(245)S11E4/3: True Conspiracy of Corporatism - The Baby Killers
Welcome back to the Fourth Way Podcast. This episode has been formed after a relatively long recording hiatus for me. Though, you wouldn't know that from your perspective because you receive pretty much weekly episodes. From your point of view, this is just another episode amidst a sea of other episodes. But I think it's important for you to understand the difficulty that I had in approaching this particular point in the season.
Derek Kreider:I think that understanding my struggle here will be important for you to recognize the scale and complexity of what we're getting into this season, but it will also hopefully encourage you to be digging deeper for yourself. So what is this struggle that I had arriving at this episode? Well, when you start getting into corporate and governmental propaganda, the complexity of the conspiracies grows exponentially, and there's often a lot of overlap with other areas that we talked about. For instance, McNamara's Folly, the true conspiracy from our race section, was facilitated by the government. Various studies on prisoners and minorities are conducted by the government on behalf of corporations and their funding and through institutions of higher learning.
Derek Kreider:How do you categorize these conspiracies? So the field grows significantly in regard to the amount of conspiracies as well as in regard to the amount of information which exists once we get into the corporate propaganda realm. So how do I convey the complexity and scale in this episode while also condensing and summarizing into a digestible portion, which is going to, sufficiently inform you? Well, I have the comfort that I'm putting resource recommendations at the end of each section for you to get a bigger, clearer picture. I understand that following up on all of these resources and sifting through them yourself is just too cumbersome for most people.
Derek Kreider:You don't have time for that. So I wanna make sure this episode adequately gives you a clear presentation of corporate propaganda. Like I said, in selecting this particular episode, I passed over a lot of material. I could have talked about the Pecora Commission following the Great Depression, which uncovered a large predatory conspiracy of business interests propagandizing their expertise and authority and suckering many people into what ended up being huge losses, often of their whole life savings. Of course, such a conspiracy would have been extremely beneficial to explore because we experienced a similar horrendous event in 2008 where banks made their killing on the poor and ended up getting bailed out for it.
Derek Kreider:The Pacora Commission and the 2008 financial crisis are recurring events, which would have been invaluable to discuss. In selecting today's episode, I also passed over the most decorated marine in US history, Major General Smedley Butler, and his famous book, War is a Racket. Butler's life and critique of the US Empire would dovetail beautifully in discussing the political and financial destitution of Haiti, a situation which is largely created by various empires with the US playing a significant role. We could talk about the Banana Republics and how corporations exploited South America, controlled their politics, and influenced CIA assassinations of democratically elected officials to ensure that exploitation and dirt cheap prices could continue for US corporations. Corporate America and the US military empire go hand in hand, and you really only start to see that when you see that the US, more often than not, undermines democracies rather than brings democracy.
Derek Kreider:And it often does this for corporate interests. That corporate interest may have at one time been fruit companies, but now it's oil or whatever else is deemed vital or up and coming for economic interests or whatever stocks politicians hold at the time. On a lighter note, I could have also talked about planned obsolescence and how light bulb companies literally agreed to limit the life of their bulbs and had inspectors to ensure that competition was financially disciplined if anyone didn't adhere to the agreement. Profit is more important than the consumer or the environment as cost to the consumer and the cost of waste to the environment aren't considerations for most corporations. I could have talked about corporate collusion with the government or corporate price fixing as represented in the history of the tobacco industry or the most infamous price fixing scandal in the US, the ADM case.
Derek Kreider:These are two instances which had serious impacts on the nation and even the globe in terms of health and cost of food, respectively. People, 1,000 or even 1,000,000 died because of these events. I could have talked about corporate greed and callousness by discussing the maltreatment of workers in the late 1800 and the early 19 100 as represented in one of the most tragic cases known as the Radium Girls. I could have talked about the way that all of us have been led to believe that many of the lawsuit cases against corporations we hear about are utterly ridiculous, when in actuality, they're often framed to help corporations save face and to deter consumers from suing. You know, that hot coffee McDonald's lawsuit, the most famous of the so called stupid and frivolous lawsuits?
