Western Journal of Communication

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The Just Use of Propaganda (?): Ethical Criteria for

Counter-Hegemonic Communication Strategies

John Arthos

To cite this article: John Arthos (2013) The Just Use of Propaganda (?): Ethical Criteria for
Counter-Hegemonic Communication Strategies, Western Journal of Communication, 77:5,
582-603, DOI: 10.1080/10570314.2013.785014

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Western Journal of Communication
Vol. 77, No. 5,October–December, pp. 582–603

The Just Use of Propaganda (?):

Ethical Criteria for Counter-
Hegemonic Communication
Strategies
John Arthos

In the face of an entrenched corporate ideological apparatus that has captured our state
institutions, mainstream media, and the governing classes, this article identifies an ethi-
cal problem for critical rhetoric. To what extent are democratic communities justified in
utilizing the ‘master’s tools’ of strategic communication to fight the vast political machin-
ery of the corporate state? The debate in rhetoric studies on the ethics of persuasion and
the debate in communication theory launched by Lippmann’s critique of mass communi-
cation serve to open up areas of concern for considering the just use of propaganda. An
ethical criteriology based on Michel de Certeau’s concept of ‘‘making do’’ is developed to
guide thinking about appropriate responses to the stranglehold of postmodern hegemony
over the political economy. The Wisconsin Scott Walker repeal campaign of 2011 is used
as an extended example to test this criteriology.

Keywords: Hegemony; Metis; Michel de Certeau; Propaganda; Strategic

Communication; Symbolic Inducement

Deliberative reason permits people to adjudicate

between the demands of the honorable and the expedient.
— Wendy Olmsted

Noam Chomsky used to sound radical. Today, with the extent of state and regulatory
capture, the neutralization of the mainstream press, the precipitous dismantling of

John Arthos (PhD, Wayne State University) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at
Denison University. The author wishes to express his gratitude to Bill Eadie and the readers for carefully guiding
this article through the revision process. Correspondence to: John Arthos, Department of Communication,
Denison University, 1 President’s Way, 1506 Menlo Place, Granville, OH 43023, USA. E-mail: arthos@denison.edu

ISSN 1057-0314 (print)/ISSN 1745-1027 (online) # 2013 Western States Communication Association
DOI: 10.1080/10570314.2013.785014
 Western Journal of Communication 583

the social safety net, the engineering of ever steeper income inequalities, and the cre-
ation of a neo-feudal class afraid for its own meager job security, all presented as a
natural and inescapable process, Chomsky’s corporatist indictment sounds fairly
tame.1 The political norm has shifted as the material ground underneath citizens
has moved, and the triumph of a narrative mythology of corporate welfare under
the guise of middle-class virtue is visible to more than just hard-core progressives.2
That tried-and-true techniques of rhetorical manipulation misdirect a low-
information public divorced from the complexities of fiscal and social policy into
undermining its own interests is also now more broadly perceived.3
Despite this growing awareness, the corporatist juggernaut is so deeply insinuated
into the social fabric that movement politics has to work along a wide spectrum of
operational modes. Fundamental reform equal to the enormity of the problem is
going to be an enormous long-term task on multiple levels.4 The infrastructure that
supports a bankrupt consumerist ideology is so vast, penetrating, and well-financed
that progressive voices seem at times to be spitting in the wind. A corporate-media-
government alliance is simultaneously hollowing out the middle class, reinforcing the
infrastructure of gated communities, and inventing sophisticated means and methods
for the suppression of middle class dissent (Chomsky and McChesney 7–13, 159–66).
With the choreographed capitulation to special interests of the neo-liberal establish-
ment and the neutering of genuinely democratic responses, the work of exposure will
have many forms. Although there are multiple aspects to this project, I want to reflect
on the challenge as it touches on academic rhetoric. Strategic communication is a
theme that has moved through disciplinary conversations in a number of fields within
communication—propaganda studies, political communication, rhetoric, interperso-
nal and communication ethics. I want to think about a possible collaboration between
critical rhetoric and strategic communication as a critical agency against the corporatist
apparatus that has so masterfully consolidated its hold on the civic sphere.
Enacted primarily through its conservative acolytes but increasingly abetted by a
neo-liberal professional class, the one percent has had a remarkable success in instal-
ling its political ideology as a reflexive presupposition of mainstream culture—the
impotence and profligacy of government, the virtue of private capital, the inherent
evil of taxes and of spending, the equation of social programs with pathological
dependency, the inviolate freedom of the private sector, etc.—but this has been a
decades-in-the-making achievement. Instructed by bitter defeat (Perlstein), formed
in the confluence of talent and inclination (Forbes), nourished by bottomless finan-
cial resources (Hoplin and Robinson 5–14), what has slowly taken shape is a
root-and-branch communication infrastructure that hungrily feeds the ideological
needs of hegemony like a starved beast (Brock). Its success is rooted in classic tech-
niques of propaganda that exploit the susceptibilities of publics, the annexation of
key communications infrastructure, and the near-complete cooptation of media
and government, which closes the feedback loop between ideology and hegemony
with brutal perfection.
Two interlocking features of this situation demonstrate the ethical perils for an
effective populist rhetoric. The first weighs how an effective rhetoric can be deployed
584 J. Arthos
in opposing hegemony without becoming what it opposes. How does a radical
environmental group such as PETA, for instance, judge the moral efficacy of its tac-
tical provocations?5 The second related issue is the way that mass electorates and
mass mediated communication as the condition of modern public life isolate and
magnify the instrumentalism that might compromise a critical rhetoric. Is there an
inherent break in the passage from dialogic communication to mass communication
that delivers democratic governance in a mass society over to propaganda? Should
populists forswear and cede these powerful instruments to the consolidation of
hegemony, pinning their hopes on the more democratic communication forms
developing in new media? These two sets of questions will help me begin to frame
a discussion about the relation of strategy and ethics in a critical rhetoric.

