Goebbels' Principles of Propaganda #3

THE PROPAGANDA CONSEQUENCES OF AN ACTION MUST BE CONSIDERED IN PLANNING THAT ACTION

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

Propaganda Has a Planned and Expected Result

Effective propaganda doesn’t just put some random information out there to confuse people, it seems. It is part of a plan to achieve a particular result.

This insight is clarifying. It separates the nutjobs from the propaganda purveyors.

• “The election was stolen” is propaganda because that message supports the result of denying election victory to Joe Biden.

• “The Earth is flat” is not propaganda because there is no intended result. These people just think the world is giant server’s platter held by Atlas or something.

• “Vaccines don’t work” would fall into the nut job category. There is no result aimed for. General suspicion of Big Pharma isn’t a result because it doesn’t lead to anything concrete.

• “Sandy Hook was fake” is also nut job territory, but may be both. It’s just a coping mechanism for people who can’t deal with the fear related to that horrible event. But there may be an intended result of building support for lax gun policies. It’s a stretch, though, to think that such an absurd and hurtful stance would be adopted to prevent stricter gun laws.

What do you think? Tell me in the comments below.

Propaganda First Doesn’t Always Work

Honestly, this is one principle that Goebbels did not succeed in implementing.

Let’s take an example from his notes: the bombing of London. Goebbels convinced Hitler to take a psychological approach to bombing the British to ruin their morale - but it didn’t work. Their spirit wasn’t broken. Goebbels failed in his plan to break the British spirit. It may be why Hitler called the Queen Mother the most dangerous woman in Europe. She laid flowers at memorials and kept people going.

Returning to the mantra “the election was stolen,” it would have a purpose: giving people permission to physically storm the Capitol and attack lawmakers. Stories about voting machines being hacked would undermine the validity of Biden winning the election. But even questions about the voting machines are enough to make people believe that Biden didn’t win the Presidential election. To work, it requires many questions about those voting machines, repeated often. The purpose is not to inspire the purchase of new machines, it is to get enough people to believe that Joe Biden is not President of the United States.

And let’s not forget those people looking for bamboo while inspecting voting ballots for signs of fraud. You know, because bamboo is in China and it would naturally get on Chinese-created fake voter ballots? That was another result of this election doubt, and a fun one you have to admit.

Consequences

I guessing Fox did not anticipate a massive lawsuit when they pushed their on-air personalities posing as reporters to openly question whether voting machines in the 2020 Presidential election were hacked.

Just saying.