Propaganda

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

- Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda, Nazi Germany, 1933-1945

Propaganda is propaganda, whether or not one calls it by a more socially acceptable name, like advertising, political analysis, news, “spin”, or religious dogma.  And the only objective of propaganda is to convince people to believe something that isn’t true.

People are inherently gullible.  If they want to believe something, it is easy to convince them. If they want to believe a fancy overpriced automobile makes them more sexually attractive, it is easy to sell them such a car on that basis.  If they want to believe a pill can make them live longer, it is easy to sell them such pills. If they want to believe their party’s politicians (but not the other party’s), are high-minded selfless civil servants it is easy to get them to support the most ridiculous and self-defeating policies. If they want to believe a face cream can make them more beautiful, it is easy to sell them cosmetics. If they want to believe gambling in the stock market can make them rich, it is easy for a stock broker to turn them into customers and regularly churn their account.

We in the modern first world age live in a sea of propaganda. We have raised it to a high art, practiced in industrial proportions. Every TV program we watch is laced with propaganda (the ads, and sometimes the plot as well). Every movie we watch is laced with propaganda (Hollywood’s idealized world and idealized people). The news we watch or read is shaped by propaganda (the political bias of the outlet, and the need to sensationalize stories to draw and retain audience). The magazines we read are saturated with propaganda (all those ads promising marvelous things, sometimes just by association, from their products).  We are surrounded by people trying to sell us something – a product, an idea, a religion, a political position – that we often wouldn’t normally be inclined to buy or support or believe.

 As a friend of mine taught me about evaluating information, “always consider the source”.  If the source has something to gain from convincing you (and almost always they do), be skeptical, be very skeptical.