Symbolic Inducement as Rhetorical Violence

In 1979 Sally Miller Gearhart published an ‘‘indictment of our discipline of rhetoric’’
because of her belief ‘‘that any intent to persuade is an act of violence’’ (241). She
situated the source of violence in rhetorical motives: ‘‘The act of violence is in the
intention to change another’’ (242). Gearhart associated persuasion with the religious
language of conversion, the colonization of souls, and she proposed as a more just
rhetorical alternative the ‘‘co-creation of an atmosphere in which people or
things . . . may change themselves’’ (244). This seems an odd conclusion from a rad-
ical movement feminist. To be sure, that persuasion is a great power loosed, and that
as a power it lends itself to exploitation, is one of the salient and perennial ethical
problems of rhetoric, but how can abnegation of direct agency be a credible comport-
ment in the face of crushing hegemony? The most effective forms of patriarchy in a
democracy are insidiously indirect, and need to be confronted. Co-creation of an
atmosphere is not creative non-violence, which is strategic, confrontational, and
direct. This may seem obvious, but Gearhart’s idea had a potent afterlife. Key features
of her theory, including the risking or yielding of oneself in vulnerability to the other,
and the shift of perspective from persuasion to dialogue, became an important source
for the development of the influential invitational rhetoric theory of Sonja Foss and
Cindy Griffin in the mid-90s (7, 14).
In the original articulation of invitational rhetoric theory, a clear binary was estab-
lished between persuasion, which was characterized as patriarchal, and the rhetoric
built on Gearhart’s ‘‘co-creation of an atmosphere’’ (244): ‘‘Our purpose in this essay
is to propose a definition and explication of a rhetoric built on the principles of
equality, immanent value, and self-determination rather than on the attempt to con-
trol others through persuasive strategies designed to effect change’’ (Foss and Griffin
4–5). In response to this theoretical proposal, a number of feminist rhetoricians
including Bonnie Dow strongly denied ‘‘that feminism supports a worldview which
holds that efforts to change others are patriarchal and should be avoided’’ (110). In
2008, Bone, Griffin, and Scholz took on the objections to the theory, and tempered
the patriarchal charge: ‘‘Griffin and Foss advocate that under certain circumstances,
to attempt to persuade is inappropriate, but they do not state that persuasion, by its
 Western Journal of Communication 585

very nature, is always and only violent’’ (438). Bone et al. acknowledged that to
‘‘employ symbols to bring about a forceful alteration or a harsh and painful change
may, in fact, be a necessary step to prevent harm or bring about a greater good’’
(439). Lozano-Riech and Cloud then attempted to undermine the ethical privilege
assumed by invitational rhetoric as a feminist alternative to persuasion, arguing ‘‘that
it is precisely in situations of power differentials that we should be most cautious
about invoking the invitational paradigm,’’ and ‘‘that social movements that use
persuasion and direct action have historically been the greatest resource for seeking
justice and equality’’ (221, 222).
This debate within rhetoric studies was an important development, but there are
still other resources within disciplinary rhetoric among the different registers of the
speech situation (formal, structural, stylistic, pedagogic, etc.) that bear on issues of
power and equity. As an example, the ancient rhetorical ideal of in utramque partem,
the practice of putting a variety of points of view in tension with one another,
developed alongside of the more monologic speaker-audience paideia that has come
down to us as public address.6 The ‘‘great speech’’ model mirrors perhaps too closely
the hegemonic agency inscribed in top-down social hierarchies, whereas there is a
democratizing impulse in the principle of multiplex ratio disputandi, which is capable
of adaptation to more complex genres of advocacy (Conley 37). So we need to be
looking at the models of teaching inscribed in standard curricula to know to what
degree we are reinforcing and promoting hegemonic relationships.
However for the issue of propaganda, the greatest challenge for equitable speech
may be the seductive potency of rhetoric itself, what Gorgias called the mighty power
of speech, which he compared to drugs and coercive force. It is a normal part of the
skill of eloquence to harness this power, to create the conditions under which others
may respond to a point of view sympathetically, or see it vividly (qtd. in Perelman
and Olbrechts-Tyteca 495). But the effects of public discourse often go deeper than
any speaker’s intention. Much of the language that is placed in circulation, that finds
the approbation of a community or that speaks its values, is a persuasive force outside
of our awareness. Richard Gregg called this subterranean feature of rhetoric ‘‘sym-
bolic inducement,’’ and he explored the deep psychological features of discourse that
guide understanding beyond our conscious willing and doing (134–35). The capacity
of speech and of speakers to shape feeling and perception, whether to create receptive
conditions for an argument, or to fundamentally change the bounds of appropriate-
ness for a discussion, has an increasing relevance as the complexity of the scene of
political discourse deepens. The relevance of invitational rhetoric or debate is attenu-
ated the further the rhetorical situation moves away from the town square into the
simulacrum of a mass mediated environment.
My particular intervention on this question is to consider how such hegemony in
the modern mass-mediated bureaucratic state effects the balance between the appro-
priate and the expedient, an issue that has particular relevance in situations where
strategically distorted communication blunts the normal appeals to social obligation.
In this article, I want to explore how justice authorizes degrees and kinds of rhetorical
instrumentalism where hegemony has removed communication from genuine
586 J. Arthos
dialogue. When public argument acts as a cover for or distraction from the actual
deliberation of governance, when the ‘‘process of the politically relevant exercise
and equilibration of power now takes place directly between the private bureaucra-
cies,’’ so that the public is ‘‘largely relieved of this task,’’ then the function of public
speaking changes for everyone (Habermas176). How do we intervene in the Kabuki
dance that national political dialogue has largely become, in which public figures
orchestrate public debate like the magician’s feint, and mainstream media represents
this theater as real?7 If it proves ineffectual to speak to our elected representatives as
though they were partners of goodwill in genuine dialogue and if we are in fact
trapped in a simulacrum of political forms, then we have to learn how to speak dif-
ferently.8 What I will be developing in this article is a framework for critical public
speech that accepts the kinds of instrumentalisms that this situation invites, and that
negotiates the ethical quandaries that arise from this invitation. If it turns out that we
need to balance ‘‘the honorable and the expedient,’’ then it becomes incumbent on us
to know with precision the toxicities of those practices so as not to lose the compe-
tencies of rhetorical community, or work our way insensibly into the pathologies of
hegemony ourselves.9 Public discourse has many audiences, direct and indirect, and
many sides of any one audience, so that to the extent that we yield to the instrumen-
tal, we need to know how to use it justifiably and defensibly, and leave ourselves a
path of return.
Disciplinary rhetoric can clearly speak at the level of the strategic, capable of
displaying both a heightened consciousness of and flexibility toward the strategic
aspects of symbolic inducement, a willingness to put the ethical and the expedient
in conversation. Because of its ancient roots in political praxis, rhetoric moves fam-
iliarly in the tensions between the ideals of social ends and the intractable role of
interest and position. Burke ties the strategic nature of rhetorical interaction to the
ancient theory of the controversial: ‘‘While in general the truer and better cause
has the advantage, [Aristotle] observes, no cause can be adequately defended without
skill in the tricks of the trade’’ (Burke 52). But what does Burke mean when he speaks
of ‘‘the underlying ethical assumptions on which the entire tactics of persuasion are
based’’? (52). Here one hears in his voice the presence of Machiavelli and Nietzsche as
well as of Aristotle and Cicero:
Surely all doctrines can at least begin by agreeing that human effort aims at ‘‘advan-
tage’’ of one sort or another, though there is room for later disputes as to whether
advantage in general, or particular advantages are to be conceived idealistically,
materialistically, or even cynically. Advantage can be individual, or the aim of a
partisan group, or even universal. And that men should seek advantage of some
sort is reasonable and ethical enough—hence the term need not confine one’s ter-
minology of rhetorical design to purely individualist cunning or aggrandizement.
(Burke 61)

