I also don’t think it’s like a bright line that propaganda is necessarily the worst form of dishonesty. The subject matter and intent is huge. If a US president runs ads with cherry picked economy data, you could argue that’s propaganda. But that isn’t necessarily worse than say a Pharma exec who pushes through a misleading advertises a potentially harmful drug. The exec could potentially get in trouble for this, but you could easily argue his actions were worse.

The potential harm is generally pretty high when we think of propaganda. As governments willing to participate in more flagrant propaganda are likely going to be willing to participate in other unsavory behavior. And use propaganda to affect it.