(244)S11E4/2: How Propaganda Became Public Relations
Welcome back to the 4th Way podcast. If you've been around this podcast for a while, then you know that I work through my seasons a bit differently than a lot of other podcasters do, for good or for ill. On the positive side, because I start recording my seasons about a year out from that release, I'm able to shift around the order and make changes and additions to my original plans well in advance. I think that helps my seasons to be very ordered and coherent, and hopefully that translates to an easy to navigate structure, which makes finding information and learning through the podcast much easier. On the other hand, sometimes there are moments where I think to myself, oh, man, I've totally screwed this season up.
Derek:And that's because while I generally start researching for my seasons about 6 months to a year before I start recording, I continue to read throughout my recording window. And I don't just read a book or 2 about a topic. I inundate myself with a wide variety of resources in order to familiarize myself with the topic from a bunch of different angles and just keep cycling back through them. Now most of the time, I have a very clear picture of the topic before I kick off the season, and the 30th book that I read on the topic doesn't give me any new foundational insights, but rather just gives me more analogies or anecdotes to work with. But every once in a while, I'll be halfway through recording or planning my season when, bam, I get blindsided by a book that transforms my understanding of the topic at hand.
Derek:At that point, I have to figure out whether or not I need to overhaul any previously recorded episodes, rearrange the season, or figure out how to incorporate this new foundational knowledge into the season. This episode is the 14th episode that I'm recording for this season on propaganda. So I am a good distance into the season, and I felt like I had a really solid grasp of propaganda up until now. And I I still think that I do. However, I just finished a book that took my understanding of propaganda to the next level.
Derek:After finishing the book, I deliberated on whether or not I needed to go back to the beginning and add some of this foundational information that I learned into my already recorded episodes. Now I think that doing that would certainly have been valuable, but I don't think that it's worth it, because plugging this new information into this particular episode, tucked into the part of the season discussing corporate propaganda, fits really well, I think. As the book isn't really an overturning of any information that I presented so far, and as it's presented in the context of corporate propaganda, I think that dedicating an episode here in our section on corporate propaganda will do just fine. Not only will it fit well, but it's also gonna be a good opportunity for us to to recap a bit here. So what is this invaluable resource that I just read?
Derek:It's titled How Propaganda Became Public Relations and is authored by Corey Wimberley. In this episode, I want to unpack the book as much as I can in the short space that I'm giving to it. But before I get into that new information, I wanna provide some historical context for Wimberley's work and recap our foundation so that we can build on it a little bit more, in in this episode. So let's, first talk about the historical background, which sets the stage for Wimberley's assessment on propaganda. Depending on how one defines propaganda, we can find traces of it as far back as written history goes.
Derek:The word propaganda itself doesn't come around until, like, the 1600 or so when the the Catholic church, uses a form of it. But propaganda itself has been around for a long time. I've actually been reading through a a book called The Manipulative Mode, which is a text that looks at propaganda in antiquity. And I looked for other resources, and there isn't a ton to find on propaganda in antiquity. This was, like, the one of the only things that I could find.
Derek:So there's not much out there, but there is something. And I think one of the reasons that there's not a lot out there on this topic is because, even though propaganda has sort of been around for a long time, the scale of propaganda and the self realization of the propagandists, you know, the them realizing that they're actually doing propaganda might not have been as acute as they are today. However, everyone seems to recognize that what we know is propaganda today, like, real, ubiquitous, unrelenting, sophisticated, pointed propaganda. This stuff is new, and it's on a totally higher level than it was in antiquity. And this sort of propaganda really rose to prominence around World War 1.
Derek:Propaganda, as most people think of it then, is really only a little over a 100 years old. Why did we have thousands of years of limited and relatively unsophisticated propaganda if it's something that we're we're dedicating a whole season to today because it's so powerful? I'm sure there are a lot of factors which play into this with diversity of mediums being towards the top of that list. You know, they didn't have newspapers and, you know, printing presses and the Internet and all of those various ways to, to disseminate propaganda. Right?
Derek:I mean, someone living in the ancient Roman Empire might have seen Caesar on his coins and the imperial logo on the occupying army's banners, but he wasn't bombarded by propagandistic advertisements while listening to a podcast, doing his agrarian business, or watching a YouTube video while visiting the latrine and doing some other business. The person's exposure to ideas outside of their community was pretty limited, at least in comparison to what we experience today. The individuals and ideas that someone would come in contact with throughout the day or throughout their lifetime were very narrow in comparison to today. There wasn't a need for the local butcher to use propaganda because his dad and your dad grew up together and had lived in their family homes, which has been held in their families for generations, probably. Everyone in your community probably believed the same things and knew each other and relied on each other to carry out their various roles and trades.
Derek:Of course, this is an overly simplistic assessment, but the point is that the exposure of the ancients to ideologies was very different than ours. Imperial power and might was the only information an oppressor needed to show to keep subjects in line. And even if the Empire wanted to, there weren't many other viable modes through which to propagandize, to persuade, and to manipulate. Sheer force, displays of violence, and coercion were really all that was needed. And that all sounds really archaic.
Derek:Right? You know, might makes right. Just flex your might and control others. Good thing we're past that barbarism. Right?
Derek:Yep. That's really the exact same thing that governments do today, isn't it? What was the Cold War arms race, but 2 empires flexing their might to intimidate their enemies and their subsidiaries with 100,000 vaporized Japanese as a guarantee given for that flex? What are threats of sanctions and embargoes, but indirect violence and flexing one's might and potential for direct violence? The threat of violence and military might has always been and always will be at the heart of empire's power.
