(233)S11E3/1: Propaganda and Racism
Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. We just finished up the first segment of our season, which looked into the way that propaganda is wielded in situations of abuse. We started with abuse because, as I see it, it's one of the most individualistic manifestations of propaganda that you can get. It's small scale in terms of the the numbers that it impacts. It primarily deals with a family, you know, two partners, maybe some kids, and extends a little bit into the social groups into which they're active.
Derek:Families, friends, neighbors, churches, etcetera. All in all, the number of people experiencing the propaganda of the abuser is small in comparison to the millions or even billions that we'll discuss later when we get to governments and corporations. My hope was that starting with the smaller scale would help to make the discussion of propaganda more manageable and recognizable as we scale up throughout this season. Today, I want to move into a new segment, which is going to scale up a bit from our last one on abuse. I wanna talk about racism.
Derek:Now it's hard for me to figure out where to put race in this season because there are a lot of aspects of racism which occur society wide on a large scale. And there are also a lot of aspects of racism which are systemic and which have been propagated by governments. So there are actually a lot of large scale aspects to racism. But at the same time, racism has a lot of features which make it a sort of propaganda that happens at the individual and small group level. Whether I categorized it correctly here or not, it's what we're going with for this season.
Derek:So let's jump into the episode. The first aspect of racism that we need to understand is that the propaganda in racism responds to a need. What's important to recognize here is that this need can be a real need, or it can be a perceived need. But, nevertheless, the propaganda of racism is going to scratch a specific itch. Maybe a simple way to think about it would be, you know, if if there were such things as Martians, and I said, hey, look.
Derek:You need to hate the Martians. You'd be like, why? I don't even know them. Why would I hate Martians? Like, I mean, now if the Martians were coming down and buying up buying up real estates on this planet and moving into your neighborhood and taking your jobs and whatever other things Martians would do if they chose to come here.
Derek:At that point, when you started to have fears because you had certain needs that were rising or maybe you you feared wouldn't be able to be fulfilled, like, you wouldn't have a job anymore. Right? At that point, me telling you to hate Martians, you might just buy into that. Because at that point, there's a need, there's an itch that you you would feel needed scratched. And that might give you control over your life if you could aim that anger and animosity towards the Martians.
Derek:And again, that is really important to understand that propaganda isn't just pure information, but it's information with an with a point, with an agenda, with some sort of goal. So in that sense, propaganda is information, but it's information wielded as a tool or as a weapon. It's aimed towards some end. So whether propaganda is being used as a hammer or a sword or a Q tip, it needs to serve some function or provide for some need. The propaganda of racism can identify a multitude of needs that it purports to handle, and it's purported to handle different needs throughout the various ages.
Derek:During enslavement in The United States, there was an economic need, which racism helped to perpetuate, to to fulfill. There was a great need for labor, and racism helped to justify the enslavement of others. The United States needed or strongly wanted enslaved labor, so they coddled a system which helped them to fulfill that need without really feeling bad about it, resolved that dissonance for them. All men were created equal. It was written right into the, the founding documents, but some are more equal than others.
Derek:Another big need that racism provided a simple explanation for was crime. How can the higher crime rate for blacks throughout history be explained? Now a high crime rate is a legitimate that need that ought to be solved. Right? We wanna feel safe.
Derek:We wanna have communities that cohere. Well, propaganda can explain the high crime rate of blacks very simply. Either blacks are naturally inferior morally or they're culturally inferior. Now that is the simplistic answer of propaganda. What propaganda can't accept is complexity.
Derek:It couldn't accept and still can't accept that crime rates are linked with poverty, and poverty is often linked with social injustice. You know, it would have been really easy to take a look at the black crime rates and compare those to the crime rates of other first generation immigrants who were discriminated against and lived under injustice and lived in poverty. In fact, people were doing that kind of thing. But such an answer is nuanced, and the conclusion that it leads to requires a much more complex solution, not to mention a solution that costs the majority something. So propaganda provided a simplistic answer in racism, and that simplistic answer not only washed away the dissonance, but prevented the majority from having to really do anything about it, having to sacrifice, having to self reflect, having to repent.
Derek:Propaganda also couldn't accept the complex answer to the high rate of black rape against white women. You know, the simple propagandized answer was that black men were savages. It's as simple as that. It makes sense. The complex answer was that white men and women were oftentimes the savage ones, fabricating stories of rape or blaming black men without evidence.
Derek:The propagandized system of racism in The States couldn't accept such complexity when Ida b Wells pointed out in her book, The Red Record, that the perceived problem of black rape was really built on lies and misconceptions. And the problem didn't lie just in the South. While Northerners in the late eighteen hundreds were propagandized to think themselves as being superior and more civilized than they're enslaving southern counterparts, propaganda allowed Northerners to get out from under the microscope of injustice. While they may have been against slavery in theory, the high crime rate of blacks did seem to indicate that blacks were naturally and culturally inferior. Northerners weren't racist like Southerners, so what explanation could there be other than black inferiority?
Derek:We see a a somewhat similar thing happen today. And whereas in the past, it was Northerners who thought themselves superior to Southerners, today it's post civil rights Americans who think that they're better than pre civil rights Americans. We're not racist like those bigots before 1970. Yet so many in my community today deny systemic racism and the real experiences of many blacks. We refuse to hear their voices, their community's voice today and listen to what they're actually saying.
Derek:Just like racism wasn't just a southern problem back in the eighteen hundreds, racism isn't only a pre civil rights era problem. It's a now problem. Listen to what the Kerner Commission had to say back in 1969. Quote, what white Americans have never fully understood, but what the Negro can never forget, is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.
Derek:End quote. So whereas the Kerner Commission was, you know, post civil rights legislation, it declared that white America had created, condoned, and perpetuated the ghetto. White America today thinks that a bill passed prior to this observation undoes the damage and eradicates racism in individuals and structures alike, despite what the Kerner Commission says. It's not like, once you had the the civil rights legislation passed, that all of a sudden, those ghettos were like, oh, we can be done being ghettos now. Right?
Derek:Now all of a sudden, we're fixed. Well, no. They they were created by white institutions and maintained, right, perpetuated. And so, that that travesty, of of redlining and everything that went into making the ghetto white flight, you know, that continues today and impacts the way that our our communities and our legislations are structured. But, hopefully, you can see the allure of propaganda here.
