Propaganda can still affect you, even if you think you’re resistant to it.

Propaganda is always obvious in

retrospect

today you look at the posters the films

the cartoons from World War II and the

Cold War and it's really clear what's

going on it's obvious you see the

emotions that are being played on you

see the symbolism of everything it's

propaganda and it looks like it

that's right and I'm an American twenty

years after the start of the Iraq War

this is what the bush years look like

Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility

toward America and to support Terror

an outlaw regime that threatens the

peace with weapons of mass murder

the Iraqi regime has plotted to develop

Anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear

weapons.

States like these and their terrorist

allies constitute an axis of Evil arming

to threaten the Peace of the world.

Today we know that Saddam Hussein never

had wmds he wasn't responsible for the

anthrax attacks and he wasn't funding Al

Qaeda all the justifications for the

Iraq war that made it out to be a battle

between good and evil that convinced

millions of Americans their army should

invade another country and that resulted

in hundreds of thousands of deaths were

unfounded and spread at times knowingly

by senior government officials and major

news outlets

when we think of propaganda this is what

usually comes to mind war and lies very

attractively packaged discourse to get

people to fight but there is much more

to propaganda than the flashy stuff

propaganda can be and actually thrives

when it's mundane we should talk

definitions

Encyclopedia Britannica defines

propaganda as the dissemination of

information facts arguments rumors half

truths or lies to influence public

opinion.

