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In this episode we dig deep into the foundations of propaganda and discuss what it is, how it functions, how it escapes detection, and how it builds its power.
0:00 - Introduction
3:00 - What is Propaganda?
21:30 - Why are people susceptible to propaganda?
33:00 - Who does propaganda influence?
38:30 How is propaganda implemented?
59:00 - How does propaganda elude detection?
1:04:00 Mithridatism and Sensitization
A podcast focusing on issues related to nonviolence, and a member of the Kingdom Outpost.
Welcome back to the Fourth Way Podcast. This episode is going to begin our first episode in digging into propaganda. And I know that anyone listening to this season is likely here because the conspiracy theories and the big lies are what's most interesting. And those are definitely topics that we are going to get to. But this episode isn't about those things quite yet.
Derek:This episode is rather the foundation to all of those future episodes. For as alluring as it might be to skip this episode and go straight into the good stuff, I've set this season up in such a way that by taking stair steps up to the big stuff, I think you're gonna be able to more easily discern how to identify truth from lies and propaganda from conspiracy theories. For this episode, then, we are going to lay the groundwork for what propaganda is. What is it? How does it work?
Derek:Why does it work? And on whom does it work? The foundation that we set up in this episode is going to follow us all throughout the season, so pay very close attention. Before digging in, I want to let you know that I will be drawing from a ton of various resources, most of which, if they're in book form, can be found in my propaganda list on Goodreads, which I'll link in the show notes. But there will also be some other links that I I put in the show notes that might be videos or articles or whatnot.
Derek:For this episode, in particular, there are 4 specific resources that I'm going to be drawing from most heavily. Propaganda by Jacques Ellul as well as his work, The Technological Society. I'm also using Bernays' Propaganda, and I'm also significantly drawing from Stanley's How Propaganda Works. All great books. Bernays, you can kinda put to the side and maybe skip that one, but, all of the other ones are fantastic in regard to this topic.
Derek:Okay. With all that out of the way, I think we are ready to jump into propaganda proper. So first of all, what is propaganda? Now I think that propaganda is a term that everyone feels they understand, and it's probably true to a certain extent. I mean, everyone does know what propaganda is in certain instances.
Derek:However, I would argue that the understanding of most people is is way way too narrow. You know, they can identify some instances of propaganda, like, Nazi propaganda, for instance. Right? That's that's clear. However, they wouldn't see some newspaper article about American patriotism or a discussion of some moral or societal truth coming from their political party as propaganda.
Derek:So don't dismiss the what is propaganda section as there are going to be some things that I think you're gonna discover that you didn't know about propaganda. So starting off at the most basic level, both Bernays and Stanley attribute the idea of propaganda to originating from the Catholic church. And it originated with the idea of the church propagating information in an attempt to fight certain heresies. It, this idea of propaganda or propagation was just the teaching of the true faith, correction of error. Right?
Derek:Now put your negative impressions of the Catholic church aside if you have them, and, and just give them the benefit of the doubt here for a minute. You know, the origin of the term propaganda came from an attempt at an educational campaign, a presentation of information which the speakers thought was true. Now, of course, we've seen propaganda blossom into something much more than a simple attempt at education, but it's important to know the root of propaganda as its heart has remained the same, usually, no matter who wields it. The central goal of propaganda is going to be to educate, and often, the one implementing the propaganda has a genuine belief in what they're attempting to teach or accomplish. Propaganda often has a backbone of truth inside of it.
Derek:And, really, the more truth that it contains, the better it is in terms of producing belief and securing certainty. If someone has doubts about 1 or 2 points of some truth that's being spouted, but as many other points of truth that they can rest on, then they can live with the the mass of certainty that they do have in spite of 1 or 2 uncertainties. The more truth that exists, the more the certainty in the lies can be bolstered. And this is this is a common misconception that propaganda is untrue information. That's not true at all.
Derek:The ideal propaganda contains largely true information. Heck, maybe this misunderstanding is, actually propaganda in action. Propaganda, creating this false idea of what propaganda is so that it's harder to identify. Who knows? So this corresponds to another misconception about propaganda, and that's a lot of people often think that propaganda is wielded by used car salesman.
Derek:And no offense, if you are used car salesman, I don't mean this, like, literally used car salesman are bad. It's just the term that we use. So, you know what I mean. So a used car salesman might try to sell you a lemon, a car that doesn't work, or has some problems with it that are hidden. And and that used car salesman might know full well that the car that he's selling is broken and not worth what he's pricing it at.
Derek:He's not only lying, but he's also lacking sincerity because he doesn't care about your economic or physical safety as evidenced by his willingness to knowingly sell you a bad item. While there's plenty of propaganda which may fit this sort of narrative, where people are trying to sell you something that they know isn't true and and they don't think it's true, so it's not only a lie, but it's also an insincere lie. Successful successful propaganda is actually born out of truth and true sincerity. Propaganda that's espoused by someone who truly believes in the information that they're citing or in the end that they're pursuing, they're able to much more effectively reel in others to believe the propaganda because they themselves believe it. Someone who has a pure agenda and is sent up to spew lies that they know are lies will often be unsuccessful.
Derek:It's like the difference between getting a hold of a live operator or an automated one. Might be able to resolve your issue, whatever you have with customer service, through both sorts of systems, a live operator or an automated one. But one of those routes will likely be much smoother and more palatable and cause you to give that company higher ratings or or whatnot on on a different review sites. Humans can often tell the difference between the genuine and the robotic utilitarian manipulator. Of course, someone can be very wrong or misguided about something that they genuinely believe.
Derek:For example, there were a lot of anti Muslim propagandists after 911, and the people spewing that sort of thing genuinely viewed the things that they said about Muslims as true. Or you can point to the same thing today with anti immigration pop propaganda. People truly believe the things that they say, even though many of those things are terrible or untrue in regard to immigrants. There may be an underlying self interest in believing that most Muslims and terrorists or immigrants are a threat. Now one might have fear for their physical or economic safety, which is allayed or assisted by legislating against Muslims or immigrants.
Derek:Nevertheless, many, if not most people, who hold anti Muslim or anti immigrant sentiment aren't sadistic psychopaths who just want to hate people. They truly believe the things that they're saying, the things that they've been propagandized to believe, and the beliefs with which they propagandize others. Sincerity, like truth, often accompanies propaganda and makes it more believable, even if it doesn't make it more true. Another aspect that has to be understood about propaganda is that it is sociological, not merely pragmatic in nature. Propaganda isn't implemented simply to bring about some desired result, though it's certainly used to do that.