Derek:Right? Racism wasn't just something that absolved southerners of the guilt of enslavement. That was a powerful thing for them, right, to absolve yourself of owning human property. And it it wasn't just something that absolved Northerners of the guilt of social injustice. As we can see from the fact that the Kerner Commission's report and observation hasn't been taken seriously, and we haven't yet taken real responsibility for what was created and what we continue to perpetuate, Racism is a is a very strong, alluring, explanation today because it it, provides a simple answer.
Derek:No. There's not really injustice going on. No. There's not racism. Systemic injustice?
Derek:Since systemic racism? No. That can't be, because then I'd be complicit, and then I'd be called to, hold our system accountable and probably repent where I've been complicit. So while we would never say that the black community is inferior no. We, white Americans, have often felt very comforted by the propaganda that blacks still are culturally or naturally, genetically, whatever it is, inferior in some way.
Derek:That's in the in the back of of our minds, and it provides simple solutions to to so many issues. It shapes police responses to crime. It influences where policing happens. It influences, the legislation, the the laws that are passed, as well as, you know, the sentencing disparities, which crimes get, more time. And it influences how an already oppressed group is oppressed more.
Derek:And it influences how we excuse ourselves from doing justice and loving mercy and walking humbly with God. If you wanna take another more modern look than the Kerner Commission, if you're like, yeah. Okay. That 1969. Right?
Derek:That's kinda dated. And, you know, at this point, the black communities had long enough to shape up, So, the fact that there's still high crime rates on them. But if you want a great look at this, of how racism shapes, the ghettos, and how how how we are complicit, and how legislation and policing and all that stuff, continue to perpetuate these disparities. Go ahead and and check out, the the federal report that came out about Ferguson, Missouri. What was uncovered there is absolutely unreal.
Derek:You know, you can look at the arrest rate of blacks, compared to their percentage of the population. You could look at the things that they were arrested for. Things like, I don't think this is what the actual law was called. I forget what it was. But the the nickname that they had for it was, you know, walking while black.
Derek:So they could they literally would just pull people over for ridiculous things. It was it was nuts. Two other resources that you can look at, which are, one of them's, more autobiographical and the other one is, kind of like journalistic work. So the one is convicted by this guy, and he kind of he he, is writing from the police perspective and explaining how he wrongly convicted, caused this black guy to be convicted, because of the way that he policed and kind of what went on in the police policing system. The other one that's really, really good and I think it's about the Baltimore PD, somewhere around there.
Derek:But it's called I Got a Monster. And they use, like, depositions and and court documents and other things, interviews, and they go through the policing practices. And it's just, like, you know that Baltimore's area is bad. Right? And you're like, well, the police aren't aren't helping at all in that area.
Derek:In fact, like, if I was a black person living in that area under that police jurisdiction, I'd be so cynical about the police and the idea of justice and goodness and legislation. Yeah. So check out those resources. But first, you know, if you if you want, like, primary source documentation, the, the Ferguson Police Department or or a federal report is just eye opening. Now whatever you think about the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, whether you say, oh, well, you know, the the, police officer thought that he was he was being attacked, and, you know, I understand his his vantage point and why he did what he did.
Derek:Forget that. Forget that. Look at the police report and see why, that community was up in arms and why they're very skeptical of of what the police say happened and why somebody would have fear of actually, like, giving in to the police and submitting to the police. Why they would want to run and why they might want to fight back because they feared for their lives. Alright.
Derek:So recap this section here. Alright. Because people think and have thoughts that blacks commit more crime, and because sometimes that actually did happen, you know, in various places and, at various times. Because we know that poverty increases crime rates, and poverty comes from social injustice in general. So policing was heavier in those communities because of that.
Derek:Right? Because of those crime rates. And or the way that those crime rates were, presented, and, the crime rates of whites kind of brushed under the rug. So the police picked them up for lighter infractions, police their areas more heavily, or completely made up infractions. And legislation was designed around the problems that propaganda identified and solved.
Derek:And that just created a cycle of propaganda identifying the problem, exacerbating the problem, prescribing a solution to that problem, which was really just a problem of its own making and a problem perpetuated by propaganda itself. The first thing that we see then in regard to the propaganda of racism is that it was alluring and still is in part because it solves a need. It solved the economic need under slavery, the need to address crime, then and now, whether real or perceived crime, and the need to absolve my own group from complicity and injustice and from repentance and sacrifice. Racism is a powerful tool of propaganda because it is such a simple solution to an otherwise very complicated set of social and economic issues. Of course, propaganda likes to put things in nice, neat packages and make things appear simple, but propaganda itself is often much more complex than that, all the things that are going on behind the scenes.
Derek:Of course, wrapped up in all of this idea of meeting a need is another aspect of propaganda, and that is the inimical aspect, as I'll call it. Propaganda tends to create and identify very clear cut enemies. And with racism, the clear cut enemy were blacks or anyone with darker skin. And and this idea goes hand in hand with needs. Right?
Derek:Because if I need something, then that need can be threatened by someone or something else. And so propaganda not only identifies a need, but then it it identifies an enemy, a threat to that need. But beyond just certain people groups, propaganda can also create enemies in the more abstract. So it might create an enemy of godlessness or, immorality, And and those can be wrapped up in racism as well. Right?
Derek:So it's not that I I hate somebody because they're black. I hate them because they're immoral. I mean, we know that black men tend to rape women more, and we know that their crime rate's higher, and we know that they're savages, and we know that they're culturally inferior. And so, really, it's not it's not the color of their skin. You know?
Derek:I'm not that shallow. Who do you think I am? That's not the color of their skin at all. It's their immorality, their godlessness. We see similar things today when black movements are attacked as Marxist.
Derek:I mean, it's amazing. When a when a black movement gets any, makes any headway at all, my conservative Christian evangelical community, it's gonna call that thing Marxist. Right? Marxist is the way is a way to dismiss something without having to to address its ideology. It's a euphemism.