Derek:And violence, direct violence was a very effective tool for much of history. But two things changed in the last few 100 years, which paved the way for propaganda as we know it today to be birthed into existence. The first major change that we need to understand is the rising of democracies. Democracy has a way of highlighting the power of the masses, which has always been present, but unrealized and latent. David Hume brings this idea out well when he says in an extended quote here, quote, nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.
Derek:When we inquire by what means this wonder is affected, we shall find that as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is here, therefore, on opinion only, that government is founded. And this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as the most free and the most popular. The Soldan of Egypt or the emperor of Rome might drive his harmless subjects like brute beasts against their sentiments and inclination, but he must at least have led his Mamluks or Praetorian bands like men by their opinion. End quote.
Derek:So what was Hume saying here? Even dictators are subject to the consent of the governed. Because if the masses rise up, the dictator is only 1 man or 1 woman. What are they gonna do against the masses? The power of any leader relies on the consent of the masses.
Derek:However, it's hard to see how power hinges on this consent in a system of extreme hierarchies, and where one is taught that they don't have a voice. They're just cogs in the machine. Democracies, however, have a way of highlighting individuality and choice within citizens. There is power to change that comes from the masses. So democracies helped people, the masses, to recognize this latent power that was always there, but just unrealized.
Derek:There's another change that we need to talk about before we discuss how propaganda has has risen to prominence. About a 170 years ago, Frederick Douglass identified this particular change that we need to talk about and the power of this change. And he did it in his famous speech entitled, what to the slave is the 4th July? So let me lay out this extended quote, and then we'll unpack it a little bit. Douglass says, quote, but a change has now come over the affairs of mankind.
Derek:Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its charted agents.
Derek:Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet.
Derek:The celestial empire, the mystery of ages is being solved. The fiat of the almighty, let there be light, has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage, whether in taste, sport, or avarice, can now hide itself from the all pervading light, end quote. Now you may agree that Douglass has a way with words here, but what does this have to do with propaganda? Well, Douglass identified some great power that was coming onto the stage.
Derek:I'd probably call it globalization. And Douglass was recognizing that as the world grew smaller, Boston and London had become holiday excursions rather than long tumultuous journeys. And even said that, you know, space is isn't even that far off anymore. And within a 100 years, it it wasn't. Right?
Derek:We were in space. Now today, Boston to London could be a day trip if one really wanted it to be. It's not even a holiday excursion. Right? You could do it in a day if you really wanted to, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Derek:But the implications of this globalization reach much farther than pleasure traveling or the trading of goods. Douglass recognized that it also involved the laying bear of ideas. Again, how much truer is this today when not only are literary works shared across the world, but images, videos, and news are delivered in real time? The evils of empires and governments can no longer be hidden so easily. They're laid bare for the whole world to see immediately.
Derek:They're laid bare because not only has the world shrunk, but so have hierarchies. Whereas the peasant used to know their place in society, now everyone embraces theoretical equality, and any old Joe Schmo can go out and be a muckraker and call out the evil deeds of the aristocrats with his cell phone for proof. Governments are now more exposed to the light, and that frightens them. Douglass recognized that change would eventually come to the racist structures of the United States, But those changes wouldn't come because the US was a Christian nation. In fact, if you read Douglass, Christian man himself, he declared that slave masters who identified more strongly with Christianity tended to be the most abusive masters.
Derek:Douglass didn't think self proclaimed Christianity would make a moral difference. In fact, he might have even been wary of such a thing given his experience with so called Christian masters. Rather, Douglass identified that change would come as light was shined into the darkness. Isn't that exactly what we see with the race issue in the US? Slavery and oppression, while outlawed dejure after the civil war, remained de facto for another 100 plus years.
Derek:If you don't believe me, go read about the criminal justice system, about policing, about sharecropping, about convict leasing, and about discrimination. Read books about the great migration and how the mobility of blacks was often limited on the threat of violence or death. Practical slavery remained in the states, not until we went back to some mythical Christian roots. You know, those roots founded on slavery. No.
Derek:The beginning of de facto liberation began with the Cold War. It began when atheist human rights violating communist Russia told the world that we, the United States, were hypocrites, and we weren't really democratic. We weren't a government by the people, or at least not all people. And we weren't really giving our citizens freedom. Douglass was right.
Derek:Change comes when light is shined into the darkness, and the reach of that light grew exponentially as the world became smaller through technology. So the rise of democracy and globalization then led to a world that changed significantly in a very short period of time. As the masses of the world began to see what was going on in the rest of the world, and as people began to recognize the power that the masses held with their consent, the masses finally began to realize their power. And you see this in the rise of ideologies such as Marxism. Now whatever you think of Marxism, its ideology spread for a reason.
Derek:And that reason is that the masses of workers were exploited and finally recognized that there were many others like them because of globalization and the shrinking world. And they recognized that because the masses had power with the consent of the governed, that they could do something about their exploitation. As Wimberly notes, the first nationwide strike in the United States only occurred in 18/77. But in 18 eighties, there were over 10,000 national strikes. Only 30 years after Douglass recognized the power that globalization was bringing to the moral stage, there were 10,000 national strikes.