Derek:Propaganda is often implemented as an expression of group solidarity as well as a way to solidify cohesion. Propaganda occurs in social groupings, and it isn't meant to be individualistic. It doesn't function as well on the individual level. This is why advertisements, while depicting or implicitly offering individual pleasure fulfillment, like sexy women or material wealth, they do so in ways which tend to be sociological. I may enjoy having a nice car in and of itself, but having a nice car is advertised as causing other people to elevate me in their minds.
Derek:Hence, my ability to get sexy women to come ride in my car with me. For me to simply have a car is just for me as an individual to have a car. But for me to have a car, which is alluring to other people and elevates me sociologically, that's different. If I can get sexy women to ride along with me and if I can get heads to turn as I drive down the street, that's more alluring to me than me just simply having a car that's gonna take me from point a to point b. What's particularly telling about this sociological aspect is that if you try some of the same types of advertisements in one community and then try to take those advertisements into a community that has different values, like, you know, take the car commercial and put it into a society of stoic philosophers.
Derek:The propaganda is just not gonna work. Right? And in fact, it might be very off putting to the group. And that's because while propaganda triggers something inside of the individual, right, it does work on us as individuals. What it triggers in us as individuals is some sociological context.
Derek:We can sort of see this sociological aspect of propaganda in an inverted manner as well. So propaganda isn't merely sociological and that it can build up the group with which I identify, but propaganda must also have an enemy group, which is antithetical to mine. So my wife was a public speaking teacher for a number of years, and when she taught persuasive speaking, this idea of accessing, somebody's needs, a listener's needs, getting them to realize their need for something, that's a a big backbone of persuasive speaking. Now they have to recognize that there's this, there's this need that they have, that the persuader is kind of resolving for them. I mean, the simplest way to kind of address this in your mind is just to imagine an advertisement for a car where the car was simply put in front of a green screen, like, literally green screen.
Derek:No no special effects or anything. And, then this list of facts just came onto the screen about the specifications of the car. The end. Because that's not very convincing at all. Well, why not?
Derek:Because they're telling you about the car. Like, they're giving you the statistics, the facts, the truth. Like, it has this many horsepower. It's got these features. It's this price.
Derek:The end. That's all you really need to know, isn't it, before you make a purchase? If propaganda and persuasion were purely about facts and truth, then that's how our commercials would be. But those who are doing the persuading recognize that that's not at all how persuasion works, and we do too if we just think about it for more than a second. But at the same time, we don't like to admit this because we don't want to recognize that we're persuadable Because we're rational, intelligent, thoughtful beings who, you know, the truth is what matters.
Derek:But no. Not at all. Not at all. That's why these basic types of commercials are are not convincing. Now if you put the car alongside of some sex symbols, yeah, I could use some of that for self gratification and for some status in my community.
Derek:Put it in front of a mountain. Yeah. I'd love to travel more to see other cultures and to tell all my friends how cultured I am, you know, tell them about the places that I've seen. Advertisers are implicitly creating an enemy through their advertisements. The mountain or the sex symbols may not be my enemy, but that which is in my life that keeps me from those things, that is my enemy.
Derek:So what is my enemy in a car commercial? That which keeps me from getting that car, because that car is my vehicle, not just from point a to point b, but my vehicle for self gratification, for acceptance into society, for, you know, people to look up to me or or whatever. So my lack of something, right, is what is my enemy. And that's our materialistic society there in a nutshell. They create need needs that we don't even really have and attach it to things that we really want, which are sociological things, group things, community things.
Derek:And then need or lack of something becomes our enemy. And so we are filling that lack, that void with more and more stuff and stuff and stuff and stuff and finding that it really doesn't meet that need. But what's worse is, you know, it it doesn't just remain at my lack of something or my felt need for something as being my enemy because I have a lack of something and needs, not because of some inanimate object or, you know, circumstances, but usually those things are attached to somebody. Now it's I'm lacking this car or the ability to buy this car because my lousy boss, right, or my unfair job, they're keeping me from making enough money to buy this car. Or those welfare moms and those illegals, yeah, they're keeping me from getting what I really deserve.
Derek:I'd have a better job if my jobs weren't being taken or if I wasn't being taxed so much to support those welfare moms. The advertisement doesn't have to show images of your boss or of immigrants because the positive culture that they're showing you where people value and obtain sexy women and leisure travel and where your enemy becomes that which stands in your way, it doesn't take many steps for the obvious enemies to arise for our for our own minds to create them, or our political parties are happy to kind of fill in the gaps for us too. If you're a blue collar worker, the immigrant is gonna be your enemy. And if you're a large company or very wealthy, then those who would prevent the labor of cheap immigrants from working in your factory might be the enemy. Either way, an enemy is created for you.
Derek:Perhaps one of the best examples of where something like this happened was after the Civil War. So you got free blacks and poor whites, and both of those groups actually had quite a lot in common in terms of their oppression by the society around them. Yet through social actions and propaganda, the poor whites were actually pitted against the free blacks. Now the northern industrialists, they didn't have a problem absorbing black labor during the Great Migration. Right?
Derek:They're happy to take those black laborers into their factories, for the most part, unless there is pushback from, you know, some of the the white communities who who feared that their jobs were being taken and stuff. And so, and they rebelled and such. But by and large, in the industrialist, they didn't mind cheap labor. But the low level white worker, they did. And there were many killings and lynchings in the North and the South as the poor whites identified blacks as their enemies.
Derek:But this wasn't abject and overt hatred. Now instead, it was hatred that was masked behind certain truths that the poor whites knew were correct, like black inferiority or blacks just having a natural tendency towards crime. Right? Their their hatred was justified. It was grounded in something true, at least something that was true in their minds and something that other people were happy to propagandize them about.
Derek:Propaganda fulfills an important function in that it not only solidifies our group and creates enemies, but it also helps us to hide or justify vices like hatred, which we know would otherwise be wrong. It makes us feel self justified in those things. Finally, for this section, propaganda is something which reduces the material cost of power. Put more simply, it greases the wheels. It causes groups to cohere, and it prevents friction in those groups.