Derek:It's a dog whistle, a slurp, whatever you wanna call it for godlessness. I mean, Marxism is framed as being antithetical to good old Christian values like capitalism. Of course, Martin Luther King Junior and his movement were framed in this light, you know, as Marxists. They were trying to make peace and and do good and love like Jesus, but they were Marxists. And a great book to see this is a book called The Radical King, which kind of comes from this perspective.
Derek:Not accusing King of, being a Marxist, but kind of talking about some of his sentiments which, aligned with ideologies that made people uncomfortable. And it's great book. Compiles some of his his best writings. But it wasn't just levied at King. Right?
Derek:It's levied today at, Black Lives Matter movement. But it's it's something that's levied at justice movements all throughout the recent history. Right? And what I found really interesting was that this trend is so ubiquitous. Like, you you just know that it's gonna come up when there's a a justice issue, that I even found this way earlier than I thought I was gonna find it.
Derek:And I think I was reading the book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Me, which was about Native Americans and kind of, the way that they were betrayed and lied to and treated and, conquered and kind of some of the the last days of their history and how they were put on reservations and things. I forget which group it was. But whatever group it was, now at the end of the book, it's talking about how they were on this reservation. And they still wanted to maintain some of their their heritage and, like, do some of their things. But what the the, the whites were making them do was, okay.
Derek:You go on the reservation, and I'm gonna make you farm this land. Like, that's you're gonna subsist in that fashion. Even if they used to be hunters or foragers or whatever it was that they did, or they went out and and, you know, drove buffalo and and hunted there. Whatever it was. Right?
Derek:Is this this new thing that the white people were asking them to do in order to live, right, made them subsist. It made them continue on living physically, but they were just so demoralized. Like, this isn't who we are. This isn't our culture. And so they kind of it it wasn't, an uprising, if I remember correctly.
Derek:But they were they were really pushing back and, like, not wanting to do this this work and stuff, and complaining, and, I think, subverting in different ways, and, like, running off the reservation. Whatever it was that they were doing. But then, this guy, the one of the soldiers, when they have this court case, he's like, you know, they're Marxists. And I was like, what? I didn't realize this is the the, late eighteen hundreds, which is definitely after Marx.
Derek:But I didn't realize that this was something that was being levied at people so early. I mean, just think about the ways that it's levied. K? Here, it's it's levied against Native Americans that we've lied to, betrayed, taken their land for capital, placed them on reservations, and domineered their culture, like, our culture over them. And then we call them Marxists, and they're the enemies.
Derek:They're bad. We use it with Martin Luther King Junior. Right? Nonviolent resistance, and and you can see the evil things that that we were doing and the the wicked things that they're fighting against. But they're Marxists and the bad guys.
Derek:Police violence today. I mean, you kinda wonder, like, this this, name calling calling, these people Marxists when they're always the ones who are the oppressed and, being taken advantage of by the other guys. Sometimes I'm like, well, maybe the Marxists are the good guys. Obviously, I know things are much more complex than that, and Marxism is is, has a whole lot of bad baggage too. But, if you're not evaluating the idea, and Marxism is just used as a slur against a group, it's being wielded as propaganda.
Derek:Right? And that's something that you need to be discerning about. Because propaganda likes to keep things simple. It uses slurs, euphemisms, catch phrases, and all that stuff to embody concepts that are inimical to the group that it's trying to persuade. And then it can just dismiss those enemies because it's us versus them.
Derek:There's no nuance. I can't be partially wrong, and they can't be partially right. So racism is a wonderful example of propaganda because, it highlights, creates, fabricates, identifies needs, real or perceived needs, and, it also clearly identifies enemies. It lets me know who is a threat to me securing those needs. But so far, those two aspects are really just informative.
Derek:They they tell me things. They tell me what my need is, and they tell me who my enemies are. And and those things can be motivating in and of themselves, right, for me to accomplish, to to get some need. But, you know, think about it this way. I need food every day.
Derek:But I don't go around acting as if, like, I need to get food. Like, I need to secure food. This is a priority that I need to take care of. And It's not a priority because I've got so much food in my house. I know that as soon as I'm aware of my need to eat, I can go and grab it.
Derek:So there's there's absolutely no impulse for me to to really live life any differently, because whenever I need food, I'm gonna secure it. So one of the important things that propaganda needs to do isn't to merely provide information of what my needs are and who my enemies are, who the people are who are gonna threaten those needs. But it also has to induce fear, because fear is a fantastic motivator. As it's not a fantastic motivator in the sense that it's good for you to implement and produces great long term results. It's a fantastic motivator in the sense that if you wanna get somebody moving, fear is gonna do that.
Derek:Right? Maybe not in a good way. Often, not in a good way. But it'll get them moving in the direction that you want them to go probably initially. Just take the COVID example for a moment in the pandemic.
Derek:It provides us a great look at how fear works. Everyone needs or probably, I would say, strongly desires toilet paper, because we can come up with some other methods, to take care of that business. But toilet paper is, in the in the Western world, probably considered a need for a lot of people. But when COVID came along and the threat of restrictions and all of that, were implemented, people started buying up all the toilet paper. And there was a shortage.
Derek:I'm sure part of that shortage was due to, the the industry and and factories and things and labor issues. But a lot of it because we saw the same thing happen with gas, like, when the pipeline burst. Right? We would have been fine if people didn't go and start hoarding. But when there's a fear that a need that I have is threatened, at that point, I'm driven, or a lot of people are driven, to act on that fear.
Derek:So with gasoline or with toilet paper, had people continued in their normal buying habits, everything would have been fine. But the mass hysteria stemming from fear drove the toilet paper shortage. And then as you get shorter and shorter on toilet paper and gas, that makes even those people who maybe weren't fearful at first and said, that's just so irrational. As there starts to be a shortage, it moves more and more people to, do similar things. Propaganda essentially works in this way.
Derek:Right? And it's no different with racist propaganda than with other propaganda. The needs that we discussed previously in this episode, you know, the need to lower crime or the need to be economically secure, were needs, real needs. But that fear led to legislation. Right?
Derek:A rush of legislation and, making decisions that probably weren't really well thought out or studied. The fear led to funding and expanding the police force until today. I mean, probably as a kind of a backlash to, a lot of the race riots started in the civil rights era, our police force has been militarized. And then determining where the police patrol and, more heavily. Right?