Derek:The consent of the governed was being realized and and was shifting power. With the ability of larger masses of people to be informed and to unite, those in power recognized that while violence may have still been a feasible means of maintaining control, its effectiveness was much less certain, and its costs were becoming much higher. By the end of the 18 hundreds, businesses were beginning to see that workers were dissatisfied and uniting, and the businesses didn't like that one bit. The general response was to resort to violence, and the state backed this up sometimes by even sending in federal troops. But at the turn of 19th century, propaganda arms of business started to arise because the cost of violence and the rising up of the masses was too great a threat to business.
Derek:Whereas the role of government in the landed aristocracy, or big business as we'd call them today, used to be to keep workers in line through force, that option was becoming less and less viable. Propaganda's job now was not the suppression of peasantry, but rather the transformation of the working class into consumptive wage laborers and cooperative voters. I suppose this was still really a form of oppression, just oppression through sedation. Propagandists were trying to opiate the masses. Now Marx may have said that religion is the opiate of the masses.
Derek:I think that was Marx. So it's some somebody. But, I would argue here that propaganda is the opiate of the masses. Sure. Religion can be a part of that propaganda network, but propaganda is much, much bigger than just religion.
Derek:Regardless of what this opiate is, the end result is the same. Whether you threaten or whether you drug, you create inaction in your victims. When your victims begin to uncover the vacuity of your threat to violence, as they understand Hume's notion that power rests in the consent of the masses, then when you have to choose between the 2, between violence or drugging, then sedation becomes a much more effective route to take. The dissatisfaction and uprising of workers coincided with industrialization and the rise of big businesses and concentrated wealth by the end of 19th century. Wimberly notes, quote, in 1904, just 80 years after the first modern laws regulating corporations, the largest 300 corporations controlled 40% of industrial wealth.
Derek:As a striking example of the rapid and unprecedented rise of corporations, the gross annual income of US Steel exceeded that of the US Treasury by the end of the 1st decade of 20th century. This legal transformation in the status of corporations also had social effects on the distribution of wealth. In 18/60, there were 3 millionaires in the United States. But by 1900, there were 3,800. The year 1900 also marked the the year in which 1 tenth of the population came to own 90% of the wealth.
Derek:This concentration of wealth in the hands of the elite and corporations meant that the size and the scope of business in the United States was akin to that of a state. With the budget of states, the propaganda campaigns that corporations could carry out were on a scale akin to that of the state, end quote. So big businesses were threatened by the revolt of workers, which led them to begin using propaganda. And that coincided with the growth of big businesses when they were getting enough resources to be able to have large propaganda campaign campaigns. Now this is something that you can see a ton of if you start reading literature from the late 1800 to the mid 1900.
Derek:There are all kinds of strikes going on. Government interventions, killing, burning of workers homes, all kinds of violence being done. Upton Sinclair, in his book, The Brass Check, talks about the propaganda of business and news outlets skewing stories in favor of businesses and government against workers. But right after Sinclair wrote his work, which was immediately following World War 1, the propaganda shift began to take place. Corporations, relatively new entities, or at least newly benefited due to the changing legislation, which now favored rather than discourage them.
Derek:Corporations began to create through propaganda, a populace who was more favorable to them and more reliant on them. You draw more flies with honey than with vinegar, as they say. For instance, Wimberly points out that people, at one point, were really independent, but they became very reliant. As an example, he says that in 18/50, 95% of the goods that the average American used were self manufactured and 5% purchased. But by 1950, the equation was more than reversed.
Derek:As Wimberly notes, quote, mass production requires stability, so propaganda creates consumers, voters, and governments for stable environments, end quote. So corporations recently endowed with large quantities of wealth, more proportionate, disproportionate than it ever been before, size of states, granted new legislative powers. We're now shying away from violence and starting to sedate the masses and, creating them to be a a populace of consumers. Now, at this point, somebody might push back and and say something like, well, okay. Yeah.
Derek:So consumers were created out of this, but, you know, there's also a lot of good that came out of this propaganda. We won World War 1, which maybe the good guys aren't aren't so clear in that that fight. But it also helped us win World War 2. Right? We had camp, propaganda campaigns that against Germany and and and to get soldiers and volunteers and stuff.
Derek:Right? So, you know, propaganda was used for good things. And, you know, reading, the book called C. D. Jackson about this this guy named C.
Derek:D. Jackson, during Eisenhower's administration, it it talked about his use of propaganda, which was actually you kinda walk away thinking, okay, propaganda was good in that situation. Because, Jackson was kind of pitted against Dulles. And Dulles was this hawkish guy who wanted to just, like, nuke everything. He reminds me kind of of MacArthur and, you know, his gung ho attitude.
Derek:But C. D. Jackson was like, no. No. No.
Derek:No. No. Let's let's use propaganda. Let's let's not nuke everything. Let's try to kind of resolve this, low key.
Derek:And so you're like, man, propaganda might have kinda saved the world there. Right? So maybe propaganda isn't so bad. Like, why are we why are we so against it? Now we'll get to some deeper reasons on why we're against propaganda in in, this episode.
Derek:But the first thing that we have to remember is what David Graeber showed us about power. That, you know, there are three forms of power. You have, violence, information, and charisma. It might be true that government and business have seemingly reduced violence through the use of propaganda, but that's not because these institutions aren't violent or aren't ready to do violence to maintain control. The only reason they're not doing violence if they aren't is because they found another method of control, which is more effective.
