It’s A Propaganda Problem —
February 18, 2021
While we all fixate on electoral political solutions, the powerful focus on narrative control, because that’s where real power is at. The people who pose an actual threat to the machine are those who disrupt its narratives and narrative control agendas. Everyone else is harmless.
If the majority of a troubled population believes their political system is operating in a way that is demonstrably very different from the way it actually operates, then that population doesn’t have a political problem, it has a propaganda problem.
Berners watched the mass media actively sabotage the Sanders campaign day after day in two consecutive elections, and went “The problem is not enough progressives in government!” No, the problem is the billionaire media are constantly lying to everyone. Create a truth-based information ecosystem and politics will move toward health by itself.
As long as the ruling class is successfully using mass-scale narrative manipulation, it won’t matter what political strategies you employ because they’ll just manipulate that too. Everything we try will be neutered by propaganda until fighting propaganda becomes our number one priority. The narratives around your insurgent third party will be manipulated to the advantage of the powerful. Your progressive takeover of the Democrats will be narrative managed into impotence.
You can’t politics your way around narrative manipulation. You’ve got to make it the issue. You don’t measure how effective someone is against the machine by what their campaign platform says or what their strategies are, but by how disruptive they are to the narratives and narrative control of the powerful. If they’re not disruptive on that front they’re not effective.
The good news is that manipulation only works if you don’t realize you’re being manipulated. Bringing mass media propaganda front and center will accomplish this. Right now it’s very far from the spotlight; it’s treated like a marginal issue when it needs to be the central issue.
The mass media do not exist to tell you the truth about the world, they exist to manufacture consent for the agendas of the ruling class. Any time you’re clapping along with their Most Important Story of the Day you are helping your rulers and overlooking more important stories.
Liberals for four years: Russia is sowing division in America!
Liberals when red states freeze: HAHAHA TURN TO HICKSICLES AND DIE YOU TOOTHLESS COUSIN FUCKERS
The best part of Judas and the Black Messiah is the bit where modern mainstream America pretends that at some point between Fred Hampton’s assassination and today the FBI just stopped doing evil things.
The mainstream consensus is that secretive government agencies have only ever done evil things in the past, no matter what point in time we happen to be in.
In a few decades there will be revelations about profoundly evil things that were done in the early 2020s by the CIA, FBI and Pentagon. Liberals will express shock and outrage and yet still believe on no basis whatsoever that those agencies have since stopped doing evil things.
Deliberately starve a child to death and they call it abuse. Deliberately starve a nation of children to death and they call it diplomacy.
That time a bunch of dangerous extremists invaded the Capitol building and voted to advance murderous imperialist agendas year after year for generations.
Violently destroying weaker nations which disobey you is authoritarian. A government which exports the bulk of its authoritarianism is still an authoritarian government. The US is far more authoritarian than any government it criticizes.
Dear American leftists,
As long as you ignore US imperialism, we will refrain from destroying you. We will even allow you to maintain a few delusions about one day having a real healthcare system. Remain innocuous and you’ll be safe.
Love,
Your Permanent Government
I criticize the Democrats more than the Republicans for the same reason you have higher expectations of an adult than a child. Obviously all my criticisms of Democrats also apply to Republicans; Republicans are just less polite and more honest about their awfulness.
It is necessary to have government secrecy in order to win wars. It is also necessary to have government secrecy in order to start wars.
Become a healthy organism by purging your mind of manipulation. Purging from your mind the manipulations of propagandists, advertisers, preachers and scriptures, and of narcissists in your personal life. Purging your own impulse to manipulate people and events from your mind as well.
You develop to the extent of your curiosity and no further. Remain endlessly curious about the world and your understanding will keep developing. Remain endlessly curious about yourself and your maturity will keep developing. Decide you know and your growth immediately stops.
You avoid the stuffy, stagnating sense of knowing by consciously meeting each moment for the first time. This doesn’t mean meeting each moment as though it’s for the first time; this is a very real thing that is already happening, because your every encounter with every experience is entirely without precedent. It’s not a matter of creating anything new, it’s just a matter of being aware of what’s really going on.
Our story is that of a species struggling to break free of the gravitational pull of ego. Spirituality bursts free then sinks down into dogma. Movements spring forth then sink down into politics. Online platforms arise then sink into government censorship.
One day, we break free.
By Caitlin Johnstone