The Often Overlooked Cheat of Propaganda

 

The true essence of propaganda is designed, not only to influence an individual’s thoughts and beliefs directly, but also to shape their perceptions of what the broader society believes. This usually works in two ways; one is through mass propaganda, like left wing economics and wokeism, and the other is through small propaganda - hermetically sealed small cults, like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Answers in Genesis. Mass propaganda tries to orchestrate an illusion of widespread consensus around specific ideas or ideologies. Small propaganda tries to orchestrate an illusion of inside exclusive beliefs, where the cult is the only true purveyor of the truth, and the masses are the ones who’ve been deceived or led astray. Most cult leaders of this kind have been so adept at indoctrinating their members that they’ve become scared into thinking that the mere questioning of their cult’s beliefs and practices is part of the same heresy to which they are in opposition.

Consequently, propaganda’s ultimate goal is first to get your soul, and then control your thinking through a subset influence where, in mass propaganda, you believe that the majority is also convinced; and in small propaganda, you believe it’s everyone else except those with the privileged information who are deluded or blind to the truth.

In either case, it’s a top-down attempt to control your perception of the collective mind. And the biggest cheat is that the victims of propaganda are the ones who most fervently defend it, and most unaware that they are ones being manipulated. They are like prisoners who believe that the outside world is the prison, and their jail cell, the keys of which they guard with their life, is the only sanctuary of freedom.