Derek:Should the populace wake up, there would be impending violence. Propaganda isn't an alternative to violence, but rather a dam which holds the violence inherent to power back from its natural course that seeks to erode and destroy anything in its path. Propaganda is a disguise for violence. It's a facade. I think when we get to government conspiracies and propaganda, that might be made a little bit more clear.
Derek:Because here in the United States, if you're not black, you probably think, you know, the government's not too bad. Right? Okay. We we have some propaganda, but we're we're not a Italian totalitarian state like, you know, some of these other communist countries were were countries with dictators. Okay.
Derek:I mean, so we have, like, most of the world's incarcerated population. But, you know, by and large for me, a white middle class guy, there's there's no violence. I don't have to fear any violence. But when we start to get into government conspiracies and and not even conspiracies, like just, true things that that happened that, you know, go through Congress and stuff that anybody can can track down as true. What you're gonna see is that, there's a facade in the United States.
Derek:I'm not touched by violence because of propaganda. But as soon as you you go into other vulnerable groups outside of the United States, and you look at the Banana Republic, you know, you look at, Haiti, Cuba, you look at all kinds of places, the government the United States has no problem using violence. It's a whole lot more cost effective, and it's it's easier for them to do. So, the this propaganda doesn't mean that the government isn't violent. It just means that they're able to, control us in some other way that they deem more productive.
Derek:And as an American citizen, as a white middle class citizen, I also do have to remember that propaganda doesn't work for certain sections of the populace in the United States, and violence is levied against those people too. So propaganda is just a mask for violence. That's the point. To close out this section, I just I I want to, to share a quote from Wimberly here that I I think is important in helping you. Because at at this point, maybe you're, like, I I kinda get, you know, that there are issues with propaganda, but I still don't think it's it's all that bad.
Derek:But I wanna give you a quote that I think should smell very bad to you. When you get a whiff of it, you should be like, oh, that that stinks. Like, some something's up here. And, hopefully, that will, open you to to hearing the rest of the argument, the rest of the discussion of Wimberley's book here. So listen to to Wimberley's quote here.
Derek:Quote, when the US government, ostensibly a democratic institution, spends more per year on propaganda, 1,500,000,000, than the Nazi state did at its peak, 1,200,000,000 in today's dollars, Serious questions have to be raised about the penetration of anti democratic relationships into the heart of the liberal state. Further, when the propaganda budget of the US government, already 20% larger than that of peak spending of the Nazi regime, is dwarfed by the $202,000,000,000 corporation spend on propaganda within the United States in 2016, It raises questions about the health or even the existence of civil society. Over 1 year, corporations spend more than 168 times what the Nazis ever did on propaganda, end quote. So register that here. The US government spends 1.2 times more on propaganda than the Nazi regime did, and corporations in the US spend 168 times more on propaganda than the Nazi regime did.
Derek:I have to ask myself a question then. Are we really as free as we think we are? And if we think we are free, is it really us who think that, or is that somebody putting those thoughts in there and thinking that for me? And we'll get to that question of freedom later, but I I don't want to jump there quite yet. I wanna meander there by taking a look at how propaganda functions in corporations before we continue our journey.
Derek:We've covered a lot of content in regard to propaganda this season because it's a an extremely complex topic. But in regard to this episode, I wanna highlight 2 specific concepts. The first of which we've already covered a number of times, but it's extremely important to reiterate. First, you need to understand, especially as we talk about, corporate propaganda, that propaganda is not about lies. While propaganda may sometimes utilize lies and especially deceit, it is actually, the most powerful when it avoids those pitfalls.
Derek:I think Wimberly points this out beautifully when he says, quote, propaganda does not so much lie to consumers as it aims to swap epistemological regimes. It does not so much repress desire as transform it, end quote. What I think Wimberly is saying is that the best propaganda doesn't lie, but rather gives you a different lens to filter everything through. Rather than tell you that your desire for financial stability is bad, It fosters a desire for material goods that supersedes your desire for financial stability. Get that credit card.
Derek:Max it out. What is particularly insidious about this changing of filters or lenses is that because we maintain our own personal lens alongside the propagandist's lens, we often delude ourselves into thinking that we're free from propaganda, while simultaneously doing what the propagandist wants. Wimberly explains this concept in what I think is the most powerful part of the book. He highlights something so well, something that Elul and other propagandists understood, which is that propaganda is about fostering actions, not beliefs. Propaganda doesn't care about belief if it can elicit actions without them.
Derek:Listen to Wimberly explain this in a, a lengthy quote here. Quote, most individuals are quick to note that they are no dupes and harbor many suspicious and critical thoughts about propaganda. But in trying to evaluate the impact of propaganda, it has to be remembered that propagandists have almost no interest in the individual. Propagandists focused on mass subjectivities, human beings, and their collective social relationships and actions. It is perfectly possible that an individual might feel as an individual that chi is critical and little impacted by propaganda.
Derek:After all, does not she know that it is all smoke and mirrors? However, what we are judging is not what the individual thinks, but what the public does. An individual may think whatever she wants, but if in her collective actions, for example, as an 18 to 34 year old television watcher, an automobile consumer, or a corporate or university worker, she acts in the collective fashion the propagandists create, for example, watches the television, buys a nice midsized SUV, or completes the university administration mandated course assessment work, then what do the rebellious thoughts of the individual matter to the propagandist who is measuring TV viewership, automobile sales, or how well a university serves its core customer base? Put otherwise, the propaganda seeks to forge mass subjectivities, which it calls the publics, to carry out the conduct their clients want, not to focus on the beliefs of individuals. Very frequently, propaganda is described as a manipulation for the purpose of changing ideas or opinions.
