Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. We are continuing our season on propaganda today by digging into our first example of propaganda in the real world. Now, most people think of propaganda, they tend to only think of propaganda as a tool of governments. Sometimes, may even extend this concept to large corporations or very wealthy individuals like Apple, Gates, or Amazon, Bezos, whatever. While I think these examples are fantastic places to look for propaganda, I also find that they're more nebulous.

Conspiracy theories and propaganda often evolve because the world is so complex and governments and corporations are at the forefront of creating this complexity. And we want ways to grasp the world, to understand it. We buy into the simple explanations of propaganda of which conspiracy theories are often a form of. Propaganda and conspiracies offer simple explanations, clear cut enemies, and they create strong social cohesion between adherents of said ideologies. Part of what I want to do in this season is to help us to begin to think more critically through conspiracies and propaganda.

One way that I think we can best do this is by breaking down the complexity of propaganda and conspiracy. While I might not be able to fathom the extent of Amazon's or Microsoft's tendrils and how they move through the world, I can understand power dynamics on a much smaller scale. If we begin by looking at the small scale and understand the more simple, I believe that will help us to translate and apply to the more complex. As a teacher, I did this all the time. Take chemistry for example.

In fifth grade, I may have taught the Bohr model of the atom and discussed how electrons move around in tracks, which is a gross simplification. In eighth grade, maybe we talked about orbitals, which is more complex yet still incomplete. And in eleventh grade chemistry, maybe we taught about the idea of electron clouds, which more closely approximates reality. Now when I taught the Bohr model in fifth grade, I wasn't lying to my students, but I was highlighting a general truth and selecting the most important idea which would be vital to build down the road. So scaffolding and building knowledge is how learning often works, and I think the same thing is going to be true for this season.

So in this episode, rather than go straight to the largest institutors of propaganda on the planet, government, we're going to start at the smallest implementation of propaganda that I could think of, the individual or the the couple level. Specifically, we're going to start by looking at domestic abusers. Now I found doing research for this topic really interesting in a lot of different ways. It was interesting to dig deeply into the psychology of why people do particular actions and how manipulation works. In part because we all implement some of these strategies that abusers do at times, though the frequency and intensity are quite different for regular people as compared to to those who abuse.

Some of the ways that I handle situations were drawn into the light. Some of how my wife or friends handle situations, and some of what my kids do to us as parents were brought into into the light, you know, as we explored the psychology of abuse. And that's in large part because abuse is heavily infused with manipulation, and we all try to manipulate and control at times. It was also helpful for me to recognize how abuse works so that I can be more of a support when I hear people complain about abuse and not just dismiss it. I had so many misconceptions and misunderstandings about abuse, and understanding it better has been truly enlightening.

I also enjoyed learning about abuse because after just spending a season talking about government, it was extremely clear to me that governments and abusers use almost the exact same strategies and have very similar profiles and motivations. Unfortunately, it isn't within the scope of these episodes to delve into all of that as we're focused on the propaganda side of things here. But if you check out the book recommendations for these episodes on abuse, you'll find that by learning about domestic abusers, you can not only become more relevant to many around you who need to be heard because they're experiencing abuse, but you'll also understand government actions a lot better too. Anyway, in this episode, we're gonna pull out some of the key ideas from our foundational episode on propaganda. If you haven't listened to that one, you should pause this and go back and listen to that episode.

It's episode two of this season. But assuming that you've got that foundation under your belt, let's just jump into today's episode. As I started learning more about abuse, I was amazed at how complex, yet how simple abusers are. It's true that there are different styles of abuse and methods of abuse, and it ends up that abusers tend to have the same overarching motivation despite those differences in styles and such. And that motivation is control.

Maybe that the abuser wants access to sex. They want constant service of meals and laundry and household chores, or they want the prestige of having others think highly of them because they have a trophy wife or, they're great guys. There are lots of motivations for being abusive, but all abuse relies on extreme control and that's what the abuser is seeking. In this way, all abusers have an enemy or potentially enemies, those who would seek to purposefully or inadvertently threaten their control. Now if you recall back to episode two and our discussion of David Graeber's concept of control, we recognize that abusers have three basic forms of power at their disposal: violence, information, and charisma.

