The Great American Quiz-Part of What Was Learned
Inital Results and Commentary
At the beginning of the summer, I undertook a project to obtain more detailed information on what the general population understood about American propaganda, an ill-defined word that is thrown around with robust indignation and vigorous denunciations. Thus the Great American Propaganda quiz was born. I needed something short and to the point, to uncover chronic misconceptions surrounding this topic, systemic failures of multiple generations to truly understand the "communication revolution' of the early 20th century and its impact on the demise of American civil society and even the nation at large.
The quiz, 20 questions in total including three demographic questions on age, religion and political leanings, took on average, 2-5 minutes to complete. My small tribe contributed around 200 responses, while James Roguski graciously used his platform to gather another 2600 responses. The answers were generally stated in the standard Likert form with the exclusion of the logic and biggest spreader questions. The complete results are enclosed in the appendix.
The demographics consist of two roughly equal groups of 41-64 and 65 and older, three roughly equal groups of Independents, libertarians and those on the Right. And finally the religious leanings were predominantly Jewish or Christian (75%) and the other 25 % distributed between Agnostic/Atheist, Muslim, Buddhist and Spiritual/New Age. Because of the limitations of accessing a diverse sub-section of the general population, consider this a snapshot of the medical freedom community predisposed to be interested in propaganda.
And because most discussions about statistics are generally boring, I'm highlighting a deep dive discussion explaining the general trends right at the start to lure you in. The "stat nerds" can navigate to the back to get more detailed data while the rest of us chew on the meat. ;)
I grouped my questions according to the following topics:
Section One: Defining What It Is We're Fighting Against and Who is Using It
What is it?
Propaganda is mostly just lies, half-truths and censorship (74% Agree)
Manufacturing public opinion through public relation firms is different from propaganda (87% Disagree)
Front groups are a form of propaganda (97% Agree)
Means needed to engage in propaganda
You don't need a lot of money to engage in propaganda (68% Agree)
Who is using it?
Who is the biggest spreader of propaganda in America? (46% American Government, 44% News Media, 6% Corporations, 5% Social Media)
Political parties on both the Right and the Left use propaganda to influence citizens (99% Agree)
Already in the first section, inconsistencies are evident, leading to confusion. While overwhelmingly front groups and public relations campaigns are considered propaganda; they also endorse a somewhat inconsistent and contradictory opinion that one does not need a lot of money to engage in propaganda. Front groups and public relations campaigns however require enormous amounts of capital out of reach for the average citizen.
They also express solid agreement that propaganda is mostly just lies, half-truths and censorship but the idea of front groups and coordinated PR campaigns suggest that propaganda entails much greater organized efforts to influence the modern mind.
So let's spend a bit of time trying to create more clarity.
I call the idea that propaganda is mostly just lies, half-truths and censorship, the "Hitlerian" version of propaganda. In this version, individuals in positions of power mislead the masses and control opposing thought. This vague idea also gets extended rather absentmindedly to include social influencers and /or any Joe citizen in front of a computer. The main issue is seeding the marketplace of ideas with weeds (lies and half-truths) and/ or choking and throttling good ideas from spreading.
An entirely different common conception of propaganda insists that it is organized influence or persuasion on a mass scale that can be used for good or bad purposes. Both sides use it, nothing to see here folks. A "stock" example of this would be two public relations campaigns- one created to help people stop smoking; the other to encourage smoking. Propaganda is nothing but a benign technique or tool of which the public relations campaign and front organizations are but examples. A hammer can be used to bludgeon someone as easily as to drive nails; don't blame the tool or so the narrative goes.
But these two popular incarnations of propaganda miss three critical points of weaponized communications potential in the 21st century.
Billions of dollars are in play
Powerful entities like the news-media complex, political hacks, the university structure and corporations are being deployed to work together strategically and synergistically
Truth vs facts is an archaic and limited conceptualization; manipulating trusts is the main technique.
Of course they traffic in lies but in a sense, the structures with which they feed you propaganda are themselves lies. But I am getting ahead of myself.
