Friday, March 25, 2011

Reactionary Propaganda---How The Cultural War is Really Fought

Composing good reactionary propaganda is actually pretty easy if you have control of a section of a cultural organ---e.g., a television show. The key is you DON'T go all 'afterschool special' or 'GI Joe--where now you know and knowing is half the battle' on your audience. You see, that induces your audience to actually think about what you said and to attempt to argue with you in absentia. Instead, you just do this:
Imagine on your TV show, you've got 20 regulars and 80 bit players that occasionally show up. Let's say you've got 20 reactionary characters, 60 middle of the roaders, and 20 leftist types.
What you do is make, say, 18 of the reactionaries sympathetic characters, and most importantly, you frequently let them demonstrate higher value when dealing with the opposite sex. Two of the reactionaries get to be low-status. For the leftists, just reverse the ratios. This way you can always point to counterexamples whenever anyone says anything.
Persuasion isn't about reason normally--I blog to encourage those who either consciously or unconsciously agree with me, I've few illusions I can convince anyone to change their mind except via attrition or divine intervention---it's about status and repetition. Humans are profoundly maladapted to television. Lots of people even seem to mentally process characters on their favorite TV shows as being their own friends. This has the effect of distorting their mental histograms as to what various groups in society are really about. Don't believe me? Ask yourself how often you see unsympathetic or uncool gay characters on TV? Now compute the same ratios for nongay characters. Do you think this is an accident?
If, for instance, a reactionary TV producer wanted to make good propaganda for Christianity in the social sphere, he'd just disproportionately stock his character pool with high status characters with Christian social markers. There's not even any need to have them show 'life lessons' or even pray on screen. In fact doing so makes your propaganda easier to resist. Just bang on the subliminal drum repeatedly---Christians, 90% hot 10% not, pagans 50% hot, 50% not, heathens, 10% hot, 90% not. Screwtape would recognize the strategy but obviously few Americans do.

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