# 13. Propaganda ## 13.5. Methodology/Refinements/Sub-species ### 13.5.2. Ad populum fallacy - Bandwagon The ad populum fallacy is an appeal by a manipulator to the popularity of a claim as a reason for accepting it. In truth, the number of people who believe a claim is irrelevant to its truth. Fifty million people can be wrong. In fact, millions of people have been wrong about many things many times, for instance: the concept that the Earth is flat and motionless, or that the stars are lights shining through holes in the sky. Total nonsense, we now know, but widely believed for millennia. The ad populum fallacy is also sometimes referred to as "mob appeal", the "bandwagon fallacy", or the "democratic fallacy". The ad populum fallacy is very attractive because it appeals to our desire to belong to the group and to conform to the larger "group-think". It satisfies our desire for security and safety in numbers. It is widely used in advertising, politics and in time of war. Generally as beliefs spread among people, as fashions and trends often do, the probability of any individual adopting it increases in direct proportion to the number of people that that have already done so. So, as more people come to believe in something, others also "hop on the bandwagon" regardless of the underlying evidence. A clever manipulator of the masses will try to seduce those who assume that the majority is always right. Also seduced by this appeal are the insecure who may be made to feel guilty if they oppose the majority or conversely may feel stronger by agreeing with a group. The method uses statements like "Some kind of God must exist. Every culture has had some sort of belief in a higher being." ### 13.6.2. Avoidance of Ad-populum The ad-populum manipulation can be rapidly unravelled by a victim citing more and more absurd cases where large numbers of ignorant human beings have believed the most absurd propositions for years and years. By making the parallel concept totally absurd, a vocal victim can make the manipulative proposition backfire on the manipulator.