If we're honest the less sensationalist

way to describe most propaganda is

influential rhetoric or maybe

advertising something doesn't need to be

a lie to be propaganda it doesn't need

to come from the government and it

doesn't need to be about war or another

country being the root of all evil if

you don't like this video for example

you can call it propaganda if you want

it technically fits that description

there's no such thing as unbiased media

and I openly admit this Channel's

socialist bent so this is influential

rhetoric but most of us don't use the

word propaganda correctly like the very

uptight people at Britannica

we tend to think of propaganda more like

Edward Bernays the guy credited with

developing modern public relations back

in the 1920s Bernays described

propaganda as quote the conscious and

intelligent manipulation of the

organized habits and opinions of the

masses unlike Bernays though most of us

think this is a bad thing he said it was

an important element in Democratic

Society

that's because Bernays had a terrible

understanding of what democracy is

Bernay saw democracy not as a society

where people govern themselves striving

to defuse power equally between all and

organize fairly their interdependence

but as a society that could be managed

by what he called quote invisible

governors

he believed most people were just too

dumb or prone to violence to think for

themselves except in the narrow confines

of an election between two Max three or

four pre-selected candidates the rest of

the time people needed to be policed and

nudged from the top down for life to

remain decent and as Society started

turning away for more overt and violent

forms of control he helped devise

strategies that would help manage

Society through the more subtle means of

public relations instead Bernays wrote

mostly for advertisers he cared about

molding habits to increase company

profits but soon enough the importance

of his work carried his techniques into

State politics

starting in the 1940s for example

Bernays was hired by United Fruit

Company now Chiquita the banana people

to run a massive PR strategy in the U.S

working primarily but not exclusively

through influencing the Press Bernays

and United Fruit drummed up fear of a

communist Takeover in Guatemala which

had recently democratically elected a

president with somewhat left-wing

politics if you've ever heard of United

Fruit you know how this story goes it's

the same almost everywhere in Latin

America in 1954 thanks in part to

bernay's and United fruits efforts to

demonize jacobo Adams and paint him as a

Soviet puppet a cia-backed coup

overthrew the Guatemalan president and

replaced him with a military

dictatorship that plunged the country

into Civil War for decades

but back to the present Bernays is long

dead and neoliberalism has perfected

propaganda influential rhetoric if you

want to be less dramatic about it the

new wave of political rhetoric that's

flourished under neoliberalism isn't as

often about that bad country over there

or the bad ideology you need to hate

that's still around obviously but rather

the more subtle more diffuse propaganda

of modern neoliberalism is a lot more

about who we should be as people

right

neoliberalism more so than previous

capitalist societies has pushed its

propaganda its jargon and its way of

thinking into almost every aspect of Our

Lives it has found the most effective

way to become bulletproof without openly

relying on violence

neoliberalism is plenty violent but

nearly invisible control works to

protect itself neoliberalism actually

molds people in its image through a mix

of both rhetoric and economic policy

designed to change people's habits and

beliefs in line with its own objectives

in other words neoliberal propaganda

creates neoliberal subjects

neoliberal capitalism is often

misunderstood because of people like

Reagan Thatcher Friedman and Hayek who

made small government their whole thing

that's often how we think about

neoliberalism our current period of

capitalism where governments supposedly

shrank and corporate power grew but

that's not what neoliberalism is neither

in theory nor in practice

neoliberalism actually means more just

slightly different government

where the welfare state capitalism that

existed before acted as a safety valve

for capitalists by preventing markets

from doing what they do increasing

inequality exploitation and poverty

neoliberalism is a different approach to

the same problem of how do you stop

capitalism from imploding when left to

its own devices instead of having

capitalists compromise neoliberal

policies start from the assumption that

it's the general mass of people that are

the problem neoliberal policies demand a

tremendous government efforts to build

and make sure that the supposedly free

markets actually work and plenty of

these policies are there to change

people partly by making every possible

area of Life amenable to Market

practices and Market Logic the market

comes first and everything else follows

or as Margaret Thatcher is reported to

have said quote economics is the method

but the object is to change the soul but

that's really abstract in practice this

logic at the heart of neoliberalism

translates to real policies like

increasing incarceration tying welfare

and health care to work criminalizing

poverty and homelessness increasing

State and corporate surveillance to

better exploit and increase consumption

creating new property rights like

intellectual property to marketize areas

of human life that worked without them

using international sanctions threats of

war and full-on invasions to blast open

countries who don't invite in foreign

capital or resist free markets bailing

out private Capital when Banks crash

year after year redefining corporations

as people so they can enjoy more rights

and so on the free market isn't

something that just exists and

neoliberals understood that their

project is using state power to create

and sustain their vision of what it

should be creating the free market and

making it interact with more parts of

our day and I know it feels like we've

strayed from propaganda right now but

all this is a very important part of

understanding what propaganda actually

does under neoliberalism it's there to

accompany all these policies make them

more palatable and ultimately create a

market Society filled with people who

think like capitalists and therefore

accept more easily the fact that more

things suddenly start operating like

businesses

here's what I mean

[Music]

