Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. Today, we are starting a new season which is birthed out of all of our other seasons. Though at first glance, it might not seem all that connected at all. Today, we are starting a new season on propaganda. Propaganda, you might be asking yourself, how does that relate to non violence?

I mean, isn't this a podcast about non violence? What does it have to do with nonviolence? Everything. It has everything to do with nonviolence. By the end of the season, and hopefully long before that, you're gonna see exactly what I mean.

But to give you a palette to taste and see this connection, I wanna give you a little analogy that I'm going to steal from a book by David Graeber called The Dawn of Everything. In Graeber's book, he identifies three fundamental means whereby we control situations, where we exert our power. And isn't that usually where violence comes from? In in relationships, seeking power and control? Well, the first and crudest way in which power is exerted is through violence, course, through physical force.

Graver, gives an example of a woman who has a very expensive diamond necklace that she wants to wear out in public. However, she's concerned that someone is going to try to take that necklace and she knows that she doesn't have the strength to stop an aggressor who might want to steal the necklace, you know, her first line of defense. Now that confidence in violence, it could be placed in a variety of places, You know, it might be in a confidence in her own strength, you know, maybe she knows jujitsu or something. It could be a confidence in the strength and violence of a significant other, or in the strength and presence of the government agents intended to enforce the law. But if she doesn't have enough confidence in the violence that's on her side, then she may choose not to wear the necklace for fear of it getting stolen.

But is violence her only means to power and control, to be able to to wear her necklace or to be able to own her necklace? No, not at all. There's another way in which she can seek to control the situation. Perhaps the woman is confident that she can wear her necklace in public, but she's worried about being targeted by burglars or maybe some thieves if they know her schedule and know when she's gonna wear it all the time, right? So as long as she keeps the location of her necklace secret, she keeps that information secret, and she keeps secret the information of when she's going to wear a necklace, she does it sporadically, then it's gonna be very difficult for others to steal that necklace, right?

She's going to have power, in a sense, through the wielding of information. Now if someone else got ahold of that information, they could blackmail her or use the information to steal the necklace themselves. Information is a way that we can hold power over others or maintain control over a situation. And in broader definitions of the word violence, information can very easily be wielded as a tool to do violence to another person. Finally, if the woman can't control the violence or the information, she may try to exert power through charisma.

If she's liked well enough by her community, if she says and does the right things, and if she presents herself well, it may be that others wouldn't want to steal from her because she was too well respected. To steal from the woman would not only cause them to fall out of favor with her, but with others in the community who all adore this woman. Someone or everyone may have the strength to steal from her and the information to steal from her, but may nevertheless, due to her charisma, choose not to steal from her. Of course, charisma could be tied to some sort of self interest as well and, you know, not wanting to be ostracized by one's community for harming an integral member or in wanting to maintain the benefits one gets from the charismatic person. Nevertheless, charisma is a means of exerting control.

If you buy Graber's arguments here, then you can see how we, who do a podcast on non violence, would eventually get to a season on something like propaganda. Propaganda is the controlling of information and it's either a stair step up to violence or a stair step down from it. An average person knows that they can't do violence to someone without having some major legal consequences, without having the violence of the sword of the state come down on them. To assault or murder someone will very likely lead to incarceration. However, wielding information against others can often result in control over a situation, obtaining the ends that one wants without doing physical violence and therefore risking incarceration or violence done reciprocally.

When one can't do violence with confidence against another person, they can wield information against someone else. Like we said, depending on how one wields that information, this can end up being just another form of violence. We see this all the time today in lots of situations, but you know, I think specifically of of teens back when I was teaching. You know, social media and all the terrible things that were were said, you know, oftentimes true things that were revealed, which end up driving some teens to self harm or to suicide. Information really is power.

But information may not be a last resort for someone who can't do violence with impunity. For an entity such as the government, which can do much violence without any recourse, controlling information is a way to mask violence. I think the Senate Intelligence Committee on Torture is the perfect example of this. The government has gotten away with torture and there were no consequences even after their abhorrent actions were revealed. Nevertheless, it was in the government's best interest for their reputation and to perpetuate our belief in our own American goodness that they sought to control the information.