Derek:That's completely wrong. The aim of modern propagandist is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action. If the terms of mass subjectivities, large groupings of psychologically bonded individuals, give no room for those individual rebellions to crystallize into collective social action, but instead reliably lead to the conduct corporations want, then one can perfectly well feel as an individual untouched, critical, or even radicalized, but nonetheless still remain massively governed. In fact, isn't that all the better that individuals believe themselves ungoverned, critical, and unaffected if the results in if that results in complacency and lack of motivation for action? The point is that the thoughts of the individual and the conduct of the publics have to be distinguished.
Derek:Though one might feel critical as an individual, the question is how social and public relationships of subjects are constituted and conduct themselves. If a radical still buys the dress, movie ticket, or the 12 piece dinner set, what does it matter that it is a radical who buys it when there is no room for that radicalism to manifest itself in the public. Propagandists would tell us that the appropriateness of the language of subjectification versus modification has has to be the judge at the level of the conduct of the public, not at the level of the thoughts of the individual, end quote. And that is a super long quote, so I will make sure to put that in the show notes for you so you can go and chew that over multiple times if you need to. But let's unpack that here just a little bit.
Derek:I love how Wimberly says it. You know? What does it matter if, you you have these radical beliefs, but you still buy the dress? You know? Who cares if a radical buys the dress?
Derek:You bought the dress. You did what the what, the propagandist wanted you to do. They don't care what you believe. And in fact, if if you think that you're your own person and do what the propagandist wants, what do they care? That's actually better because you think you're your own person when you're really the propagandist's slave.
Derek:Right? If we say we don't believe what the propagandist is saying, and we even say, oh, we see you. You think you're tricky, but, you know, we we see right through you. Smoke and mirrors. Yet, we do what the propagandist is trying to get us to do.
Derek:Do we really believe what we say we believe, or does our action prove what we truly believe? Does it matter if we believe something if we don't act on it? Now this question is perhaps the biggest question that we can ask this season. In fact, it might be one of the biggest questions that we can ask as human beings. Now Descartes may have told me that I think, therefore, I am.
Derek:I exist. But what does my existence entail? Who am I as I exist? Am I my beliefs? Am I my actions?
Derek:Or what? In the last season, I had an episode where I talked about moral systems and purpose, arguing that while Descartes helps us to avoid pure solipsism and uncertainty in all things, even uncertainty in our existence, that stopping at existence is meaningless. Who cares that I exist? Like, what does that lead me to? So I argued that, you know, I think, therefore, I am entails a follow-up to to provide us meaning.
Derek:I am, therefore, I act. That is what to be means. You act in the world. As living beings, our existence is expressed through actions, and these actions are evidences of our being and who we truly are. For the Christian, this is why our goal is not to convert other people in their beliefs, but to disciple others in actions, to be transformed new creations.
Derek:The great commission is to go into the world and to make disciples, communities of people who act a particular way. Of course, action is burst out of belief, but like begets like. Right? We had a whole season on means and ends. Means are concomitant with the concomitant with the ends.
Derek:The means are the ends in the process of becoming, as I think the way that, somebody put it. Actions and beliefs are entangled, intertwined with one another, and they're of the same substance. Dead trees produce rotten fruit, if they produce any fruit at all. So let's get back to, to propaganda here. While Wimberley doesn't use the word discipleship, I think a lot of what he discusses entails that concept.
Derek:Wimberley frequently uses the word subjectivation, by which I think he means that we, as subjects, are formed by beliefs that we allow to lead us onto action or whatever. Just action apart from beliefs or diluted that we believe something. Whatever. But we as subjects are are acted upon. So, essentially, that's discipleship.
Derek:Right? Our our self, our subject part is is being formed. That's discipleship. Wimberly argues that what propaganda in the modern age seeks to do is to form us, to disciple us into new creations fit for the kingdom of the corporation and the material economy, where, you know, whoever the propagandist is. That's what they're trying to do, to to make us fit to live in their kingdom.
Derek:Wimberly says, quote, certainly, Stanley's epistemological interpretation and Marcuse's ideological interpretation are both correct insofar as propaganda does lie and repress. However, I will argue that these functions are subsidiaries of a much more threatening function of propaganda, Its ability to shape human beings, body and soul and spirit in the quest to produce the relationships that would sustain corporate growth. The stakes in misinterpreting propaganda are high. If you take propaganda to present the problem of belief, then the solution is to replace false belief with true belief. If you take propaganda to be ideological, covering over true human desire with false and destructive desires, then the solution is to recover true desire and to banish the chimera of the false.
Derek:Both of these ways of interpreting propaganda place true belief or true desire as the untouched savior of contemporary life. The true remains present and unaltered, whatever the deceptions, propagandists foment, and it is the critics' job to recover them. But if the aim of propaganda is to produce new subjects who will cooperatively and spontaneously adopt the wanted relationships with corporations, and there is no going back, the subject is not deceived but transformed, and the task of combating propaganda will not be best conceived as a project of enlightenment, but of subjectivation. The future will have to be created by producing new subjects and not through recovering what has been supposedly hidden, but is better described as lost. Without grasping the impact of propaganda, attempts to counter it are unlikely to be effective, end quote.
