After reading this article that was linked on here a few days ago, there was something that occurred to me. The same tactics that are used for advertising here (in the US, probably most of the imperial core but I don’t know enough to say for sure) are used for propaganda. Meanwhile, the people here are probably particularly susceptible to these sorts of tactics, what with being taught basically our entire lives not to think critically or ask questions. Which I think might be contributing to the success of the US’s propaganda in the US, vs, for example, China’s propaganda in the US. I don’t know, maybe this is obvious to everyone else, I’m tired. And I know I didn’t articulate this very well. I’m going to bed.
Advertising departments used to be literally called propaganda departments
Yeah, advertising IS propaganda, or a method of propaganda. As is public relations, which I think most people severely underestimate. Edward Bernays, “the father of public relations”, wrote a book literally titled “Propaganda”.
Some good resources for a deeper dive into this are Adam Curtis’ documentary series The Century of the Self and Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s book Manufacturing Consent where they present their “propaganda model”, in which advertising is also used to pressure media who depend on advertisers continuing to buy advertisement space from them.
I’d like to suggest Parenti’s Inventing Reality as an alternative to Manufacturing Consent. It also gets into media as basically controlled by advertising since they pay for it. The programs - news or fiction or whatever are just the lures to draw us in to see ads. It was written a year before Manufacturing Consent, and was written by someone that is not a left anti-communist. Same general sort of message and information, very well researched and sourced.