Derek Kreider:Yeah. There's a whole lot more to that case, and McDonald's was in the wrong. Yet due to their power, they've been able to spin the case into a big PR campaign for themselves while simultaneously humiliating an old woman who is severely injured from their policies and refusal to change after previous court actions. I could have talked about the kids for cash scandal in Pennsylvania and how judges were incentivized to collude with the business interests of private prisons, sending kids away to prison for stupid things like creating a parody site of a vice principal or sending them away for excessive amounts of time that didn't fit the crime. Children were sacrificed for corporate profits.
Derek Kreider:I could have talked about the Powell memorandum and how an associate justice of the Supreme Court talked about the importance of pushing business propaganda and giving businesses more power, a memorandum which certainly makes one look twice at a number of court decisions that he ruled on. All of these events would have been great things to talk about. Some of them would have even been more interesting and important to discuss in regard to modern day political power structures, you know, Butler and the Banana Republic, especially. That would have been extremely valuable to discuss, and you should definitely follow-up on studying that. Nevertheless, I selected the conspiracy that I did today for several reasons.
Derek Kreider:Before getting into the details of the conspiracy, let me tell you why today's conspiracy is so important. First, I selected the particular conspiracy for this episode because I think it clearly demonstrates one of the most powerful aspects of corporate propaganda, which is the ability to create desires or attach associations with innate desires that you already have. Or as we discussed in the previous episode, it puts salt in your hay. Corporate propaganda can be extremely sophisticated and difficult to decipher, but the case that we're going to talk about today seems to be laid bare. Seeing a very clear example of how corporate propaganda taps into desire will hopefully give you a keener eye for it elsewhere.
Derek Kreider:2nd, the conspiracy that we're going to talk about today, while probably not impacting as many lives or as much of the world stage as the marriage of US empire building with corporate profiteering, it is still an issue which has done tremendous damage to lives throughout the world, and it's still doing damage today. So while today's issue isn't the most significant conspiracy that we could talk about, it's still very significant in terms of both numbers affected and in that it's still ongoing. 3rd, today's conspiracy highlights one of the most powerful strategies propaganda has. Towards the beginning of the season, I told you that propaganda makes atrocities possible or it makes them unbelievable. But I think we can formulate this in a slightly different way to explain how propaganda functions.
Derek Kreider:We can look more at the mechanisms. How does propaganda make atrocity possible or unbelievable? It does this in a number of ways, but it primarily works by preventing us from recognizing atrocity or it prevents us from remembering it. When we can't recognize that atrocity is happening, whether that's because we're willfully ignorant or whatever else is the case, then we do nothing, and we say nothing. Nazi Germany is a prime example of that where people did and said nothing.
Derek Kreider:Plenty of people knew what was going on in Nazi Germany if they really admitted it to themselves. I mean, their neighbors were getting rounded up. Right? But they rationalized away all the evidence of what the Nazis were doing to Jews and political prisoners. And those with who were willing to admit what was going on, they didn't recognize atrocity because those who are being killed were worthy of death.
Derek Kreider:They didn't see the humanity that was being destroyed because theirs already was. Propaganda keeps us from recognizing atrocity by making us think that our nation is too great to be doing something bad, or the enemy is so bad that they don't deserve to live anymore. But there's another aspect of propaganda which can perpetuate atrocity, and that's through what I'd label as forgetfulness or not remembering. And there are 2 types of forgetfulness that can be evoked here. First, there can be a forgetting of the past.
Derek Kreider:My wife and I were just watching a documentary focused on an event that happened in the 19 eighties, and she was amazed at how many incidents of police brutality were in the news at that time. She said, wow. So police brutality didn't just become a thing all of a sudden. No. It didn't.
Derek Kreider:I've read books from a wide variety of time periods, and I can attest that this whole idea of police brutality in the United States didn't just come up in 2015. It wasn't birthed out of Ferguson. Police brutality and killing unarmed black men has been a constant issue for the black community throughout the decades, throughout the century. But for the majority, mostly whites, we are surprised by a surge of vitriol and fed up ness that bubbles to the surface once in our lifetime. And rather than using that open wound as a lens through which to view news and current events from then on out, we allow it to scab over until the wound is opened up once again decades down the line, and we're surprised.
