Deafening Silences: propaganda through censorship, smearing and coercion
This article was published simultaneously by PANDA and Propaganda in Focus during the Autumn of 2022. It provides an introduction to the mechanisms through which dissent is controlled
This article was published simultaneously by PANDA and Propaganda in Focus during the Autumn of 2022. It provides an introduction to the mechanisms through which dissent is controlled, with particular reference to the COVID-19 event, and highlights the ways in which ‘conduct is organised’ via real world threats and coercive tactics. I intend, in time, to develop a fuller academic paper based on it.
Since the start of the COVID event, authorities around the world have sought to implement quite extraordinary policies including the so-called “locking down” of entire populations, compulsory masking and coercion through, for example, the mandating of multiple ‘vaccine’ injections. Many of these policies fly in the face of long-established and well-evidenced public health approaches to dealing with respiratory viruses whilst the scientific cogency of these measures - including lockdowns, community masking and “vaccine” injections - is coming under increased scrutiny. At the same time, the catastrophic consequences, the so-called “collateral damage” (a military euphemism for wartime civilian casualties), of these extreme policies for populations around the world is becoming well-established. Randomised controlled trials of the injections to date have not shown net overall benefit, while accumulating evidence from passive reporting suggests they may be a cause of significant levels of harm. A central part of selling these extreme, and ultimately highly destructive, policies has involved the use of propaganda.
One of the problems with researching and writing about propaganda is that many people believe it to be alien to democratic states. However, as Edward Bernays, considered by many to be a key figure in the development of 20th century propaganda techniques, explained and promoted, “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society”. At least to an extent, this belief in propaganda rests upon an assumption or belief that people are ultimately selfish, egotistical, power-hungry and hedonistic beings who require guidance and incentive; it therefore follows that propaganda is required by powerful actors in order to provide a degree of structure, order and purpose to a given society. In contrast, if one assumes that humans are ultimately good and well-inclined towards each other and to the natural world, and that they are capable of great things if conditions permit, propaganda emerging from self-interested and powerful actors equates to a parasite within the human mind that seeks to lead humans away from their better instincts [1]. To this one might add the propensity of those with power to define themselves as the arbiters of truth and morality:
“The moral attitudes of dominant and privileged groups are characterised by universal self-deception and hypocrisy. The unconscious and conscious identification of their special interests with general interests and universal values[…]. […] the intelligence of privileged groups is usually applied to the task of inventing specious proofs for the theory that universal values spring from, and that general interests are served by, the special privileges which they hold.” [2]
Whatever one’s position on the justifiability of propaganda, and although we usually call these techniques by different names today, employing euphemisms such as “public relations” or “strategic communication”, it is a fact that techniques of manipulation are part and parcel of contemporary liberal democracies.
Promoting the Narrative
In the case of the COVID-19 event, propaganda has been deployed across democracies on an unprecedented scale. In order to gain compliance with the unorthodox and intrusive measures adopted during the COVID-19 event many forms of “non-consensual persuasion” have been employed, ranging from manipulated messaging designed to increase “fear levels” through to coercion. Indeed, very early on it came to light that behavioural scientists were providing advice to the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). UK Column reported that this group, named the “Scientific Pandemic Influenza group on Behaviour (SPI-B)”, was (re)convened on 13 February 2020. One document produced by this group identified “options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures” which include persuasion,incentivization and coercion. In the section on “persuasion” it states that the “perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging”. The document also referred to using “media to increase sense of personal threat”. Many of these “behavioural science” approaches to manipulation used in the UK context have been documented in Laura Dodsworth’s influential work State of Fear whilst Dr Gary Sidley has written about the remarkable reluctance of anyone in authority to accept responsibility for the deliberate manipulation of the public. Dr Colin Alexander has, for some time, been tracking the propaganda output across the UK public sphere.
More widely, and as described by Iain Davis, these approaches have been paralleled at the global level. In February 2020, according to Davis, the World Health Organisation (WHO) had established the Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health (TAG); “The group is chaired by Prof. Cass Sunstein and its members include behavioural change experts from the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Professor Susan Michie, from the UK, is also a TAG participant”. Since then, Susan Michie has taken over as chair.
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