Derek:All of those things, fear induces those things. Fear induced white flight, which, which had a significant impact on job creation, where jobs were placed, the housing market and the prices, all kinds of things that significantly impacted, other people, particularly the black community. A great example of seeing this fear inducing propaganda in action would be the infamous Willie Horton advertisement that George Bush used back in, like, I think it was 1988. You know? This and and along in that in those days, there's the, you know, the war on drugs, tough on crime, three strikes laws.
Derek:All those are examples of, kind of fear induced responses that I mean, today, we're recognizing right. The Willie Horton advertisement was blatantly pretty bad, I think, and and very pointed dog whistly. The war on drugs, we're discovering that oh, yeah. There's a lot of lot of nasty stuff going on there. And it it actually produced probably a much worse culture than, if we would have taken some other approach.
Derek:The tough on crime. Oh, yeah. We were we were pretty much just disproportionately impacting blacks in terms of arrests as well as, sentencing disparities and three strikes laws and all that stuff. Right? We can see in retrospect, oh, man, we really rushed into that because we were scared.
Derek:We were scared of these super predators and and all these other things that weren't scientifically proven, but we bought into it because it it sounded right to us because we are fearful. So I mentioned dog whistle politics here a lot, and I I think it'd be good to expand on that one as well because it provides a lot of great examples. Willie Horton being a a famous one, like I said with George Bush. But where I'm from, in Georgia, MARTA. MARTA is, the the euphemism, the dog whistle, the whatever you wanna call it.
Derek:It or a a dog whistle, I should say. Right? And what is MARTA? I forget what it stands for. It has something something something transportation something.
Derek:And probably has Atlanta thrown in there somewhere. It has this public transportation system in the Atlanta area. And what you what you figure out as you read history, especially, Cruz's book called White Flight, which is fantastic. And specifically for me, he he covers specifically the Atlanta area. And so it's extremely informative.
Derek:But what you find out is that a lot of the jobs, the the better jobs, the higher paying jobs, and the better housing opportunities are outside of the city because of white flights that occurred, within the last hundred years or so. So what happens? The the jobs move outside of the perimeter. We've got this big, two eighty five that goes around the perimeter of Atlanta and essentially closes it in. Right?
Derek:So you've got inside the perimeter and outside the perimeter. If you're inside the perimeter, you're probably I mean, gentrification might be changing this, but you're probably poorer. You, you probably you have a much less chance of owning a vehicle because you are poorer. And so the way that you get around is through public transportation. Well, MARTA is public transportation, and, it's been limited in the area.
Derek:Because as it has sought to expand into the more suburban areas, right, to extend its reach out farther to where you get, better different areas, you know, different jobs, get out out of the food desert and be able to get to different stores, things like that. Right? As Marta has sought to expand that opportunity for those inside the city, people have been vehemently against that. Well, I should say, people who live in the suburbs. Right?
Derek:Why? Why don't we want Marta to come to the suburbs? Right. Sure. I can say, well, it's because it's gonna devalue my property.
Derek:Right? It but it devalues my property in part because the wrong types of people, you know, the black and brown people, are gonna begin to have access to the suburbs. But why do black and brown people moving in to to the suburbs? Why does that lower my property value? Because we don't want to live where they live, and therefore, we value that property as less.
Derek:And what happens when we value property as less and undermine their property values and evacuate ourselves from where they live? Well, they experience injustice in the form of economic and societal hardship and discrimination. And what do we know that injustice leads to? Higher crime rates. So it's a it's just a cyclical mess that's that started on fear and is run on fear, continues to be run on fear.
Derek:It's what led to block busting in the early to mid nineteen hundreds where real estate agents would stoke fear in white communities that blacks were moving into. They'd buy up the block, then they'd sell the homes at inflated prices to blacks moving into the community. So they'd rip off the the whites. They'd blame it on the blacks. Hey.
Derek:Look. They're lowering your property value. You better sell it quickly. Right? Fear.
Derek:Fear. Fear. And then they turn around and sell it to blacks. Hey. I got this good deal for you in this nice community.
Derek:Right? You wanna move on up in the world? Come on. Buy this piece of property I got at this inflated price. It's just terrible.
Derek:And it's it's largely driven by fear. Homes lost value because people bought the propaganda that homes would lose value, and they sold them for less than the homes were worth, which just fulfilled the expectation that homes would lose value if minorities moved in. Fear is a great mobilizer, and it solidifies the propaganda for people. It it makes those needs and those enemies not just clear, but it makes the individual act on those things. It accesses the felt needs that people have, or it creates those perceived needs itself, and then it hurries people to perform the reflexive actions that propaganda has instilled in them.
Derek:This is perhaps the greatest strength of the use of fear in propaganda. Accessing reflexes elicits actions. I think this is something that my community, the white community, has a particularly hard time comprehending. We feel as though racism was handled with the civil rights movement. And some of us think, well, I mean, we ended slavery in 1865.
Derek:What are they still complaining about? Right? So some people some people, think that racism was ended in 1865. But I think most would would say, okay. It's it's ended in 1969 or whatever, which isn't that much better, because to think that racism has ended, by and large, is is problematic.
Derek:Nevertheless, we feel, my community, that racism was done with after the civil rights movement. And that racism and racists are confined to the overt racists of the KKK or white supremacist militia groups. Although, when they were associated with the president that our group elected and they're marching with their regalia and such in broad daylight on video cameras, people still didn't accept that there were racists there. But, nevertheless, that's that's a different topic. I don't wanna tick too many people off.
Derek:So we modern whites, especially those of us who are educated and northern born, we think that, hey. We're we're post civil rights. Right? We're not racist like them. And we think that we're we're un racist.
Derek:And not only do we think that we're un racist, but we we think so because we feel like we're also immune to propaganda. Like, that stuff that affected our parents or our grandparents doesn't affect us. Yet, fear, even though it's a a great tool for propaganda, when you're attuned to it, it can also be a great uncover of propaganda in your life. So if you become aware that propaganda uses fear, you can actually use fear in your life to expose how you've been propagandized. And so it's actually a great tool for uncovering propaganda.
