Beware of Propaganda
It's often the more subtle forms of propaganda that are the most dangerous.
Throughout the course of human history, governments of all forms have used propaganda to manipulate their populations to their advantage. That fact is hardly in dispute, but what's considered to be propaganda often is. Regardless of whichever side of any given issue you find yourself on, it's a safe bet to assume that you've been exposed to propaganda both for and against your point of view.
The concept of propaganda goes back centuries, if not longer, but the term itself as it's currently used is relatively modern, and the rise of the internet — specifically, social media — has proven to be quite an efficient method of spreading it. While most people probably think of blatant examples like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union when they think of propaganda, it's often the more subtle forms that are the most dangerous.
Merriam-Webster defines propaganda as “the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person”. According to that definition, this very newsletter could be considered propaganda, as I advocate for my own political and social beliefs and argue against policies that are contrary to those beliefs. However, I do my best to be as honest and upfront about my beliefs as possible. My intention with this article is to discuss the more deceitful forms of propaganda, which is what I assume comes to most people's minds when this topic comes up.
That isn't to say that all propaganda is made up entirely of lies and fabrications, however. Oftentimes, as I intend to further illustrate, the most effective propaganda is not blatant dishonesty but rather manipulating the truth in such a way that it's just deceiving enough to have the desired effect.
Examples of this tactic being put to use are practically endless, so I chose several that are fairly relevant to briefly discuss.
Covid-19/mRNA Vaccines
Covid-19, while being a very real virus with very real risks, was quickly discovered to be far less dangerous than what was initially assumed. That fact was more or less ignored by the corporate media and public health officials until long into the pandemic, however, as they tried for months on end to exaggerate the danger to justify the mitigation policies already in effect. Evidence has increasingly come out against lockdowns and mandates, but that evidence still has a difficult time getting through to the propagandized public.
Joe Biden’s Chief Medical Advisor and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Anthony Fauci, attempted to discredit the Great Barrington Declaration, a document authored by accredited epidemiologists who disagreed with lockdowns and mandates. That move underlined how he and others, like then-Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Frances Collins, desired to smear the many experts who disagreed with those mitigation policies in order to keep the public scared enough to support them. (Policies which Fauci very openly endorsed, regardless of his recent attempts to distance himself from those policies and gaslight us all into believing he never supported them).
As for the Covid-19 vaccines, specifically, the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, evidence has increasingly come out showing that they do not prevent you from becoming infected or transmitting the virus, and do not prevent severe illness or even death. In regard to the omicron variant, those who are vaccinated may actually be at a higher risk of severe illness than those with just natural immunity, even though omicron is a much milder strain of the virus.
That’s without even mentioning all of the side effects of the vaccines, most notably myocarditis and pericarditis, which tend to affect young men and boys more than anyone else. Despite that fact, public health officials, politicians, and the media all still support mass vaccination. A recent decision made by an advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to add the Covid vaccines to the recommended immunization schedule — paving the way for states to mandate the shots in order for children to attend public schools — highlights the willful ignorance of the risks involved with the mRNA vaccines and the continuation of the propaganda campaign in support of them.
For the record, my wife and I both got the original two doses of the Pfizer vaccine in order to attend a music festival that decided to require proof of vaccination or a negative test after we had already paid hundreds of dollars toward the tickets. That may have somewhat forced our decision, but it's still true that we both consciously chose to get vaccinated.
That situation gives me a great way to point out another example of Covid propaganda. Even though we've both been vaccinated, my wife and I still fit the current definition of anti-vaxxer, as it includes not just those who are against vaccines generally, but anyone who opposes vaccine mandates as well. So here I am, a vaccinated anti-vaxxer. How's that for Orwellian?
The Economy
Every presidential administration has engaged in propaganda when it comes to the economy. Every president tries to take credit for any positive developments during their term, and shift the blame of the negative developments onto anything they can point to. The opposing political party also engages in propaganda about the economy in basically the same way, just reversing where to place the blame and the credit.