Derek:So if what propaganda was trying to do was just straight out lie to us and and tell us to view the world in a particular way. Right? This this is how you come to truth. Then all we need to do is just learn what's true, and we're good. And on the other hand, if, in the other view of propaganda has been, well, they're they're giving us these false desires, you know, if that's what propaganda really is, then we just need to have the right desires, and everything will be good.
Derek:And what Stanley is saying is that both of those things, you know, okay. Propaganda does lie and it does kind of work with desires. But the thing is because a lot of propaganda is true, and and we're gonna find out works with true desires, It it's not that we can simply just replace those things. We've we've been formed through true things. Propaganda, and in this episode, in particular, corporate propaganda, seeks to form us into new creations.
Derek:But how do they do that? Let me give you an example by exploring an age old adage. Adage? I don't know. Is it an adage or I don't know what you'd call it, but I'm gonna call it an adage.
Derek:You've probably heard the expression throughout your life. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Now if that's commonly used in your repertoire of sage advice, I'm sorry to tell you, but it's wrong. You can make the horse drink, and you can do it pretty easily. All you have to do is put salt in its hay.
Derek:Now when you add salt to a horse's hay, you tap into the horse's natural physiology, and you create the desire for thirst. The horse may be a strong animal that you could never forcefully bend down and shove water down his throat. But if you know who horses are, how they function, and what they desire, you can make them drink with 10ยข worth of salt. Propagandists lead us in the same fashion, not by lying to us and telling us that, you know, we need to drink water. There's water where there's not.
Derek:And not telling us that, you know, you really just need to drink soda, horse. You know? No. They don't do that. They tap into the desires and needs that are already within us.
Derek:Propaganda doesn't change our drives. It simply redirects them to the objects that it wants us to desire. Wimberly provides a great example of this. Quote, when Bernays wanted to get women to smoke Lucky Strikes, he had to change not only the image of cigarettes, but also the self image of women who would smoke them. Bernays and psychoanalyst, a a Brill, determined that women would smoke cigarettes if women viewed themselves as crusaders for liberation.
Derek:And the cigarette was positioned as a symbol of equality, freedom, and pleasure. To get women to smoke, Bernays guided women into thinking of smoking as an act of defiance and empowerment that would make them revolutionaries. Every woman could conceive of herself as contributing to women's liberation just by smoking a lucky strike. Bernays kicked off this campaign on Easter Sunday in 1929 when he recruited women to break the law against public smoking by women in New York by smoking lucky strikes in an Easter day parade. He used this symbolic gesture to link smoking to the liberation of choice, pleasure, and a voice as an act of resistance against patriarchy.
Derek:Feminist Ruth Hale encouraged women to join in saying, women, light another torch of freedom, fight another sex taboo. The aim was to get women to regard themselves and cigarettes differently, such that women would form the relationship to cigarettes that Lucky Strike wanted. For example, as avid and fierce consumers. Bernays wanted to redirect drives, true drives, to point at new ends. He did not falsify desire, but rechanneled them from their source.
Derek:He created objects of desire as true as any by working with their unconscious source, end quote. What a beautiful but terrible display of how we humans work. Bernays just put salt in the hay. Like a virus that hijacks a cell, a healthy cell for its own ends, propaganda taps into our true desires. So propaganda doesn't straight out lie to us.
Derek:It works by tapping into truths that we we hold that are innate to us. But the second thing that we need to be aware of in regard to the corporate wielding of propaganda is that they're often focused on groups rather than individuals. And that was talked about a little bit already, but I think it's important to elaborate here. Now in some ways, it makes sense to us that this is true and that it would be really hard for corporations to advertise to each individual uniquely, though we talked about narrow casting and, before. And, personal advertisements are becoming more common.
Derek:Sure. Nevertheless, there's impracticality of trying to make unique ad for every person. So corporations don't generally seek to perfectly individualize propaganda because propaganda is a sociological endeavor. Propaganda works within a social context, and therefore, it is best distributed through groups rather than to individuals. Now I might see something in the store like, an air fryer.
Derek:I have no idea what that is nor care one iota about it, just like I didn't a year ago before I knew that such a thing existed. When people at church start talking about their delicious air fried meals, I see it being used on some of our favorite TV shows. It pops up in ads and, you know, my favorite celebrity is talking about the life changing experience of eating all these foods that used to be unhealthy smothered in grease, but now with an air fryer are healthy. Yeah. I I want an air fryer.
Derek:I'll take one. And Wimberley gives us a a better example when, he tells a little story. So here, quote. For example, if our working class Catholic Democratic mother was being persuaded to not vote for the nationalization of the telephone system, then sending her the message through her workplace, her church bulletin, a popular Democrat speech, and through her children at school, who learned about the telephone system through materials provided by the telephone company, would provide mutually overlapping force that originate from 4 different and trusted sources. This hypothetical individual would be governed as a mother, a worker, a Catholic, and a Democrat, applying considerable force to her conduct to transform it.
Derek:Bernays explains that the aim is to co opt the relationship that individuals have already established in order to leverage those relationships as a means for encouraging the embodiment of the wanted conduct. Each different relationship co opted is another point of leverage added to the governmental effort. End quote. So messages which activate groups or are activated through groups are much more effective because propaganda is sociological. Wimberly succinctly highlights another reason why corporations don't care about individuals when he says, quote, a public is markedly less intelligent, less rational, and more gullible than those same subjects would be when taken as individuals.
