Every mainstream media outlet and some alternative ones present some form of propaganda.
But generally speaking, it is the left (aka Marxist progressives) who are in control of the narrative.
Leftist news outlets and politicians’ goal is to make us weary of standing up against their bizarre ideas of sexuality, race, and justice.
If they can cause us to lose heart, they know it will be easier to get us to submit and tell ourselves “The wolf is at the door; just let him in.”
But, before we resign ourselves to giving up, we must understand that the battle is often won or lost through an assault on words which is ultimately a war on ideas.
The radical Marxist left wants to use words not just to win the debate but to cancel debate altogether.
They want to destroy the influence of those who disagree with them. They want to use propaganda to limit and control our thoughts
(Aka)Gaslighting:
The purpose of propaganda is to reshape peoples worldview (views of reality) by redefining reality.
The long-term goal is always about power.
The ultimate goal is to make them obedient to the dictates of a leader or group of elites who tell us they are committed to “what is best for the people.”
Eventually, people will suspend their judgment, set aside what they know to be true, and join the “masses”. i.e. Herd instinct.
Propaganda makes lies credible.
When we are not open to the possibility of being wrong, propaganda is more readily able to accomplish its purpose.
Jesus repeatedly said, “He who has ears to hear, let hear” (Matthew 11:15). He was saying that there is no one as deaf as someone whose heart is not open to truth.
George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-four after spending time pondering the rise of communist Russia and Hitler’s chilling control of Germany.
The Encyclopedia Britannica summarizes the book 1984 in this way:
Its depiction of a state where daring to think differently is rewarded with torture, where people are monitored every second of the day, and where party propaganda trumps free speech and thought is a sobering reminder of the evils of unaccountable governments.
To do this, lies must be sweetened to make them easier to swallow.
Humans do not always need words for feelings, but we do need them for thought, especially complex thought. And that is why Big Brother is at war with language. He wants to make it less useful for examining ideas by reducing the power of words to the barest expressions. Newspeak is his tool for keeping his subjects permanently inarticulate.
Word control is intended to bring about thought control.
Aldous Huxley, in his book Brave New World, described a totalitarian state:
A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors, and schoolteachers.
The goal is for people to love their servitude and accept the controlling narrative, which is designed to limit what they say and what they are allowed to think.
Isaiah wrote in Scripture: “Woe to those who call evil good”. You can only call evil good if you rename the evil; to say it differently, good words must be used to camouflage the evil. But, to call evil good is only half the task; the other half is to call that which is good evil. Language must be manipulated to accomplish this.
In a nutshell, Propaganda is telling people what they want to hear, then giving them what you want to have. The goal is to make a lie to appear to be true. Also known as gaslighting.
To paraphrase Voltaire, “Those who can make you believe the bizarre can make you commit atrocities,” And if people can be made to believe a lie, they will live as if the lie were the truth.
George Orwell called this verbal sleight of hand Newspeak.
A revolution can be brought about only when you have slogan that is hard to speak against (and of course you need an enemy to hate). Slogans like Climate Change, Black Lives Matter, Social Justice… They all sound like something everyone can and should support, but when you unpack what they really mean you discover it involves the restructuring or more accurately deconstructing the whole order of society.
Take social justice. When you unpack what it really is all about is gender identity, Critical Race Theory, socialism and equity.
Propagandists are very adept at slogans. They say one thing but really mean another.
When Hitler starved children he called it “putting them on a low-calorie diet.” Killing Jews was “cleansing the land,” and euthanasia was “a compassionate use of medical therapy.”
Remember: Propaganda is telling people what they want to hear, then giving them what you want to have.
The radical Progressive Left does not use language to describe reality, but rather to create a “reality” they want you to believe and accept.
Orwell wrote in his book 1984, “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.”
In this same book, Mr. Winston was expected to say 2 + 2 = 5, it was not so much an attempt to convince him of this, but rather, to get him accustomed to speaking lies and doubting his own judgment. If he could speak lies, he could live by lies. Remember Common Core? How many of our children have been brainwashed by this lie (not to mention their parents as well?
Big Brother’s goal is a population so dependent on the government it is willingly controlled.
Do you remember during the George Floyd riots seeing a reporter with burning cars and buildings in the background, saying that the demonstrations were “largely peaceful.” So riots can be described as “peaceful,” looting is “redistributive justice,” and those who break the law to enter the US are not illegal immigrants but “undocumented workers.” And a criminal is “a person who has issues with the law,” which implies the real culprit is the law itself.
The left is using words to attempt to reorder reality when they tell us “That man you see competing in sports is actually a woman.”
The university that will not allow a conservative to speak on campus does so in the name of tolerance. And the mother who kills her unborn child is simply making a healthcare decision.
They tell us drag queens are artists who should be welcomed to libraries to speak to children. “Drag is art,” writes Jaden Amos, who reports for NPR.
When the goal of language is not truth but ideology and power, the totalitarian state has already arrived.
Many universities and colleges have policies narrowing the realm of permissible speech, reducing students to silence and ultimately ignorance due to a lack of critical thinking skills.
The reason for this madness is NOT to elevate the conversation, but to silence it. The goal is to produce students who graduate with ideological conformity; those who do not comply are intimidated and canceled.
The left is very intolerant of the three C’s that shaped America: Christianity, the Constitution and capitalism.
Research by the Cato Institute reported that nearly half of the students aged 13-22 said they stopped speaking up in the classroom because of the prevailing atmosphere of intolerance and political correctness.
The goal of the Progressive Marxist Left is to imprison the mind. Eventually, people will not be able to object to any radical leftist ideas no matter how bizarre because there will be no vocabulary for doing so; the words will have been banned.
The debate is no longer about ideas, but about bigotry and hate.
The left wants to pass hate speech legislation to shut down the expression of conservative ideas on the pretense that they are hateful and cause harm. In a strange twist of irony, the left will sometimes even justify violence as “free speech.”
Anywhere Communism/Socialism/Marxism has been installed, Gulags and death ALWAYS follow.
Russia used the tactic of labeling dissidents as mentally deranged. In effect the government says, “Challenge our idea, and we will declare you mentally ill and need to be locked away in an insane asylum.”
The radical left says, “You disagree with me? See a therapist.”
In propaganda, ideology controls the “facts” rather than the facts controlling the ideology. Therefore, “facts” are carefully selected to fit the narrative.
Take Canada as an example of our future here in the USA where even true statements can end up being banned. “Not all truthful statements must be free from restriction,” said Canada’s Supreme Court justice Marshall Rothstein.
Propaganda does not just control what is being said, but also what is not being said.
Look at how the media covered the Kyle Rittenhouse story. He was vilified as a racist because he was white (even though the three people he shot defending himself were themselves all white). He was labeled a “white supremacist” and belonged to a militia and “carried a gun across state lines.” All of which were lies propagated by leftist news media.
Contrast this with the story of Darrell E. Brooks after he deliberately drove his van into people who were celebrating a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin in December 2021 killing six people. Some news outlets never even carried the story and within days it all but vanished from the news.
Rittenhouse shot three people in self-defense; Brooks deliberately killed as many people as he could. But his story died because it could not be exploited for racial or political purposes.
So propaganda does not just control what is being said, but also what is not being said.