Now most of us who think of what abuse means, I mean like, you know, real actual abuse, we think of physical abuse. I mean, getting called names and stuff, that's not very nice, but that's not really abuse, is it? Right? But you'll also recall from Graeber that violence is really the top tier form of power. It may be the most effective in terms of its immediacy and in terms of being the most sure thing if you know that you're more powerful than your opponent, but it also carries with it the most risk.

There's the potential for revolt from the oppressed, and there's the potential for intervention on the part of someone intervening on behalf of justice. Because when you punch your partner, it's clear that that's evil and who's doing the evil. So for the abuser then, the control of information, aka propaganda, along with charisma is going to be the primary means of control and power assertion. Physical abuse, if there is any, will likely be rare and will be the explosive result of the abuser's feeling that control is being lost and dominance needs to be reasserted. But in general, physical abuse, especially of the more violent sort, are not the dominant expression of abuse.

So the first aspect of abuse is that, as with propaganda in general, there's an adversary, an enemy. Since one part, one's partner tends to be the one who comes in most contact with the abuser and sees his true self most clearly, the partner has the greatest opportunity to pose a threat to the abuser. The partner has a competing will and sees the abuser's true self and can expose him. Therefore, the abuser's enemy is most often their partner and children. However, if someone threatens the abuser's control, which often arises when someone accuses the abuser of abuse, that accuser may find that the abuser shows their true colors to them as well.

But the abuser typically does not reveal his true abusive self to others outside of the home. This is a big part of what it means to be an abuser. The formation of one's image and the formation of how others perceive reality or truth, that's vital to being an abuser, the control of information. The abuser does this in two ways, propagandizing the one being abused and propagandizing outside influences. The way in which the abuser propagandizes the one he's abusing is in itself abuse.

He may be a wonderful and intimate sexual partner, yet he snaps when his partner asks him to do work around the house or to stop drinking. He might be cheating on his partner, yet constantly accuses his partner of cheating so that she's always on the defensive, feeling like the guilty party, and that the spotlight's always on her. The abusive man may also be loving and gentle for a period of time, accumulating personal information that his partner discloses to him, thinking that, oh, his abusive behavior is over, right? He's better now. Only to become for her partner to become abusive again, and then wield that personal information she divulged to him against her.

The abusive man also gaslights his partner by completely reinterpreting events to make a situation his partner's fault. And the partner is left wondering like, did I just completely misunderstand what happened? Like, how how can we both perceive reality in two different ways? There's so many ways in which information and perception are controlled by abusers. Like propaganda, there are a number of reasons for doing the things that the abuser does here with controlling information.

First, because the abuser mixes much of what he says and does with truth and sincerity, as in the abuser has many periods, even extended ones, where they might be kind or non abusive. Because of that, they're able to lure their partner into focusing on these true and good things while denying or maximizing the bad and crazy. That's exactly what what propaganda and conspiracy theories do. They mix as much truth and sincerity as possible into their information. Because of the sliver of deep loving community created with the one being abused, and because this connection is often exacerbated by financial dependence, dependence for childcare, or isolation from other communities, the abuser is able to form bonds with the abused that can be very difficult for the abused partner to escape from.

In many ways, she does love and need the abuser and is reliant on him. The abuser's propaganda is meant to isolate the abused partner from others and to make her reliant on him. Just as propaganda usually requires that there be opposition or enemy and propaganda provides an alternative community to this enemy, so it is with abuse. The abuser makes himself the abused partner's friend by becoming her knight who will slay her isolation, her financial problems, her parental limitations, and her need for sexual intimacy. Thus, the abuser often seeks control over one or all of these areas to force dependence on him for community.

