Edward Curtin does a disservice to propagandists: he credits them with being smart (such faint praise). Moreover he errs in assigning them the role of creating leaders, "a master, a prefabricated demigod." This is not the propagandists' contribution. The leaders are chosen to fit archetypes.
I can't remember who wrote it, but someone compared a generation of actors from the 1940s or 50s with those of our era. He demonstrated convincingly that each actor could be paired off with an archetypal character actor of the other generation. It's as if you went into a fruitier and requested two examples of each fruit, one fresh, the other dried and mummified.
Propagandists would like to be thought of as progenitors of our political class but their skills lie elsewhere. They come along later to help burnish the legend. What they value above all -- and what they are valued for -- is the skill to implant a world view and then to switch it on a dime.
Propagandists are generally people with some talent for persuading others but who can't get a better job at what they truly desire: creating whole worlds for the movies, the television or novels in which they can rival the creator himself. So they use their skills to warp, sway and manipulate on behalf of their paymaster.
They may work in newspapers or what we now call the panoply of media but their job, like a bodysuit of armour, is to defend and protect the state. Of course there are other propagandists who sell toilet tissue. They are better paid but receive less respect.
You can't blame the people for falling for propaganda. If they didn't fall for it, it wouldn't be very effective propaganda.
To reprise my opening assertion, look at the crossover between novelists and intelligence services or, more specifically, a counterintelligence section that is concerned mostly with concocting narratives since gathering accurate information is so much harder (Christopher Steele, don't call us. We'll call you.)
There are struggling writers (Howard Hunt is a classic example) and those who achieved success (such as Ian Fleming and Roald Dahl) but more accurately we can say, "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em'."
Event Covid and the uniform and relentless nature of messaging through Corporatist Media has laid bare the extent to which the organs influence journalists, and scientific and mainstream publishers.
Again, this makes sense if you return to the roster of writers: in a meritocratic world there would be no efficient way to ensure the propagandist reached the target audience. By controlling to a practical degree publishers and broadcasters the organs can promote favoured voices to a pedestal and run the factories of spinners of yarn.
Do the people seek divine masters? People listen to parental figures which is why totalitarian political systems are so quick to capture the youth and supplant parental authority. So-called progressivism does this. Parental authority is patriarchal and should be dismantled, it says. It doesn't talk about what will replace this patriarchy.
Totalitarians are not against hierarchies or father figures or even politburos full of men. They don't disdain the family, they see it as a rival. Likewise totalitarians are not against religion. They don't disdain God, they see God as a rival.
Joseph Stalin once had a prayer recited to him each day in school. It was only later that Russian stubbornness persuaded him that he could not crush or replace the Orthodox church and so he set about infiltrating it.
The new cover of Jacobin magazine discusses this theme in pictorial form.
Propagandists don't just serve up legends for leaders. They can give us each our own personal beliefs, a suite of attitudes that we like to believe are tailor made for us but which are really an off-the-peg suit. We imbibe many of our beliefs while growing up but the majority of our adult persona is worn like a coat and can be changed like one. The only difference between people is how much it pains them to change it.
Many people wouldn't give it a second thought: fitting in is prized in schools; team players in corporations. The visible symbol of universities are the colours, just as with sports teams, horses and dogs. Conformity is not meant to begin and end with a scarf.
Here lies the propagandist's trick. He needs you to be ready to switch your allegiance but only at a precise moment in response to an unmistakeable signal. How can people be fanatically roused against a rival team to the extent of going to war and yet about turn in full fury when the enemy is reassigned?
Curtin identifies the key skill and how it is used: "Propagandists’ ability to mesmerize the faithful has increase exponentially as the technological life has increased and been promoted as de rigueur."
The key to controlling the public mind is not censorship but the replacement of thinking with feeling, exemplified by Orwell's Two Minutes Hate. The publishers, broadcasters and social media play this trick, not surprisingly, by assuming the shape and the belief-forming influence of parents. After all, at a young age we mirror our parents' outlook, driven by bonds of loyalty and emotion not logic.
So the propagandist-as-Mesmer presumes to share our emotions, and our envy and fear. His speech patterns are repetitive and reassuring. He quickly becomes a crutch to our laziness and, having formed an emotional bond, begins to suggest other attitudes we may like to adopt. The other end of propaganda which is marketing plays a role here: are you a Telegraph man or a Mail woman. Be informed, up to the minute, with stories of a reliable consistency of depth and taste: "Be sure to read..."
With this cheery or frightening hourly dose of information comes the mesmerizing: each of those stories is emotionally charged to some degree. By dialing up or down the emotional amperage, and attaching it to this or that topic, those people or their country yonder... the control is effected.
So it is not the appointing of an external deity but the control of our inner response that is the true grail of the propagandist.
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