I cannot quite recall the origin of Haltom's 16th Law, but I can pinpoint the source of Haltom's 17th -- Jacques Ellul's Propaganda [p. 58]: "The propagandist will not accuse the enemy of just any misdeed; he will accuse him of the very intention that he himself has and of trying to commit the very crime that he himself is about to commit."
Ellul here posits one of the enduring truths of society and politicking. Once one degrades an opponent into the enemy, one entitles oneself to use means that would be forbidden if one were competing with a worthy opponent within some rule-governed venue. At Guantánamo or in the Army-McCarthy hearings [M. Stanton Evans and Ann Coulter notwithstanding], the Marquis of Queensberry is/was not consulted. Those who believe that they would not win a fair contest heap onto the enemy the foulest intentions. One source of such intentions is one's own basest schemes and designs.
Suppose some malignant narcissists -- see The People of the Lie in the UPS Book Nook -- are jealous or resentful of a colleague. The narcissists are likely to accuse the colleague of flaws, schemes, and scams from the narcissists' own hearts. One narcissist foists his own foibles onto the colleague, dragging the colleague down to his level even as his accomplice transforms the absence of evidence for her charges into evidence of absence so that the enemy's innocence is made to seem evidence of cunning deceptions and false fronts. [Otherwise, the narcisists proclaim, the evidence would be clear to everyone and not just to the narcissists.] Opportunistic sociopaths, like other propagandists, project onto their enemies sins from their own pasts, sins that they may reprise in the near future, sins that avert attention from them and direct suspicion to despised others.
From this example we see that well-designed propaganda does double duties. Propaganda is a tool at once offensive and defensive. As offensive weapon, propaganda disparages intentions and imminent actions of enemies. As a defensive shield, propaganda preemptively blames enemies for what the propagandist argues he or she was compelled to do or may be compelled to do in self-defense. In adidtion to those offensive and defensive uses, propaganda works retrospectively as well as prospectively. It rationalizes the past even as it excuses the future, all in the service of getting past some present difficulty.
For instance, if a colleague quietly and privately informs me that I have violated a professional norm, I may strike back at the constructive critic with propaganda at once offensive and defensive, retrospective and prospective. On offense, I hunt down [in multiple senses of "down"] or make up accusations or suspicions and float them [like turds] among confidantes so that my confidantes may propagate smears and rumors without their being traced back to me. On defense, I bootstrap my offensive propaganda into defensive propaganda: my critic concocted false charges against me in a cynical, hypocritical effort to distract everyone from my critic's far greater sins and the true charges that the critic feared I might prefer against him. These tactics are retrospective in that widespread innuendo diminishes both the critic and the criticisms. ["Can you believe it? That toad called me ugly!"] but prospective in that publicized defamation undermines my critic-target-victim.
Hence, I might choose to make a critic's private criticisms public to pre-empt his or her doing so and to incline naifs to ask, "Would he admit the past if he were culpable? The original criticisms must have been unjust."
Ellul's insights go beyond accusations to attributions of intentions and spinning of interpretations, which more generally define [p. 57] " ... the real realm of the lie; it is exactly here that it cannot be detected. If one falsifies a fact, one may be confronted with unquestionable proof to the contrary. ... But no proof can be furnished where motivations or intentions are concerned or interpretation of a fact is involved."
Ellul does not underestimate the potency of false facts. When audiences consist largely of those distracted or ditzy or ignorant or indifferent, one need not engage in more sophisticated propaganda but may simply prolong or promulgate falsehoods. Supposed connections between el Qaida and 9-11, Barack Obama as a Muslim, and exposed urban legends make for low-cost but effective palaver into which accusations or other propaganda may be infused. The more credulous and conformist the throng, the more that flimsy fabrications and evidence-free suspicions will suffice.
Audiences deemed too sophisticated to succumb to bunk will be treated to interpretations and intentions. Malignant narcissists and other propagandists complement rumors, innuendo, and lies with half-truths and non-truths [e.g., statements of values that can be neither true nor false] and rely on the hubris of the sophisticates -- "I am too clever to be taken in by anything but the truth" -- to win over the mob. Once a target has been tarred as an enemy, factionalism do the rest: "Who are you with, the evil one or the forces of goodness?"
When next someone is projecting some image that he or she would like you to credit, ask yourself how open and clear the colleague seems. Colleagues who cite their sources or who direct attention to evidence or otherwise enable peers to test propositions are probably not spinning their own shortcomings into characterizations of others. Colleagues -- peers or superiors -- who invoke trust, civility, confidential information, or other devices to occlude usually have something to hide and some reason to avoid "the culture of evidence." Pay close attention to their charges, suspicions, and interpretations. They may be telling you what they have done and will again do.
Coming Soon --- Haltom's Eighteenth Law: Never mess with someone who has more free time than you do.
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