A few weeks ago, I was doomscrolling Instagram and came across a Wall Street Journal post titled “Mamdani Is Promising a Cheaper New York. But Can He Afford to Pay for It?” When I opened the comments, I was disappointed but not surprised to see that the first comment said: “media propaganda is out in full force against him,” followed by over 1200 likes.
As someone who enjoys reading the Journal, I decided to read the full article to gain a taste of the propaganda in question. To my disappointment, but also relief, I had to ‘actually’ exercise my critical thinking skills to understand the author’s points, instead of being spoon-fed propaganda. The piece outlined tangible financial barriers and political constraints surrounding New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s proposals on taxation, childcare, public transit, rent control, grocery access and minimum wage. It raised reasonable questions about the feasibility of such an ambitious reform, grounding each critique in data and political contexts and demonstrating analytical rigor and evidence-based reasoning.
So how does this article qualify as propaganda? When did posing reasonable challenges become synonymous with propaganda? If the democratic socialist candidate and his supporters can coherently address these critiques — which they should, given that these issues form the core of their political campaign — there should be no reason to react defensively to an analysis by the Journal that merely raises legitimate doubts. In fact, I might even argue that the commenter themself has fallen victim to a subtle form of propaganda, leading them to believe that any skepticism toward their moral position must automatically be dismissed as the opponent’s attempt to undermine them.
This was hardly the first time I’ve seen an instance like this, where critical thinking has been completely abandoned and the art of persuasion neglected during political debates. The issue is not that a person’s argument lacks incisiveness, but rather that their responses to counterarguments, skepticism or hesitation take the form of instant dismissal or reckless misuse of technical terms as a substitute for genuine explanation. If we can’t respond to perfectly well-reasoned dissent with equally sound reasoning, we’ve already lost the argument.
There is a time and place where critical thinking and argumentative soundness are especially important, and that is precisely during political debates held on an individual level, where both parties’ personal opinions are at stake, regardless of whether they are being formed, revised or directly challenged. While this type of speech looks similar to protest slogans, which are meant to serve a broader political movement rather than contribute nuanced perspectives to an actual conversation, its function is quite different. It is one thing to use a slogan like ‘The Boston Police Department is the KKK’ in a protest setting to attract public attention. However, it is an entirely different — and I would argue unacceptable — thing to make such a claim in a personal argument about policing in Boston without offering concrete, evidence-based reasoning to support it. It is one thing to draw alarming comparisons between our current sociopolitical conditions and those under fascism, but it is quite another to directly deem our peers ‘fascist,’ especially without robust evidence or a clear causal explanation for why such a label is warranted.
This aggression-driven reactionary attitude to skepticism and divergence is dangerous; it can worsen polarization and increase self-censorship. Even those who are typically vocal about sociopolitical issues could now possibly feel uneasy about continuing to be civically active, if they fear being labeled a ‘fascist’ or accused of spreading ‘propaganda’ merely for expressing a dissenting view. When there is no welcoming space for people to advocate for themselves and learn, not only does it become harder to encourage new voices to speak up, but we may also risk losing those who are currently courageously vocal.
Authoritarian regimes maintain legitimacy through censorship and the manufacturing of public consent, cultivating an atmosphere of fear that breeds self-censorship and ultimately reinforces groupthink through a dangerous feedback loop. While we have not yet seen these practices taken to such extremes, these underlying tendencies are becoming increasingly visible. What should alarm us even more is that self-censorship today does not need to be imposed from above — it is already emerging from the unreceptive and hostile attitudes we direct toward one another. That is precisely why it becomes all the more important now to stop engineering environments that pressure individuals into silence through instant dismissal.
In light of Tufts’ new statement on pluralism and the recent launch of the Center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education, we should be reminded of the vital importance of critical, multifaceted analyses to a civically healthy and engaged campus. I remain optimistic that Tufts students have stronger critical thinking skills than those behind random online comments, and I am hopeful that critical thinking and the art of persuasion will continue to thrive across our campus.