Derek:Because, fear exposes what we've been propagandized to, since fear elicits responses that are are more reflexive. So let me give you an example. You take a white woman on an elevator who clutches her purse when a black man enters, while she doesn't clutch her purse when when a white man enters. Right? Well, where is that reflex coming from?
Derek:And that shows something about what she really believes deep down inside. Now she's not gonna go out and call somebody the n word, maybe. Right? There are lots of people who are ideologically, like, on board with being against racism, and they hate that, and they hate the terrible things that it does to, the black communities. Nevertheless, because we're unwilling to face the idea that we can be propagandized, we we fail to understand that there are those those racist tendencies and beliefs deep down inside of us that we don't really wanna admit that we have.
Derek:And fear exposes those sorts of things. And that shouldn't be a shaming moment. That should be a moment where we say, man, my community has failed me, and we have we have sinned. Like, let me figure out how to unpropagandize myself, and and let me work on this. Like, it should be a beautiful moment of of, an opportunity for repentance as opposed to something that, we're we just feel pure shame about.
Derek:So I I think to the the story of, Crash, it's a movie. And there's a a scene in there with Sandra Bullock. Right? She's got this monologue where, you know, she was walking to her car, and she was gonna clutch her purse. And she said, you know what?
Derek:I'm I'm more civilized than that. I'm not gonna clutch my purse. Right? I'm not gonna be on my defensive when she walks towards these two black guys. And then what ends up happening is she gets mugged.
Derek:Well, after she gets mugged, she goes off on this rant about how she, you know, she wanted to be politically correct. And she she didn't wanna clutch her purse, even though she knew that she should have, because those guys seemed like they were gonna be criminals. And so, right, she talks beautifully about the fear that she had that was that was under there. But then the way that that that fear was actually, you know, justified by her real life experience later and her struggle with that. So Crash is a great movie to kind of see some of these different aspects of of fear come out in people and the ways that it impacts, them through the various experiences that they have.
Derek:It's a good movie that kind of will help you to see the fear in other people and the way that they kind of work through the their propaganda and racism. So fear elicits reflexive responses, and our reflexes uncover how we've been propagandized. Now a lot of whites think that what we intellectually think at this moment determines whether we're racist or not. Or maybe a better way to put it would be whether there's any racism within us at all. So we determine the presence of racism based on individual intellectual ascent.
Derek:But one of the things that the black community has been trying to point out to us is that intellectual ascent doesn't mean jack if the actions don't comport with that. This reminds me of, right, James saying faith without works is dead. Well, maybe we could, rephrase that for for racism here. Not believing in racism while doing racist things is dead. Jacques Ellul in the technological society and and his book propaganda, maybe says it a little bit differently as he talks about how propaganda is indifferent to our beliefs.
Derek:What it cares about is our actions. It doesn't matter if it can get us to believe something. It matters if it can get us to do something. Sure. It wants us to believe and do because that's more powerful.
Derek:But if it can just get us to do, to go along, to get along, that's really, you know, the ideal. So in summary, our actions reveal how we've been propagandized, not what we say we intellectually assent to. This concept is one that we've touched on a little in our season on Christianity and government as well. Kierkegaard's book, Attack on Christendom, bemoaned that in Christendom, where the whole society is sacralized or propagandized, that those who called themselves Christians were usually not really Christians at all as revealed by their actions. Jesus said the same thing.
Derek:By their fruit, you shall know them. We're disciples if we do the will of his father, or the one who builds their house on the rock is the one who hears and keeps Jesus' words. Actions reveal true deep seated beliefs and propaganda. They reveal how we've been discipled and by whom we've been discipled. Christians can talk about loving Jesus and intellectually assenting to his lordship.
Derek:But when fear of loss elicits actions of greed or fear of life elicits violent responses against enemies, such actions betray the depth and extent of our discipleship or lack thereof. Undermining this aspect of fear as wielded by propaganda is one of the best ways to attack propaganda, but one which I think is underutilized. Fear elicits hasty responses and and uncovered reflexes, which have been developed in individuals over a long period of time. Counteracting fear isn't something that you're gonna be able to do logically or hastily. It requires steady exposure.
Derek:The best example I can think of for this at the moment is the story of Benjamin Lay. If you don't know his story, you should go back and check it out in season seven of this podcast. It's actually one of the most listened to episodes that, I've done, and I think for good reason. His story is is amazing and inspiring. But what you find in the story of Benjamin Lay is that he's someone who recognized the problem of racism over time through his experiences.
Derek:He didn't just wake up one day and say, oh, yes. This racism stuff is terrible. He he actually met enslaved people. He worked on ships that had slaves. And and through his experiences and interactions, over a long period of time, he became convinced of it.
Derek:And after he became convinced that racism and slavery was wrong, he spent the rest of his life undermining racism, not by being violent and not by being purely intellectual, but primarily by being an example. He ate with slaves, and he invited them into his home. He paid slaves if he was served by them in someone else's home. And he persistently confronted injustice in his midst. He even sort of kidnapped a kid one day, and, then told his parents, hey, that's how the, the families of the enslaved feel.
Derek:But you have to go you have to go listen to that episode to, to hear about that. He was he was pretty ballsy. It's hard to continue in wicked actions when a wilderness prophet like Benjamin Lay exposes your evil day after day, and he goes against what all the other court prophets are saying. It's hard to fear slave rebellions and economic hardships from the the freeing of blacks when you see the wilderness prophet eating with those dangerous savage slaves and giving up worldly conveniences that you say your needs, like slave labored sugar. A wilderness prophet like Benjamin Lay reveals whatever fears one has, whether perceived or real.
Derek:And he reveals that those fears don't justify the end for which the propaganda of racism is directing the masses. There's another story which I think reveals the way in which the fear wielded propaganda is exposed. The blinding of Isaac Woodard is a famous event of a black soldier who was blinded in a beating while returning back from serving in World War two. Images of his beating and his retelling of the story was what some consider to be the spark that really kicked off the civil rights movement into motion within the next two decades. Sometimes the the fear wielded by propaganda goes too far.
Derek:And when others see the inordinate response to their fear, something clicks for them, and they're disgusted by the propaganda. You know, Emmett Till's Open Casket Funeral is another great example of exposing what what fears do to people and how they're irrational. You know, if if fear drives you to beat a young boy, to to a disfigured pulp. Right? When the world sees that, people who might have been indifferent to racism or inactive about it, they can kinda see, oh, wow.
