, “[t]echnological advances have allowed foundation subjects like math, science, and reading to be taught more effectively, with interactive e-learning modules enriched with a multi-media learning experience.”

The think tank president also noted that “the conventional classroom methods can now be complemented by the rich content and digital skills that could be acquired through exposure to the online world – of course with proper guidance and precaution from mentors.”

READ: PH students still among lowest scorers in reading, math, science – Pisa

For these reasons, the group said, the government should prioritize strengthening the digital connectivity in the country so that learning institutions will be equipped to improve students’ critical thinking skills.

Manhit said the lack of critical thinking skills among Filipino students must be addressed, especially with the country’s recent poor performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) where the Philippines ranked sixth to last in reading and mathematics while it ranked third to the last among 81 countries in the science category.

Improving Pisa and digital literacy can be achieved through efficient internet connectivity and close coordination of the government with private sectors, Manhit stressed.

READ: Nat’l Fiber Backbone launched, starting with Laoag-QC phase

In his third State of the Nation Address last July 22, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. lamented that as of 2022, only 77 percent or 20.6 million households nationwide have connected to the internet – which, he said, is “much too low.”

He then highlighted the implementation of the first phase of the National Fiber Backbone program. The phase two and three of the program began this year and are expected to be completed in 2026.

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The National Fiber Backbone program, with the first phase covering 1,245 kilometers from Laoag City in Ilocos Norte to Quezon City, is expected to increase the internet penetration rate in the country from the current 33 percent to 65 percent, or 70 million out of 115 million Filipinos.

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Mariya Calkins for Santa Rosa County School Board, District 2 | Candidate Q&A

Name: Mariya Calkins

Office you’re seeking: Santa Rosa County School Board, District 2

Occupation: Left blank

Education: Left blank

August primary ballot is set. Nearly 100 have qualified to run for local elected offices

Why are you running for this office?

I am running because the current school board is implementing a liberal agenda that does not align with the values of our community. The incumbent, Elizabeth Hewey, a Democrat, secured the District 2 seat in a nonpartisan race and is now advancing a Democratic agenda. This includes masking our children, refusing to restore legislative prayer, introducing pornographic books into our district, voting for critical race theory, and failing to protect our children's privacy. I believe there is a crisis in our public education system, with radical left propaganda infiltrating our schools. I founded Moms for Liberty Santa Rosa County Chapter to advocate for parental rights, transparency, and accountability in our schools. My commitment is to protect our children and ensure our education system upholds conservative values and American principles.

What experience do you have that makes you qualified for this office?

As the founder of Moms for Liberty Santa Rosa County Chapter, I have actively fought for parental rights and educational reforms. My leadership in this successful advocacy group, recognized by prominent figures like President Trump and Governor DeSantis, demonstrates my ability to mobilize and lead community efforts. Additionally, I have worked at the Florida State Legislature, where I gained experience advocating for educational bills that benefit our children throughout the state. My involvement in various educational initiatives and my dedication to conservative values make me qualified to serve on the school board and address the challenges facing our district.

In your view, what is the role of public schools?

Public schools play a crucial role in educating our children and preparing them for future success. They should provide a safe, nurturing environment where students can learn essential academic skills, develop critical thinking, and grow into responsible citizens. Public schools should also respect and reflect the values of the communities they serve, ensuring that parents have a voice in their children's education. It is vital that public schools focus on core academic subjects and strive for excellence in education.

What do you believe should be changed about the school district, and what specific steps you would take to implement those changes?

Several key changes are needed in our school district:

• Cut Ties with Woke Organizations: I will work to sever any affiliations with organizations like the American Library Association that promote radical agendas.
• Advocate for Fair Pay: I will push for fair compensation for our teachers, including higher pay for veteran educators.
• Fight Title IX Changes: I will prepare to challenge any Title IX changes that could allow biological males in female bathrooms, ensuring the safety and privacy of all students.
• Enhance Student Safety: I will advocate for more comprehensive safety measures, such as having monitors on school buses to assist drivers.
• Equitable Teacher Training: I will ensure that teacher training sessions are conveniently scheduled in both the north and south ends of the county.

What do you believe the school district is doing right, and how would you improve it?

The Santa Rosa County School District’s focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education is commendable. Programs such as the Navarre Beach Marine Science Station provide students with unique, hands-on learning experiences that enhance their understanding of marine biology and environmental science.

Additionally, the district's emphasis on career and technical education (CTE) programs prepares students for real-world careers by equipping them with valuable skills and certifications. These programs are vital in providing pathways for students who may not pursue traditional college routes but still seek meaningful and well-paying careers.

Improvements

• Enhanced Community Engagement: Establish regular town hall meetings and feedback sessions to ensure the community's voice is heard and considered in decision-making processes. This will foster a stronger connection between the district and the families it serves, ensuring that policies and programs reflect the community's needs and values.
• Expanding Teacher Support and Training: Increase funding for professional development programs and ensure training sessions are scheduled in both the north and south ends of the county. This will equip teachers with the latest instructional strategies and technologies, enhancing their effectiveness in the classroom and ultimately improving student outcomes.

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Critical Thinking and Emotional Intelligence

Olympic arson attacks highlight growing danger of low-tech terrorism on public transit systems

Ph.D. candidate in Public Affairs, American University

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Sara Harmouch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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As the Olympic torch was carried toward Paris for the 2024 Summer Games, flames of another kind were causing concern for the city’s security chiefs. On the eve of the July 26 opening ceremony, a series of arson attacks disrupted travel into the capital along a high-speed rail network.

