by
M. Richard Maxson
Propaganda is the deliberate and systematic effort, using a variety of means, to manipulate people into believing and behaving in accordance with something that is not true. Media corporations along with the government, employ sophisticated psychiatric techniques, unscrupulous public figures, junk science, tainted studies and clever PR mercenaries in a relentless effort to push their agenda.
Propaganda is delivered by a variety of means. Aside from that issued, in various ways, by governments and corporations, propaganda is delivered by education systems as ‘knowledge’, by the corporate media as ‘news’ and by the entertainment industry as films, television programs, video games, music, literature and in other forms. But all propaganda is designed to instill and reinforce a limited set of fears, approved beliefs and endorsed behaviors so that the ‘individual’ responds submissively within the carefully managed system of elite political, social and economic control.
Let us take for example, education is designed to teach the individual a limited range of technical functions intended to help create, maintain but essentially serve the emerging technocratic tyranny (as it supersedes the existing version of industrial capitalism), make the individual a passive consumer and politically submissive and dogmented to a Progressive viewpoint, while ensuring that an intelligent mind capable of seeking out relevant evidence for themselves, critiquing society and responding powerfully does not develop. This is why most people believe propaganda.
In an early book on propaganda written in 1928 by Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, he opened with this paragraph: The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
As Bernays makes clear from the outset, his preoccupation is the manipulation of people to do the bidding of others: clearly, a debased and cynical view of the human individual on which many of humanity’s less morally committed characters have capitalized since Bernays wrote the book. For example, Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945 and an avid reader of Bernays’ work, observed that ‘Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.’ But to understand why the approach of Bernays and his disciples such as Goebbels even works, we need to consider why it is that most people are so gullible in the first place.
Why don’t more people ask deeper questions about what is taking place rather than simply accepting, without serious question, whatever is presented to them whether by parents, teachers, religious figures, doctors, propagandists, marketing agents, governments or the corporate media? The fundamental problem is simply this: parents, teachers, religious figures and other significant adults in the child’s life require obedience and obedience means that the child not only behaves as directed by the adult but also that the child believes what the adult believes. This latter point is easily overlooked but is actually the key issue. Why? Because a child who does not believe what the adult believes might think and behave in a way that scares the adult.
Demanding obedience is essentially about eliminating beliefs and their consequent behaviors that would frighten the parent, teacher or other adult. Once the child starts to think or believe differently, especially if this ‘difference’ is too far from a belief of the child’s parents, teachers or religious leaders or an accepted Progressive belief within their society, the child is quickly pulled back into line with some combination of inducements and/or violence. The recent urban riots are a perfect example of this.
Consequently, the freedom to think for oneself and act accordingly is strangled at a very young age and certainly by the time a child is compelled to attend a prison for children, also known as the ‘government school’. As a result the child’s concept of freedom, should they ever come across the notion, can only be a parody of the real thing. And the adult who emerges from this childhood is simply incapable of comprehending what freedom might mean for the obvious reason that to be meaningfully understood, freedom must be experienced.
Freedom of thought only exists in America today within certain clearly defined and narrow Progressive parameters. For the vast bulk of adults, the idea of questioning a dominant narrative does not even occur to them and it is certainly not something they can do with any intelligence, persistent research effort or courage. The propaganda keeps us complacent. The majority of the populace believe that "they" would never lie to us – or would they?