When it comes to the Biden administration, the propaganda started right away. Not long after Biden became president, the economy began to fully reopen as the pandemic started to recede in the average person’s mind. When businesses were allowed to open back up, naturally, the number of jobs increased, as people were able to return to work. The Biden administration took that as a win on their part, claiming that they had added those jobs to the market.
They did the same thing when the deficit began to fall, taking credit for it when in reality the deficit is still at historical highs when compared to 2019, just a few years ago. The deficit may be lower than it was during the height of Covid stimulus spending, but anyone not looking at this administration through a partisan lens should be able to see what is really happening.
They behaved similarly when it came to gas prices as well. I’ll concede that gas prices were already on the rise when Biden took office, but his administration immediately began spending more money that we didn’t have, which is a major driver of inflation. During Biden’s term, gas prices — and inflation in general — skyrocketed, and as they did Biden blamed everything from gas stations to Vladimir Putin. When they started to decrease, however, Biden was more than happy to take the credit, highlighting the sort of behavior I mentioned a moment ago.
One of the worst examples of this administration engaging in propaganda was a few months ago when they practically changed the definition of a recession to try to deny the dismal reality of our economy. While it may be true that there’s no technical definition, up until now everyone more or less agreed that two consecutive quarters of negative growth was considered to be a recession. As the data emerged showing that we did in fact meet that standard, the White House tried its best to pretend like that commonly observed definition never existed.
Climate Change
Propaganda on climate change abounds from both sides of the argument. On one hand, alarmism and panic over the future of this planet, and on the other, a complete denial of the existence of man-made climate change. Both sides of the argument engage in nitpicking the data — propping up data that support their side and ignoring data that goes against it. The idea that humans have an effect on the environment is, for me, not hard to believe, and I fail to see what denying that reality accomplishes. However, the side of climate alarmism tends to have far more sway over our politics and culture than the opposing side does, so I feel it’s the more pressing side to address.
I could go back decades and discuss how the problem went from global cooling to global warming, and then to global climate change, giving critics some easy ammunition to claim that, clearly, this all must be a hoax. I could also discuss the many predictions that have been made about how much time humanity has left, just for those predictions to be proven false each time. For the sake of time, however, I’ll keep my focus on a more recent example: last year’s IPCC report.
In August 2021, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report that caused a wave of panic in the news cycle. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was “a code red for humanity”, and as was to be expected, everyone seemed to focus on the worst aspects of the report.
In response to the report, University of Colorado climate change researcher Roger Pielke wrote two separate articles on his Substack that clarified the details of the report and debunked some of the alarmism. In the first article, Pielke points out how some of the scenarios the IPCC used to project future outcomes are implausible.
A few of those scenarios “assume that the world is going to massively increase consumption of coal in the future,” writes Pielke. “The scenarios project that we will replace natural gas with coal, we will replace nuclear with coal, we will replace wind and solar, we will even chose (sic) to abandon gasoline for cars and use coal-to-liquid as fuel. If that sound ridiculous — it is!” Of course, emissions would increase drastically if we were to use so much coal, but given how unlikely that is, there’s little reason to ring the alarm bells over the projected outcome of those scenarios.
In the second article, Pielke points out that, despite the way the media interpreted it, the report doesn’t actually conclude that extreme weather events have drastically increased in recent years. According to Pielke, the conclusions of the report “indicate that it is simply incorrect to claim that on climate time scales the frequency or intensity of extreme weather and climate events has increased for: flooding, drought (meteorological or hydrological), tropical cyclones, winter storms, thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail, lightning or extreme winds (so, storms of any type).”
Basically, while climate change may be real, the alarmism is unwarranted as many of the worst-case scenarios are very unlikely to occur.
Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
When it comes to the war in Ukraine, the propaganda is so prevalent from both sides of the conflict that it’s often hard to figure out what’s true and what isn’t. While Russia is certainly spreading its own propaganda, both domestically and abroad, our own government is far more capable of pushing its propaganda on us than a foreign government could ever be. I could go on at length giving examples, but I want to focus on one particular aspect of the western narrative surrounding this war.