Derek:This this fear is inordinate. And look, this is what it does. It reveals that to people. For whatever reason, some of these events, images, and stories finally get through to the propagandized mass and reveal the insanity of the fear that's been sold to them. Whether fear is revealed to be disproportionate or not really real, nonexistent, through seeing the example of others, like like that of, Benjamin Lay, or in seeing what fear does to people, as in Isaac Woodard or Emmett Till, The uncovering of this fear in whatever way it's done, neuters the propaganda and allows for potential breakthroughs.
Derek:It's for this reason that someone like Daryl Davis, a black man who has converted over 200 KKK members, away from white nationalism. It's why he's been far more effective at reforming white supremacists than well funded and mannered organizations like the Black Panther Party. Right? One man getting over 200 people to to convert out of white nationalism, and that's impressive. That's why nonviolent action is better than violent action.
Derek:Daryl Davis' nonviolent action use, as a method, the exposure of truth rather than the coercion of truth. The goal is not to cram ideas of racism and justice down an opponent's throat as if that's gonna make them change. That but rather, right, we want to reveal to opponents the truth of their irrational fear and the truth of the consequences that that fear produces. And nonviolence does that that wonderfully. It reveals.
Derek:It bears the truth open. The opponent is treated as a rational human being rather than being counter objectified by, one's own counter propaganda. Davis is is, famous because of the amazing work that he's done. Like I said, over 200 Klansmen or, white nationalists away from that, and that's amazing. And he he did it not through violence or vitriol, but by befriending and conversing with the white supremacists.
Derek:When people are able to put a name to their fear and recognize that their actions will hurt that individual, and as they get to know their enemy and realize that their fears are unfounded, true transformation is possible. Exposure to that which is feared and to the consequences of irrational fear are the best remedies for fear itself. But such counter propaganda takes time, and a lot of people aren't willing to do that kind of thing. Okay. So far, I've probably made my white conservative friends mad.
Derek:Now it's time for me to maybe make my more liberal ones a little bit mad. One of the other reasons that exposure to irrational fears can help to undermine propaganda is because a lot of times racist propaganda is grounded in truth and sincerity. Believe it or not, people really do want to solve crime and do want justice to be served for those who harm others. People really don't like gangs and drugs, and they don't want those things to hurt people. Certain minority groups do really have higher incarceration rates than whites.
Derek:Neighborhoods composed prime primarily of minorities do often have more graffiti and destruction, and minorities tend to be poorer than whites. Poor people do tend to choose food that is much unhealthier than the wealthier do and also have more health issues. Now back in the early to mid nineteen hundreds, it was levied at black women that they were failing to care for their families because they had such a high employment rate, and therefore couldn't nurture their kids. And that was true. Their employment rate was higher, and they likely couldn't take care of their kids in the same way that a white stay at home mom could, given their limited salaries to provide for alternative care.
Derek:It's true. And a lot of people who recognize those truths do genuinely, on an intellectual basis, want those things to be resolved. Truth and sincerity. It is really important to understand that a lot of racists, a lot of people a lot of anybody who's propagandized about anything, us. Right?
Derek:People oftentimes speak out of sincerity and speak much truth. That is vital to understand in order to prevent dehumanizing and objectifying them as an enemy and, treating them inappropriately. And I would bet Daryl Davis was, able to kind of think this way, to recognize that, hey. These are people too. And I'm gonna talk to them because I I think probably, if they get to know me, like, we can have conversations and they might be willing to change because I believe in their humanity.
Derek:So it's absolutely vital if you are fighting against racism for you to recognize this truth and sincerity principle, in part, because it will help you to treat people well in love. But, however, we need to flip this back around because the racists need to to hear this too, or the people who are harboring racism. I need to hear this about things as well. Right? Truth and sincerity don't make something true.
Derek:Right? Because what a lot of people fail to realize about propaganda is that truth isn't just truth in and of itself, when it's wielded by propaganda. But rather, truth is aimed or pointed or fashioned or formed or shaped towards some ultimate goal. It's aimed somewhere. Take the claim of the working black moms in the mid nineteen hundreds.
Derek:Propaganda there identifies a truth. Right? Black moms are working more, and therefore can't take as good of care as their fam of their families because they have to work. But what it ends up doing with that truth is it it takes two major missteps, which contribute to racism. First, it fails to recognize why black women were working more.
Derek:They were working more because they needed that income as a result of unfair labor practices and injustice, inappropriate education. They weren't able to get educated like the white children were able to do. All kinds of reasons why they were taking more jobs. And the other thing missed is that while it was true that black women worked more back in the day and were criticized for it, now black moms, pejoratively called welfare moms, are criticized for not working. Propaganda today literally criticizes black women for the exact opposite of what it criticized them for in the past.
Derek:Now that is a telltale sign that one is being propagandized. The agenda and the goal remain the same, but the information and arguments shift. Sometimes, like in this case, making a 180 degree shift and just arguing the antithesis, arguing the opposite of itself. It comes to the exact same conclusions regardless of the evidence it's given, even if that evidence is in opposition to the earlier evidence. Propaganda selects the truth it wants to highlight, and it frames those truths in order to create a larger concept that it puts forth as ultimate truth.
Derek:The components of propaganda are often largely true, but the machine that those components combine to create is often a fabrication of untruth. You might liken it to a nuclear bomb. The bomb itself is composed of mostly benign elements, but the small payload of nuclear material onboard is enough to make the otherwise benign materials catastrophic. Alright. So we've talked a lot in this episode about how propaganda functions, but we also really need to talk about how propaganda is formed.
Derek:As we know from our, foundational episode, education is vital to the formation of propaganda. Of course, schooling is one way in which this propaganda forms. Public schools, particularly in the South, have long used textbooks which skip over certain aspects of history or whitewash racism by minimizing it with ideas like, you know, the slaves were actually provided for and treated very well as an implied softening or a justification of that practice. The boom in private schooling largely resulted from integration. Whites didn't want their kids to be forced to go to public schools with blacks, so they created what were known as segregation academies.
