You probably already know about the Warming Pan Scandal if you either a-are British, b-study British history, or c-like BBC documentaries. I fall into category C. Last night I was watching a BBC documentary called "Tales of the Royal Bedchamber," featuring Lucy Worsley (who for some reason I find irresistible--I think it may be partly that she seems so excited about history in general), and I learned the following:

In 1688, Mary of Modena, then queen of England and wife of James II, gave birth to a baby boy. In doing so, she fulfilled her most essential royal duty as queen, but in fact many Brits were unhappy about it. The problem was that Queen Mary was Catholic, and James II had converted to Catholicism when he married her. His previous marriage, to a Protestant, had only produced daughters (Mary and Anne), so the birth of a male Catholic heir to Queen Mary would mean that Catholicism would continue to be (as it then was) the religion of state in England. Protestants in England, understandably worried about this possibility, spent a lot of Queen Mary's pregnancy trying to undermine the idea that her pregnancy was legitimate. When she actually gave birth to a male child, they (successfully!) argued the following:

1-the baby being presented as the prince did not actually belong to Mary or James II.
2-the real baby had died (or else possibly Mary had never actually been pregnant--opinions varied) and the fake baby now being paraded as the prince had been sneaked into the birthing chamber from a neighboring building while hidden in a warming pan (see image below for what a warming pan looks like. When not being used to sneak illegitimate Catholic heirs around, warming pans were generally filled with hot coals and used the way we might use hot water bottles today). No one noticed that the baby in this warming pan (surely a baby would wiggle?), apparently, because it was carried through.... a series of secret passages.

The entire warming pan scenario was based on the fact that, when questioned about her participation in the birth, months later, one midwife reported having seen a warming pan. Obviously suspicious (although of  course it's NOT particularly suspicious--if warming pans were used in bedrooms, it doesn't seem crazy to imagine that there would have been one floating around at the birth). Some observers at the birth also had difficulty seeing the baby at the moment it issued from the birth canal. (Princess Anne, who had claimed that she would not believe the child legitimate until she actually saw its birth, had particular trouble witnessing the blessed moment, since she avoided attending the birth altogether.) The Protestants blamed the lack of visibility on  the fact that the Queen gave birth under covers, and the fact that the midwives were clustering too closely around the royal bed, thus obscuring the view. They claimed that both elements had been put in place on purpose, to prevent the audience from noticing the commoner baby being snuck in via warming pan.

Both blankets and hovering midwives had been pretty normal at previous royal births (I assume I don't have to explain why), and the Protestants hadn't had any issues with those births, but suddenly now they were suspicious. Why wasn't the Queen reasonable enough to allow people to see her genitals at the moment of the birth? Why should this be such a big deal? Other women, contemporary commentators remarked disparagingly, gave birth with far less privacy. Why should the queen get this special dispensation? She probably thought she was special because she was Catholic. Also, she and her Catholic minions probably thought that they could pull off any kind of trick and have the public just believe that the baby was hers because, you know Catholics. They just take things on faith and believe authority. That's what their church teaches them. But we, we rational Protestants, aren't so easy to fool. We see right through that papist, that idolator, Mary of Modena (although not through the suspiciously thick birthing blankets that covered her genitals during labor).

The story of the substituted prince was spread far and wide--songs and poems and pamphlets about it popped up everywhere. There was a hearing in Parliament questioning the veracity of the baby's birth. Of course, in the days before the DNA test there was no way the warming-pan story could be proven, and that may have been the point--if it was impossible to prove, it was also impossible to disprove. The possible fake-ness of James Frances Edward Stuart (the baby) gave Protestants in Parliament plausible deniability when, a year later, they helped James II's Protestant daughter, Mary, and her husband, William, take the throne. Did Mary and William actually believe that James Frances Edward Stuart was not really the child of James II and Mary of Modena? Not so clear. But a lot of people did, and it made what was essentially a governmental coup seem justifiable to the Protestant population. Facebook would not be invented for at least 300 years. Even the telegraph was over a century away. But fake news successfully transformed the political future of the throne of England.