Derek:And you might think that this is a relatively unimportant reason to propagandize. I mean, when you think of all the money spent on advertising, it's hard to believe that all of that money is worth it. Coca Cola alone spends $4,000,000,000 a year on advertising worldwide, and that seems ludicrous. How how do they make back $4,000,000,000 in just selling, like, Coke products? Like, it's it's insane, and it's gotta be so much of what they make, which shows you how little I know how much Coca Cola makes.
Derek:But let me put this into an example that I think will help to kind of make this a little bit clearer. Let's take the biggest, most ruthless business of them all, the government. As I'm recording this episode, the Freedom Convoy in Canada had just ended a few days ago, a week ago, maybe. And I'm not here at all to praise or condemn that. So push whatever your thoughts of the convoy are to the back of your mind, because we're we're gonna just pull out some facts here.
Derek:We're not concerned about truth and fiction there. So looking at the numbers at the high end of the estimates, the the very high end of the estimates of participants, there are about 20,000 people who participated in the Freedom Convoy blockade in Canada and, along several borders with United States and in multiple locations. Now in about 3 weeks, the convoy caused approximately estimated $300,000,000 in damages. And that's just considering the lost worker wages and the loss to car companies. That that's not including all losses.
Derek:That's just to those two specific things. So that's $100,000,000 a week that was lost, sparked by a protest of, at most, 20,000 participants. Now we did a whole season on nonviolent action, which you should definitely go and listen to, but the effectiveness of nonviolent action is is very well known. Why is nonviolent so powerful? Of course, it does expose evil with truth, and it rallies a significant amount of the population behind the movement.
Derek:But, also, what I think we see here in the Freedom Convoy is that a huge reason nonviolent action can work is because it can be so economically debilitating. I mean, we saw that in the, in the civil rights movement too, right, with the bus boycott. So what propaganda is gonna do is is a very important thing in that it greases the wheels against rebellion or nonviolent action. The state, even more so than other companies, wants a positive image and seeks to prevent protests and nonviolent action because it's so costly. If 20,000 Canadians can cause 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars of damage in such a short time, then 1,000,000,000 of dollars spent on marketing are well worth greasing the wheels.
Derek:Propaganda reduces the material cost of governing because not only does the government not lose money by the financial withdrawal of protesters, but it also saves money in not having to enforce their desires and laws. Everybody just goes along and gets along. So to summarize, propaganda is often filled with truth and sincerity, but it is truth and sincerity aimed towards some end. This propaganda creates a more cohesive in group while simultaneously aiming criticism at an enemy group. In this propaganda, it greases the wheels of society, government, and institutions.
Derek:Okay. So now that we know what propaganda is and what it does, let's discuss why people are susceptible to propaganda. Now, honestly, I feel like I'm not susceptible to it because I'm thoughtful, and I can discern when people are trying to take advantage of me, except for that one guy in Las Vegas who sold me Seinfeld tickets that didn't work out. But, anyway, Elul says that if you think you're not susceptible, you're probably extremely susceptible. So maybe I'm not the best person to be telling you about propaganda as I I know from experience that I'm kinda susceptible to it at times.
Derek:And, honestly, I think that's where understanding our first section is vital. Because if we think that propaganda is sold by used car salesman that we can see right through, then, of course, we think that we can identify it. But if it's being sold in a package that's filled with truth and sincerity, by somebody who truly believes what they're saying, it's gonna be a lot trickier to discern. And that's really the the first reason that people are susceptible. They have a used car salesman view of what propaganda is, or perhaps we could call it the Ted Bundy view.
Derek:Now that guy can't be a serial rapist and murderer. He's too attractive, kind, and charismatic. But what we know now is that the best abusers come in a very refined package and look fantastic to everyone else on the outside. The same is true of propaganda. The heart of the most nefarious propaganda is often presented in a package of good looking truths and charismatic, genuine purveyors of those truths.
Derek:So there are 3 other big reasons why people are susceptible to propaganda. Propaganda offers a way out of despair for our realization that the world isn't fully comprehensible or under our control. Just think about QAnon conspiracies for a moment. Now I can believe that there are a lot of competing actors on the world stage who are vying for power, some of them good, some of them bad, and that there are complex lines of evidence for various world issues like COVID, vaccines, and global warming, and we're all struggling through those things together. Or I can believe that everyone whose net worth is over $1,000,000,000 meets up at a pizza shop in Washington DC to procure child sex slaves and plan how to euthanize a majority of the world's population through vaccines and cloud seeding with poison.
Derek:Now one pathway leaves me with more questions than I had going in and having to treat people that I might want to treat as my enemies as people who are grappling through the through life and trying to discern truth just like I am. But the other option offers me an answer for every question I have. Simple. My enemies are clear. Answers are clear.
Derek:Now, of course, the second outcome is a lot more alluring. I don't want to think that the world is complex. I don't want to think that the world's outside of my control. I want to have a clear cut enemy, and I wanna have a strong social group that I can share my thoughts with and count on as we fight the billionaires. I wanna know who's got my back.
Derek:My certainty and my clear identification of enemies helps me to feel less fearful because I now have some control. It only makes sense that the propaganda of conspiracy theories draws in a lot of people. It should be understandable, and we shouldn't just dismiss conspiracy theorists as crazy people, even though some of the things that they believe are crazy. They have a natural human desire and longing to to have control and to want to understand what's going on and to fight injustice. They just, without nuance, misplace a lot of their their ideas.
Derek:Another reason people are susceptible to propaganda is because it helps us to deal with our philosophical and logical inconsistencies. Take Augustine and his rash rationalization for just war. How can we love someone and kill them at the same time? That had to be figured out in order for post Constantinian Christians to avoid persecution and further their will through the power of the state. So Augustine figured out the answer, and the rationalization was eaten up because the tension had to be resolved in order to maintain power and control.
Derek:We take a modern problem in conservative circles. How can we love the stranger and be a borderless kingdom of God that he called us to be while refusing the immigrant and the stranger? Those two things seem incompatible, probably because they are, yet conservatism has figured out a way to love Jesus as a blue collar worker and to crucify him as the immigrant, something similar to what James Cone says in the cross and the lynching tree, just with blacks instead of immigrants. What about the American myth of benevolence? How is it that we can kill over a 100000 Yemeni children, invade Vietnam, torture and kill prisoners who don't have inalienable human rights, and the list goes on?