Because of its roots in Greek culture, rhetoric has a close acquaintance with what
the Greeks called metis. Stretching back to its earliest history, the Greeks admired
protean cunning and practical intelligence as a virtue that ‘‘operates on a shifting ter-
rain, in uncertain and ambiguous situations’’ and that has the particular capacity of
 Western Journal of Communication 587

giving ‘‘the weaker competitor the means of triumphing over the stronger’’ (Detienne
and Vernant 14, 27). Metis feeds the doctrine of practical reason that underwrites
Aristotle’s ethics.10 We find a commonality between this virtue of metis in the
rhetoric of the oppressed across all ages: ‘‘Enslaved Africans, like their trickster,
depended to a great extent on their own ingenuity to succeed against their antago-
nists, the slavemasters’’ (Roberts 39). Out of necessity a rhetoric of masks and double
meaning developed as a tool of survival, of getting over to get over.
So I am reintroducing the idea of metis into what I am arguing is an analogous
situation for voices of radical structural reform when democratic access to power
has been usurped and rendered impotent. An ethical rhetoric justifies asking when
strategic, instrumental communication might ‘‘be necessary and acceptable or, con-
versely, questionable, inappropriate, or forbidden’’ (Bone, Griffin, and Scholz 439).
Emotions ‘‘appear to be both crucial to persuasion and dangerous to polity,’’ and
we will not escape this dilemma by the ritual purgations of either rationalist or ethical
purity (Hariman and Lucaites 6). The truth of the matter is that, even in the spaces
where each of us attempt to live by the tenets of an invitational rhetoric—i.e., where
we attempt to risk our presuppositions, become radically undogmatic, make
ourselves open to the position of the other, enter into genuinely transformative dia-
logue—even in those spaces we pass in and out of operative modalities that include
discursive skill and strategic thinking.11

Mainstream Media and the Ethical Question12

So that disciplinary understanding can clarify the de facto role of rhetoric as symbolic
inducement, we need to ask a second question: To what extent have mass society and
its technologies exacerbated the worst potentials of the sophistry identified by tra-
ditional rhetorical studies? There are a range of ethical problems that surround the
tactics and strategies of organized political campaigning relating to the use of psy-
chology and social psychology, behavioral effects, and all the calculative tools that
come into play once we move beyond the effective range of dialogic communication.
There is no question that a seismic shift is occurring in the nature of public com-
munication through the new communication technologies, both in terms of the
democratizing force of social networking media, the use of digital technology as a
tool of surveillance, and the battle for control of the digital space. For one thing, a
vibrant debate has begun among cultural theorists about the nature and efficacy of
digital networks as a democratizing factor and as a the challenge to media hegemony,
but it appears that traditional media will continue to play a major role in construct-
ing public opinion for the foreseeable future.13 We saw that in the Wisconsin recall
campaign of 2012, for instance, traditional media still remained decisive in shaping
public opinion, despite the pivotal role of new media for networking and organizing.
Moreover, the new media do not escape the ethical burdens of mass communication,
as we saw so vividly with the viral video Kony 2012 campaign.14 And the new media
itself is a hybrid form that hardly escapes the most exploitative features of marketing
and behavioral control. To the extent that progressive movements face or engage the
588 J. Arthos
power of the complex of media to shape public opinion, ethical questions of
manipulation will remain vital.
Lippmann’s analysis of this problem in chapters 1–7 of Public Opinion provided a
catalogue of the compressions and distortions of mass culture and mass communi-
cation—much of it having to do with the simplification of complex affairs for the con-
sumption of what we now call low-information voters.15 These foreshortenings are what
Lippmann called misleading pictures—the translation of complex policy issues into
accessible symbols and narratives. The passage from policy to politics normally takes this
route, and propaganda scholars remind us that this kind of condensation is not neces-
sarily pernicious. Ivy Lee asked, ‘‘Will you kindly tell me of any situation in human his-
tory which has ever been presented to people in the form of a candid survey of all the
facts?’’ (Ivy Lee qtd. in St. John III 224). St. John argued that condensation ‘‘can be cred-
ible and beneficial without accounting to the public for all the possible facts’’ (224).
But the distance or separation that condensation introduces is a process that is
systematically exploited by hegemony. Thus the society of the spectacle, the society
of technique, presents a new opportunity for concentrated power, and the self-
reinforcing relation of ideology and hegemony becomes even more amplified. The
manufacture of consent, Lippmann wrote, ‘‘was supposed to have died out with
the appearance of democracy. But it has not died out’’ (248). The tremendous expen-
diture of expertise and resources toward the management of public opinion has
intensified this anti-democratic tendency. As a result, a ‘‘revolution is taking place,
infinitely more significant than any shifting economic power’’ (248).
But simply to characterize mass communication as a dark power oversimplifies
and forecloses consideration of its potential for counter-hegemonic resistance. John
Durham Peters has argued against the Manichean binary between massification and
face-to-face interaction. There is, he said, a ‘‘hermeneutic burden’’ in both instances,
and a uniquely democratic potential in mass communication itself: ‘‘Strikes, protests,
petitions, letter-writing campaigns, boycotts and other forms of mass action are in
fact one-way forms of mass communication, communicatión de masas’’ (‘‘The Gaps
of Which Communication Is Made’’ 117, 124, 135). Peters concluded that revolu-
tionaries will and do recognize mass communication as an unavoidable tool, since
societies now ‘‘are sustained or subverted by the representations they circulate about
themselves’’ (‘‘Satan and Savior’’ 261).
I accept both of these conclusions, but take Lippmann’s question (not his answer) as
a central one for a progressive rhetoric seeking the mobilization of the disempowered:
The living impressions of a large number of people are to an immeasurable degree
personal in each of them, and unmanageably complex in the mass. How then, is
any practical relationship established between what is in people’s heads and what
is out there beyond their ken in the environment? How in the language of demo-
cratic theory, do great numbers of people feeling each so privately about so abstract
a picture, develop any common will? How does a simple and constant idea emerge
from this complex of variables? (125)