Propaganda, and what makes it work or not work, is obviously at the heart of this story, and clearly there are more than a few modern parallels available The article I read today (McTague 2013) offers some really interesting analysis of how the the warming-pan narrative played on the conventions of traditional English anti-Catholic bigotry to argue that James II and Mary of Modena were trying to preserve the idea of  an absolute, completely unaccountable, monarchy. But I was particularly interested another of McTague's points, about how the story of the warming-pan ridiculed Catholics for their unquestioning trust in authority while asking Protestant audiences to demonstrate their loyalty by believing a narrative for which there was very little proof. If it can't be proven, and you consider yourself a rationalist, why believe it? Because you trust the tellers of the story--or maybe because the story benefits you. Maybe a bit of both.The Catholic monarchy would only fall if it had no male heir, and so it made sense for Protestants on all levels of society to deny that there was such an heir. Even when there was.

The point of this for me is that propaganda, even at its most ridiculous, works because at least a subset of people wants to believe it, because it accords with their interests in some way. This has been true for most of human history--it was not invented by social media or during this election cycle. Further, the impact of propaganda is not limited to the uneducated, the credulous, or those with the habit of unquestioning religious faith. Propaganda is alternatively believable and tempting to educated rationalists just the same way it is to anyone else, because at its base it's about rationalizing and maintaining power. Probably there is no human being, alive or dead, who hasn't on some level wanted their own side, their own country or ideology or family, to prevail.And that means that there is no human being who has not been tempted by a convenient but unsubstantiated belief.

To truly be able to claim a commitment to evidence and proof, you have to resist propaganda even when its message is attractive to you. You have to encourage and teach people to be critical even when it's your side telling the story. An informed citizenry isn't necessarily one that agrees with you (although hopefully if you are committed to critical thought, many of your beliefs also have some solid facts backing them up, and that's part of why you believe them). An informed citizenry is one that expects and demands evidence from anyone, as a matter of course. There are lots of ways to foster that kind of thinking, but insisting that your own ideas are unimpeachable because you like them is not one of those ways. That is to say, if you are worried about "fake news" but expect people to believe that Russia exerted an inordinate amount of influence on the recent election without giving them access to any kind of verifying information, you are not anti-propaganda. If you are worried about "fake news" but were OK with the way the NYT dealt with Bernie's campaign, if you are worried about "fake news" and Trump's election but are OK with the way that the US has used propaganda and persuasion to influence elections from Brazil to Honduras to Russia itself...then you're not really worried about "fake news." You're worried about a loss of power. It's far less laudable, and it doesn't go well with a commitment to the facts. To make sure that the truth is spoken despite the interests that act against it, you have to teach people to ask for it unapologetically, again and again and again. Even if it means that putatively liberal but essentially non-transparent politicians lose support.

There are far, far better reasons to oppose Trump's presidency than the possibility that Russians might have tried to convince Americans to vote for him. And there are far better ways of inoculating future elections (if we're lucky enough to have them) against populist demagogues than putting a lot of energy into investigating Putin. And yes, a lot of those ways and reasons involve discussing things that are likely to be embarrassing to the Democratic party. But the way I think about it, the essence of progressive government has to be that it acts in conversation with the people it serves. If you're imagining that the methods of oligarchy or plutocracy, the methods of non-transparency, can create good policy, I'd say that that's unlikely, because those methods create the kind of government that's inherently unresponsive, even to its "own" base. Is it really possible for anyone in power to feel respect for the needs of people whose responses and perceptions they work so hard to control--especially when they are so successful at it? Is it really possible for anyone in power to maintain a commitment to empowering and educating citizens when they simultaneously rely on citizens' vulnerability to slanted narratives? I don't think it is. The expectation of transparency doesn't just keep politicians honest--it reminds them that their constituents are powerful and worthy of a healthy respect. Contrary to what many politicians might tell you, politics isn't just about the end, it's about the means, because the means frames an awful lot about how people think, what they expect, and how they imagine themselves as citizens and civil servants. In that regard, uncritically accepting the fake news spread by your own side is harmful even if you like and trust your side. It's just not a good basis for a government of the people.

McTague, John (2013) Anti-Catholicism, Incorrigibility and Credulity in the Warming-Pan Scandal of 1688-9, Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies 36(3).