Derek:How can we be a benevolent nation, yet be a nation in history and in modernity, filled with atrocity and genocide? Well, propaganda helps us to elevate the myth of our goodness while suppressing the truths of our evils. So when something like CRT comes along and asks us to recognize some of the terrible truths about our history, it's labeled as propaganda and wicked. Of course, CRT has problems and is itself wielded as propaganda. Sure.
Derek:But for those who have been propagandized under the concept of American goodness, CRT is actually counter propaganda and something which exposes truths that the propagandized patriot was never allowed to hear. So propaganda is extremely valuable in in the way that it allows us to avoid facing tough decisions about our philosophical, logical, or moral consistency or national history. It prevents us from having to change our minds or our ways. It prevents cognitive dissonance and provides us with a certainty of our positions rightness and goodness. From this, we get our final reason for why propaganda is able to draw people in.
Derek:If you are in a community of people who have embraced propaganda in order to embrace something like the myth of American Benevolence, then a significant part of your identity is going to be that propagandized perception of truth. You are going to find community in others who share the same beliefs as you. The more heavily propagandized a belief is, the more you're likely to form a community around that belief. This is why when I refused to vote for Donald Trump in 2016, I found out that there were many in my conservative Christian community who were propagandized much more heavily by the Republican party than by Jesus. I believe the same theological truths that they did, but many were willing to see me and as an enemy because their true god and savior was the GOP, not the g o d.
Derek:Sorry for that dad joke. But this is seriously something that is a huge draw for propaganda and why people find being propagandized so alluring. It produces community. We've already talked about the sociological aspect, and here we see it arise once more. In a technological and urban society like ours, one would think that our proximity and always on devices would connect us more with the world, but they actually create a greater social distance.
Derek:In a large society where one isn't known by their immediate community, one ends up selectively forming those who are in their community. Rather than the town priest, the town prostitute, the town drunk, and the town nag all being in close proximity and on a first name basis with you, if you live in a small town, people have very different character and experiences there. You now, today, may not even know who your neighbors are or the guy in the cubicle across from you. So the formation of community is more of a choice on our part today. And who is it that we're going to choose to commune with?
Derek:Well, those who think like us, of course. Those who are propagandized like us. Thus starts the feedback loop of our beliefs as well as the echo chamber. As I socialize with the group I created based on my beliefs, then my beliefs are reinforced as are the other people's beliefs in my group. I speak back into my group the things that they want to hear, and they are reaffirmed in their beliefs.
Derek:Our beliefs are not only reinforced, but they're also amplified in such a scenario. Hopefully, you can see after all of this that propaganda is really like a drug, especially given our technological society. We aren't all just some objective distillers of truth, but we are self interested actors. And some form of propaganda is always in our self interest if we desire to be part of a community. The this idea is called Interest Relativism by sociologists who understand that the acceptance of information as true enough to change one's beliefs and actions is dependent far less on the veracity of the information and much more on what changing one's mind is gonna cost you.
Derek:Stanley, in his book, How Propaganda Works, talks about a study done on interest relativism. There are 2 groups of participants who were given a scenario in regard to proofreading a paper. In the one scenario, the paper was just a regular paper that was being handed in with little to no consequence if there were any mistakes. In the other scenario, a paper was being handed in with much higher stakes and with the teacher promising that nobody would receive an a if there were any errors present. Now when participants were asked how many times each paper would need to be read in order to ensure that there were no mistakes, The paper with the higher stakes attached to it was believed to acquire double or more of the proofreadings in order to ensure that there were no errors.
Derek:The potential cost to an individual raised their stakes for certainty and for a change of action. Interest relativism is a real issue, whether you're on the left, the right, or in the middle of a political divide. This is, in part, why Thomas Kuhn's Paradigm Shift observation is true. In his book, The Structure of the Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn recognized that we don't change our minds about something that we've long held to be true when we're 51% certain that we're wrong. We don't even do it if we're 60% certain that we're wrong, not usually, anyway.
Derek:Changing our paradigms often requires a very high certainty level for wrongness of a long standing belief. Sure. Part of that is because it requires resources and energy to shift paradigms, but another big factor is the social factor. Just take Qanon for a moment. Now it might be relatively easy for me to make an intellectual case against Q, at least to get someone maybe to 51% certainty of their wrongness, but that wouldn't be sufficient.
Derek:Q is more about a social grouping than it is about some intellectual truth. And the same can be said of lots of ideologies, from religion to politics to corporate brands. With that understanding of why people are susceptible to propaganda, why you and I are susceptible, it's important from here to move on to talking about who propaganda tends to influence. Propaganda tends to influence people who are the opposite of me. It influences poorly educated, hillbilly, backwoods, ghetto people.
Derek:Wrong. The group which is the most susceptible to propaganda tends to be intellectuals and the educated. That was a surprise to me. Right? I I reeled from that one as you're probably reeling from that one too.
Derek:That seems like propaganda in and of itself. Somebody who is anti intellectual. Well, Jacques Ellul, an intellectual philosopher, said this. He called out the intellectuals. He said that intellectuals are the most influenced by propaganda.
Derek:But why? Like, that doesn't even make sense. Well, think about it for a second. Propaganda is fed to us through interactions with material. Right?
Derek:Interactions with others, with writing, with conversations, whatever. Now when you're living in close proximity to others, you're invested in social media. You consume streaming services and advertisements. You're wealthy enough that marketers want to influence you, and you're you're living away from the community where you grew up, meaning that you are choosing your flavor of propaganda and what groups you want to be a part of. And you're literate, so you can read.
Derek:You have that as as access to more information. You are way more propagandized than someone living in rural Arkansas who has no access to the Internet, has a moonshine still as their highest form of technology, and whose community consists of the 30 other people in his town. All people who are community by accident, not by choice. It doesn't take a kid from these parts too long when exposed to other parts of the world, to realize that a lot of what he was taught by his community just doesn't jive with the real world. And he can change his mind more easily because he didn't self select his propaganda, but also because the extent of his propaganda was probably extremely limited.
Derek:He might have been propagandized about loving Christianity or being wary of outsiders and the government, but he probably has no opinion on global warming, the Amazon rainforest, or the me too movement, in large part because he knows nothing about them. They aren't pertinent to his community, nor does his community have access to those discussions. So this kid from Arkansas is able to be open to more since he was propagandized about less. And since what he was propagandized about, he wasn't propagandized by choice, but by accident. But now think about those who are more educated.
