Symbolism uses charged symbols — flags, anthems, icons, revered images, staged settings — to evoke identity and emotion, so that feeling does the work argument should do. Civic symbols are legitimate and meaningful; the technique becomes manipulation when a symbol is made to carry an argument, fusing a contested position to a shared identity so that questioning the position feels like betraying the group. Bernays understood that publics respond far more readily to symbols than to reasoned cases, and much of modern political staging is built on that insight.
Symbols are potent because they operate fast and below conscious scrutiny. A revered image can trigger pride, belonging, or protectiveness before any specific claim has even been stated, priming an audience into an emotional posture in which the subsequent argument is received rather than examined. The recognizable move is to place a widely revered symbol beside a narrow or contested agenda so the reverence rubs off — a form of association the Institute for Propaganda Analysis catalogued as the “transfer” device (see T23.13). The tell is that the symbol is doing the persuading while the actual proposal remains vague, and that examining the substance is treated as sacrilege against the symbol.
The defense is to separate symbol from substance. You can genuinely honor a shared symbol while rejecting the contested claim someone has attached to it — the two are not the same, and refusing to conflate them is the whole move. Name the emotional priming as it happens, ask what specific proposal remains once the imagery is set aside, and consider whose agenda the borrowed reverence is carrying.