Image above, from the Washington Post, 17 July 2017. Donald Trump seems to have been basically unaffected by the Russiagate campaign, even with those who disapprove him. Is it a sign that propaganda doesn't work anymore as it used to in the past?
It has been said that the best trick of the devil is to convince you that he doesn't exist. The same holds for propaganda, which draws most of its power from being able to convince people that it doesn't exist. Yet, it exists and its impact on people's lives has been gigantic. The more we try to ignore it, the more it affects us, especially those of us who claim to be immune from it.
Yet, it would seem that propaganda can work only when it can eliminate or marginalize the opposing voices in environments. Maybe the concept of "free press" is a little optimistic today in the Western World. Still, with the availability of the Internet, everyone can verify the media statements and there is no lack of opposing voices in the galaxy of the social media and the various independent media sites. That had led someone to prophesize "The end of Spin".
Can it be that propaganda has been weakened by the Web? Difficult to say, but some examples indicate that something has changed. A good example is the attack on Russia. It was done literally by the book, applying all the recipes that are known to work and have worked beautifully well in the past. In particular, it was based on demonizing the bad guy of the moment, Vladimir ("Vlad") Putin, accused to be a bloodthirsty dictator and compared to, well, you guess whom! The real objective, however, soon became to use the already done demonizing work to bring down the hated Donald Trump, accused over and over of connivance with the evil Russians,Did it work? In short, no. At least for what it was its main purpose, that of bringing down Donald Trump, it was an abject failure. Despite the daily hammering of all sort of accusations about Trump being Putin's straw man, the idea just didn't stick. Even with those who disapprove Trump as president, the idea that he is somehow connected to, or working for, Russia and Putin ranks very low among the criticism list.
But that doesn't mean that the anti-Russian propaganda didn't work. Here are some recent Gallup poll results:
The barrage of anti-Russian news on the mainstream media has clearly had some effect, bringing 70% of Americans to have an unfavorable opinion of Russia. So, propaganda still works, it seems.
Yes, but only within some limits. If we compare these data with those for Iraq, we find that in 2003, 93% of Americans (!!) declared to have an unfavorable opinion of Iraq. That was a true triumph of modern propaganda that could obtain this result on the basis of a complete fabrication: that of the "weapons of mass destruction" allegedly deployed in Iraq. Such an extreme view of Russia seems unlikely to be attainable today.
So, could it be true that propaganda doesn't work anymore so well and so smoothly as it did in the past? Or is it Trump the maverick who is disrupting everything? The only thing we can say is that propaganda may have weakened a little, but it is still the formidable weapon it has been from the time when it was developed in its modern form by people such as George Creel and Edward Bernays.
Yet, in the long run, even the most wondrous contraptions are subjected to the Seneca Collapse. And one of the reasons why empires collapse is because of the mountains of lies that the elites tell to their subjects. It has happened in the past, it may happen again. It probably will.