Derek:They've been propagandized their whole lives. They've they've received much more propaganda because they're literate, and and, more has gone through their their eyes and their ears. And they're doubly invested in their communities because they have self selected their communities, and they've locked themselves in. Beyond that, the educated feel the need to have an informed opinion about everything, So they're likely to speak on many topics that they don't truly understand, as well as not in agreement with others like themselves who feign knowledge on a topic. This leads to the intellectuals consuming a lot of secondhand information, which has a tendency to lead to incomplete or erroneous information.
Derek:And, of course, to add the icing onto the cake, intellectuals tend to be more haughty and believe themselves good discerners of information and truth. Now add to this that many who are listening to this podcast live in a democracy and accept the Democratic form of government as ideal, if not flawless. However, in a democracy, informed consent of the govern is required to run the government smoothly. This means that to run a democracy, I have to be informed. You have to be informed.
Derek:We all have to be informed if we're voting. Yet the more informed I am, the greater the chance that I have succumbed to propaganda's influence. Of course, there's a monkey wrench thrown into this machine here, though I think Elul would not be surprised at all. While all I've said so far of intellectuals is true, with the increase in technology providing access to more and more rural areas, the definition of educated or intellectual would change significantly. Everybody and their brother now has access to secondhand information and is connected to information from around the world.
Derek:So a rural kid from Arkansas really hardly exists anymore. We have thus become a society that is more and more propagandized. Elul saw both this technological and propagandized aspect coming, and I strongly recommend you pick up both of his books on these topics. I also recommend you pick up Stanley's book, How Propaganda Works, for a look at picking apart some of the huge problems of democracies in regard to propaganda. Okay.
Derek:We've taken a lot of time setting up what propaganda is and what it does. Now I wanna take a look at how propaganda is actually implemented. The first component of propaganda is education. Education is vital for at least two reasons. 1st, as we saw earlier, it is intellectuals and the more educated who are more prone to being propagandized in certain ways.
Derek:So education provides individuals with the tools to become propagandized, whether that's the tools to read the praises, to Mao in Chinese schools or the praises of a whitewashed Washington and American schools. Education provides 1 with the tools and access to become propagandized. But second, education often is itself a propagandizing tool. While information can certainly open one's mind to diversity of opinions, this is only true if there's truly a diversity of opinions being presented. But chances are that whoever determines the curriculum is selecting a diversity that isn't really diverse as they have some agenda in mind for their education.
Derek:Now this isn't necessarily a critique on education itself as there has to be some goal towards which you move students who are being educated, and selecting what's in the curriculum inherently means that you're selecting resources which are excluded. And that's true whether you're in a public school, a private school, or you're being homeschooled. You can't teach or include everything. So all education will be inherently propagandistic to a certain extent at least, just as will all raising of children by parents. However, many modern school models and parenting models implement problematic forms of propaganda and that they're authoritarian in nature, whereas a might call them technical in nature.
Derek:They dictate information and direct students to the information that they want them to obtain with specific information being the end goal of the process. You can see this in no better place than standardized tests, the ultimate assessment of an information based education or an authoritarian based education. When I was a teacher, I had kids ask me all the time why they had to learn about stupid things like valence electrons or atomic numbers, and when were they ever gonna use that crap? Now I told them, at least in my class, that the point wasn't for me to simply convey information to them, but to give them the tools to assess and process information. So I used a lot of Socratic questioning and puzzle sorts of elements to get the kids thinking and problem solving.
Derek:We focused a lot on mnemonic devices and analogies that related our science concepts to other concepts in the real world. In my mind, the goal of education wasn't for my kids to know about Valence Electrons, but to learn and apply logic and strategies to the learning process so that they could become better thinkers. So while it would be true that I was propagandizing kids even if I were to start my own school as I would have to select what information that I wanted to present to them and what information I excluded. Nevertheless, an education that is focused on becoming critical thinking thinkers, it is far different than a system focused on the obtaining of specific information. One system provides selected information and invites students to engage with it and pick it apart.
Derek:The other system dictates the information, and it expects students to regurgitate it. With a child propagandized, I mean, educated, actions tend to become reflexive which is also a part of what propaganda seeks. Propaganda is way less concerned with my opinion than it is with my action. There are tons exam tons of examples of this, but, I'll give 2 right here. I've talked a lot about Vaclav Havel in this podcast.
Derek:In his article, Power of the Powerless, Havel gives a fantastic story of a greengrocer who was told by the state to put up a sign which says, workers of the world unite. It's a harmless sign on its face, but everyone knows that there's a whole lot of philosophy behind it, and complying with their quest to put out the sign shows a compliance with the state. In fact, to not put the sign out would be seen as a subversion of the state, and it would lead to punishment. While the government would prefer a citizen to be on board with them in action and in philosophy, their biggest concern is really that one comports with their actions. If a 1,000 grocers chose not to display the sign, that could be disastrous for the government, as it would let others know that there were other dissenters and that the government was built on a facade, on lies.
Derek:A dinky little sign and the compliance of the masses are vital to propping up the lies of the state. Action is more important than thought to most propagandizers. An example from my personal life, I know that my natural instinct has long been to put my hand over my heart during the Pledge of Allegiance, or at the singing of the national anthem. And I still feel kind of dirty when I don't do that kind of stuff. I I don't do it anymore, but I feel dirty when I do.
Derek:Morally and socially dirty. It's been a a sacral act ingrained to me since I first started going to school. By the time my kids 18, they've likely if they go to public or most private schools and Christian schools, they've likely had well over 2,000 opportunities to experience this formative act. And even if, they feel a little strange doing it or they don't really believe what they're saying or doing, The fact that everybody just kind of does it anyway, it it forms us as a group. Education is formative, and it makes our actions reflexive.
Derek:And now that's my personal experience of not putting my hand over my heart, but I think you can see you can see this, like, in popular culture now, the idea of taking a knee during the national anthem. Like, that's just abhorrent. Why is that so? Propaganda. Propaganda is a a good place to start looking.
Derek:We've been propagandized through sacral acts. So education makes actions reflexive, even if we don't necessarily believe what we're doing. Right? It's more important that we act than that we believe, though, of course, both are desired by the propagandist. And we could apply this to information as well as to sacral acts.