Lippmann took the relation between ‘‘the unmanageably complex’’ and ‘‘a simple
and constant idea’’ to be not a reduction, but a necessary relation (125). Here is a
 Western Journal of Communication 589

first bridge between the inherency of rhetoric in symbols and mass communication.
Whereas Sproule called for the cultivation of eloquence to ‘‘negate the power of vis-
ual images by forcing people to think about society,’’ Hariman and Lucaites provided
a virtual manifesto for the rhetorical function of images to mobilize, give direction to,
and sustain social movements, responding directly to Walter Lippmann’s question
about a common will (Sproule 340; Hariman and Lucaites 25–48). The concentrated
power of the iconic image for ‘‘reproducing ideology, communicating social knowl-
edge, shaping collective memory, modeling citizenship, and providing figural
resources for communicative action’’ is an exemplar of the condensing function of
public rhetoric (Hariman and Lucaites 9). Such images can become ‘‘storehouses
of the classifications, economies, wisdom, and gestural artistry that make up social
interaction’’ (Hariman and Lucaites 10). Hariman and Lucaites even spoke of a
‘‘visual democracy’’ (287).
Lippmann’s solution to the problem of the common will (chapter 8 of Public
Opinion) committed the dualist fallacy of a scientistic worldview, and thus deflected
us from a rhetorical perception of social understanding. It has been the long lesson of
twentieth-century theory that the strict demarcation of an objective world and the
pictures-in-the-head is an illusion; that our knowledge of the world is from
the beginning, and all the way down, an ongoing product of that reciprocity; that
the ‘world’ is only ever something in between brute materiality, whatever that is,
and the language with which it is comprehended.
What I am concluding here, then, is that rhetoric does not find mass communi-
cation in a mass society to be a constitutional barrier to civic progress. Yet we are
stymied by the institutional capture of mainstream media by hegemony, and this
control has meant that whatever strategic rhetoric we devise must work in the
environment of a permeating machinery of propaganda. We may not have to fight
it exactly on its own terms, but we will not be able to forswear the cunning of instru-
mental and strategic communication. (That is a sobering admission for someone who
has spent his teaching life preaching the virtues of a humanist rhetoric.)

Developing an Ethical Criteriology for Strategic Communication

Michael Sproule’s hope to ‘‘incapacitate propaganda’’ by a ‘‘climate of eloquence,’’ a
sentiment that hearkens back to Dewey’s communitarian dreams of local democracy
and even Cary’s dialogic vision of the public sphere, is not an adequate response to
our political situation (Sproule 340). On the other hand neither is Jacques Ellul’s view
that propaganda is the unfortunate but necessary public discourse of a modern
democratic society.16 Can we stake out a rhetorical ground that accepts the expedi-
ency of strategic communication in the face of hegemony but locates its power within
an ethical frame?
If populist activists decided to become masters of strategic communication, what
would guide the weighing of means and ends against an enemy that does not fight
fair and that holds most of the cards? Since concentrated power is operating under
no ethical constraints at this point, what calculation should justice use to weigh
590 J. Arthos
the instrumentalization of the fight against the repercussions of loss? In order to get
at this question, it will be helpful to have some differentiated vocabulary to pin down
the ethical complexion of technique. A starting point is the term ‘‘propaganda’’ as it
has been negotiated in communication scholarship. Propaganda is typically under-
stood as a persuasive instrument to move audiences (masses, publics, with a
pre-established intent (the interest and values of the sender), a scientific approach
(systematic, data-driven, empirical), a behaviorist methodology (plays on impulses,
drives, and primal emotions), and goal (predetermined result). As a result it is typi-
cally oriented toward manipulation, fallacy, concealment, emotional exploitation,
behavioral modification.17 Propaganda leans toward behavioral determinism; it
wants to program, plant, and propagate. A scrupulously ethical persuasion, we could
say, can only seek to lead or move if alternative choices are freely available to an audi-
ence, whereas propaganda wants to colonize the argumentative space. Insofar as this
means of manipulation is purely predicated on success without an ethical compass, it
has at least a short-term advantage enhanced by the short attention-span structure of
mediated political discourse.
With such an extreme on one end, and Dewey’s communitarian ideal on the other,
we should ask if there are viable options open for smart and effective communication
strategies that bear the double burden of ethical responsibility and outmatched
resources. In Table 1 below I have tried to suggest a range of options (Dewey
143–84). The first column shows the characteristics of public communication that
belong natively to symbolic inducement—descriptors of partisan communication
whose moral valence depend on their use. The second column displays the propensity
of strategic communication to construct its messages under the sign of metis, that is,
with an eye to defeating an enemy through guile. The third column displays the
unethical practices that we have said have to be weighed in the context of lesser evil.
The fourth column is separated as a form of strategic communication that exchanges
the direct threat of disorder, force, and instability over metis.
The first column of Table 1 represents what was warranted above in my earlier
reference to symbolic inducement. In the third column I have listed some elements
of what has become the normative value system in the Lee Atwater-Karl Rove-Frank
Luntz school of propaganda, rhetorical expedience entirely dissociated from ethical
accountability (see Forbes). The fourth column is separated off from the gradations

Table 1 Ethical Gradations of Strategic Communication

COLUMN 1 COLUMN 2 COLUMN 3 COLUMN 4

Persuasive cunning deceptive direct

Strategic stealthy fraudulent coercive
Artful seductive disingenuous unlawful
Shrewd crafty manipulative confrontational
Predisposing calculating indoctrinating undisguised
doxastic18 opportunistic treacherous revolutionary
 Western Journal of Communication 591

of seduction as a direct and undisguised challenge to power. Whereas it still refers to

symbolic inducement, it rejects the movement of persuasion toward deception, at the
cost of moving toward coercion. I will provide an example below. The second column
is what Michel de Certeau justified as a rhetoric of the marginalized, and what is
being put up for question in this article on ethical grounds. In the face of hegemonic
power, de Certeau recommended ‘‘a mobility that must accept the chance offerings of
the moment, and seize on the wing the possibilities that offer themselves,’’ using ‘‘the
cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of proprietary powers’’
(The Practice of Everyday Life 37). This is what Conquergood described as the ‘‘turns
and twists and shifts of ground . . . of those who must make a life on the margins’’
(82). The rules simply are different at a certain level of desperation.19 De Certeau
operationalized this principle of disproportion: ‘‘A tactic is determined by absence
of power just as a strategy is organized by the postulation of power’’ (‘‘ ‘Making
Do’ ’’ 169).20 Progressive work is subversive of the order itself, deployed to locate
cracks in the structure and exploit them, to find temporary points of entry where
the social narrative can be altered or transformed. A healthy progressive instinct will
look on it with either suspicion or distaste, but will not be able to dismiss it out of
hand. So on the one hand, I affirm with de Certeau that we must be ‘‘sly as a fox and
twice as quick: there are countless ways of ‘making do’,’’ but on the other hand, I
know how easy it is to lose a moral compass and become one’s tactics (‘‘ ‘Making
Do’ ’’ 162).

