Propaganda hijacks your beliefs and you don’t know it. You are sure they are your beliefs. It makes you angry when you hear an opinion opposite to yours, as if it goes against the “real” truth.
This observation comes from experiences with a right wing intellectual group I belong to.
Suppose you are an MD or a PhD. You couldn’t be called dumb. It takes a lot of brains to get these doctorates. Early in life you took civics classes in high school where you learned that free speech is an underpinning of Democracy. Back then it meant that people on both sides of an argument are free to voice their opinion. If the opinion does not match yours, still they are free to speak. But today we live in armed camps.
I had a conversation with a member I particularly love. She actually said, “I listened to MSNBC and I can’t believe they are still on the air.” I was shocked. On second thought it dawned on me that she is being indoctrinated to forget that free speech is the underpinning of our Democracy.
The propaganda makes us hate the opposition so much that we want them silenced forever and we think silencing them preserves our democracy. The propaganda has us righteous and outraged when we hear an opinion opposed to the one we have become married to. And worse, it destroys critical thinking and forming our own opinions that can see through what we are being indoctrinated into. image
The right thinks they have formed their opinions through discernment and critical thinking; in fact it harps on “critical thinking” and thinking outside the box as if they alone are capable of it and Dems are not. I got seduced by this but this conversation woke me up to considering this stance as a form of sophisticated propaganda which instills a superior and righteous attitude toward Dems. The Dems have the same righteous attitude — particularly when they harp on misinformation and how it should not be allowed. The lesson is “beware of being righteous; its part and parcel of propaganda.” Don’t forget the Nazis righteously killed the Jews whom they were sure were vermin.
BUT right now the most threatening mental hijacking is that of the minds of the right wing to righteously silence the opposition because it “is wrong.” They are now in power and they just might get this done. To agree that NPR, MSNBC, CNN and all Mainstream Media be taken down because they are evil is to forget the underpinnings of Democracy, to forget who we are as a nation.