Derek:When someone addresses the Civil War in the South, the reflex is often by Southerners states rights. When someone says that Lincoln was one of the worst presidents we had because of all his repealing of individual rights and the locking up of journalists and dissenters, the reflex is, no. He was the best because he got rid of slavery. Propaganda is a large part of why we experience such polarization in our society. Propaganda gives us simple answers, clear enemies, a clear in group, and we hate nuance.
Derek:Now Elul gets at the heart of this, and and he predicts our polarization 60 years before it happened. He says something that we're gonna come back to in, in, future episode, but I'm gonna read it here again because hearing this multiple times is is gonna be good for you anyway. Elul says, quote, a modern state can only survive if the citizens give it their support, and that support can only be obtained if privatization is erased, if propaganda succeeds in politicizing all questions, in arousing individual passions for political problems, and in convincing them that activity in politics is their duty. The church often participates in campaigns without understanding that their propaganda designed to demonstrate that participation in civic affairs is fundamentally a religious duty, end quote. So rather than a critical thinking approach to issues, which is able to identify that there are usually goods and bads in every position and that the potential for nuance exists, we reflexively recoil against all that doesn't fit into our box, into the schema of what we were propagandized to believe.
Derek:There is no longer such a thing as the individual, but an in group and an out group, the legitimate group and a canceled group. So some clear ways we see this. Now if you're a conservative, CRT is all bad, and there's nothing, absolutely nothing that we can learn from. Or if you're more liberal and you hate the church, Christianity is all bad, and there are no goods which can come from it. Or if you're an anarchist, the founding fathers are all evil and shouldn't be acknowledged as having done any good.
Derek:Or when you're talking about the civil war, the civil war was only about slavery, or the Civil War was only about states' rights. So education is largely at the heart of these reflexive positions, these reflexive actions, whether those actions are sacral actions put on display or intellectual acts or a sense that are strongly defended and clung to. One of the strongest tools in creating this type of reflex is the demonization and stereotyping. Education, especially in countries, like, let's say, North Korea and China, implement this type of thing very well as they hammer into the minds of their subjects the wickedness of those in the West. Of course, stereotyping is also huge in the West as we all have stereotypes about different groups, whether those stereotypes are about minorities or majorities, the poor, the wealthy, or anything else.
Derek:As groups are more propagandized and passionate about their propagandized beliefs, these stereotypes and beliefs become packaged and condensed into what we call slurs. And it's a much easier way to deliver propaganda in one word slurs than it is in, you know, more complex ideas. So wherever you hear slurs, you know that the individual has been strongly propagandized by someone or some institution. And saying that slur is going to signal to those around the individual, what team he's on and get his team together around him as well as, to ostracize the the enemy that he's identifying with the slur. But today, you know, slurs have kind of gone out of fashion.
Derek:They've become more discreet. They haven't disappeared. People just can't use them openly because they're looked down upon. But they've they've become more discreet as they've become more taboo. Slurs today are hidden in political discourse by what we call dog whistle politics.
Derek:They're, things which are said that, like a dog whistle, are heard and recognized by a certain group, dogs, I guess, while flying under the radar for everyone else. So in Georgia, where I live, saying that you aren't going to allow MARTA to come out to Gwinnett County means that the politician is just trying to protect your property values by not allowing public transportation into your area. Well, that makes sense. I don't want my property values to go down. Right?
Derek:But we know what it really means. It really means that we are keeping the city, a k a black people, and minorities too, other minorities, from expanding out to us and preventing access by poor people, especially minorities, from accessing jobs and housing in our communities. In Cruz's book, White Flight, it's he had it does a fantastic job, specifically about the area where I live, but talking about white flight. Right? But, talking about how, like, the percentage of jobs that were inside the perimeter of Atlanta, and then how they moved outside of the perimeter, and then not having MARTA blocks, block people from, getting to jobs that they had lost, because those jobs used to be inside the perimeter.
Derek:It's it's really fascinating and terrible and and complex. But we all know what it means, and we're denying it if we don't. That, what it means when somebody says a politician says that we're gonna prevent Marta from coming into our area. It means we don't want black people to live there. Of course, you can't say we don't want black people to live there, so we just say, we don't want Marta.
Derek:No MARTA here is a packaged slur in disguise, because my community can't just come out and say, we ain't want no n words here. So most people only think of slurs as, you know, those 4 or 5 letter words, that you can come up with about groups. But really, dog whistle politics are a way to, maybe package slurs even more discreetly. Well, I guess slurs aren't really discreet. But a dog whistle is a very discreet slur, because you can you can get the same concept across, in a way that you can always have denial.
Derek:So while propaganda is disseminated through various forms of education, it also functions in that it tends to promote fear. And slurs kinda do that. Right? Talking about slurs sure. When when you use, a particular word, it maybe it doesn't create fear.
Derek:I guess it it can to a certain extent, but, it does create a lot of animosity that might have some fear wrapped around it. You know? So thinking back to, the good old days, when when somebody was, maybe used a slur against a a black man, then probably conjured up in that image were the images that the people had about, oh, a black man. He's dangerous, you know, protect my daughters and scary and big and right? There are probably all those things wrapped up in a slur.
Derek:So I think there is definitely fear wrapped up there. And that that is a big part of propaganda to create to elicit fear. And going back to MARTA, that's a a great example of this. Right? Because fears are stirred up in regard to the loss of property values, an increase in crime, an invasion of minorities, a loss of community, urbanization, all of those things.
Derek:It's a it's a slur, and it's it's, fear mongering. Politicians in the media are great at creating and stirring up fear. And I kinda liken this to, to WebMD. If you've ever had symptoms of something, and you look those symptoms up on WebMD, you're gonna end up, after reading that site, you're gonna be far more scared than if you didn't read that site. You're more informed.
Derek:Right? So but you're informed about a host of horrendous conditions that your symptoms could potentially indicate even though those symptoms probably don't indicate those horrendous things because those conditions are so rare. But rarity doesn't matter once you know that such conditions exist because now that's in the back of your mind that you could have some terrible disease. The media does the same thing, making news out of rare and heinous crimes and accidents. It's how we've ended up with so many terrible laws, like this one from Arizona.
Derek:Right? You cannot allow a donkey to sleep overnight in your bathtub. Why is that a state law? Well, because a dam once broke and flooded a a property where there's a donkey sleeping in a bathtub. And so in 1924, there's this law that they came up with because of a dam breaking and flooding a house where a donkey was sleeping in it.