The abuser simplifies the world for his partner as he is the answer to all of her problems. While the one being abused is being propagandized by the abuser, so too are those on the outside, neighbors, co workers, family, and friends. The abuser never shows his abusive side to others. And because abusers are often extremely self centered, they tend to be very charismatic people as they have a lot of confidence, self confidence and they care about how others view them. They're helpful neighbors, they're loving fathers in public, they're involved elders at church, and they're great son in laws.

The partner's friends may find him attractive and charismatic, outgoing and fun. While the abuser portrays this selective information to the outside world, he often restricts his partner's freedom to socialize with others, especially without him by her side. Like a good propagandist, he needs to maintain control over his partner by ensuring that she doesn't get conflicting information from elsewhere. She can't discover that what he's doing is labeled abuse. He doesn't want his partner to interact with others who would potentially threaten his control.

As the partner withdraws from those on the outside of the home through pressure from her abuser and from other relationships as well, with her family included, At the same time, the abuser is maintaining his connections and his charisma, and it appears that the abused partner is the one who has the problem, not the abuser. The abused partner is withdrawn. She's depressed. She's self isolating. She's emotional.

She's got the problem, not the abuser. Something similar happens if the police are ever called out for an incident of domestic violence. The partner has just been abused and is traumatized and is shaking and emotional, whereas the abuser who has always been in control and thrives on control, he's able to be calm and in control when the police arrive. Now this of course has the appearance that the abused partner is the crazy one and the abuser is the sane calm one. The abuser controls his image very tightly.

As with propaganda, Mithridatism and sensitization also come into play. Lower level abuse begins to be viewed by the ab abused as normal, and it goes unreported by a woman. I mean, that's just what he does, that's just how relationships go. He he hits me sometimes, but I mean, he doesn't severely injure me. He only called me a bitch once today.

He must love me. She becomes immune to the poison of abuse and doesn't realize how deadly it truly is. Simultaneously, every potential misstep elevates her stress. Every altercation, even the slightest one, has the potential to be the one that becomes worse than that one time she got the black eye or the broken arm. A minor argument might trigger a heightened heart rate, might lead to ulcers or other sorts of issues.

You know, at the beginning of the relationship, burning the dinner would have been a minor irritation. But now, knowing how the abuser has responded in the past, it might lead to an abusive outburst. So a burnt dinner leads to hours of fear from the woman wondering what's gonna happen. Because of the mythradatism and sensitization, it's possible for abusers to achieve the same end goal that they've had from the beginning of relationship with less abuse as time goes on. Maybe the abuser used to have to escalate to a backhand across the face, but now calling her a bitch is enough to remind her of the backhand because she associates the two together and he doesn't need to lift a finger again, just utter a five letter word and get the same result.

As with propaganda, the the abused's belief is irrelevant. She doesn't have to think that her abuser is the greatest guy in the world, he merely needs his propaganda to lead to the desired action that he wants, to lead to his control. After years of abuse, the action of the abused becomes pure reaction and reflex. There's so many aspects of abuse which align with what we've discussed in propaganda so far. While abuse is often linked with physical violence, the majority of the abuse is either implied violence or violence in other forms, like mental, emotional, psychological.

Abusers don't usually go around controlling their victims by punching them twenty four seven, but rather by wielding the power of information and charisma, by packaging those things and presenting them in a particular way both to the abused and to those outside of the home. I recognize that this is a very short episode on a large topic. I mean, I only read two books on this thing and I was just inundated with information. There's so much that I I left out either because I couldn't fit it in or it didn't exactly go with propaganda or I just plain up forgot about it. There's so much stuff here and it's it's worth reading because I think it's broadly applicable.

But I think we've drawn out enough in this episode to kind of link propaganda and abuse together to help you kind of see some of the underlying ways that they are similar. So in the next few episodes as we delve more into abuse and propaganda, I'm gonna have some interviews with some women who I think will be able to give us some more insight and make some connections and, hopefully, you'll be able to learn more about it as as we discuss. 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.

Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to nonviolence and Kingdom Living.