I have spent the past several years taking a deep dive into the psychology of propaganda and mass persuasion. There is an underlying message that can be found in many of the sources I have looked at. It is a message that I have tried to share with readers, and because that message often contradicts what people want to hear, it seems to go unheard. If people were to stop and think about it, they would know in their gut there is a disturbing truth to this message. When it comes to discussing political agendas, people will often say something like “they are just telling you what you want to hear.” Or “they are just placating you to get what they want.” Unfortunately, there is more truth in those two statements than people realize. All propaganda is meant to get the targeted audience to go along with an agenda they would otherwise oppose. This is true no matter who is pushing it, and whether it has to do with gaining acceptance for anything from gun control to accepting armed troops in the street. Before acceptance of the message can be gained, the propagandist creating it must first know what their target thinks, he must understand their feelings and biases toward that issue if he expects to formulate a narrative people will go along with. Conservatives largely accepted the deployment of ICE agents, for example, because of the constant messaging concerning illegal aliens. It is highly likely that they would have opposed this if Democrats had done the same thing. Illegal immigration is an issue that resonates with the conservative voter; it is something that is perceived as a destructive force tearing the country apart. On one hand, you have the left advocating for completely open borders; on the other, the solution is in the form of more federal power. It is a trick to gain acceptance of more control over every aspect of society. ICE agents were killing American citizens over the most trivial of issues, and because they were perceived as fighting illegal immigration, they were cheered on by many conservative voters. What is this underlying message, and why is it so important that people understand it? All propaganda works best when it reflects the popular sentiments of the targeted audience. In other words, they are telling you what you want to hear. In this article, we are going to look at several sources where this message is repeated in various different ways. Keep in mind, the ultimate objective is gaining acceptance for things that would have at one time been opposed.

Propaganda must be familiar with collective sociological presuppositions, spontaneous myths, and broad ideologies. (Ellul, 1962,)

Conservatism is an ideology, just as Marxism or liberalism. If a propagandist were attempting to appeal to a conservative audience, he would have to be familiar with the beliefs, attitudes, values, and expectations of the people to be able to develop an effective message. Donald Trump tapped into the conservative ideology perfectly at a time when Republican voters were losing faith in the system. According to Ellul, a propagandist cannot be a believer in the ideology he professes but must use it as a tool for propaganda. For ideology itself is nothing but a vehicle of transformation being used to gain acceptance of growing state power. This is exactly what we saw during both of Trump’s administrations, as well as Obama’s, Bush’s, and Biden’s. Please don’t mistake my criticisms of Trump for leftism. It is my sincere belief that we must continually guard, with jealous vigilance, the blessings of liberty, and that all who hold power must be questioned with robust skepticism. But, you see, that is the purpose of propaganda. To, as the book Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research so eloquently states, bypass the psychological barriers to change. The purpose of propaganda is to turn off the critical thinking faculties of the audience and get them to follow along.

“To make the public more productive and orderly, publicists first need to discover what they think and feel.” (Soules, 2015)

Trump was a man who was able to capture the disheartened mood of the American public. He was someone who was “able to give expression to the message recipients’ own concerns, tensions, aspirations, and hopes” (Jowett & O’Donnell).  The way he insulted the liberals on social media resonated with a public who had been humiliated, demoralized, and made to feel as though they were the problem the world needed to be rid of. Trump was the propagandist who “gave voice to the propagandee’s own feelings” (Jowett & O’Donnell). Persuasion, according to an article entitled Psychological Targeting as an Effective Approach to Digital Mass Persuasion, “is always more effective when it is tailored to the individual’s or a group’s psychological traits, beliefs and behaviors.” Trump was essentially using the conservative ideology as a way to blindfold an audience who had placed all their hopes and dreams in the prospect that he could save a country they so dearly loved. How did they do this? The Trump administration used a company called Cambridge Analytica to analyze the opinions and attitudes of the conservative voting base. From here, they were able to discern that conservatives were frustrated with what the left had done to the country. They wanted a strong leader to reverse what was done, and frankly, someone that could satisfy their desire for revenge. Much like we are currently seeing from the Democrats who just won the midterms. They are looking to stick it to the Republicans they perceive as taking their rights away.