To explain this even more clearly, we need to think though the types of influence available to individuals (Pre-Digital and Digital eras) vs Organizational Influence
Don't let the charts scare you off. Being able to discriminate at a deeper level is what has been missing and will improve your propaganda IQ considerably.
In the first two charts, individual influence on public opinion is considered based on motivation (open or concealed) depicted on the vertical axis and by money used (little vs lots) depicted on the horizontal axis. The vertical axis is tilted to the left so that the concealed motive area could be described in more detail.
The two charts differ as they relate to the Pre-Digital era or the extremely advanced technological era in which we currently find ourselves. The complexity of communication expands rapidly in the digital age and warranted a separate chart.
Finally the third chart is the influence of organizations based on motivation (open or concealed) depicted on the vertical axis and by collaboration of entities (single vs multiple) depicted on the horizontal axis. Note that large outlays of money is assumed in the third chart regardless of the quadrant being examined.
Upon examining the first chart, we can immediately note that an individual without money (left side) could do very little to impact public opinion in a country whether his motives were genuinely community oriented or not. I have given the example of Alfred Crozier, a person to whom we shall return later as a well-intentioned individual who gave his best to change the fate of this country but was beaten handily.
On the upper right side of the chart, I cite Damar Hamlin as an example of an individual with a genuine motive to advance life saving knowledge of CPR across the country with a substantial sum of money that came to him as a result of his cardiac arrest. Persons dominating the lower right side of the chart, I label as shills; individuals with money themselves or those with some type of clout willing to pitch or sell whatever benefits them for the money it provides.
Remember we are addressing the potential to direct the population toward higher aims; civic, political or otherwise and not commercial endorsements like pitching an electric shaver. Examples might be celebrities using their influence to endorse some type of social cause. The determination of whether they fall into the top or bottom category would be whether their endorsement coincides with their sincerely held beliefs as to what constitutes the betterment of society or whether they are doing it solely for the money.
The term 'foundations' noted in green and asterisked, is used to designate a unique beast created in the early 20th century financed by high net worth individuals and ostensibly tasked with influencing the public good. These entities have their embodiment only at the behest of these high net worth individuals or family groups. Which means that some individuals can influence public opinion far and above 99.9% of the population. The skull and cross bones denotes this weaponized entity. Keep this in mind further along in this report.
In the second chart, we consider individuals in the Digital era. Let's start again with the left side. On the bottom is an individual with little means and a concealed motive trying to influence public opinion. I consider this person very rare. Most people knowingly spreading disinformation are getting paid. Those who unknowingly pass on mis-information I would put in the top category because they have a genuine motive but are misguided. In contrast to the previous chart where individuals were relatively powerless to affect public opinion, in the digital age, the power of truth to go viral, actually makes the man with a computer and a few bucks somewhat dangerous. The problem is that lies as well as truth can spread or be intentionally spread like wildfire in this quadrant as well.
In the upper right hand side, you potentially have a person like Joe Rogan, who appears to have an organically created platform to share his views and the views of his guests via a podcast talk show format. According to Wikipedia, he started the show for free in 2009 on iTunes and by August 2010 appeared in the top 100. By 2011 the show was picked up by Sirius/XM radio and he finally got a big payday ($200 million) to air exclusively on Spotify in 2020.
The problem as can be seen in the screenshot above is that online authority and celebrity can be purchased. If Rogan bankrolled his way to the top of the charts, does it matter? Probably not all that much if he is espousing only his own views, yet I think that ultimately it corrodes national conversation when only those with money can get their views heard. Keep this in mind when mining the internet for valid information.
A bigger problem occurs when someone back-rolls a social influencer into a position of influence to be used later in a highly complex communications PR strategy. This is easily accomplished through marketing firms with legacy media attention providing an added boost in the rise to prominence. Once again we see that if you have a lot of money available, and/or friends in powerful places, you can purchase influence anywhere, at anytime.
Which leads us to the bottom right quadrant, the devils playground, so to speak. Remember the overall goal of propaganda is to control the narrative. Control of the legacy news media made this easy in times past. Enter the digital age and the internet era and the devil's playground looms in importance. How is it possible to sabotage truth or the carriers of it when it emerges organically from its submerged state in the national conversation? Think about how you could play games to confuse or frustrate a resistance movement consisting of those who can no longer be conned?
