Propaganda has been used as long as records exist, the Roman Foundation myth (the one with Romulus, Remus, and the wolf and stuff) is even an example of propaganda. It can be political, cultural, ingrained, or brand new. Its almost always a combination of some of the previous categories along with a mix of others. It's been used in essentially every society since the dawn of time and nobody is immune to propaganda. Beyond societies, systems can have their own propaganda. Capitalism, Anarchism, Communism, Fascism, and all the great, wide sweeping -isms have used, or currently employ propagandist techniques to sway the masses in their favor.
One of the most effective at this is Liberalism. Right now, dear reader you may be thinking "but wait liberalism isn't a system, its a political position! What do you mean Liberalism uses propaganda?" To answer that, I watched a video by the excellent philosophy tube. He uses a definition of liberalism which is particularly helpful to understanding society. Its propaganda is the belief that liberalism isn't an ideology, is based in pure reason and is the only truly equitable system. However, frequently exceptions are made within the rules that reveals the truth: anyone society considers other will not have the rules apply normally to them. They will suffer from state violence and have no social capital outside their in-group. Some real examples of this include Indians, from the perspective of British imperialists, natives according to american colonists, slaves in general, women to a degree. One of the fundamental texts of Liberalism is Two Treatises of Government, by John Locke. It was written at the time of the English Civil War. Locke was a staunch Republican and in his book he argued that Native American societies which viewed land in a different way, typically a communal way, or didn't use the land for "improvement" (agriculture) had no legal right to the land despite living and hunting on it for centuries. Therefore it wasn't immoral to remove them from it, because they didn't own it so it was free to be settled in his mind. By justifying this land-grab philosophy he set total settlement as the main goal of British Colonies. Next: I'll discuss capitalist propaganda.
*******************************PLEASE WATCH THIS VIDEO***************************************
Comments