This brings us to our next quote. “Propaganda,” according to Taillard and Giscoppa, “must target the emotional predispositions of the targeted audience, and must be built off their pre-existing beliefs.” While propaganda can be effective in solidifying public opinion, it must first understand that opinion and reflect it back to the audience in a way that the public perceives as being their own, and not something they are being forced to accept (Jowett & O’Donnell). Let’s reexamine the Qanon phenomenon a moment. Even today, there is an expectation that Trump will spring the final trap against the Democrats, as it is largely believed they cheated. This was the same narrative in 2020, as conservatives sat at the edge of their seats waiting for Pence to rebuke the election results. That never happened. Why was this “trust the plan” narrative so effective? One, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, the beliefs and expectations of conservative voters were thoroughly examined through data collection conducted by Cambridge Analytica. Two, the conservative voter placed all their hopes for the future of the country, along with their expectations for justice, in the one man who was sold to them as the only candidate who could possibly beat Hillary Clinton. If you remember, Rush Limbaugh was one of the first people to start pushing the “4-D chess” strategy in response to Trump’s questionable behavior. I remember him specifically saying, “Trump is playing a kind of three-dimensional chess.” Trump was literally promoting people into cabinet positions who were known to be “swamp dwellers” while claiming he was going to drain the swamp. This was successfully twisted into a narrative describing Trump making brilliant moves which would ultimately expose the deep state for who they were. The same thing happened when Trump began pushing red flag laws. Not only did that get brushed off as fake news, but many commentators were also pushing the idea that the intent was to expose the ambitions of the gun grabbers. What really happened was that William Barr, using taxpayer money, bribed states to pass some kind of red flag law initiative.

It should be pretty clear by now that propaganda feeds off public sentiment. It reflects the attitudes and beliefs of the public in an attempt to gain compliance for what would otherwise be opposed. According to Ellul, the government probes the public to determine what it is thinking, then goes about the work of shaping and guiding opinion to bring the public in line with what the government has already decided. Some people refer to this as the Hegelian Dialectic, or the problem-reaction-solution strategy. Ellul also said that the information the public is exposed to creates the problems that propaganda purports to offer solutions. This means the media the public willingly watches is deliberately filling their heads with the problems the government wants them thinking about. This is called the agenda-setting role of the media. Once the public is focused on these issues, they can be guided into accepting the pre-existing government solutions. This is the deceptive nature of the whole system. The false left-right paradigm also feeds off this, as the public is wrapped up in false narratives reflecting left and right worldviews, which trap the public in a limited frame of thinking, as both parties tend to offer solutions which enhance government power and limit human freedom. The whole thing works because propaganda is designed to give the public the illusion of choice and the perception that government is following their will (Ellul), when in fact, it is the other way around. The public is being psychologically persuaded into accepting government power, which, at one time, would have been opposed, especially by the conservative voter. This brings us to the final quote from a book called New Lies for Old, by Anatoliy Golitsyn. Who was Golitsyn? He was a KGB agent and a specialist in communist propaganda. His book describes the deceptive nature of communist strategy and how they deceived the West into believing communism had died. When he says, “to be credible and effective, a deception should accord as far as possible with the hopes and expectations of those it is intended to deceive,” it should be taken at face value. What does that mean? Accord as far as possible? According to Golitsyn, the Soviets feigned the implementation of capitalist reforms; they created the perception of disunity, all while building a network of communist countries and a long-term strategy of deceiving and taking over the West. In other words, they, as closely as possible, created the perceptions the West wanted to see by actually implementing the reforms as best they could, while maintaining a communist infrastructure. Take that for what you will.

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Article posted with permission from David Risselada