The Electric Boogaloo

We love them, we love them not. We love them, we love them not...

Since the Summer of Love^TM in 2020, it has been an adventure watching the cultural and political left express their disagreements by protesting, rioting, canceling, destroying, killing, and burning things to the ground. On an elementary school playground, we call those “temper tantrums.” According to Very Smart People^TM, however, they are “mostly peaceful” protests.

It has been noted by many that civil discourse is very hard to come by in our American public square. The values of genuine civility, listening to differing viewpoints and crafting genuine ideas have fallen on hard times. There are a multitude of reasons for this, but one might surprise us.

If we started talking about propaganda, we might first imagine stark, red and orange posters with catchy and aggressive slogans. We might imagine a fictional character like “Big Brother,” or some other mass media meme. Though these versions of propaganda exist, the problem with their effectiveness is that they are easy to spot from a mile away. If you see it, you can duck.

Actual propaganda works because it is not obvious. It slips in through the cracks, is persistent in its work, and slides into our daily lives. Our vocabulary becomes full of it, educated people fall for it and become its greatest defenders. Others are willing to throw away their youth for it.

We may also assume that propaganda is used to get us to believe in certain things over others. We should vote for this person instead of the other. We should support this form of political ideology over the other.

The problem with that view is that people who are victims of propaganda will change what they believe to be true on a regular basis. The real value of manipulating what people think is to get them to behave the way the propagandists want them to behave. The goal is action, not belief.

In a powerful treatment of the topic, Jacques Ellul provides what he calls a “partial definition” of propaganda:

Propaganda is a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulations and incorporated in an organization.[i]

Later he expands:

Remember that propaganda seeks to induce action, adherence, and participation—with as little thought as possible. According to propaganda, it is useless, even harmful for man to think; thinking prevents him from acting with the required righteousness and simplicity. Action must come directly from the depths of the unconscious; it must release tension, become a reflex. This presumes that thought unfolds on an entirely unreal level, that it never engages in political decisions. And this is in fact so. No political thought that is at all coherent or distinct can possibly be applied.[ii]

Our current culture is replete with examples.

Not that long ago, the Biden administration signed an order that 50% of all new cars would be electric, not gas. The environment stood in the balance, after all. Not to be outdone, California mandated 100% EVs by 2035. Surely, that would fix all of the problems caused by combustion engines and livestock flatulence. EV cars are great. Gas cars are bad. If you wanted to be one of the “cool kids,” you bought an electric car, especially a Tesla. That way, everyone knew how much you cared.

But, oh my, how times have changed in the eon of the last, roughly, 60 days.

Now, leftist groups, many of them funded by deep pockets on the Left, including USAID, have begun their campaign to burn as many Teslas to the ground that they can. Not only have the once-vaunted electric cars become enemy number one, but their cause is so just that they can justify polluting the air with chemical fire after chemical fire.

It is fair to ask what someone is doing if one day they love a car for its supposed benefit to the environment and the next day they are risking jail time to burn it all.

The answer is that their actions have nothing to do with what they believe to actually be true, but with what they have been told to do by the people they allow to act as their commanders. Literally. It was never about the environment. It was never about EVs. It was about power and who can be used to shift power in their direction.

Another recent example of a shocking change in belief driven by political propaganda was the “guilty until proven innocent” movement during the Justice Kavanaugh hearings. People who would have proudly called themselves Progressives, or Civil Libertarians, the week before and would have defended to the death the proposition, “innocent until proven guilty,” made a neck-breaking shift the moment they were told to. Their propaganda filled their minds and social media feeds with every version of sophistry necessary to “defend” their position, including the ever useful, “just to be safe” chestnut.

Their position was never about actual innocence or guilt, but political advocacy driven by their preferred propaganda. The moment it was inconvenient to their puppeteers to reverse a belief that constitutes one of the most significant civilizational advances, the dupes followed suit without asking any questions.

We could add the examples of marriage, sex and transgenderism, and “women’s” sports, but we would be repeating ourselves.

Propaganda is not primarily about belief; it is first and foremost about action. More precisely, manipulated action.

How can a person defend themselves against such manipulative sophistry? One ancient sage said it well, “If you know the truth, the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

Those words primarily mean that if we believe in Jesus we will begin to know the grounding truth of all existence and we will be set free from our sin. But there is more. If I value what is true, it will be harder for propaganda to have its way. Knowing and learning to love the truth will give me eyes to see and be repelled by what is false and manipulative.

Because we are limited, and sinful, creatures, this doesn’t work 100% of the time. But, sheesh, maybe we can avoid being dupes and not take part in clown shows we are watching unfold before our very eyes.

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[i] Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (p. 61). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[ii] Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (p. 180). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.