Derek Kreider:Our parents and grandparents didn't see it in the riots of the late sixties seventies, and we ourselves don't see it now because we don't remember history. Oh, we say. I didn't realize that this was a problem. I think it's just some people making some noise. We resolved all this back in the day, you know, with civil rights legislation and such.
Derek Kreider:This forgetfulness of our past, of events that have occurred and continue to occur, it contributes to our blindness in confronting current injustice, which is often really just injustice perpetuated. We can't truly address the weed of injustice because we think that picking a dandelion and blowing its puff away means that the weed has disappeared. I mean, hey, we don't see it anymore. But in reality, we've not only failed to rip out the roots of one plant, we've helped it to disperse its seeds across even more time and space. Forgetfulness is a dangerous state, not usually for the people who forget, but for those who are the forgotten.
Derek Kreider:There's a second form of forgetfulness that comes into play here as well. It's the NIMBY form or the not in my backyard. As an example, let's say the government wants to build a Superfund site in your backyard, but you say, hey. That's not right. That would harm all the children around here.
Derek Kreider:You can't do that. You end up being able to keep the trash, radioactivity, or whatever else the government wants to put there out of your backyard. The thing is, the government still needs or wants to do what it intended to do in the 1st place. It still has waste to dispose of. Just because it's not going to be in your backyard now doesn't mean that it won't be in someone else's backyard.
Derek Kreider:Yet so long as we've pushed it away from being in our backyard, we can forget about the issue. The correlative to not in my backyard is, but in someone else's backyard. Out of my sight, out of my mind. In some ways, that's understandable, but it's really a very selfish and myopic form of justice. A justice which only prevents us from experiencing injustice ourselves isn't really justice.
Derek Kreider:It's us being fine with the oppression of others. Because if you were powerful enough to push the government off your back, what's the ultimate result? It's not that the government gives up. Rather, the government will end up putting the injustice on the shoulders of the weakest and the most vulnerable. So recognizing and remembering are vital to uncovering propaganda and atrocity, and our story today is going to help you see this vital aspect.
Derek Kreider:Finally, I really wanted to talk about today's story because I can add my own personal experience to it. I've had a number of encounters with today's conspiracy and the ramifications that it has on society. In that vein, I think I can help to put some flesh onto this conspiracy, so you can see how it plays out in the real world. That being said, I wanna jump into the episode by telling you a little bit about my experience living in Romania. For the first two years of my family's life in Romania, we resided in a relatively small town.
Derek Kreider:On the edge of the small town, there was a Roma or Gipsy Village, but I'm gonna use the term Roma, which is more appropriate. Just wanna make sure, because a lot of people call them Gypsies and wouldn't know what a Roma is. It's a Roma Village on the edge of town. While the living quarters were separated, you know, they had their section and then there was the rest of town. The town was small enough that each day, many of the Roma would make their way into town.
Derek Kreider:Some came in to do work, some went up into the mountains for wood, and some would come into town to beg. We built some relationships with several of the Roma families, most of whom had small children. Of course, you can probably imagine what our interactions were like. If you know any stereotypes of Roma or those who have been generationally impoverished, then our experiences were largely like what you're probably imagining. Almost every interaction involved us being asked for something, usually money.
Derek Kreider:We were taken advantage of and stolen from when we let some Roma individuals into our home. There are lots of stories, a few of which you can hear in season 2 of this podcast, so I I recommend that you go back and, listen to that. But, anyway, one of the items that we'd constantly be asked for were diapers and baby formula. And, of course, it made sense that we'd be asked for those things because the people that we interacted with had small children. But at the same time, we had seen and heard of Roma with children receiving these products and selling them too.
Derek Kreider:You know, you'd give them something from the store, and then they'd turn around and sell it at a discount so that they could get cash. But however, they decided to use what we gave them was between them and God. So we often gave food items, including formula, to the Roma mothers. Less than half a year into our move to Romania, my wife had our 3rd child in a local private hospital. She had largely breastfed our previous 2 kids, which included a lot of pumping so that our kids could have breast milk at their day care while we were teaching.
Derek Kreider:We supplemented with formula sometimes if we didn't have time to thaw milk or something like that, but we decided to do breast milk as much as was possible. But we weren't those crunchy, judgmental people. We just did what we thought we could do, the best that we could do in our situation. And we were going to do the same thing for our 3rd child when he was born in Romania. But when we had our 3rd child, Denton, our hospital experience was a little bit different.
