Propaganda's Secret Partner

Violence and Persuasion

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

Propaganda’s Secret Partner

Violence and Persuasion

In propaganda, context matters in more than one way. Messages of fear that moved the citizens of Rome would be ineffective in the U.S. today. The circumstances are different, so the messaging has to be different.

There’s another context for understanding the power of propaganda: fear. When people mention Goebbels’ methods in Nazi Germany, they need to remember that saying anything that disagreed with official messaging would get you killed.

Violence is propaganda’s secret partner. See The Fuhrer Has A Secret Weapon where we discussed the fate of a young man who voiced his opinion that Germany WOULDN’T win World War II.

It is lazy to think a mere turn of phrase will keep people in a mental lockstep through bombings, battles and invasion. There has to be fear of publicly disagreeing.

Creating the Fear

Russia

In Russia, there have been so many Suspicious Deaths of Russian Businesspeople the topic has its own Wikipedia page. Often called “Sudden Russian Death Syndrome,” thirty-eight Russian businessmen close to the Kremlin have died under mysterious circumstances. From The Atlantic:

Over the weekend, Pavel Antov, the aforementioned sausage executive, a man who had reportedly expressed a dangerous lack of enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine, was found dead at a hotel in India, just two days after one of his Russian travel companions died at the same hotel.