Derek:You can even see propaganda in education extending up through the college level at places like Bob Jones University, which was a Christian school that banned interracial dating, which was only overturned as late as the year February. Let that one sink in. February. And, of course, many private schools and homeschoolers today use Bob Jones curriculum, as well as a number of other curriculums which have origins from institutions fraught with a racially tumultuous past and, unfortunately, present. But, of course, education extends well beyond the four walls of a school.
Derek:Education occurred in the community movements to erect Confederate monuments. Education happened in other symbols, like the raising of Confederate flags. Education happened socially in the South with Jim Crow laws. Every time a person went into a store in the South under Jim Crow, or wanted to get a drink or go to the bathroom, they were educated as to the distinction between whites and blacks. Education happened through entertainment as well, as blackface and the portrayal of black characters as buffoons taught society something, or else the absence of any black protagonist implicitly taught that blacks weren't ever the good guys or really worth mentioning in any important stories.
Derek:However, entertainment could also be more pointed as the movie, The Birth of a Nation and the book, The Leopard Spots, educated well against the sexual deviancy of the black man. And it got readers and viewers to empathize with the murder of a black man, because by the end of the book, by the end of the movie, they recognized he deserved it. And you know what? I would have participated in in punishing him as well. And, of course, there was the original propaganda aimed at the slaves themselves.
Derek:The infamous slave Bible, which conveniently took out significant portions of the Bible, like Exodus, while leaving in and highlighting passages referring to submission to masters. So much for inerrancy. Right? Education was vital to the propagation of propaganda, both for whites and for blacks. Education, of course, works on those with fertile minds.
Derek:Some of the education mentioned here was preparatory education. A kid who has grown up never eating in the same restaurant as blacks, hearing slurs used when adults talk about them, and seeing statues of Confederate heroes, well, that child will be primed to hear the truth about black inferiority when he goes to school. And while a part of what primes individuals to absorb propaganda is preeducation, a huge factor in receptivity is the allure of community. I think about the book To Kill a Mockingbird and how Scout must have been teased relentlessly throughout her life for the fact that her dad represented a black man and a black man who was found guilty. Nobody wants to be on the outside of the group.
Derek:But even more than not wanting to be on the outside, everyone wants to be on the inside, causing them to mimic and choose complicity in the propaganda. Rene Girard is a great guy to read on this. I, I've only read some excerpts, but he talks a lot about mimesis, and, it's something you should check out on this area. But segregation, flags, and monuments are not intellectual arguments. Right?
Derek:They're vehicles that make the propaganda stick. They're visual aids. It's sort of the opposite of inoculation. Right? Inoculation is something that protects you from something else.
Derek:Instead, it's, a word that I would I would describe as inculcation, which is the sort of the opposite, because it's the instilling. It's the placing in you of values. Right? The constructing and supporting of an idea within you. That's what these vehicles did.
Derek:These aspects of propaganda, which provide community, make the ideas of propaganda desirable for people because they want to be a part of that community. So whereas fear draws reflexes out, education is what implants those reflexes for fear to be able to manipulate down the road. Finally, it's important to recognize that propaganda is always on the defensive against additional information being included. Just as we saw with abusers who isolate their partners from others to prevent information coming into their lives, so it's the same with racism. I mean, the most obvious, right, was the slave bible that we already mentioned.
Derek:But the way that the the masters of slaves, of those who are enslaved, did not want them to learn to read. Why? That's that seems ridiculous to us today. But they didn't want them to learn to read in order that they couldn't read things that the masters couldn't control. So whereas in a place like China, where reading is actually probably helpful to the government because they significantly can control the whole society and prevent other works from getting in, and control the Internet and everything, they're able to ensure that reading actually is helpful because, everything is pro communist.
Derek:But, you know, it's also dangerous because that means they can read other things too if you don't keep a tight control on it. White supremacy has long been a master of controlling the information. When it came to arguing against slavery from the Bible, propaganda guided theology and hermeneutics. Inerrancy and literalism became weapons. Since the Old Testament prescribed slavery, then God must be fine with it.
Derek:In fact, since he civically instituted slavery, he must actually desire it. That's what a good society would have in it. Sometimes, Christians were able to come up with far fetched ideas, which were bought simply because they needed to be accepted in order to justify the propaganda. One such idea was the curse of Ham and the idea that blacks had come from Ham's line and therefore deserved to be enslaved. Religion didn't have a corner on the market in regard to promoting racism and and stifling alternative ideas.
Derek:Science was also racism's handmaiden. Charles Darwin, evolution, and eugenics were all big contributors to the idea that blacks were inferior. Skull sizes were measured and intelligence assessed, and blacks were determined to be scientifically inferior. It was easy to accept such conclusions because not only were these conclusions expected, but they were also convenient conclusions. Conclusions which resolved any dissonance one might have about treating another human being like an animal, since science and religion proved that, in fact, they really were just animals.
Derek:The propaganda of racism led to some horrendous events in history, because ideas have consequences. You know, a lot of people are familiar with things like the Tuskegee experiments and lynchings, but few know that these sorts of events were much more widespread than typically thought. It wasn't just these one or two instances. The Equal Justice Initiative has a wonderful compilation of events, and they even have a calendar that you can order each year with some of those events listed on them. And it's a great place to start.
Derek:But some of the events which stand out to me are things like Ota Benga, a black man who was literally put on display in the Bronx Zoo because black people were animals. Oh, and, he wasn't placed in the Bronx Zoo in the eighteen hundreds pre civil war. He was placed in the zoo in nineteen o six. There's also the sterilization of minorities, especially Native Americans that occurred at least up through the nineteen seventies. And hardly anyone knows of the 1920 Supreme Court legislation, or Supreme Court case decision, whatever you call it, Buck v Bell, which legalized forced sterilization.
Derek:Though this law was also used against whites and and other groups of people, particularly the poor. The Supreme Court decided that we can forcefully sterilize people in The United States. And while everyone knows of the existence of lynchings, few know just how terrible they really were. James Coen in his book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, describe a lynching which took place not too far from my residence in The United States, right, in Georgia, where Mary Turner, who was eight months pregnant, was hung upside down by her feet, had gasoline poured on her, was lit on fire, and while still alive, had her eight month old baby cut out of her abdomen and stomped on. Her crime was having protested her husband's unjust lynching.