Fortunately, no one was hurt in the series of small fires that brought trains to a halt on three major lines; nor has there been any claim of responsibility. But the incident exposed a vulnerability long known to security experts . Terrorist groups, too, have long seen passenger trains as attractive targets. Just months prior to the Paris incident, al-Qaida had been promoting train stations as potential targets.

As a defense researcher who focuses on how militant groups think and act , I see the Paris incident as a stark warning. Terrorist groups have long earmarked rail systems as a stage for attacks ranging from “spectaculars” – that is, coordinated, simultaneous acts designed to cause maximum amount of disruption, harm and panic – to lower-level disruptive acts. The persistent evolution in extremists’ tactics presents a critical challenge to global security, particularly when it comes to public transportation. The rail lines that connect cities around the world remain uniquely vulnerable to threats both old and new.

Low-tech, high-impact attacks

The attacks in France not only disrupted physical infrastructure, they also instilled widespread fear and uncertainty, especially given that Paris is a city still scarred with the memory of recent terrorist attacks .

Authorities were quick to describe the arson attack as “criminal acts ” rather than terrorism.

But they were clearly the result of sophisticated planning and a high degree of coordination. And aspects of the France attack reflect recent terrorist thinking.

On Dec. 30, 2023, al-Qaida released a promotional video for the upcoming issue of its online magazine Inspire, focusing on train stations as targets.

The propaganda revisits the theme of rail vulnerabilities and encourages methods such as arson. This suggests a strategic shift toward low-tech, high-impact attacks that can be executed by individuals to disrupt daily life on a massive scale.

This tactical shift is not just a blueprint for chaos but a psychological strategy designed to instill fear and paralysis in millions of commuters.

Trains are symbols of routine and reliability. An attack on them can shatter that sense of everyday safety and infuse a pervasive atmosphere of fear and vulnerability.

In Europe, in particular, there are painful memories of such attacks; the 2004 Madrid train bombings killed 192 people and injured over 2,000, and a year later the 2005 London bombings on a bus and tube trains resulted in the death of 52 people and injured more than 700.

The timing and location of the Paris arson attacks – just as the city was gearing up for a global celebration, the Olympic Games – magnify their impact, extending the psychological reach far beyond the immediate physical damage.

The economic repercussions can also be dire . The immediate effects include repair costs and heightened security expenditures, but the broader economic disruptions – delays, lost tourism revenue and shaken investor confidence in the region’s stability – can linger long after the tracks are cleared.

Cities like Paris, reliant on their robust public transport systems, face significant economic setbacks from such attacks, which can stifle economic activity and growth. The timing of the Paris incident meant not only local commuters were affected but also international visitors, potentially leading to a ripple effect across the global perception of security in European transport hubs.

Maximizing damage and casualties

Terrorist groups are well aware of these long-lasting effects of an attack on rail networks – it is a theme that has been prominently featured in terrorist propaganda .

For example, the 17th issue of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula’s Inspire magazine , released in August 2017, detailed a simple method for derailing trains by placing obstructions on the tracks – a tactic that requires no advanced technical skills, only the resolve to create havoc.

Inspire’s strategic insights suggest targeting trains near critical structures such as mountains, buildings, bridges or tunnels to maximize impact, damage and casualties. The magazine notes that “5.6 million passengers ride the New York subway every day, and in France, 15,000 trains pass through 3,000 stations daily,” highlighting the intent to inspire attacks on densely populated, high-impact targets.

Even years after its publication, the August 2017 issue of Inspire has been circulated repeatedly, especially at times of major geopolitical events such as the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Israel-Hamas conflict .

And al-Qaida continues to encourage lone actors to undertake attacks that can disrupt major urban centers, leveraging the widespread accessibility of the proposed methods.

Rail systems are vulnerable

Rail networks are an attractive target for terrorists for several reasons. They are inherently accessible, often lightly secured and can be densely packed. The very efficiency and openness that make urban rail systems the lifeblood of a city also render them vulnerable to attacks.

Additionally, the potential for high casualties and significant media coverage ensures that even a small act can send shock waves of disruption both locally and internationally.

In the U.S., the risk of violent extremists’ attacks on critical infrastructure remains alarmingly high. From 2016 to 2022, U.S. federal courts charged 94 individuals with planning violent extremist attacks, 35 of whom specifically targeted critical infrastructure. Notably, 19 of these individuals were jihadists affiliated with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and al-Qaida. And of the seven jihadist plots involving transportation, five targeted mass transit and public rail services.

Wake-up call

The attacks on Paris’ rail lines should serve as a wake-up call.

The continuous circulation of Inspire magazine’s issues and the recent promotional push for al-Qaida’s “open source jihad” campaign underscore a grim reality: The terrorist threat is evolving, adapting new forms of low-tech tactics that exploit the vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure such as railways.

This evolution marks a significant shift in terrorist strategy, moving from spectacular, resource-heavy plots to simpler, more accessible forms of disruption that any individual can execute without formal training or support networks.

The simplicity and low-tech nature of the sabotage methods prescribed in terrorist propaganda make preventing such attacks challenging, but it is a necessary endeavor to ensure the safety of millions who rely on public transportation daily.

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