A Concrete Case
The way to see if my schematism has some conceptual utility is by bringing it into
contact with a real case. The failure of the grass-roots recall campaign in Wisconsin
against Governor Scott Walker in 2012 will serve the purpose, because it provides
clear opportunities to think about the progressive effort in each of the ethical cate-
gories in Table 1. In this case, hegemony was forwarded by virulently right-wing
Republican standard bearers, and the revolt was a broad coalition of mainstream
Democrats, unionists and community activists, but my hope is that the analysis
has validity for any struggle that pits marginalized groups against entrenched political
elites.
Great hope was pinned on Wisconsin in 2011 when a wide-spread populist revolt
was ignited by a frontal attack on unions and the public sector to address economic
distress in the wake of the great bank meltdown. For a moment it looked as though
populists had seized the narrative, fingered a corporatist villain, and found a diverse
and sympathetic audience for punishing the craven plundering of the middle class by
a small elite.21 The prank phone call that tied Walker to the Koch brothers, and the
spectacle of Egyptian citizens from the Tahir Square uprising ordering pizzas for
Wisconsin protestors at the state capitol were two of the early iconic moments in this
narrative (Shiner).22
But it turned out that this narrative control was illusory. The establishment
machine behind Walker went to work with its well-honed propagandist skills and
592 J. Arthos
boundless resources to reframe both the story and the hero. In a depressing confir-
mation of the power of mass mediated propaganda, a seven-to-one advertising bud-
get advantage combined with a skillful narrative reframing had a decisive effect on
voter attitudes. The linchpin of the Walker strategy was to drive a wedge between
public union workers and their private counterparts. Teachers and bureaucrats were
demonized as selfish and lazy government workers unwilling to share in the collective
economic pain, and the politics of resentment became the dominant narrative of the
Walker recall episode for a majority of Wisconsonites.23
With the Walker campaign we saw on display all the classic techniques found in
the third column of Table 1. Walker demonized the opposition24 to distract from his
record and dampen enthusiasm for the recall,25 manipulated job numbers to create a
false picture of the economy,26 and misappropriated government resources to dis-
guise the economic plight of the state.27 His ad campaign convinced private-sector
workers that his anti-public union measures would lessen their tax burden.28 He used
robo-calls to confuse voters and depress turnout (Peck). Surrogates used spam mes-
saging to jam phone lines at Democratic campaign headquarters (see ThinkProgress).
Most crucially, Walker scapegoated unionized public service workers to create private
sector resentment:

There is now a new way for the rich, ruling class to use fear and envy to divide the
American middle class . . . .conservatives have now managed to vilify plain old
working people as elitist fat cats. Librarians, teachers, public employees, and union
laborers: Basically, people who earn health insurance and decent wages have sud-
denly become the things that stagnate an economy and raise taxes. (Bakopoulos)

Stunningly, at the end of the day, 37 percent of union households voted for Walker
(Ungar 1).
So, unethical practices, both rhetorical (misdirection, obfuscation, ad hominems,
false attribution, ridicule) and material (alleged accounting tricks, legal suppression,
bribery, technological sabotage) were deployed by the winning side successfully
(Lounsbury, ‘‘Walker Spent 1.25 Million’’). Leveraging power to camouflage vulner-
abilities and undermining opponents through manipulation of the process were
combined with heavily subsidized mass-market advertising to change the perceptual
frame and voter behavior.29
What was the response from the other side? The ground-game of the anti-Walker
forces was a volunteer-based grass-roots get-out-the-vote effort. As the Washington
Post put it, ‘‘Two distinct strategies have emerged among political interest groups:
an air war on the right and a ground game on the left’’ (Eggen). The difference in
strategy illustrates the problem I am highlighting: The corporate elite understood that
constructing and controlling the narrative was key to electoral behavior, and their
strategy turned the tide. Walker was turned from a villain into a hero for a large
swath of the Wisconsin electorate in a short space of time with classic
image-management techniques. Polling data clearly demonstrated the shift in voter
attitudes once the ad campaign was underway.30 There was little indication that
the opposition learned this lesson in Wisconsin. In a conference call after the defeat,
 Western Journal of Communication 593