Derek:And then what I think is the most atrocious lynching that I've I've ever heard of of all time. Jesse Washington in Texas to a crowd of 10,000 plus people who made postcards, which was a a common occurrence. But they put a a chain under Jesse's arms, and they created a fire underneath of Jesse. And they raised him and lowered him so that he didn't burn to death. You know?
Derek:They wanted to make it prolonged. And so they'd raise him and lower him and raise him and lower him. If he passed out, they'd raise him, and they'd lower him. But Jesse started to climb up the chain, right, with his hands. He'd climb up higher to try to get away from the fire, and they didn't like that.
Derek:And so when he came down, they, they cut off each of his fingers so that he only had stumps to beat against the chain, and he couldn't pull himself up. And, at one point, they also castrated him while he was still alive until, of course, he died. So lynchings, forced sterilizations, redlining, block busting, Jim Crow, segregation, superfund sites, highway zoning through neighborhoods, discriminatory policing, unjust hiring practices, unjust lending, predatory lending, medical experimentation, house bombings, assassinations of leadership, intimidation, rape, false witness, false imprisonment, judicial disparity, discrimination to college admission, and the list goes on. Racism has been a powerful force for evil, and one which has been so successful in part because it has been so heavily propagandized, and so successful because we think that today, we aren't propagandized to it ourselves. But propaganda still propagates racism today, and it defends it from critique.
Derek:The last aspect I want to talk about to close out this episode is the idea of Mithridatism and sensitization. I think this is important to keep bringing up, because it's gonna help you realize how things can be so bad, yet so normalized. Take the story of Emmett Till for a moment. I think the story provides an example of sensitization. Such a minor action as whistling at a white woman was enough to get Emmett Till beat to death.
Derek:It took hardly any racial provocation at all to warrant his murder. At the same time, the culture in The United States A Hundred Years ago was so steeped in racism that newer and crazier ideas didn't seem problematic. There was Mithridatism that occurred there. Put a black man in a cage? Just another day at the zoo.
Derek:Experiment on black people? Who else would you experiment on? Use science and religion to come up with hair brained explanations that confirm your position? What else would the evidence show? Have the highest court in the land say that forceful sterilization is lawful?
Derek:Well, that makes sense. The racist culture was so mithridatized that they couldn't even see the insanity of their ideas. In fact, we still have a racist hangover. The United States was birthed in racism and propagandized in racism, So we're fools to think that something baked into the system gets obliterated in one generation. And you might disagree with me on this, but let me leave you with one story that I think shows my point a little bit.
Derek:So there's a video, which I'll try to link in the show notes, with Oprah from, I think it's like 1987. I don't remember exactly what year, but she goes to this place in Georgia, Forsyth County. Now in this county, they had driven out, like, all the black residents, like, seventy five years prior to that. And so she's going there and she's talking about, you know, race. And, there's there's just so much vitriol in that community.
Derek:And in in one of the videos, in one of the sections, they go there and there's like a I don't know if it's a protest or whatever you call it, but you got all these people out there talking about how they don't want, black people. I don't remember if they're using slurs or whatnot, but, like, they're angry. They're upset, and they're they're talking, badly about black people. And I think to myself, I was born when when that was happening. And some of those kids there are, like, maybe 10 years old.
Derek:Right? So and I was, like, three at the time, two at the time that she's she's doing this. Right? So those kids are my peers almost. They're about 40 years old, maybe a little bit older.
Derek:K? And those are the people who are, you know, at at 30, you can be in the, the senate, I think. And 35, like president, whatever. Like, these are the people who just started to become the leaders of our country, like, people who are that age. Do I really think that that kid who is so propagandized that as a 10 year old, he's screaming out against black people.
Derek:And just because it's 2022, when I'm recording this, this kid in his generation magically threw off their parents' propaganda and their community's propaganda. You know, their parents who lived during the civil rights era and who probably had parents who, were instigators of the abuse against the civil rights, protesters and leaders. Right? Their parents were heavily propagandized by the people who made the civil rights, protest necessary. So their kids are obviously propagandized, and those kids are my age.
Derek:Do I really think that racism is has not been so baked in, that it's it's still around? Like, that's just insane to think that it's it's out of the system. But it's not insane. It's not insane to think that. It's not insane to think that if you're arrogant enough and ignorant enough to think that you aren't propagandized, that your group isn't propagandized, that you yourself don't propagandize other people.
Derek:No. Racism is alive and well today because propaganda perpetuates it. Racism is still baked in. But now instead of being the icing on the cake that covers the whole thing and is evident. It's more like the baking soda in the batter that's expanded to create countless pockets of racism hidden beneath the surface in practices like dog whistle politics.
Derek:Racism is there. It's just deceptive and indistinguishable for those saturated in it, especially if we're not willing to hear the voices from those in the outside, those experiencing the racism that we perpetuate. We think that so long as we keep Marta out of our suburbs, suburbs, we'll never have to come face to face with our fears, and therefore, we'll never have to uncover the truth revealed in the reflexes that fears produce. The truth that we really are racist. We really do harbor racism.
Derek:Yeah. We don't realize that this very thing itself proves the point that we're trying to avoid. Just like the woman who clutches her purse on the elevator as she sees a black man getting on, so we, the suburbs, are that white woman. We see the black man approaching our elevator, and we, the suburbs, clutch our purse. We know he's just coming to take what's rightfully ours because our parents thought that, as did their parents, and because the judicial system is set up to prove this very thing to us.
Derek:Our forebears aren't dumber than we are, stupid racists. In fact, we might be dumber than they are because we think that we can't be propagandized. And as Alou pointed out to us, we should be more wary of how we've been propagandized because we live in an ever increasing technological society. The difference then between our forebears and us is not that we're less propagandized, but rather that we choose the propaganda with which we identify. Our forebears were propagandized by the accident of their birth, while we are propagandized by choice.
Derek:My admonition to you then is to face your fears head on and see what reflexes come to the surface. Check yourself and figure out how you've been propagandized. Then choose you this day whom you will serve, whether you will be a disciple of racism or a disciple of love. That's all for now. So peace.
Derek: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.