things that exist outside the market are

either reframed in Market terms or

demonized Trump ran in 2016 on the

promise of running America like a

business in France macron run on

promising to transform the country into

a startup Nation where every kid should

dream of becoming a billionaire that's

an actual quote the Iraq War supposedly

fought to spread democracy was briefly

considered a success when the country

was announced as open for business

welfare money set aside by the

government to patch the gaps when the

market doesn't allocate work efficiently

becomes handouts and its recipients are

admonished as lazy or welfare Queens

every government policy with the unique

exception of the military budget is

treated to a rigorous cost benefit

analysis as if the benefits of every

policy could be measured in monetary

terms and despite the ability of

governments to fund whatever it wants at

a keystroke government success is

measured not by the impacts of its

policies their popularity or the

efficiency with which they're carried

out but by its ability to remain within

budget and keeping the economy healthy

all the economy ever means by the way is

capitalist profits just as a side note

outside of the state all political

movements like strikes are reduced to

the same cost benefit analysis with

events like the railroad workers Strike

last fall being almost exclusively

discussed on CNN as a two billion a day

expense inviting viewers to make their

own judgment of whether better working

conditions are really worth all the

strain on the economy and this logic

extends further and further out from the

neoliberal core

education isn't about learning it's jobs

training the means to acquire human

capital so that you can better Market

yourself to Future employers self-care

is buying the right face mask or

treating yourself to a new tech product

rest is really important and valuable

and necessary so long as you're doing it

to recharge for work the next day every

problem is promised to be solved by an

app that's democratizing access to

something when all democratizing means

for these companies is making stuff

cheaper and this isn't just something

that tech companies do in neo-liberal

societies whether it's Bush or some Tech

Guy saying it an association is

constantly made between markets and

democracy or if some other positive

value like freedom

nationalized companies are always framed

as state-controlled the implication

being that that's necessarily

authoritarian and juxtaposed with free

markets freedom is what happens when BP

comes into a country and takes over all

the oil refineries this stems from the

fact that neoliberals have a terrible

understanding of and generally a pretty

strong distaste for democracy and try to

make it up by pretending that the market

with its huge disparities of power is

actually where democracy thrives because

people vote with their dollar no matter

that some people and corporations have

billions of votes and some people have

none Friedrich Hayek for example one of

the small government neoliberal guys by

the way was a terribly undemocratic

thinker his ideal government's upper

legislative house would only allow men

of substantial property over the age of

45 to vote or be elected no political

parties would be allowed and each member

would stand for a 15-year term these

guys have no clue what democracy and

freedom are but they're not shy about

co-opting these terms and the positive

values they carry to them Freedom means

giving corporations permission to do

anything they want so long as they can

generate profit and giving consumers the

freedom to buy any one of 50 different

brands of toothpastes even as their boss

Cuts their pay on a whim and their

government festers with Rich old white

dudes who stay there for decades but the

march of the market and its logic

extends even further past government

policy past political organizing past

the values of freedom and democracy even

and into our everyday life

your hobby is now your side hustle my

little grind setter

you're not dating you're in the dating

Market two words that were actually put

side by side by The neoliberal Thinker

Gary Becker who argued that more

powerful wealthier men Were Somehow more

entitled to polygamy because they won at

business the most classic example of

this though has to be the one you hear

endlessly parroted by neoliberal

politicians most notably guys like

macron and all those motivational

Instagram accounts just become an

entrepreneur

the entrepreneur is the epitome of the

neoliberal subject the person who is a

business entrepreneurs are constantly

applauded by neoliberals and the

entrepreneurial life is repeatedly sold

to People by politicians and intelligent

businessmen slash grifters with an 80

course as the way to achieve freedom

[Music]