the national political director of the SEIU responded to the strategy question by
calling for a more robust get-out-the-vote effort in other states (Conniff, ‘‘Will Labor
Learn . . . ?’’).
The battle for narrative framing does not intersect with the ethics-strategy con-
tinuum I have put forward in a neat alignment. Since Walker commanded near-total
control of the airwaves and a peerless propaganda machinery without moral con-
straints, the options for his opponents were circumscribed, and called for creative
strategies for making the narrative competition more even. In what follows I will sug-
gest two alternative strategies for the Wisconsin effort, both more focused on control-
ling the narrative than what emerged. One strategy is the path of indirection and
metis, and the other is the uncompromising path of direct action. The first strategy
would deploy the ethically challenging tactics that de Certeau proposed (column 2),
and the second strategy would forsake these ethical compromises by the direct show
of populist force (column 4).
1. First is the compensatory tactics of de Certeau that those who exist on the mar-
gins use to leverage the power disadvantage (‘‘ ‘Making Do’ ’’ 169). This means all the
resources of metis that prove effective, i.e., that subvert immoral power without
undermining the moral justification for doing so. The kind of ethical calculus
involved here surfaced in Wisconsin early. Initially some mainstream commentators
expressed discomfort with the prank caller who exposed Walker’s ties to the Koch
brothers, comparing it to the infamous ploys of James O’Keefe (NPR, ACORN,
Shirley Sherrod) (Frum). Was this a moral equivalence? The ethical question surfaced
again on the recall side when Ed Garvey, a recall organizer, contended the campaign
should reject all out-of-state and PAC money and stick with the grass-roots foot-
leather campaign: ‘‘By refusing to play on Walker’s terms, Garvey argues, a candidate
could run against the whole corrupt, big-money regime that has taken over what
once was a clean and open government state.’’31 Russ Feingold likewise argued that
accepting PAC money was playing by the Republican rules: ‘‘People will see us as
weak and not being a true alternative . . . to me this is dancing with the devil.’’32
The television host Ed Schulz responded that moral purity was not a practical option
and noted that Feingold lost his own campaign with that strategy.33 It needs to be
remembered that an ethos of integrity has its own persuasive force, with long-term
and difficult-to-assess follow-on effects. The question from a tactical perspective is
how to find the narrative leverage that keeps the resentment on the right targets.
De Certeau would I think have authorized whisper campaigns, viral videos, sensatio-
nalized PR stunts, confrontations with the majority party leaders—guerilla tactics to
keep the public eye on the Walker criminal investigation.34 The astonishingly clumsy
overreach of the government—the ties to out-of-state backers, the machinations of
the Wisconsin Assembly, the thuggish behavior of the Fitzgerald brothers—provided
such rich dramatic resources for political narrative that the choice to run with an
establishment politician who preached healing and consensus appears in retrospect
to have been unilateral strategic disarmament.34 The ethical question for
‘making-do’—and thus the need for reflective awareness—is where justifiable
expedience lies in the continuum between, for instance, the prank call that uses deceit
594 J. Arthos
and humor to reveal collusion, and an ad hominem ad campaign that insinuates (or
warns about) an unproven criminal conspiracy.
If grass-roots activists had used the tactics of ‘making do’ (undermining motives,
exploiting emotional hot buttons, introducing subconscious fears), could they have
navigated effectively between justifiable expedience and self-destructive manipu-
lation?36 Saul Alinsky’s second rule of political ethics is that ‘‘the judgment of the eth-
ics of means is dependent on the political position of’’ those involved (26). I think
this may be too facile, because it might get activists trapped in a descent into a rela-
tivism that they could not work back out of. Part of the strength of the original Wis-
consin uprising lay in the perception of the legitimacy of its grievance, the broad
participation and class representation, and the transparency of its motives. And
yet, at least initially, metis seemed like a viable option, as demonstrated by savvy orga-
nizing in the capitol building by student teachers, the orchestration of public opinion
through home-made images, the dramatic exit of Democratic senators from the state,
seizing control of the media narrative by cleverness, interruption, and subversion.
Alinsky’s better claim, one eminently suited to a rhetorical perspective, was that
‘‘the real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is, and always
has been, ‘Does this particular end justify this particular means?’ ’’ (24). In the
absence of a good faith partner in dialogue, the calculation for strategic communi-
cation changes the ethical equation. The question then becomes, how much?
2. The second option for the revolt in Wisconsin would have been to move from
the margins and reclaim the structural center of power by invigorating the union
movement and building ongoing grass-roots political organization in local com-
munities in order to challenge the Koch brothers et al. in fundamental ways. In
the case of Wisconsin one step in this direction would have been a general strike.
A number of progressives had pushed for this option, and deplored its early aban-
donment: ‘‘By calling for a recall instead of a general strike after Walker stripped col-
lective bargaining rights and cut benefits for workers, labor and Democratic
leadership in the state diverted and then subverted populist energy, channeling it into
an electoral process’’ (Stoller). Any number of post-mortems judged the electoral
path as a major strategic error: ‘‘The energy of the Wisconsin uprising was never elec-
toral. The movement’s mistake: letting itself be channeled solely into traditional poli-
tics, into the usual box of uninspired candidates and the usual line-up of debates,
primaries, and general elections’’ (Kroll). The logic for this judgment was strategic.
Absorption into the party machinery too early becomes simply cooptation, which
is the lesson that national progressives learned from the 2008 Obama presidential
campaign (Smith).37 To be sure, the general strike was not the only option for direct
action. Activist voices in Wisconsin did in fact advocate channeling protest energies
in just this direction, but they lost out.38 As partisans of the values and tactics
expressed in the fourth column of Table 1, they were a relatively small voice.
The direct action approach brings out an important distinction between the tactics
of metis and movement communication strategy in general, and leads to one of the
two major assertions of this article. The general strike option is directly confronta-
tional and interruptive; its challenge to hegemony has the kind of purity that
 Western Journal of Communication 595

Feingold was arguing for in Wisconsin, but in a different way—as resolutely revolution-
ary and idealistic (column 4). In rejecting indirection, it does not, however, give up rhe-
torical calculation or communication strategy. A social movement is still fundamentally
and always a rhetorical act and controlling the political narrative is a necessary tool.39 This
point circles back to the Gearhart debate in which I reaffirmed that rhetoric is always sym-
bolic inducement. Even coercive tactics in a democratic system marshal symbolic capital
for material change—work stoppages throughout Egypt in 2011 were among the most
potent tools for forcing change, but they worked as expressions of popular sovereignty
that undermined the legitimacy of state power. If the tactics are coercive, the strategy is
still persuasive.40 Thus a theme that has consistently emerged in this article is how ines-
capable the logic of symbolic inducement is to social movements, and that the movement
left therefore has to train itself to think rhetorically. This assertion is not directed primarily
at rhetoricians, but at activists in the field who may not think in these terms.
The second finding has to do with the ethical choices available to a critical rhetoric in a
period of totalizing hegemony. Both hypothetical strategies I have laid out here would
have had their own practical and ethical perils. The first is far from ideal (column 2) even
as it draws a line at pure sophistry (column 3). The second strategy (column 4) leans in
the direction of coercion (meeting force with force), but has the virtue of transparency
and directness. Separate or combined, a vibrant movement politics needs to move from
the highly constrained and ritualized conventions of protest to these higher risk strate-
gies. The Occupy movement in roughly the same period as the recall effort was a labora-
tory of experimentation in these less conventional forms, and we need to work along with
these new activist impulses as they continue to develop.
The two assertions I have articulated above reaffirm the theoretical premises of my
article. First, a social movement is primarily symbolic inducement, a fight to take
back and control the narrative. Second, this is an unequal fight that requires balanc-
ing the honorable with the expedient. Grass-roots movements in a period of seem-
ingly impregnable hegemonic domination will have to be attuned to both of these
facts, and rhetoricians can help.

A Preceptive Rhetoric in the Face of Hegemony in a Mass Society

If justice is the presupposition of civic participation, and the might of ambition and greed
is aligned against it, if hegemonic interests have extraordinary control over the ideology
inputs that more or less constitute our political reality, and those inputs are every tool
of symbolic inducement and strategic communication, then communication strategy is
the vernacular of resistance, and the mixed practice of dialogic ethics and strategic instru-
mentalism distributes itself in some kind of moral calculus. In a democratic system, the
predicate to political success is control of the narrative. The populist challenge is to break
the bond between hegemony and ideology and find the chink in the armor of the noise
machine that controls our politics. Let me suggest provisionally some rules of thumb com-
ing out of this discussion, the first of which serves as presuppositions for all the rest:
. This first presides over any concession to strategy, and acts as a proviso. It is
implicit in the most mundane adversion to tactical communication among friends,
596 J. Arthos
and to the most systematic deployment of political persuasion. Humane and dia-
logic communication is the regulative ideal and the default practice for rhetorical par-
ticipation in a community. To the extent possible, counter-hegemonic resistance
should build and model the dialogic norms of its own institutions. Even in resist-
ance, just means should always be the first option. Chris Hedges noted that ‘‘the
power of [the recent revolutions of Eastern Europe] was that they found as their
primary weapon the understanding that the good draws the good; that taking that
moral high ground in the face of repression is not only tactically necessary, but
finally morally empowering, not only to those on the ground but everybody waver-
ing on the edges.’’41 In this example, deeply reasoned and passionate arguments
came from contending sides, made poignant by the lived commitment and aware-
ness of the stakes involved.42 This is best practice. On the scales of justice the
thumb should be pressing down hard on the side of the ethical and the
non-violent.
. However, that is often only a distant possibility. The superposition of massive and
intractable hegemony manifest in the institutionalized violence of the state puts an
ethical calculus in play that requires the disempowered to think more strategically.
. Under such circumstances, the ethical spectrum of strategic communication that
moves from lesser to greater harm is to be understood contextually rather than
as an absolute.43
. If the endgoal of a progressive social movement is social justice, the strategic means
include fundamentally symbolic inducement. Activists that forget this are likely to
fail their cause.
. The standard of appropriateness regulates the movement from strategy congruent
with dialogic community to expedience in the face of hegemonic violence.
. Because metis is constitutive, its practice always sits within a larger moral calculus
that asks when its toxicity is more than the practical end is worth.
. With respect to the fourth column, we need to remind ourselves that the boundary
between persuasion and coercion is porous. This is not a grant of license but a con-
cession to realism.