Derek:And what are the chances of a dam breaking and flooding your house, let alone flooding a house that has a donkey sleeping in it? Right? Why do you make up a law for something like that? It's it's so rare. But that's what happens when, you know, when you highlight these freak incidents, you kinda think that, well, we gotta do something about this.
Derek:We we need we need some action to be done when it's only, like, affected 5 people in the world. So propaganda often uses information in order to create a fear in us, and oftentimes, this is an, irrational fear. Now being gracious, we can see that this creation of fear could be intended to protect us and to help us stay safe or to help donkeys and bathtubs to stay safe. But many times, this fear is used to move one's actions towards a, a desired specific goal or agenda. Look at how immigration or crime are used by politicians to garner votes with perhaps no campaign being more famous for than Bush's 1988 campaign, where he used that infamous Willie Horton ad to scare people into voting for him.
Derek:Propaganda often moves fear, which is appropriate, into anxiety, which is inordinate fear. If one's fears are logically regulated, then they can be logically dealt with. We can do it rationally with nuance and and take our time, like, be patient about it. But if one's fears are inordinate, then the potential for the acceptance of inordinate responses grows significantly. And that's okay for propaganda because propaganda's goal is its end goal.
Derek:It doesn't so much care about, whether your responses reasoned or not. Right? They just want reflex. Another aspect of creating inordinate fear is that this is often accompanied by the hurrying of a response. Hurrying a response prevents critical thinking and invokes reflexive action rather than thoughtful action.
Derek:And I have seen this so much with, working with the poor. When I, worked on my church's diaconate, we would constantly have people come in, and they'd be like, my power's getting shut off. Okay. Love, let's let's work with you here. Oh, we don't have time to really work on anything.
Derek:Like, we just need you to pay it right now because it's getting shut off in 2 hours at the end of the day, and I chose to come in at 3 PM, and it closes at 5. Oh, so they they rush you. Or, you know, here in Romania, we worked with 1 woman who, you know, she came in and she says she needs money for something. Oh, well, we don't just give money. You know, we can help you find a job or something like that.
Derek:Oh, no. No. No. I need the money right now, because my daughter's in the hospital. Like, okay.
Derek:Well, we can go with you to the hospital. Like, in fact, we'll save you a bus fare because we'll we'll drive you, and then we'll get time to talk in the car, and it'll be great. We can build relationship. No. No.
Derek:No. No. You can't, go to the hospital because, actually, she's in the hospital up in Cluj, which is, like, 6 hours away. And the ambulance is taking me, and I have to hurry and get this thing before the ambulance comes to pick me up. Okay.
Derek:So you've got, like, 20 minutes until the ambulance comes to pick you up to take you, to a place that's 6 hours away where your daughter's in the hospital. Right? So it it's, getting you to hurry and and escalating the situation, because they want you to feel, like, you have to respond now. You don't have time to think. You don't have time to problem solve.
Derek:You just need to give them the money now. And you see that a ton working with people who are are in need. Yeah. So inordinate fear and immediacy are used to bring about this reflexive response that that's just kind of ingrained into us, and that causes us oftentimes to make bad decisions or not as wise decisions as we could if we deliberate it. Like electing leaders who seem so confident and who can solve the problems that they created through the media, right, with that fear mongering, creating anxiety, this inordinate fear, by highlighting, things that aren't really realistic.
Derek:Alright. So we have seen what propaganda is, why it works, who it affects, and how it functions. Now, let's talk about a few necessities or, some important groundwork for propaganda to run smoothly. First, as mentioned earlier, propaganda is a social endeavor. Therefore, propaganda relies on social groupings and social reliance.
Derek:The stronger the social cohesion, the stronger the potential for propaganda. 2nd, propaganda has to respond to a real or a perceived need. This is one reason why propaganda so often lives on fear. Fear creates a perceived need, and propaganda needs a perceived need in order to offer a potential solution. And this is what helps propaganda drive groups towards a particular goal.
Derek:Right? This this need and this fulfillment, this promise of fulfillment of a need, these simple solutions, easy answers, clear enemies. And, finally, propaganda has to prevent external reference points. The better that it can prevent alternative propaganda from influencing its victim, the better. And this is, I think, one way to better tell if something is propaganda or not.
Derek:If an idea can't survive alongside the expression of other views, then this view is likely a highly propagandized one. The need to avoid dissenting voices is what characterizes much of the propaganda that we see. Propaganda floods the market with its message to drown out alternative voices. Noam Chomsky talks about the difficulty of countering propaganda in our society as, you know, he's often offered speaking engagements where he's he's given a very limited amount of time, like, 3 minutes to talk. Because we have to package everything nicely for people because they, you know, they can't comprehend it.
Derek:They won't pay attention if it's longer than 3 minutes. So he says that if he tries to package his nuanced points and get into rebuttals of the current view and then an assertion of his with information and stuff like that, there's no way that he can do that in 3 minutes. And he's gonna sound crazy having to spend 3 minutes making naked assertions because that's all he really has time for. He can't really bolster his claims and and provide substance. But at the same time, if he doesn't go on the shows that invite him to present what he can, nobody will hear any alternative ever.
Derek:And this is a propaganda trap where open dialogue is falsely praised and presented. When when media shows you these 3 minute conversations between people, that's a propaganda trap. It appears that they're having a, maybe, civil discourse and a good dialogue, but you you don't get to any of the real substance or content. Right? Propaganda wins out, because it maintains the control through those things.
Derek:Of course, perhaps that better is better, like, the illusion of dialogue, the illusion of, discussion than what other countries are able to do, like North Korea or China, where they're able to suppress dissenting ideas by restricting certain terms. You know, terms like free speech or free press. Like, in China, I know, has tried to block out those from discussion in in universities. Like, you don't don't bring those words up. They recognize that if they're able to prevent people from having a schema, a framework for a particular idea, that it may not even come to them into their minds that there's anything wrong.
Derek:A lot of what, abuse counselors do for abused women and for abusers is to help them recognize what abuse really is. Women often know something is very wrong with their relationship, but they don't think it's abuse because doesn't abuse mean to be, like, physically beaten, like, badly beaten, not just, like, hit a couple times? But all these other terrible things that her partner is doing, things that he's saying, psychological games, right, those aren't abuse in her mind, so she really has no recourse. However, when she recognizes all that abuse entails and is able to apply it to the category of abuse, and when she goes to a counselor, when she starts talking to friends who say, hey, that's abuse, Then she begins to have power in confronting what's going on because she can name it. The same thing's true with all the other types of propaganda.