They were using physical violence, but they controlled the information so that nobody knew about it. The government can do pretty much whatever it wants, but our government, at least, recognizes the importance of giving its citizens the blue pill of sedation. We don't really want to know the bad things that our government is doing, and they're happy to keep us ignorant of those evils so that we can go on living our normal lives without upsetting the apple cart. Understanding that information often masks violence may also help you to see why we spent a season talking about nonviolent action. Now, people often think that nonviolent action is less powerful than violence, or it's a last resort to violence, right?

Something only those who are weak and powerless use. However, when you understand how power functions and how abusers and states function, you can begin to see how non violent action is willing to absorb some of the violence in order that the lie, the facade, the truth is exposed. Hence, we get the phrase speaking truth to power. While governments and abusers seem to have the power of force, when their evil is put on display through the presentation of truth, we usually find that their power dissolves. It might take some time to dissolve, but it eventually dissolves.

The dissolution of their power is often preceded by intense persecution. There's nothing abusers and governments hate more than the exposing of their true natures. But in the end, truth wins if it persists. For violence can often continue unabated so long as the abuser or the state can spin their story and control the information. It's only when the lie is exposed that the house of cards can collapse.

And that lie is best exposed through non violence as non violence not only draws out the true nature of the abuser and the state, but also because non violence remains free of the tendrils of propaganda. For if one is attacked without retaliating in turn, the abuser can't attribute violence and evil to the abused. This is the laying bare of truth through cross. But beyond bolstering our season on non violent action, the other reason I thought a season on propaganda would be a good fit in a podcast on non violence is because propaganda often, though not always, involves a lie. If you've listened to season two on consequentialism, we have two episodes in there on the ethics of lying.

Now, I argue that lying in any circumstance is not fitting for a Christian to do. It's always immoral. And I know that take sounds really prudish and unloving on the surface, but I I challenge you to go listen to those episodes to hear me out, although there will be replays at the end of this season as well if you if have the patience for that. But what I think that you see in lying is that the wielding of untruth against another person is a form of objectification, and we all know where objectification leads to in one's thinking. Whether it's lust leading to adultery or rape, or hatred leading to violence or murder, lying is another objectifying action which dehumanizes.

But we don't even have to have the discussion here about the more trivial cases of lying, as the season will be focused on the big lies of propaganda. However, I do want you to take note of this observation here that lying leads to objectification and dehumanization. Because as we go through this season, we're going to explore not only the strategies behind propaganda which make it tick, but also the consequences of propaganda. What does propaganda do to other, to those who are being objectified? It dehumanizes other.

And this is why propaganda is so often associated with abuse and atrocity. Lying, deceit, and manipulation occur almost exclusively where objectification and dehumanization occur. Propaganda either makes atrocity possible or it makes it unbelievable. We'll see examples of each of these throughout our season. As propaganda sometimes dehumanizes a group and makes their murder or exploitation possible, or at other times, lulls the masses into believing in a person or group's incorruptibility and their inability to commit atrocity.

It's what we call denial. Finally, I chose to do a season on propaganda because I don't think there's a more pertinent topic to discuss right now. We are living in a world where propaganda is present just about everywhere we look. And that's in part because as Jacques Eloule identified more than sixty years ago, a technological society is run on propaganda. We are bombarded by multiple narratives of the same act or occurrence and it's nearly impossible to distinguish what is truth anymore.

At the same time, the polarization of narratives is making the objectification of the other group more prominent. As clarity of truth dissipates, so does our clarity of the humanity of other. And that of course leads to terrible acts of violence. This season is valuable because we are going to do a number of very important things. We are going to elevate truth and discuss how to discern what is true.

We are going to discuss the idea of othering and the creating of enemies and how that's problematic for us. And we're going to discuss not only how we identify propaganda and lies, but how we counter them and create a counter culture of truth and discretion. I'm really excited about this season. So hopefully, you have been able to see that information is extremely powerful. But if you can't, we're gonna spend this season showing you how propaganda and lies function, and how powerful they really are.

As usual, I've set this season up to create a cumulative sort of case to explore propaganda. We will first look at propaganda and lies on a more individual scale, looking at issues like spousal abuse and racism. Then we're going to take a look at corporate propaganda in society, followed by looking at propaganda as wielded by the largest corporation of them all, the government. We'll round out the season by assessing propaganda today, learning how to discern truth and fight lies, and finally, finishing out the season by taking a look at the Christian view of truth. Hopefully, this wets your palette for the rest of the season.

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 non violence and Kingdom Living.