Propaganda

by Arman Musaji

I have always had a deep fascination with propaganda. It strikes at psychological weak points and presses all the right buttons necessary to reprogram whole populations.

The best example is that time when those Nazi fellows reprogrammed a whole population of decent hard working Germans into a massive killing machine by pressing the buttons of fear, insecurity, and bitterness through carefully constructed artwork and speeches.

It would be nice to think it didn’t work that way, and that people form all their conclusions based on logical reasoning, but it does work that way, and most people aren’t logical.

Imagine growing up in North Korea and taking a field trip through the Sinchon-Ri Museum of US War Crimes. Where you saw an entire collection of paintings and photos depicting atrocities that may or may not have any basis on reality, all presented as fact.

For examples of propaganda images see here.

Seeing these images stirs immediate feelings of anger and vengefulness in me. I want to find the bastards who are about to burn a human child and beat them to death. Of course, these feelings are the wrong feelings to have and my rational, educated brain reminds me of the context and reality of the situation. Nonetheless, this shows how effective propaganda is. An uneducated person is powerless against it, and thus whole populations have been exposed to it and turned against the very concept of America.

Unfortunately, Americans are victims of propaganda as well. In our country it has been raised to a high art, literally. It has infiltrated all forms of media and social situations. When a parent tells a child that all individuals of “X” type are evil, that’s propaganda. When a drunken idiot at a bar starts feeling political and preaches that a presidential candidate is a terrorist to support their own agenda, that’s propaganda. When people on TV convince us that whole nations, cultures, religions, or races are evil, that’s propaganda. When big business convinces us that it has our interests covered better than our constitution or government, that’s propaganda. When a whole nation makes all it’s big decisions based on fears that have been carefully cultivated by an elite ruling class, that’s actually the current state of American propaganda.

I hope we are smarter than the North Koreans, I really do.