Association (propaganda technique)

Association, as a propaganda technique, is the activity of creating a bias about an unknown individual or organization by associating the unknown individual or organization with something familiar. The associated bias of the familiar individual or organization can be created in favor of, or, in opposition to, the individual or organization under discussion.

This technique of association is very similar to the technique of transfer in that the victim makes a transfer of, or association with, the familiar to the unfamiliar.

By way of example, a recent SourceWatch contributor offered,


 * "Extreme critics, the most 'mainstream' being perennial extreme-left Presidential Candidate Lyndon LaRouche and an article in The Nation"

with the effect of having readers take a familiar negative association of "extreme", amplifying it by association with the "perennial extreme" LaRouche, and applying it unfairly and unnecessarily to both The Nation and the outfit which it reasonably and rightly criticized. Note also the inference that critics regard LaRouche as "mainstream".