The answer, create your own chess pieces on both sides of the issue and deploy them to fight your proxy battle. Finance social influencers, individuals and groups, throughout the digital landscape including websites, videos, podcasts, and social media to either attack the truth or people you want shut down or use them to lead the sheep down dead end roads with movements that have no hope of achieving real change.
Here the communications war games gets infinitely complex and psychologically sophisticated. Unfortunately, this is exactly where most people, having just clawed their way out of the legacy media trap, attempt to start their education about American propaganda. This is a serious problem and the reason why I advocate going back sufficiently in history such that truth has had time to surface and many of the tried and true propaganda techniques brought into the light of day.
Just by short way of introduction to the complex war games targeted at the resistance movement, I'll name Hopium, a contraction of hope and opium, popularized by James Corbett, where the sheep are lead down endless blind alleyways of false hopes; The Player or Pretender Intrigue (Whose side are you on anyway?) is being played out constantly as infiltrators "blow up" individuals and entities on our side and trigger speculation as to who is and who is not "controlled opposition"; Political Theater provides distractions ad nauseam for those who haven't seen their way out of the left/right illusion of separation and finally Reactionary Galvanization, where focus can be maintained exclusively on fixing the last big crisis instead of getting ready for the next one or even more importantly dealing with root issues. All of these strategies are ways the resistance movement gets diverted from vital action that is effective and targeted.
Of course we also observe outright censorship by the online platforms to shadow ban, de-platform or de-bank those who threaten to expose globalists narratives. This strategy is much more risky for the elite because it calls attention to itself being quite obviously totalitarian and will be opposed by all freedom loving people. Unfortunately, we are fast approaching a tipping point where freedom lovers are outnumbered by the rising tide of rigid ideological beings, incubated and nurtured in academia, who actually demand the censorship of others so that society can be rendered "safe," for their habitation.
I'll sum up the Digital era as a communications nightmare. Just when many of our offline means of communication have broken down or been slowly extinguished with the rise of digital communication- we realize with horror that the digital landscape is filled with land mines of personalities, movements and ideologies designed to confuse, frustrate and demoralize the resistance movement opposed to the cabal. It's bad enough that so many are waking up so late to the game, it's even worse that they are rendered useless once more by engaging with sham resistance movements that will result in more spinning wheels of inaction or wasted effort.
Finally let's move onto the final graph. So far we have been considering only individuals and their ability to influence public opinion which overall we find to be quite limited. Remember, the goal of this section is to elucidate the possible conceptualizations off handedly refer to as "propaganda" to determine what and where the gravest dangers lie.
The graph on the far right is an analysis of organizations and their potential to influence public opinion. The top section, organizations working alone or in tandem to promote good causes would appear to be of little concern. So let's focus on the bottom half of the graph. These are organizations working alone or in collaboration to influence the public mind with a concealed motive with massive amounts of money to outspend you and I.
This, my friends is THE juggernaut of propaganda and don't ever forget it! Most people have a colossal blind spot when it comes to Quadrant Four. Yes they see people online spreading what they call propaganda and they acknowledge corporations and organizations using PR campaigns and front groups to spread propaganda but they don't or can't see Quadrant Four, the truly insidious and destructive collaborative and massively funded propaganda across powerful entities like the news-media complex, politicians, non-governmental organizations, foundations, corporations and universities -exactly like we saw in C19. This is the leviathan that I attempted to expose in One Idea to Rule Them All: Reverse Engineering American Propaganda. A friend of mine in his nineties and as insightful as ever, suggested I name Quadrant Four...propaganopoly. I kind of like it.
The beast of Quadrant Four has been in existence, feeding off the citizens of the United States and eventually the world, like a giant parasite for many, many years. In Part Two I'll share the story of Albert Crozier... and wrap up the discussion about “who is using it.”
Note the graphs are a work in progress. Trying to make them less busy. Share your comments below. Defing the problem well is one-half the battle!