Here we are in 2023 and it has become abundantly clear to the majority of awakened citizens that western civilisation is now saturated with every kind of government sponsored propaganda.

Clearly the purpose of this propaganda is to manipulate the way we the public think, act, work, shop and ultimately who we vote for.

Here’s how it works….

Propaganda and the Mainstream Media

Today propaganda is particularly evident in the American mainstream media, but most of the Five Eyes nations employ similar tactics.

The fact is that many whistleblowers from these nations have revealed that they are experiencing constant pressure from their mainstream media employers to print/broadcast only the narratives which are favourable to the political status quo of the US empire and the Five Eyes.

For example when viewed with any degree of critical thought observers of the American mainstream media can see how reliably they support every US war, rally behind all the US foreign policy objectives of the day and display an overwhelming bias against all US empire-targeted governments.

To deny that these mass-scale manipulations have an effect on the general public would be as absurd as denying that advertising – a near trillion-dollar industry – has an effect on people’s buying habits.

Even the politicians in these countries have publicly acknowledged that they have vested interests in manipulating the way the public think.

Just an uncomfortable is the fact that as much as we like to think of ourselves as free-thinking sovereign agents immune to outside influence, our human minds are very hackable.

The dark-state manipulators of truth understand this, and the science of modern propaganda which has been advancing for over a century understands this with acute lucidity.

The illusionary Truth Effect

The indoctrination into the mainstream media imperial worldview begins when we are very young, largely because schooling is intertwined with the same power structures whose information interests are served by that worldview.

AND….. let us never forget that powerful plutocrats like John D Rockefeller actively inserted themselves into the formation of our modern schooling systems.

By continually hammering our minds with simple repeated messaging about the nature of the world we live in, propagandists are able to exploit glitches in human cognition like the illusory truth effect, which causes our minds to mistake the experience of having heard something before with the experience of having heard something that is true.

Our worldview is formed when we are young in the interests of our rulers, and from there cognitive biases take over which protect and reinforce that worldview, typically preserving them in more or less the same form for the rest of our lives.

This is what makes it so hard to convince someone that their beliefs about an issue are falsehoods born of propaganda.

A lot of people blame this problem on the fact that critical thinking isn’t taught in schools.

Some strains of Marxist thinking argues that westerners choose to espouse propaganda narratives because they know it advances their own class interests.

Both of these issues factor into the equation to some extent.

However the primary reason that people tend to stay committed to their propaganda-installed perspectives actually has a much simpler and well-documented explanation.

Modern psychology tells us that people don’t just tend to hold onto their propaganda-induced belief systems; people tend to hold onto any belief perseverance system.

Belief Perseverance

As the name suggests, belief perseverance describes the way people tend to cling to their beliefs even when presented with evidence that disproves them.

This theory goes that back when humans lived in tribes which were often hostile to each other, their tribal cohesion and knowing who they could trust mattered more to their survival than taking the time to figure out what was objectively true.

It’s as true today as it was back then….

Motivated Reasoning

Today our brains have developed in order to prioritise a loyalty to our modern “tribes” – like a nation, a religion, an ideological faction and/or a pet cause.

This tendency can take the form of motivated reasoning, where emotional interests and “tribal” loyalties taint the way people take in new information.

It can also give rise to the backfire effect, where being confronted with irrevultable evidence which conflicts with a person’s worldview it will not only fail to change their beliefs but it will actually strengthen those beliefs.

If they can consistently and forcefully indoctrinate someone from an early age and then give them a mainstream ideological “tribe” with which to identify in their indoctrination, the cognitive glitches in these newly-evolved brains of ours will act as sentries and protect those world views the propagandists have implanted.

We often see people expressing bewilderment about the way the smartest people they know subscribe to the most ridiculous propaganda narratives out there.

A person who has effectively been indoctrinated with propaganda will be more determined than an un-indoctrinated person of average intelligence in defending their beliefs.

Some of the most foam-brained foreign policy think pieces that people read come from PhDs and Ivy League graduates, because their intelligence gives them the ability to make intelligent-sounding arguments.

One of the most saddening things today is that very often we find these intellectual propagandists speaking out for why it is good and smart for the US military to do something evil and stupid.

So the simple answer as to why people cling to the beliefs which were instilled by imperial propaganda is because – that’s just how minds work.

Which is exactly what modern propaganda, and our modern political systems, are set up to do.

And Finally….

The mind’s tendency to forcefully protect its worldview does not mean it’s impossible to change a person’s beliefs in light of new evidence, only that it is more difficult than accepting beliefs which confirm one’s biases.

It takes some work, and it takes sincerity and self-honesty, but it can be done.

This is good news for those of us who have an interest in convincing people to abandon their propaganda-constructed worldviews for reality-based ones.

Sometimes just being patient with someone, showing empathy, treating them how we’d like to be treated, and working to establish things in common to overcome the primitive psychology which screams that we’re from a hostile tribe.

This can accomplish a lot more than just laying out tons of objective facts disproving a person’s believed narrative about Russia or China or their government or what have you.

Above all we can just keep telling the truth, in as many fresh, engaging and creative ways as we can.

The more we do this, the more opportunities there are for someone to catch a glimmer of something beyond the veil of their propaganda-installed worldview and the cognitive biases which protect it.

The more such opportunities we create, the greater a chance the truth has of getting a word in edgeways.

Thanks for reading, much appreciated.

We leave you now with a music video from the glorious Sophie Ellis-Bextor….

Author: Michael W