I offer these rules-of-thumb as an initial sketch. In a complex rhetorical environ-

ment with competing needs and interests, multiple spheres and modalities of inter-
action, differing audiences and exigencies, competent citizens must be rhetorically
adaptive—entering into and out of differing generic roles, alternating been invita-
tional and confrontational discourse, negotiating self-consciously the extent of its
own agency in the rhetorical exchange, and sometimes juggling of all these discursive
modes and levels simultaneously. From a rhetorical perspective, ‘‘deliberative reason
permits people to adjudicate between the demands of the honorable and the expedi-
ent,’’ and the canny skills of strategic communication must be harnessed to under-
mine the corruptions of hegemony.44
What is different now from healthier times is that the whole social-political culture
has been effectively poisoned by ideological polarization, and is, therefore, ripe for
exploitation. We see the corporate state now systematically turning its sites onto each
 Western Journal of Communication 597

new democratic institution—sending out its shock troops to discover new scape-
goats, planting the narrative seeds for takeover, and mobilizing its base for action,
a populist democratic response cannot once again reflexively turn to its conventional
and ineffectual ‘‘advocacy protest’’. It must respond persuasively—attentive to the
ethical issues raised—in kind, to the extent that it learns how to propagate effective
counter-narratives, identify the true villains, and frighten people with the nightmare
outcomes that actually are coming to pass.

Notes
[1] Krugman and Wells point to popular commentaries that have recently done this kind of
political-economic analysis.
[2] Habermas gave this phenomenon its most famous articulation when he described the illicit
cooperation of government and special interests ‘‘above the public whose instruments they
once were,’’ a public ‘‘included only sporadically in this circuit of power,’’ and even then
‘‘only to contribute its acclamation’’ (The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
176).
[3] The theory of what is now called ‘‘extraction economies’’ has become prominent in main-
stream economics (see, especially, Acemoglu and Robinson). The exposure of the machin-
ery of regulatory, legislative, electoral and state capture by corporate interests is now
commonplace (see Johnson). Chomsky’s longstanding analysis of the media and govern-
ment cooptation is virtually indistinguishable from the rhetoric of the Occupy Wall Street
movement, and this can be seen in a recent book by Chomsky on Occupy Wall Street (see
Chomsky). This analysis is even making its way into mainstream news organizations like
the New York Times (see Morgenson).
[4] ‘‘We have to be real about the media environment. They’re there, and they reach millions of
people, so we can’t simply ignore them’’ (Tucker).
[5] For instance, in October of 2011 PETA published billboard ads with the logo ‘‘Payback Is
Hell: Go Vegan’’ immediately after a spearfisher lost a leg to a shark attack (Kelly). In
another campaign PETA published a photoshopped mash-up of caged chickens and
Holocaust survivors with the banner ‘‘To Animals, All People Are Nazis’’ (Vamburkar).
One critic who agrees with PETA’s aims opposes their tactics: ‘‘I think their campaigns
are sexist and racist, and that they’re willing to sacrifice the dignity and the rights of one
group in order to make the case for the rights of another’’ (Jill [sic]).
[6] Cicero described the method, championed first by Carneades, in book 5, section 4 of the
Tusculan Disputations, and demonstrated it throughout the De Oratore (On Oratory and
Orators).
[7] The national political reporter Andrea Seabrook quit her job at NPR because of what she
called collusion: ‘‘As journalists, walking into a situation that we know is political theatre,
and then recording those words and playing them back to the American people as if they
were news plays into the game that they’re playing’’ (Garfield).
[8] For a history of the construction of a media infrastructure that has now effectively captured
public discourse and shaped political narrative, see Brock.
[9] Olmsted 50.
[10] ‘‘There is a certain faculty called Cleverness [metis], which is the capacity for doing the
things aforesaid that conduce to the aim we propose, and so attaining that aim. If the
aim is noble, this is a praiseworthy faculty: if base, it is mere navery’’ (Aristotle 367–69,
bk. 6, par. 12).
[11] Each of us knows in our own lives, whether working on the neighborhood watch, the school
board, the professional organization or the voluntary group, that we sometimes think
598 J. Arthos
expediently about how to outwit an opponent or nudge an ally, and we are also aware
intuitively that there is a line not to be crossed when we begin doing this, and that scruples
usually kick in to keep us from going over that line. If we make these concessions at the
personal level, how do such concessions translate up the chain to mass movements and
campaigns? The epigraph that begins this article refers to a traditional principle of Cicer-
onian rhetoric: ‘‘Deliberative reason permits people to adjudicate between the demands
of the honorable and the expedient’’ (Olmsted 50). But rhetoric is an art that is schooled
by theoretical self-awareness, and it would be good to have some clarity about how to
navigate between the honorable and the expedient.
[12] Jacques Ellul may have anticipated the challenges posed to theories of mass communi-
cation by the increasingly individualized form of digital communication: ‘‘Thus all
modern propaganda profits from the structure of the mass, but exploits the
individual’s need for self-affirmation; and both actions must be conducted jointly,
simultaneously’’ (8).
[13] Among the most notable discussion on this topic, Malcolm Gladwell, in a series of
high-profile exchanges with critics, proposed and then attempted to defend the thesis that
the new digital social media was not going to be a significant new force in fomenting social
change, because it relied on distended ties of filiation rather than the strong face-to-face
bonds that support revolutionary movements (see Gladwell.) Gladwell wrote this thesis just
prior to the Egyptian spring—sometimes called the Facebook Revolution because of the use
of Facebook to plan and execute the early stages of the uprising—an event which seemed to
contradict his thesis. Similarly, the Occupy movement was catapulted to prominence and
sustained in its early months by a series of viral videos that overcame mainstream media
suppression. But then the famous Kony 2012 Youtube video (the most viral video of all
time up to that point) and its aftermath (a negligible activist response) gave considerable
support to the Gladwell thesis. These are early days for understanding the role of the
new media in social activism.
[14] A masterpiece of standard persuasion and marketing techniques applied to a progressive
Youtube campaign attracted the most views of any Youtube up to that point in time,
but created a fire-storm of protest over ethical questions (see Memmott.).
[15] In Lippmann’s words, ‘‘The limitations of social contact, the comparatively meager time
available in each day for paying attention to public affairs, the distortion arising because
events have been compressed into very short messages, the difficulty of making a small
vocabulary express a complicated world’’ (30).
[16] ‘‘Propaganda is needed in the exercise of power for the simple reason that the masses have
come to participate in political affairs’’ (Ellul 121).
[17] Representative definitions of propaganda can be found in Jowett and O’Donnell 7; Taithe
and Thorton 6; Parry-Giles xxvi; Sproule 8.
[18] By doxastic I mean the reliance on or exploitation of popular memes, tropes,
narratives and clichés; a practice that can short-circuit the rigorous process of
reasoning.
[19] A good example of a de Certeau tactic is what was called the ‘‘horror show’’ developed
during the Vietnam era to help recruits avoid the draft. In collusion with others, a potential
recruit stages an elaborate and devious misrepresentation designed to dissuade the recrui-
ters (see Maher).
[20] Thus a North African living in Paris or Roubaix (France) insinuates into the
system imposed on him by the construction of a low-income housing devel-
opment or of the French language the ways of ‘dwelling’ (in a house or a lan-
guage) peculiar to his native Kabylia. He superimposes them and, by that
combination creates for himself a space in which he can find ways of using
the constraining order of the first place or of the language. (de Certeau,
‘‘ ‘Making Do’ ’’ 163).
 Western Journal of Communication 599