Derek:Propagandists sought to govern those massifications, their publics, ignoring people as individuals and instead focusing on their subjectivity as groups. Why? If the individual has no public for its anti corporate rhetoric, she is isolated without a venue and largely powerless. It is not what the individual does alone that is important, but the norms that constitute the subjectivity of the massification that brokers public conduct and its relationship with a corporation that is important. End quote.
Derek:Isolated people are powerless and therefore worthless to businesses and politics. It's why businesses don't change until it's economically beneficial. They have no hearts, no soul, just a pure desire for money. As just one example, they never cared about gay individuals, but once the gay community became a significant group, and one which was making legal headway, businesses started changing their logos every pride month. The gay community had been suffering and crying out for a long time, and there was a large number of gay people.
Derek:And even growing acceptance of, of the gay community in the late nineties and, early 2000. Yet businesses took until fairly recently to start showing them support as especially especially such open and brazen support. So while there was a potential cost to showing support for the gay community, businesses abstained from pandering to them. But now that the gay community is larger, more powerful, and accepted, businesses could actually be harmed by not showing them support. Yet the support that most big businesses now show is not one bit related to any moral courage or conviction, but rather tied purely to economic and power motives.
Derek:As V. O. Key said, as quoted in Carey's Taking the Risk Out of Democracy, quote, businessmen are a small minority, highly vulnerable to political attack. They have to depend on something other than their votes. They have to use their wits and their money to generate a public opinion that acquiesces to the enjoyment by business of its status in the economic order, end quote.
Derek:Businesses in it probably all the time, but, you know, especially in a democracy, they don't care about you. They care about your consent, the consent of the governed. If your group is sizable and powerful, then or very powerful even if you aren't sizable, then, you know, they'll pander to you. But until you are, they don't care. Businesses don't care about individuals.
Derek:So let's recap here for just a moment before we move on and show why this all matters so much. Corporate propaganda was birthed out of a need to control the masses who are rising up to fight injustice in the workplace as well as to grasp at political power, a power which had significant implications for corporations. Up until the people recognized Hume's veracity on the power that they held, corporations were fine using violent force and coercion. But this became untenable as strikes and riots grew in size and number, exposing the injustice present in many corporations. Propaganda then became an option whereby corporations could preemptively gain the upper hand.
Derek:Corporate propaganda views us as malleable subjects. It typically seeks not to lie to our faces, but to form us into the kinds of people who suckle from the teeth of the corporation. We like what they give us. We are happy to work so long as we are sedated by our material goods, and that keeps us from digging too deeply into the system, asking too many questions, or pushing back too hard. This, by the way, is why the middle class is so important and why they're always talked about.
Derek:The middle class is the buffer for the rich. So long as there's a large middle class who is happy enough with their slice of the pie, they're happy to prevent the system from changing and correcting the injustices, injustices both towards the poor in their own country, as well as injustices against those who are exploited across the ocean. So corporate propaganda seeks to shape us into good workers and good consumers, and it does this by accessing our natural desires and truths that we hold dear, and simply inserting its own ends as a fulfillment of our natural desires. It puts salt in our hay. And it does this not through implanting chips in our brains, but by going through social groups and institutions, televisions, movies, schools, churches, political platforms, etcetera.
Derek:Propaganda then must not be understood as discourse or rational dialogue. Rather, propaganda are affirmations and statements made with the calculation that these affirmations will change the behavior of others subconsciously rather than rationally. In a nation where free speech is valued, many who dislike propaganda might still be okay with it because, you know, that's what free speech means. And we have to deal with ideas that we aren't comfortable with and don't like. But Wimberly argues that, quote, freedom of speech and liberalism were built on the assumption that each individual, upon hearing a statement, will process that statement reasonably, either agreeing or disagreeing.
Derek:What the propagandists do might appear to be speech or even communication to Liberals. But the public relations councils, affirmations are not arguments or even communications meant to be registered consciously. Affirmations are lines of force whose impacts trigger associations of images in the unconscious, stimulating new desires and stimulating new conduct, end quote. So I'm gonna take a chance here, and I'm gonna go from the analogy off the cuff. This is not scripted, so it might be a terrible analogy, and I might get some, concepts wrong, without researching viruses and freshing, up on them again.
Derek:But here it goes. You know, we talked about propaganda being like a virus before, and I think this is what Wimberly is saying in regard to free speech. Because this is a really touchy subject, especially for, you know, more conservative leaning people that, oh, now you're talking about limiting free speech. This is this is getting dangerous. But think of, the the cell and virus analogy again.
Derek:Right? When when you have cells, they are they are able to discern what sorts of things they allow through the cell wall, you know, proteins and I don't know. All kinds of things. Lipids, maybe? I don't know.
Derek:Cells cells let in a bunch of different things. So cells can discern what things they want to let in. And that's kinda like free speech. You say whatever you want, and it comes to my my cell wall, and I am going to, discern whether or not I let that pass through the cell wall and enter me. Right?
Derek:That's that's rational discourse. Right? I'm assessing ideas, and that's fine. Free speech. Even if you have crazy ideas, I get to assess that and determine rationally whether it's true or not.
Derek:What Wimberley is saying is that propaganda doesn't do that. It's, it's force, it's affirmations, it's it's not rational discourse. It's like a virus. And what viruses do, some viruses at least, is they hijack cells. They hijack things.
Derek:Right? So imagine that you, you are a cell, and, this this protein, I don't know, whatever, comes comes to you. And, really, it's hijacked, or it's this virus disguised as a as a protein or something. And you're like, oh, yeah. Okay.
