As we advance towards the November election, expect to see unprecedented levels of gaslighting and propaganda. And when we say propaganda, we mean literal propaganda.
This will not be a scenario where each side presents its argument in a marketplace of free ideas and allows the public to weigh the evidence and come to its own conclusions. Rather, the far-left, along with the official Democrat establishment, will hammer home the same message points ad nauseam until they are assumed to be fact, based solely upon their proliferation.
Does any of this sound familiar?
It should. It’s not a new methodology. Edward Louis Bernays (nephew of Sigmund Freud) is widely considered to be the “father” of modern public relations. Public relations is a much more palatable and modern label for a field dedicated to “influencing” public opinion.
However, the approach and motives used in furthering and developing the field by Bernays were anything but altruistic. In fact, he very much evidenced a mindset that society’s elite ought to dictate what others are to think, how they are to live, and how they are to act – a concept as old as man. And his work is synonymous, in many ways, with what we now understand to be propaganda. He wrote in his 1965 autobiography that Joseph Goebbels – a propaganda master – read and used his books.
Bernays coined the idea of engineered consent:
If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible…
In his elitist view, Bernays surmised that, “Intelligent men must realize that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends and help to bring order out of chaos.” Bernays left no room for a free society based upon autonomy and individual interactions and decisions. Instead, he perceived society to be chaos upon which order must be imposed.
Fast forward to today – the left uses social media to push narratives and influence votes through aggressive propaganda. This strategy involves dictating what and how you should think about issues. It’s crucial to recognize “how” this approach works.
Prior to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter (now X) the leftist social media platform simply silenced those with whom it disagreed by applying a number of capricious and arbitrary rules on the subject of “misinformation” which often ended in accounts being suspended and popular thinkers being deplatformed. It was anything but a “free speech” platform.
However, now that free speech guardrails have been installed under Musk’s leadership, it’s evident that the Democrat party apparatus and co-opted leftist allies are still using social media (and the complicit mass media) to further their agenda, albeit with slightly different tactics.
The new (old) tactics are simply this:
Take any politically-charged subject (inflation, abortion, immigration, corruption, voter ID, crime, etc.) and craft the message that you want people to believe. No matter how contrary to common sense, “lived reality”, data, or other objective measure, push that message daily, weekly, and monthly until it has proliferated so widely as to be known to be universally true.
Social media is particularly susceptible to this methodology because it uses brief, poignant messages to capitalize on our short attention spans, our valuable time, and our reluctance to engage in long-form thinking, research, or fact-checking.
Here’s an example:
Our economy is increasingly challenging, with rising costs for rent, food, energy, and just about everything else. This is evident to anybody who has to balance a checkbook or manage a budget. Our collective purchasing power is diminishing. $25 worth of groceries does not get you the same quantity it did a year ago.
The answer of the Democrat apparatus is to post this message almost hourly, in one form or another, on X and other social media platforms:
BREAKING: Grocery prices plummeted in April. Bidenomics is working.
— Biden’s Wins (@BidensWins) May 18, 2024
Here are additional example propaganda statements currently being pushed that are now widely known to be “true”:
- Guns are the number one killer of children.
- Abortion is healthcare.
- If we don’t safeguard our voting rights, our democracy is in danger.
- Nobody needs an assault weapon.
- Everyone deserves a living wage.
- No student should have to choose between paying their loans and feeding themselves.
- Immigrants perform the jobs that Americans don’t want to do.
- No person is illegal.
- The wealthy need to pay their fair share in taxes.
- Inflation is falling and the economy is growing.
Also…
- Corporations are using inflation as an excuse to raise prices excessively and increase profits.
These propaganda statements have some common themes:
- They are often asserted with no supporting evidence
- They are contrary to many people’s everyday experiences
- They are easily proven false
- They are vague and bereft of context or substance and appeal to emotion
- They are sometimes contradictory to other propaganda statements
- They are asserted from a position of faux moral authority that often undermines other societal norms
It doesn’t matter that the message doesn’t reflect an underlying truth, or that many people will have contradictory evidence in their everyday life.
What matters to the elitist leaders is that the message is delivered hourly, daily, and weekly until even those who know it to be untrue are convinced of its veracity by mindless repetition, and then start to repeat it to others until it’s a universal truth. Mission accomplished. Vote for the guy who brought us a “good economy”, or whatever else.
This is propaganda in its purest form, and it’s as pervasive today as it was when it was modeled and perfected by Bernays in the last century, or conceived and first written about 2,000+ years ago.
As you consume media in the coming weeks and months, stop and ask yourself if the statement put forth makes sense. Can you prove it to be true or false? And if it’s suspicious or false, call it out for what it is. It’s important that we continue to engage in dialogue and not let the forces of evil use propaganda to further their agenda.