[21] Wisconsonites intuitively understood what was going on as an economic reorganization

under cover of what is referred to now (see Klein) as disaster capitalism. For an example
of how this structural change was being engineered in Wisconsin, see Lounsbury, ‘‘Walker
Spent 1.25 Million,’’ and Lounsbury, ‘‘Walker Redefines Act 10.’’
[22] The prank call in fact had a significant effect on public opinion (see Dayen, ‘‘Prank Koch
Call’’).
[23] The fact that, according to polling, a majority of voters throughout this period remained
Obama supporters was a good control against this opinion shift (see Eric Black).
[24] A Willie Horton-style ad campaign was launched against Tom Barrett (see Russell).
[25] Sixty percent of those polled said recalls are only appropriate for official misconduct (see
Edison Research).
[26] Six out of the seven jobs Walker took credit for ‘‘were created by Wisconsonites getting jobs
outside the state’’ (Senator Kathleen Vinehout reported by Conniff, ‘‘Walker’s Deceitful
State of the State’’).
[27] Walker plugged the state deficit with mortgage relief funds from the federal government
(see Wisconsin State Journal).
[28] Deferred salary programs are funded by the worker’s own payroll contributions.
[29] Governor Walker raised $30.5 million, 66% of which was out-of-state donors, while Tom
Barrett, the Democratic contender, raised $3.9 million, of which 26% was out-of-state
donors. The super-PAC Americans for Prosperity spent $6.5 million on ads for Walker
(see Abowd).
[30] For a good aggregation of polling data on the shift in Wisconsin public opinion, see Ekins.
[31] Qtd. in Conniff, ‘‘Which Way, Wisconsin? How to Compete with Walker?’’
[32] This recall process should be one in which the candidates make the cases for
themselves without having to rely on either the deceptive efforts by the groups
supporting them or the special interest influences that Russ Feingold and Pro-
gressives United have worked so hard to keep from corrupting our democratic
system,
Feingold added. ‘‘If we can’t allow our candidates to campaign for them-
selves without taking pot-shots or deceiving the people we represent,
we are in severe trouble."Quoted in Conniff, ‘‘Feingold and Wisconsin vs.
Obama’s Super PAC.’’
[33] ‘‘Feingold is a ‘loser,’ progressive commentator Ed Schultz shot back on his radio show.
Having lost his Senate seat in 2010, Schultz added, Feingold is now just a ‘heckler from
the stands.’ ‘This is about winning,’ Schultz said. ‘If you don’t have the money, you can’t
win.’ ’’ (qtd. in Conniff, ‘‘Feingold and Wisconsin’’).
[34] Leading up to the recall vote, progressive media reported heavily on the possibility that
Scott Walker was the target of a criminal investigation on allegations of embezzlement
and use of taxpayer money as a Milwaukee County executive (see Terkel.) Three days before
the vote, anonymous government lawyers confirmed Walker as a target of the criminal
corruption probe by the Milwaukee County District Attorney (see Bice; Bottari).
[35] For a well-documented case for this interpretation see Perlstein.
[36] If you answer ‘‘already lost,’’ then change the word ‘‘poisoning’’ to ‘‘turning’’ in the formu-
lation and ask the question again.
[37] ‘‘Political campaigns are pretty much where movements go to die, get betrayed or are still-
born. A mass movement consciously aims to lead politicians, not to be led by them’’ (Dixon).
[38] The populist movement that arose from the uprising could have used every
dollar given to a politician or an outside campaign spending group and used
it in community-based organizing. We could have seen well-funded nonvio-
lent actions. We could have seen education campaigns, going door to door
with a message rather than asking to support Tom Barrett or whoever else.
We could have seen economic boycotts on Walker-supporting businesses.
600 J. Arthos
We could have seen more organizing into broad coalitions around the idea
of repealing the rights-stripping collective bargaining law. We could have
seen an insurgent movement, one that captured the energy of the uprising
rather than re-channeled it. (Dayen, ‘‘After Wisconsin’’).
[39] ‘‘The form of a movement is a rhetorical form’’ (Cathcart 86).
[40] The permeability of persuasion and coercion is now well established in rhetorical studies
(see Burgess; Andrews; Starosta).
[41] A fascinating and important debate took place around this issue in the wake of black bloc
activities at Occupy Oakland in the winter of 2012, when activists nationally faced the poss-
ible growth of violent confrontation within the movement (see Hedges at about 45 minutes
into the interview. This quotation is not recorded in the written transcript.).
[42] See danps [sic].
[43] ‘‘[Ivy] Lee maintained that propaganda’s ability to move crowds was only as good as its
transparency . . . open and disclosed propaganda could serve a greater good’’ (St. John III
226).
[44] Olmsted 50.

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