Derek Kreider:The nurses kept mentioning how our child was too big for breast milk to be sufficient and kept encouraging us to allow him to be formula fed. We declined the formula because we knew how breastfeeding worked and that it takes time for both the child to learn, about how to suckle and also for the milk to fully come in for the mom. But it was a natural part of the process. We weren't concerned at all. It happened with all of our kids.
Derek Kreider:Our kid was just fine with what he was getting. But on the second day, the hospital staff took Denton out of the room for some reason to weigh him or wash him or something. I don't exactly remember what. But when he came back, he was all gassy, and he didn't wanna eat when he was supposed to. We thought that was a a bit odd, and we're pretty sure that they had formula fed him.
Derek Kreider:Whatever. Their culture, their rules, we were fine. No big deal. As we shared our experience and our suspicions with those around us and kinda told it as a humorous story of cultural differences, they told us how the hospitals push formula here because the formula companies have historically, and perhaps even currently, incentivize hospitals to push their product. We thought that was a gross sort of capitalistic thing to do, but, hey, people can make their own choices.
Derek Kreider:If they wanna go with the formula, so be it, even if hospitals are a bit pushy with their salesmanship. Fast forward about a year, and we have started to build a relationship with a young Roma girl. A girl who is 15, pregnant, and promised or engaged or whatever you call it. I don't really know because here the word is concubinage, which translates to concubinage. So I don't I don't know what it was, but we'll go with engaged.
Derek Kreider:But we had this girl and her fiance into our home for meals. We gave her some odd jobs around our house so that she can make some money too. We took her to doctor's appointments, and my wife gave her advice on caring for her body and for raising children. And my wife even prepared her for how to breastfeed and to set up, with a a breast pump that my wife gave her. So she was set to go.
Derek Kreider:The girl was looking forward to breastfeeding her baby. But wouldn't you know it? That girl came out of the hospital and wasn't breastfeeding. Why? They told her that she couldn't breastfeed.
Derek Kreider:It wasn't sufficient. She didn't produce enough milk, and they fed that baby formula for her stay at the hospital. Of course, it didn't take long for her to actually be unable to produce milk. Now it is absolutely this girl's prerogative to use formula over breast milk if she wants to. And maybe she was one of the 1 to 5 percent of women who didn't produce enough milk, or the kid was tongue tied or something.
Derek Kreider:I don't know. But when you have practically all of the Roma community around here formula feeding their kids because none of them can produce milk, or so the doctors say, it seems like something's afoot here. It ends up that this problem is actually huge. It's huge because not only are these women misinformed on the health benefits of breastfeeding, if it's possible for them to do, but they're also put into an impossible financial situation by being forced into formula feeding by the hospitals. They're already so poor that they're having to beg for food and money.
Derek Kreider:And now you've locked them into at least a year's worth of expensive Formula purchases when they could have been producing milk for free. This ruse impacts the mother, the child, and the family in terms of physical health, financial health, and subsequently, mental health. And it's done through those who should be the most trusted authorities, doctors and nurses as mouthpieces, and by companies who seek to exploit the most vulnerable people. This experience is why, today, I wanna tell you about the Baby Killer conspiracy. The story of how various corporations have sold formula to the world.
Derek Kreider:Now at first blush, it feels like I'm feeding into conspiracy theories when I call a conspiracy to sell baby formula, a perfectly legitimate capitalistic venture, I might add, when I call that venture the baby killer conspiracy. It seems like utter hyperbole to call powdered milk, baby feed food that feeds and nourishes many kids, a baby killer conspiracy. Parents have a choice to breastfeed or a formula feed, and formula preserves many lives for those mothers who can't breastfeed or afford wet nurses. So why call this conspiracy a baby killer conspiracy? Well, first, it's because the breaking piece of literature that brought the issue to light was entitled The Baby Killer.
Derek Kreider:So the name is sort of a head nod to that work. But far more than than that, this issue does have some very serious ramifications, which includes the deaths of perhaps tens of 1,000,000 over the decades that the conspiracy has been maintained. So let's start digging into the details and unpacking why I think the Baby Killer conspiracy earns a prime spot in our season on propaganda. To properly understand the scope of this conspiracy, you have to first get a lay of the land. To understand the impact of formula, you have to understand the world before formula or imagine a world without it.