that's because another element of

neoliberal propaganda is that you and

only you are responsible for your

freedom which is made to be synonymous

with financial success it's propaganda

in the sense that it's a lie because

this rhetoric is repeated over and over

again even though tremendous political

efforts are expanded by neoliberal

governments to make your ability to find

success harder neoliberal policies

encourage wages to stagnate or decrease

in real terms to cut off the safety net

to defund the public resources that

allow the development of people and

their skills to force people into taking

on and being submerged with debt and to

imprison and police ever greater parts

of the population that live outside the

specific understanding of freedom

under neoliberalism if you cannot

survive in the market the place that is

made more Cutthroat every year you don't

deserve to complain until you've spent

every shred of your energy trying to

start your own business or selling your

labor to someone else once again macron

is the best example of this logic in

2018 a citizen looking for work in

agriculture came up to the French

President explaining that he couldn't

find a job despite his best efforts all

macron found to say to him was that

there were plenty of jobs around that he

himself would only have to quote cross

the street and he'd find a job for him

the idea behind the statement being that

unemployment isn't the fault of

capitalist society which just happens to

benefit from unemployment on the one

hand and overwork on the other no

unemployment is the fault of the

individual who must be ready to take any

job regardless of how degrading or low

paying it is rather than be unemployed

because if the market has produced that

job opening so neoliberal thinking goes

then that job must be worth doing even

if the only way to convince people to do

it is to threaten them with poverty if

they don't

but statements like macron's just

crossed the street and you'll find work

are the rhetorical part of the

neoliberal strategy the propaganda that

makes it seem like unemployment is the

fault of individuals not working hard

enough it's there to accompany macron's

reforms to French unemployment that

actively make it harder to get

unemployment benefits and overall just

make life worse for people without work

it's in these moments that the paradoxes

and contradictions at the core of

neoliberalism are on full display on the

one hand you can do anything you want be

an entrepreneur dream of becoming a

billionaire from the earliest age and

yet on the other hand

you're a lazy bum who must be willing to

accept any job at any rate and will do

so in an environment where every means

of collective support is gutted and the

thing that will actually decide if you

can do what you want is the market the

place where big companies and

governments set the rules for what

ultimately generates profit do what you

want

so long as it generates profit for those

at the top everything else is worthless

if you're not convinced think of every

Centrist or conservative politician's

speech about jobs for the past 50 or so

years in those speeches whenever they

talk about unemployment it's never the

responsibility of employers and the

market to cater to the desires and

skills of workers it's always your

responsibility to retrain yourself and

lower your standards for the jobs that

they offer you flexibility Independence

and resilience are elevated as virtues

because a market that can exploit and

dispose of people at will is more

profitable than one that guarantees

everyone a decent job with good pay and

security it's a form of control that

doesn't rely on the negative you can't

do that but convinces people that they

can do anything and when they inevitably

come up short it's because they have the

wrong mindset work harder think positive

and anything is possible

look every political movement has its

propaganda it's rhetoric that it's

getting out there to try to bring people

to its cause but what good is

neoliberalism we work harder for Worse

pay and we're burning out like never

before the value we produce is captured

by a few billionaires who blow it on

Joyrides in space and buying social

media platforms so people stop bullying

them neoliberal propaganda communicates

the most shallow and meaningless

definitions of freedom and democracy I'm

tired of it and I know you are too

we talked a lot about how rhetoric can

be weaponized in this episode so I

wanted to take a second and give a

concrete example of what that looks like

using today's sponsor ground news let's

take a single event the UK Junior doctor

strike and see what headlines look like

from Outlets with different interests

remember the goal of effective

propaganda is to persuade so let's see

how these different news outlets try to

get us to feel a certain way

here are three headlines from three

different groups same story but take a

look at how subtle wording differences

can completely change our gut reaction

to the event here we have examples of

right wing coverage nominally Centrist

coverage from an outlet with a single

wealthy owner and coverage from an

explicitly socialist perspective notice

how the story is framed patient safety

patient convenience and the actual

reason for the strike by omitting

certain details or by giving precedence

to one quote or fact over another news

outlets can frame a story in a way that

nudges the reader towards a conclusion

that benefits their operation often

beholden to obscenely Rich individual

owners or a particular flavor of

Economics this is something I get asked

about a lot how do I help parents or

friends break out of their little

propaganda bubble it's great to analyze

an event like this comparing coverage

from different interest groups but it's

a lot of work and none of us have time

for that that's why I always recommend

people check out ground news because it

has a ton of really useful tools to make

building media literacy skills a lot

easier

ground news is a web and mobile app that

Aggregates over 50 000 news sources and

offers intuitive easy to understand

comparison tools so you can do things

like what we did here see how a

particular story is being spun by

various corporate Outlets you can also

see the political leaning factuality

rating and ownership of every single

news source right in the app no tedious

research required now full disclaimer as

a socialist I obviously disagree with

the placement of some of these outlets

for example I don't think CNN should be

placed as far left as it is but honestly

this might be a good thing when trying

to educate your friends and family if

you come at them with well actually CNN

is a right-wing Network they're not

going to take you seriously ground news

is the perfect first baby step towards

media literacy if you're looking for a

way to give your friends and family a

great set of tools to understand media

bias who it serves and how to spot it I

highly recommend you check out ground

news at the link below so head to

ground.news second thought and give it a

shot today I promise it'll make your

life a whole lot easier