It seems almost impossible for western media to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine without using at least three adjectives: unprovoked, illegal, and aggressive. I’ve written articles, both before the invasion and immediately after, where I discussed some of the context of this war and the U.S. government’s role in what led up to it. While I don’t condone Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine, calling it unprovoked is, frankly, dishonest.
One way the media/political class has pushed that narrative is to conflate the words provoked and justified as if acknowledging the geopolitical circumstances that led up to this invasion somehow means supporting it. Let me assure you, it is most certainly possible to be opposed to the war while being aware of the ways in which it was provoked. It’s also strange how often they use those other two words. Illegal. Aggressive. As opposed to what, a legal, passive invasion of a sovereign country? What’s an example of one of those, the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq? Not even the president behind that war, George W. Bush, would agree with that assessment.
Another example of propaganda about this war is the massive amount of narrative management it takes for the West to portray the Ukrainian government as a beacon of democracy. There’s too much information about that aspect of the war to discuss here, but I wrote a rather extensive article about it a few weeks ago.
The Protests in Iran
Several weeks ago, protests broke out in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was arrested for wearing her hijab incorrectly. She died while in police custody and it is widely believed that she was murdered. The protests are currently ongoing.
As someone who supports police reform within my own country, I empathize with the protesters in Iran, and I have no doubt that the protests started organically. However, the U.S. government, specifically, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), regularly uses situations like this to its advantage, especially in countries that have long been targeted by the U.S. empire. Iran is one such country.
The basic idea is that you use the momentum of an organic populist uprising — possibly even support it by funneling money to the groups involved through non-governmental organizations (NGOs), for example — and then install a leader loyal to the U.S. empire once the previous regime has been overthrown. That may sound like conspiracy theory nonsense, but it’s well-documented that that tactic has been used time and time again. One example actually took place in Iran back in the 1950s.
I’ll admit, I haven’t been following the protests inside of Iran as closely as I should be, but I think it’s safe to assume that there’s potentially some U.S. influence and propaganda both on the ground in Iran and in the narrative about the protests. There have been people within the U.S. protesting in solidarity with the Iranian protesters, actually calling for regime change inside Iran. Also, the U.S. government has used the protests as an excuse to enact sanctions on Iran (more than there already were) and to avoid conducting talks about getting back into the Iran Nuclear Deal — a deal which was struck between Iran and the U.S. under Barack Obama until Donald Trump pulled out of it; talks have taken place on and off under Joe Biden, but this latest development makes future talks much less likely.
Again, I empathize with the protesters inside of Iran and I support their right to reform or overthrow their own government, but it’s important to be aware of the geopolitical dynamics of these sorts of events and to be wary of calls for the U.S. government to get involved.
Propaganda Everywhere
To recap: Covid-19 and climate change are both real threats we have to try and mitigate, but the danger of those threats is largely exaggerated in order to stoke fear and push for certain policies. The president does have some influence over our economy but attempts to give him all of the blame or all of the credit are used to stoke division and are more often than not inaccurate, as there are always other factors at play. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine truly is illegal and aggressive, as are all invasions, but calling it unprovoked is intentionally deceitful and used as a way to manufacture consent for the West’s involvement in the war. Iran’s government really is an oppressive and theocratic regime, and the protests against them are most likely organic, but it’s very likely that they could be used to further the interests of the U.S. empire.
These are just a few examples of how our government and the corporate media spread propaganda to the public in order to maintain a narrative or push an agenda. This article is far from exhaustive, as there are many, many more examples than what was discussed here. It’s important to remember, however, that propaganda can come from all directions. I chose to go over the propaganda that comes from the bigger power structures within our society, but even lesser-known public figures and alternative media outlets can spread propaganda. It’s always a good idea to question the official narrative, but that doesn’t mean that every argument that runs counter to that narrative is the truth.
Beware of propaganda. It’s widespread, constant, and oftentimes, hard to see through.
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