Derek Kreider:The very high end of estimates of babies who can't breastfeed, either due to a mother's physical inability to nurse or a child's inability to suckle, are 5%. Now if you go to a site like, La Leche League, they'll tell you that they think it's something more like 0.1% of families who would be incapable. But if we split the difference and aim a bit high, we get something like 3%. 3% of babies worldwide can't be breastfed by their moms. Now that doesn't mean that they still couldn't drink breast milk from a bottle, getting breast milk from some co op or a mom pumping or something like that.
Derek Kreider:It just means that the mom can't produce milk or the child can't latch, but we'll stick with the 3%. Assume that 3% of babies have to be formula fed. Now that's not a lot of babies. It's not that huge of a market share to be had, especially considering the limited window in which a child uses formula. Yet the formula industry made 35% more money in 2019, selling a product that only is used by infants in about the 1st year of their life.
Derek Kreider:They made 35% more than Coca Cola made in that same year. A drink company which is all over the globe and can be consumed by practically everyone except for infants in the 1st year of their lives who live on milk. Now, of course, there are many ways we can account for the formula profits. Perhaps formula is priced so exorbitantly high that the 3% of parents who need it and the few who choose it as a lifestyle choice, they're willing to pay obscene amounts of money. But if you've priced formula recently, you'd know that, well, it's not really all that cheap, It's also not insanely expensive.
Derek Kreider:If an exorbitant price isn't what brings in the obscene amount of revenue, what else could it be? It's the number of consumers. Formula is used by far more than 3% of families worldwide who supposedly need it. Now we can understand that there are many wealthy and working moms who are not in the 3%, and they desire to formula feed for a lifestyle choice. But the vast majority of births in the world are not to wealthy moms.
Derek Kreider:The majority of births are to families that have limited resources. Yet many of these families still choose to feed their children formula, to choose a lifestyle that they don't need to choose, that financially disadvantages them, and that is overall less nutritious for their child. Now why would they choose that? Well, in 1974, the levy broke on the formula industry when War on Want released a paper entitled The Baby Killer, an expose on the formula industry, their practices, and their impact on the world. Follow-up pieces from other organizations came not too far behind.
Derek Kreider:And by 1978, there were congressional hearings, the Kennedy hearings, and they were held to hear what health care workers around the world had to say about business practices of the formula industry. The practices that were uncovered in those 4 years were appalling as the formula industry wasn't simply marketing a product to for people to choose if they wanted to or needed to. No. The industry was shaping and manipulating desires and the desires of the most vulnerable people at that. Nestle, one of the primary culprits, fostered desires of new customers in at least three ways.
Derek Kreider:According to the New Internationalist, which I have linked in the show notes, Nestle, quote, created a need where none existed, convinced consumers the products were indispensable, linked products with the most desirable and unattainable concepts, then giving a sample, end quote. Whereas Business Insider elaborated, quote, how does this strategy work for infant formula? Formula marketing has systematically undermined its competition breastfeeding at both psychological and physiological levels. Promotional campaigns have encouraged the view that breastfeeding is complicated and prone to failure. Breastfeeding is thought of negatively on the basis of beauty, like breast egg, work, you have to stay at home, snob appeal, only the peasants do it, racism, white women don't breastfeed, and fear, it won't work.
Derek Kreider:Your baby will starve. End quote. There were all sorts of stories as to how formula companies created desire and a felt need. They would hire women who were often not nurses to don nursing outfits and hand out formula and talk about its health benefits. Wearing nursing uniforms, of course, gave these saleswomen credibility in the eyes of new moms.
Derek Kreider:It reminds me of the white coat professionals in the Milgram experiment. Perceived authority carries a lot of weight. They would also essentially bribe hospitals with architectural upgrades, financial kickbacks, and free formula. When some public hospitals in some countries kick the formula industry out of hospitals, They lurk around town looking for infant clothes or clothes diapers hanging on the laundry line, and then go door to door giving the moms enough formula so that their breast milk would run dry, and they'd be forced to then purchase formula for the remainder of their child's infancy. They put pictures of white babies on their cans, even in places where everyone had dark skin because white families were associated with more wealth and credibility.