Derek:I'll let that in. And you let it in, and now you're infected. And that go back to the Lucky Strike example that Wimberly gave. Right? Lots of good ideas there.
Derek:Liberation for for women against patriarchy, oppression, you know, freedom, courage, all those those wonderful, good, true ideas. Yes. And what happened was that Lucky Strikes cigarettes hijacked those ideas and came along with it, and and entered the cell wall. People didn't rationally choose to buy cigarettes. They were propagandized to do that.
Derek:So I'm not saying that I agree or disagree with restricting, I don't know, the ability of corporations to say what they wanna say or to to use images. That's not really what I'm I'm thinking about in this part of the discussion. Though I I would say that I think treating corporations as individuals like the US does and, you know, even better than than individuals, especially if you're, an immigrant or something. I think that's dangerous and wrong. We already do restrict the speech of some corporations, particularly alcohol and tobacco, and determining some of the ways that they're able to advertise and and where they can advertise.
Derek:But, you know, despite where you land on this idea of censoring corporate propaganda, it's important to see that there's a huge difference between liberal discourse, argument, and ideology, and propagandistic affirmation and manipulation. Now I don't know if I'd want anyone to judge when that line is crossed, and I don't know how that judgment would take place. And it seems like lines could be crossed really quickly there if you start limiting images and speech, even of of corporations. That makes me very nervous. Like I said, I I'm not offering solutions here.
Derek:I'm just pointing out that it's really important to distinguish the way that propaganda works, and and kind of covers itself by acting like it's, you know, free speech and ideas and discourse and arguments, when it's it's really a virus. It's not liberal discourse. So what's the takeaway from this episode? Why did I think that this episode was so important? I think it's important for a few reasons.
Derek:First, it's important to recognize the history of corporations in the United States. I think we're coming to recognize more the power that they really have with lobbying and all, but nobody seems to realize that this power isn't all that new. When you start looking at the history of big business, you recognize that they've always had significant power. They've often been extremely violent in conquest and suppression. They were terribly violent against strikers in the late 1800.
Derek:They were terribly unjust to the laborers when it was legal to be, unjust and violent here in the United States. And they're still terribly unjust to the their laborers where it's legal to be in other exploitable countries. And even here in the west when when they can get away with it. Big businesses, as glimpsed in Smedley Butler's book, War as a racket, have caused millions of deaths and a destabilization of governments around the world in order to control resources and prices. And wars continue today for big business, particularly oil.
Derek:That's far too easy for us to play on our iPhones and feel as though companies like Apple are benign because their personnel are so nice and their products are so fun and their advertisements are so pretty. But big businesses only seem that way because we're not as exploitable here in the West, and we don't face their oppression firsthand. And also because we buy into the propaganda. So long as the money is in control and the consent of the governed is behind them, they play nice. But go read about business actions prior to 1920 or so, and you'll see what happens when they don't get their way.
Derek:Should propaganda begin to lose its grip on us and we wake from our stupor, there would be hell to pay for those who control the money and therefore, the power. So this episode is vital for us to see that we are getting into the big league propaganda here. This stuff has worldwide application and deals with extreme power structures. The tendrils of corporate propaganda are insidious. They're ubiquitous.
Derek:But the other reason I think that this episode is so important is because, well, it's vital to see propaganda as a rule and others present it. I don't think they go far enough. Wimberly recognizes that propaganda goes into the core of our being, and it shapes us as subjects. Propaganda isn't just some trance that we're in that we can snap out of, if we just believe the right thing or have the right desire. It's a formative tool that actually shapes who we are, and that means we are being discipled by that which we consume.
Derek:And that's something which is still hard for me to believe because I'm just so arrogant that I think that I choose my own path. I don't want to think that I'm shaped by propaganda. But that's just like the alcoholic who thinks that he only drinks because he wants to, but he could really stop at any time. We, like the alcoholic, may only recognize how transformed we are by our drug of choice when that drug is taken away. Take away your show, your device, your products, your symbols of prestige.
Derek:Take away your favorite pundit, your favorite news channel, your favorite talk show host. Take away your social media page. What happens? I bet that all of us are touched somewhere by propaganda. We've been formed and transformed to be something that we deny that we truly are.
Derek:And that right there is true propaganda. Propaganda doesn't lie in the fact that a company got you to buy their product one time. Its true power lies in the fact that it shaped you to be unable to see that you've bought into a new self. Propaganda isn't resisted by refusing to buy a product when you see a commercial. It's resisted by being discipled to be something other than a pure docile consumer.
Derek:Hopefully, this episode has been helpful for you to see into the depths of propaganda. You're gonna wanna keep this lens on as we track further into the season. As I sign off, I wanna leave you with a quote from Borstein, taken from Alex Carey's taking the risk out of democracy. Quote. Americans have come to think that our main problem is abroad, how to project our images to the world.
Derek:Yet the problem abroad is only a symptom of our deeper problem at home. We have come to believe in our own images till we have projected ourselves out of this world. So that now, in the height of our power, we are threatened by a new and peculiarly American menace. It is the menace of unreality. We risk being the first people in history to have been able to make their illusion so vivid, so persuasive, so realistic that they can live in them.
Derek:We are the most illusioned people on Earth, yet we dare not become disillusioned because our illusions are the very house in which we live. They are our news, our heroes, our very experience. 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.
Derek:Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to nonviolence and Kingdom living.
