I'll promise up front, nobody gets called a Nazi in this diary except Hitler. I think even Godwin himself would be cool with that.
To really understand political propaganda, we need to look at the propagandists handbook, Mein Kampf. This section is straightforward and startlingly contempary in its discussion of how different segments of the population process information from the media. Read along, and you will recognize yourself, as well as the shouters and Fox News viewers.
Journalistic circles in particular like to describe the press as a 'great power' in the state. As a matter of fact, its importance really is immense. It cannot be overestimated, for the press really continues education in adulthood.
Its readers, by and large, can be divided into three groups:
First, into those who believe everything they read;
Second, into those who have ceased to believe anything;
Third, into the minds which critically examine what they read, and judge accordingly.
-Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf
Wow, that sounds strikingly like today, doesn't it? How would a budding Fascist dictator in the 1930's use this? How would he do it today?
Except for my block quotes, this text is one continuous excerpt from Main Kampf, Chapter 10, Causes of The Collapse, where Hitler accuses various parties of undermining Germany during and after WWI. Being part of these groups was a bad thing.
Numerically, the first group is by far the largest. It consists of the great mass of the people and consequently represents the simplest-minded part of the nation. It cannot be listed in terms of professions, but at most in general degrees of intelligence. To it belong all those who have neither been born nor trained to think independently, and who partly from incapacity and partly from incompetence believe everything that is set before them in black and white.
I guess you're either with us or against us. Jesus really did ride a triceratops. Everything is "us versus them" where we are good and everyone that disagrees is evil.
To them also belongs the type of lazybones who could perfectly well think, but from sheer mental laziness seizes gratefully on everything that someone else has thought, with the modest assumption that the someone else has exerted himself considerably.
Bring out the think tanks guys and consultants, crank up the medicine show and dazzle the rubes.
Now, with all these types, who constitute the great masses, the influence of the press will be enormous.
These are the people that called the Volk.
They are not able or willing themselves to examine what is set before them, and as a result their whole attitude toward all the problems of the day can be reduced almost exclusively to the outside influence of others. This can be advantageous when their enlightenment is provided by a serious and truth-loving party, but it is catastrophic when scoundrels and liars provide it.
Better make sure their sources are "Fair and Balanced."
Now what about the town hall screamers? You know, the people that were the GOP base under Bush, but now seem more than a little dangerous.
The second group is much smaller in number.It is partly composed of elements which previously belonged to the first group, but after long and bitter disappointments shifted to the opposite and no longer believe anything that comes before their eyes in print.
Wow, Hitler really nailed that one! These would be the LaRouchies, the Ron Paul people, the libertarians, the townhall screamers.
They hate every newspaper; either they don't read it at all, or without exception fly into a rage over the contents, since in their opinion they consist only of lies and falsehoods.
This is actually a surprisingly lucid insight. People who fly into a rage when they see anything that is not predigested and molded into a form that fits a comforting and familiar narrative. they aren't even getting angry on cue any more, they have been so conditioned towards anger that it's more or less constant and increasingly psychotic.
So, are they potential recruits for the Nazi cause?
These people are very hard to handle, since they are suspicious even in the face of the truth. Consequently, they are lost for all positive, political work.
Wow, it must suck to be considered to much of an underachiever to be a Nazis. That is really a hoot. How low can you go?
Anyway, you should pay attention to this next part, Gentle Reader, because it applies to you.
The third group, finally, is by far the smallest; it consists of the minds with real mental subtlety, whom natural gifts and education have taught to think independently, who try to form their own judgment on all things, and who subject everything they read to a thorough examination and further development of their own. They will not look at a newspaper without always collaborating in their minds, and the writer has no easy time of it. Journalists love such readers with the greatest reserve.
You know who you are - you have to fact check everything, or you would not be reading blogs.
For the members of this third group, it must be admitted, the nonsense that newspaper scribblers can put down is not very dangerous or even very important. Most of them in the course of their lives have learned to regard every journalist as a rascal on principle, who tells the truth only once in a blue moon. Unfortunately, however, the importance of these splendid people lies only in their intelligence and not in their number- a misfortune at a time when wisdom is nothing and the majority is everything!
Sorry folks, you are a minority, regardless of your race, and you are likely to be persecuted despite your many fine qualities.
Today, when the ballot of the masses decides, the chief weight lies with the most numerous group, and this is the first: the mob of the simple or credulous.
There you have it - all resources are to be directed to manipulating the credulous simpletons.
And the state must control the press so that it can control the population. What? Things were actually making a lot of sense up until now, and here the Fascism kicks in.
It is of paramount interest to the state and the nation to prevent these people from falling into the hands of bad, ignorant, or even vicious educators. The state, therefore, has the duty of watching over their education and preventing any mischief. It must particularly exercise strict control over the press; for its influence on these people is by far the strongest and most penetrating, since it is applied, not once in a while, but over and over again.
The party must drive home it's messages through repetition, repetition, and more repetition. Information must be reduced to memorable phrases. making sense is not necessary, because it being pitched to the dullest and most gullible part of the population. "Death panels, death panels, death panels, drill baby drill...."
In the uniformity and constant repetition of this instruction lies its tremendous power. If anywhere, therefore, it is here that the state must not forget that all means must serve an end; it must not let itself be confused by the drivel about so-called 'freedom of the press' and let itself be talked into neglecting its duty and denying the nation the food which it needs and which is good for it; with ruthless determination it must make sure of this instrument of popular education, and place it in the service of the state and the nation.
Note that Hitler calls propaganda "popular education."
And just to be sure that the message does not get lost, Hitler shifts gears and starts laying down some of Hitlers favorite propaganda themes, which are rants against the liberal media.
So what does an unpatriotic press do?
But what food did the German press of the pre-War period dish out to the people? Was it not the worst poison that can even be imagined? Wasn't the worst kind of pacifism injected into the heart of our people at a time when the rest of the world was preparing to throttle Germany, slowly but surely? Even in peacetime didn't the press inspire the minds of the people with doubt in the right of their own state, thus from the outset limiting them in the choice of means for its defense?
Oh no, pacifists! I bet those Nazis would have infiltrated and spied on the Quakers!
Now for a little rant that sounds like the UN "black helicopter crowd:
Was it not the German press which knew how to make the absurdity of 'Western democracy' palatable to our people until finally, ensnared by all the enthusiastic tirades, they thought they could entrust their future to a League of Nations?
And then the media encouraged immorality!
Did it not help to teach our people a miserable immorality? Did it not ridicule morality and ethics as backward and petty-bourgeois, until our people finally became 'modern'?
If the media does not clap hard enough, Tinkerbelle dies! This sounds familiar.
Did it not with its constant attacks undermine the foundations of the state's authority until a single thrust sufficed to make the edifice collapse?
And they didn't support the troops!
Did it not fight with all possible means against every effort to give unto the state that which is the state's? Did it not belittle the army with constant criticism, sabotage universal conscription, demand the refusal of military credits, etc., until the result became inevitable?
And yes, Hitler actually uses the phrase "The liberal press!"
The so-called liberal press was actively engaged in digging the grave of the German people and the German Reich. We can pass by the lying Marxist sheets in silence; to them lying is just as vitally necessary as catching mice for a cat; their function is only to break the people's national and patriotic backbone and make them ripe for the slave's yoke of international capital and its masters, the Jews.
Ooops, bad Feuher! You were doing so will there limiting yourself to beating on the press. Saying "Jews" is just really really awful, and if you had just said "The New York Times," everyone would have known what you meant.