Derek Kreider:Everyone wanted to live like the white people. They must be doing something right to get as wealthy as they were. And, of course, fear was used to make moms think that they couldn't produce enough milk or that the formula was more nutritious. The same spiel they tried to use on us here in the private Romanian hospital. Here's a line from a jingle that they played in Africa to scare moms into buying formula.
Derek Kreider:Quote, the child is going to die because the mother's breast has given out. Mama, oh, mama, the child cries. If you want your child to get well, give it clam milk. End quote. And some of the tactics were a mixture of creating desires and obfuscation.
Derek Kreider:For example, one of those who testified at the Kennedy hearings talked about how in his country, formula companies used a lot of big words that even many of the literate people wouldn't be able to read or understand. On the one hand, the use of this jargon and high level language provided perceived credibility because it sounded really smart, and it simultaneously hid the truth. Finally, the formula companies benefited from product recognition. Nestle's name was on many products in the grocery store, so when a person saw that name on a can of formula, it made the formula seem trustworthy and high quality. Psychology 101 teaches you that the more exposure to something that you have, the more, you're provided with familiarity, as well as, you're caused to have more positive feelings towards it in general.
Derek Kreider:Through all that was revealed here about the Formula Industry's tactics, it became clear that the industry sought to form consumers, not inform them. And isn't that really what we've been talking about with, propaganda, specifically corporate propaganda? Both Ideal Capitalism and Democracy, in order to function and to be the good that they claim to be, they rely on rational, informed choice. Yet today's corporate propaganda seeks not only to obfuscate truth and keep consumers and constituents uninformed. It also seeks to form and wield subjects rather than have subjects process and wield information through rational choice.
Derek Kreider:The thing is, this is what pretty much all propaganda is doing in the corporate sphere, and we're largely okay with it because corporations are persons under the law and persons are granted free speech. Yet when it comes to the baby killer conspiracy, we recognize that the same tactics we approve of or at least put up with are actually exploitative and wrong. There's something clearly wrong about taking advantage of poor people or those in the developing world to form them into consumers who spend of their limited resources to buy something that they don't really need. But the same process, which forms the poor into an even more impoverished group, does the same thing to all of us. It makes us consumers who believe that our purpose can be found in our next purchase.
Derek Kreider:You know, discover that such purpose is fleeting and elusive. It forms us into consumers who are the types of people who work for companies that exploit those in developing countries through propaganda, pollution, or slave labor because, you know, we need the money. It makes us the type of people who are committed to a political party and are willing to sacrifice our morals in lesser of 2 evils compromises. Propaganda forms us all. It's just that when it kills babies, it's easier to see the evil inherent to most corporate propaganda.
Derek Kreider:Speaking of killing babies, I suppose it's time that we talk about, a little bit more of this, because, at this point, we've only really discussed how formula is sold to moms, not how it kills babies. But what makes this conspiracy so bad isn't simply that the poor are exploited, but that this exploitation leads to very deadly results. There are 3 main ways that converting poor mothers to formula feeding has negative health consequences. 1st, the most obvious factor is the money. When we're talking about breastfeeding, which is essentially free versus formula feeding, having poor moms who have difficulty feeding their families already now purchase expensive formulas, it I mean, it strains their families.
Derek Kreider:It may cause them to skimp on food for themselves or other children, bringing health issues on all of them. It may also cause mental anxiety and health issues with increased pressure to earn more money in order to provide formula. And if they don't formula feed because they need to make that economic choice, they might face mental and social issues in a society where the good moms formula feed their children because it's supposedly the best thing to do. But this financial situation is really just the tip of the iceberg. A much bigger consequence of formula feeding is that in many poor areas, the water that goes into mixing the formula is not potable.
Derek Kreider:And please don't hear me saying that this is only a developing world problem. This would apply in the US as well. Just think about Flint, Michigan. The US may be considered a developed nation, but the amount of inequity in the nation abounds. And there's a developing nation within our developed nation, a developing nation formed by de facto apartheid.