Derek:Limiting our framework and dissent, even to the extent of limiting terminology that would give us the ability to discuss things, is powerful, and propagandizers know it. So definitely look out for that tactic. The limiting of of conversation and information and, language words is is a huge tact tactic for propaganda. Recognize that a lot of times when ideas are being attacked, they're being attacked because propagandizers are seeking to prevent language from expanding our ability to put words on injustice. And I think we see that with racism, with abuse, and with all other kinds of things as well.
Derek:Finally, I wanna talk about, 2 other aspects of propaganda, which may be a little bit more minor, but definitely something that we'll we'll come back to and and you should be looking out for. And that is Mithridatism and Sensitization. Now Mithridatism is essentially acquiring immunity to a toxin. If you've ever seen The Princess Bride, great example. Right?
Derek:Where one of the characters has built up an immunity to the poison, and can therefore survive drinking it. Now propaganda with all of its saturation of our lives gives us this ability to a certain extent. There is so much propaganda in the world in part because we need more and more propaganda to remain propagandized and to feed our need for social grouping in order to feel fulfilled socially. Right? To for our propagandized group to, to feel more cohesion.
Derek:At the same time, we also become sensitized or more sensitive to propaganda. And I don't mean desensitized here, but, like, actually sensitized, which is sort of the opposite of Mithridatism. We actually become more sensitive to propaganda over time, the more we're propagandized. Because I I think this is an important concept to grasp, I wanna give you 3 examples here, because you might be thinking, wait a second. We become more immune, but we become more sensitive.
Derek:That doesn't make any sense. So here's 3 examples where I think something like this happens. K. First, there's the drug addict example. After using drugs, the user often requires more of the drug to reach the same high.
Derek:That's sort of like Mithridatism. But at the same time, that user will also become more sensitized to the drug in a certain way. Just think about how me, having never used cocaine, getting my hands on cocaine for the first time, how would that feel to me? I might kind of feel a little bit fearful of cops catching me or whatever it's gonna do and maybe a little bit excited. But compare how I would feel to how a drug addict who hasn't had their hits, their fix, whatever you call it today or for a week, they get their hands on it.
Derek:Man, their their heart rate is gonna be going up. They're gonna I don't know if you salivate for cocaine, if you know starts running. I don't know. I don't know how that works. But, right, they're gonna have physiological responses.
Derek:They're gonna be sensitized to it, even though they're gonna need more cocaine because of Mythridatism or whatever you call it. I I don't know if that's only for poison, but I'm I'm using it here for drugs too. So they can experience both things in that that same occurrence. Right? I won't feel a thing, whereas the mithridatized and sensitized addict is going to need more cocaine, yet at the same time, have more sensations as they get their hands on it and prepare to to take a hit.
Derek:2 other examples here. So a a few months back, I had a splinter in the bottom of my foot. It's like a bad one. I'd been walking barefoot on our carpet, and, I don't know, wood from one of the kids' toys has gotten on the floor or something. And I slid my foot or kicked it, like, to kick a ball across the ground.
Derek:And I got a really deep splinter in the bottom of my foot. Now I'm a baby when it comes to splinters, but then the bottom of your foot is super sensitive, and this was super deep. So I had no idea how I was gonna get this out. I was gonna have to go to the hospital and, like, get put under to get the splinter out of my foot. But, obviously, I knew that they probably wouldn't waste anesthesia on me, and they'd, like, strap me down or something.
Derek:And to pay to go to the hospital, that's stupid. So my pride kind of made me think. Okay. How am I gonna get the splinter out of my foot? And so I had this idea.
Derek:I didn't know if it would work, but, I like sat on my leg, and like on a tennis ball under my glute and stuff, and I made my my leg go to sleep. And so my foot was just, like, you, like, you touch it with your finger and you don't feel a thing. You poke it with a needle and you still didn't feel a thing. Hardly felt anything at all. The thing is though, if you've had your foot fall asleep before, you know that in some ways, you're actually super numb.
Derek:But then in other ways, when you do feel something, it's extremely sensitive. So as my wife was digging the splinter out of my foot, it's like it was numb, numb, numb, numb, numb, but then she got to a certain level, a certain depth to get the splinter out, and it was just, like, terrible shooting pain. So that's kind of how I would view Mithridatism alongside sensitization. It's kind of both things at once in a weird way. Finally, maybe a way that you can understand, even more so is in regard to ideas.
Derek:It this could be any idea. Like, any pet idea that you have. Maybe you like horses. Maybe you like politics. Maybe whatever.
Derek:Whatever your your pet idea is. For me, when I when I first went to, became a a reformed Christian, no. I was really excited whenever I got the chance to talk about Calvinism. And so I I had that cage stage Calvinism where I was, like, my ears would perk up as soon as somebody said something in regard to, reformed doctrines or free will or something like that. So I would go around and and love having all of these discussions, and my ears perked up.
Derek:I was I was extremely sensitized to the topic. But at the same time, having had so many of these conversations, once I would get into a conversation, I started to kind of get bored of them, and, I needed more and more depth in order to make me, satisfied with the conversation. Because talking about the same talking points over and over and over and not really advancing in conversation was just dull and pointless. So, hopefully, one of those examples stick, and you can see how you can be Mithridatized as well as, sensitized at the same time. And that's the way that propaganda tends to function.
Derek:We need more and more propaganda to keep us high as other ideas and propaganda which seep into our lives might undermine this high. But at the same time, if we're so propagandized to the right that we're embracing QAnon, then when we see CRT, Democrat, Liberal, or anything like that come across our screen or hear it in conversation, we are primed for a fight, and our juices start flowing. In that way, we are both sensitized and mithridatized. So that's something to keep your ears open for as we continue the season. That was a doozy of an episode, and you might have to go back and listen to it a number of times as this is a vital episode to the season.
Derek:I'm gonna be basing a lot of this season on what we covered here. In the meantime, definitely go and check out Elul's work on the Technological Society and Propaganda, as well as Stanley's book, How Propaganda Works. That's all for now. So peace, And because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost network.
Derek:Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to nonviolence and Kingdom Living.