Propaganda

 

The following essay was submitted to the Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal on July 30, 2020, which they published it in the September 1 edition.

 

“Propaganda” is defined as communication designed to influence an audience and to propagate an agenda. We are bombarded by all forms of propaganda, primarily in the form of advertising to get people to buy, or not buy, consumer goods or to sell, or discourage, political beliefs. In a country that supported “Free Speech” the onus has always been on the person being subjected to that propaganda to evaluate its merits and then make their own decision. That is what a “Free” society is all about.

Some societies, especially totalitarian ones, use censorship to ensure you only see or hear the propaganda that favours the ruling regime. Take for example the current Communist China government. They have been working extra hard to subvert the Hong Kong people and get them to give up their freedom and only hear and see what the communist government wants then to see or hear. Our own Prime Minister has been doing the same using his loyal propaganda machine, the CBC, and reinforced by the rest of the mainstream media.

I remember well when the USSR was still in existence that Canadian media all mocked the Soviet newspaper, Pravda; in English that name translates to “Truth”, yet we all knew that was not what they “reported”. I find it ironic that our own media is now nothing more than the equivalent to Pravda.

It has slowly been building up but we are quickly approaching a nexus in which, if we collectively do not act, we will soon be subjected to our own version of communist rule and freedom of expression and thought will be a thing of the past. History has shown unequivalently that every totalitarian state results in the deaths of millions and is far more dangerous than any disease known to man. Do we wish this upon ourselves just by being gullible rubes willing to believe anything we are allowed to see and hear?

They say that if you throw a frog into a pot of hot water it will promptly try to get out. But if you place the frog in cold water then slowly raise the temperature it will allow itself to cook to death. And so, it is with us. We have let totalitarians in the guise of “socialists” pervert our society through their lack of a good moral foundation.

Let me illustrate this progression. Back in the early 1960’s, Rachel Carson published her book “Silent Spring” which denounced the use of DDT. Soon after, that chemical was banned. Since then the science has shown that many of her opinions were not based on fact, yet it was allowed, and rightly so, to be disseminated amongst the public for us to debate and decide.

In 2006 the documentary film, “An Inconvenient Truth” was released and broadly shared. Many jumped on the band wagon. Since then none of the predictions have come to pass. Yet many found the message resonated with them even if the evidence did not support the premise. Several years ago, another documentary movie maker, Marc Morano, tried to distribute his film “Climate Hustle”. He and his film were subjected to a campaign of smearing and banned from the same theatres that had shown the Gore film as it went contrary to what some think is “truth”.

Very recently it has gotten even worse. A documentary film called “Plandemic” was announced as being under production. Its creators are accused of being “conspiracy theorists” just by raising attention to issues just like Carson and Gore did. Yet they were not given that moniker.  This blatant smearing of an alternative idea and application of “cancel culture” to only those themes one political extreme do not want you to consider has become so intense it likely will not see the light of day. “Free Speech” is not supposed to work this way.

This does illustrate why totalitarianism enforced propaganda and the suppression of free speech needs to be avoided; all arguments they present to coax you into buying into their lies are easily disproved. But the quest for power is all consuming and as they say, power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely. George Orwell tried to warn us with his book “1984”. Well, we have ignored the warnings and the dystopian world he warned us is almost here, albeit about 50 years later than predicted, all because we are compliant sheep easily accepting of propaganda with little, if any, push back.