Derek Kreider:On top of this lack of access to potable water, mothers in impoverished areas struggle to afford formula and, therefore, often cut their formula with water, meaning that each bottle is far less nutritious than a normal dose should be. Considering that in many of these places, the water is not potable and is very dangerous, Infants with weak immune systems are now ingesting contaminated water and less nutritious water because it's cut, than they would have ingested if it weren't for the Formula industry. Beyond the financial strain, formula purchases put on families, as well as the harm of adding contaminated water to a child's diet and cutting the dosage, there's a third problem the formula industry brings to families. We know that breastfed babies build stronger immunities to diseases, especially respiratory illnesses. When you consider that poorer families are facing harsher environments and that formula practices are introducing contaminated water into a child's diet and it's less nutritious, then foregoing breastfeeding practices, which impart higher immunity and more nutrition, is much more dangerous for these children.
Derek Kreider:Estimates are that anywhere from half a 1000000 to 800,000 children would be saved each year if all were breastfed. Now my group is good at calling out the practice of abortion, yet struggles to call out business practices which obscure truth, create fictions, manipulate desires, and kill about as many children worldwide as are aborted in the US every year. This baby killer conspiracy then truly is the baby killer conspiracy, and one which ought to be called out, especially by my group. Yet the problem isn't called out by all that many. Those who do call it out are viewed as crunchy freaks, judgmental, angry.
Derek Kreider:And therein lies another propaganda aspect of this whole conspiracy. Sure. There's a huge propaganda aspect in getting vulnerable people to buy breast milk, to foster this desire within them. But there's another huge aspect of propaganda which I experienced in my own life, even up to the present. As I was researching this issue, looking at sites like the La Leche League, I was shocked.
Derek Kreider:I was shocked because after reading 3 or 4 things from various pro breastfeeding groups, I couldn't believe how open they were to formula feeding. Many of the groups recognize that mothers choose formula for a variety of reasons, and that there are some mothers who can't breastfeed and that they were okay with that. The stereotype I had of these groups is that they were, excuse the language here, but bitchy, judgmental, uptight, feminazis. Now I use that language because in using it, it sounds absolutely harsh and extreme, like, you know, I would never think that I feel that way. I wouldn't say that.
Derek Kreider:I could have identified that as hyperbolic propaganda. Right? Yet, my surprise at the cordial nature of what I read from these groups showed me that no matter what I said about my beliefs of them, I'd subconsciously bought into the propaganda against pro breastfeeding groups. I believe that the outliers portrayed in the media were representative. In wealthy and middle class areas of the United States, we can easily buy into the idea of breastfeeding ad advocates as all being judgmental jerks.
Derek Kreider:We can buy into it because, 1, we don't see the extreme damage that unnecessary formula feeding does to impoverished communities. And 2, our position in life makes issues like breast versus bottle an issue of convenience and choice. Oh, why make such a big deal out of formula? If a mom wants to work, let her work. If a mom doesn't wanna use her body to breastfeed, it's her body.
Derek Kreider:If that's how parents want to spend their money, stop being so judgmental. While there are certainly mouthy, arrogant, judgmental breastfeeding advocates, I think the stereotype of them is propaganda in action. If you can turn a legitimate issue, an issue which sparked a decades long boycott and congressional hearings over 40 years ago, if you can turn that into an issue that you brush off as being polarized nonsense today, propaganda has done its job. And that really sums up what we identified at the beginning. Doesn't it?
Derek Kreider:Propaganda prevents us from recognizing atrocity, and or it prevents us from remembering it. For this conspiracy, it does both. It causes us to see the formula breastfeeding discussion as trivial choice. So we don't truly consider the ramifications of the industry. But it also causes us to forget that the truth about the formula industry was brought to light almost half a century ago and hashed out in view of the whole world, with the health organization, the World Health Organization, beginning guidelines for the industry in the early eighties as a result.
Derek Kreider:Yet the baby killer problem persists, and it persists in part because we don't see it as a problem, And we've forgotten about the exploitative nature of the issue. There are a lot of reasons for our forgetfulness, arrogance at our self perceived invulnerability to propaganda, individualist notions that we should all be able to make our own choices, ignoring the role of circumstances and misinformation and manipulation, our distance in time from when the issue was first brought to light. You know, that's old news. Right? The lack of direct impact the issue has to us or to other middle class and wealthy people that we know.
