Mark Freeman
Some Covid restrictions were lifted in New Zealand early last month, yet vaccine mandates remain for many employees, masks are still required in some public settings, and the jab continues to be promoted as a way to protect our loved ones. Enabling this ongoing oppression are the mainstream news media. Their mostly unquestioning coverage of the policies of the “single source of truth” government and the skewed science of the officially-sanctioned experts perpetuates the public’s state of hypnosis regarding all things Covid.
Of course, we know the local media are now reliant on government funding or owned by large multinational companies with shares in Big Pharma, making their claims of independent journalism laughable. Ironically, though, mainstream journalists seem to believe they’re on the side of truth and justice, courageously fighting mis- and disinformation. They may even see themselves as part of the romanticised “fourth estate”, which supposedly holds the legislature, executive and judiciary in democratic countries to account. But the reality is more prosaic – and unsettling.
American academic and activist Noam Chomsky says the media’s real purpose in a democracy is to defend the social and political agenda of the elite through the indoctrination of the masses. Drawing on the early-twentieth-century writings of American journalist Walter Lippmann and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Chomsky claims in the 1992 film, Manufacturing Consent, that indoctrination is “the essence of democracy”.
Since democratic societies can’t force people to do things as totalitarian states can, he says they need to control what people think so that the public submit to civil rule:
“The standard way to do this is to resort to what in more honest days used to be called propaganda, manufacture of consent, the creation of necessary illusions, various ways of either marginalizing the general public or reducing them to apathy in some fashion.”
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient, Chomsky argues in his 2011 book How the World Works, is to “strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum… That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the pre-suppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
We usually associate indoctrination and propaganda with authoritarian regimes like Nazi Germany. But as it turns out, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was greatly inspired by the work of American public relations pioneer Edward Bernays, who used mass psychology to design publicity campaigns. Among his achievements, Bernays helped build public support for World War One and successfully promoted a cigarette brand as a slimming aid in order to entice more women to smoke. In his 1928 book, Propaganda, he wrote:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. … We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.”
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
There may be a positive aspect to propaganda, but its dark side is undeniable, as we’ve seen in the last two years when democracies have experimented with totalitarianism. Interestingly, the occasional mainstream media outlet overseas has openly acknowledged covid indoctrination’s destructive power. Last year Germany’s Bild newspaper and Denmark’s Ekstra Bladet apologised for their covid fear-mongering coverage, admitting they had pushed propaganda.
There’s been no such mea culpa from any of the New Zealand media. As long as government and corporate money is propping them up, that’s unlikely to happen. Thankfully, though, we have The BFD and other truly independent outlets stepping into the gap of the missing-in-action fourth estate. May their anti-propagandist voices grow stronger and stronger!