Derek Kreider:There are a lot of reasons that we can't bring ourselves to see or acknowledge the baby killer problem today. Some of which are heavily propagandized ideas, like our perceived invulnerability to propaganda or individualistic capitalistic notions. Now at this point, I don't want you to hear me wrong. I'm not flat out bashing the idea of capitalism or individuality, individual choice. Solzhenitsyn and Havel would tell you just as quickly that communism and socialism heavily propagandize and terrorize the poor as well.
Derek Kreider:My point here isn't that any particular system is good or bad, but rather that when any one system is propagandized and indoctrinated, it prevents us from seeing the blind spots and the weak points in such systems. It prevents critical thinking. It defends against critique. It keeps us from seeing the vent shaft on our death star, which may perhaps be the best analogy for the Imperialism with which Capitalism has so often been associated. Communism may blind a populist to the horrors at home that the government is doing to its own people, but Capitalism blinds a populist to the horrors it produces abroad, or in communities kept at a distance, like in ghettos.
Derek Kreider:Whereas Havel told us that in order for us to truly see the horrors of the state or corporations under communism, we'd only need our local greengrocer to reveal it to us by taking down a sign. On capitalism, the problem tends to be more distant. Our local greengrocer can't see the problem either because he doesn't experience it. He's fed as much on bread and circuses as we are. Atrocities under imperialism and capitalism don't tend to be as local.
Derek Kreider:We export our genocides and exploitations, and the myopia of consumerism and materialism in which a capitalist system steeps us makes it difficult to see at a distance. It's hard enough to see beyond our gated communities into the ghettos, let alone to see across the seas to the hovels that Havel would have a see. We're primed to not want to see the issues or to think that there is no issue. So that when we see commercials from baby formula companies, which supposedly support breastfeeding, we take those companies as changed persons. We take them at their word, and we say that there's no problem anymore.
Derek Kreider:In fact, was there ever really a problem? I don't know. Repeat it with me now. There is no problem anymore. There is no problem anymore because the problem has been resolved.
Derek Kreider:The world has banned together against unjust practices of the formula industry. Just like civil rights legislation resolved the issue of racism, disparity in the criminal justice system, and racial injustice, so laws related to advertising and formula industry practices have been a panacea for babies across the globe. We have made it unethical to promote products in hospitals, shops, or to the general public, give free samples to mothers, give gifts to health workers or mothers, and give misleading information. Of course, these regulations are circumvented all the time, but let's assume for a minute that they weren't. Let's assume that corporations put profit as their ultimate and only goal to the side and cared about humanity.
Derek Kreider:Let's assume that they cared about legislation. Would our problem really be resolved? One of those who gave testimony in the Kennedy hearings made a good point, a point which will help to conclude this episode and highlight what we've emphasized over and over throughout this section of the season. The speaker in the hearing bemoaned that the damage of the industry had already been done. The companies had run propaganda campaigns and had thoroughly propagandized the poor of the world.
Derek Kreider:Were these companies now going to run an unpropagandizing campaign? Of course not. The formula industry had shaped the values, desires, and beliefs of billions of people, a whole generation of people. And people left to themselves are propagandizing machines. A generation reproduces not only their genetic material, but also their values, their desires, and their beliefs.
Derek Kreider:That's what a culture is. The formula industry had not only propagandized a generation of consumers, they propagandized an infinitely reproducing group of propagandizers who will propagate their beliefs until they are propagandized or discipled well-to-do and believe otherwise. Formula propaganda in Romania may comport with World Health Organization expectations. I don't know. But I can tell you that the poor haven't read the WHO guidelines and haven't been trained to value the financial and health benefits of breastfeeding.
Derek Kreider:And even when we have built a close relationship with the poor, our discipling was ineffective to transform a culture propagated with decades of propaganda and discipleship in Formula Feeding. Corporate propaganda is dangerous because it's powerful and it's insidious, and what it has done is hard to make undone without great effort. It's formative, it's devious, and it's dangerous. You don't see it at first. And even if you do, you have a way of what was I talking about again?
Derek Kreider:It probably doesn't matter. 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 Kreider:Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to nonviolence and Kingdom Living.
