I often wonder if the time and effort I put into writing makes any difference. Motivated purely by preserving our nation’s values, and passing the torch of liberty to the next generation, my writing is geared toward educating people about the realities of the political world they live in. It isn’t that I am an expert. The approach I take is very scholarly, as I have come to believe that understanding the academic research that goes into persuading the public to accept certain positions, is essential if we intend to stand for what we believe in. Much of what I write about concerning persuasion and propaganda, or Critical Race Theory, is a product of dedicated study. One thing I never do is express opinions or beliefs without an academic reference supporting them. Writing is a process that starts by learning to reinterpret texts that reinforce what it is the writer wants to say, and being able to back it up. In essence, the writer’s journey often times begins by self-educating. Learning how to effectively craft a text that represents what is being studied. For example, before even typing a single word this morning, I read two journal articles on persuasion and propaganda, and a third on writing development, for reference, which I first read a long time ago. After decades of practice, a writer’s work begins to transform from self-informing to writing with the reader’s needs in mind. This is generally called the knowledge-crafting stage of writing. This can often take several years. Especially if the writer is deeply involved in studying the topic he or she is writing about. The depth to which the study of persuasion, in relation to human behavior, and the work they put into understanding how politically orientated messages induce changes in opinions and attitudes, is astounding. Over the years, I have learned that many people are turned off by this type of writing. Most people want to read something that reinforces what they believe or only takes a minute or two to read. That’s fine, my writing isn’t for them. It is for the inquiring mind that is curious, and inclined to follow the links and citations provided so that they can educate themselves and see that I am not just spouting some misinformed, personal opinion. Sometimes this requires more effort because not everything I cite is available for free in its entirety. Sometimes, the best I can do is show the reader the information exists. If at the end of the day, a handful of people seek it out for themselves and see the points I am making, the effort to me, is worth it. This is the type of writing I am trained to do and it is the type of writing I will continually try to perfect.
Why do I think this is important? Many Americans are blissfully unaware (and believe me, when it comes to this topic ignorance certainly is bliss) of the work being done to understand the effects of political/media messaging on the public mind. The unfortunate reality is they have been studying the effects of propaganda and persuasion since the early twentieth century. In fact, according to a paper entitled Propaganda Studies in American Social Science: The Rise and Fall of a Critical Paradigm, it was after WWI when world leaders saw the effectiveness of one-sided, politically motivated messages meant to gain support from the public for the war, that the study of propaganda took a different direction. They saw that the public’s views on social issues could easily be controlled through the manipulation of information. This was at a time when mass media was taking on a whole new form through printed newspapers and radio broadcasts. Even John Dewey, known as the father of modern education, had noted that public opinion could be shaped and controlled by those who controlled the flow of news. The study of propaganda, from a psychological point of view, steadily progressed into the study of persuasion. Social engineers took a deep dive into studying what parts of messages influenced the public to change their opinions in desired directions. This is a study that continues to this to this day as propaganda and persuasion are of the same paradigm being used to influence opinion. The purpose of the new propaganda is to frame all the news in a way that aligns with the beliefs and attitudes of the chosen audience, so they can gain your acceptance for an agenda you would otherwise reject. As the book Media, Propaganda, and Persuasion so eloquently states, “to make the unruly public more productive and orderly, publicists first need to discover what the public thinks and feels.” To elaborate on this idea I will draw attention to another study I cited in my article, Understanding the Nature of Propaganda: The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion. Published in the journal American Political Science Review, the study revolved around the use of the Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion. An issue was presented to the public, by Donald Trump, revolving around a minimum wage proposal from both a left and rightwing perspective. This was done not only to gauge the opinions and attitudes of the public but to test the republican party’s loyalty to President Trump. What they found was that conservatives, if receiving a properly framed message, were likely to go along with any proposal as long as it was coming from their candidate. This is an indisputable conclusion as I have experienced for myself, the resistance that comes from conservatives any time I mention Trump’s support for red flag laws. There is no doubt in my mind that his statement “take the guns first and go for due process later” was also another study into Republican support for their president. Imagine their surprise when the popular response from conservatives, even die-hard second amendment supporters, was “fake news and/or, 4D chess.” I am not picking on Trump, they do this with everything. This is just the most relevant example that is easily drawn on by readers.
The American public has a problem. unfortunately for them, in many ways, it is a problem of their own doing. The government thinks we are stupid and gullible, and in many ways, we are. Face it, most people do not put in the work to understand what is going on beyond what the media tells them. This is something that the researchers are duly aware of, which is why they study the effects of media messaging. According to an article entitled Changing Minds: Political Arguments and Political Persuasion, researchers are well aware of the fact that people are more influenced by messages that they perceive to have more of a negative consequence for themselves or those close to them. They have found that people influenced by the negative connotations in a message – if deeply affecting them – become more resistant to attitude change. This can work both ways. Take gun control, for example, what is or isn’t considered negative information is largely dependent on existing worldviews. Gun owners view the message of gun control itself as a negative, and something that would certainly entail more loss as opposed to gain, making us resistant to the idea of new gun restrictions. Those supportive of gun control, on the other hand, see the reason for the message as negative. The constant fear of gun violence portrayed by incessant media pushing the agenda is enough to simply make them go along. This is why they do studies that gauge the perceptions and opinions of targeted audiences, so they know how to reframe the message to gain compliance. Another thing that researchers know through decades of study is that many people – if a message is too difficult to follow or understand beyond the simplicity of eliciting an initial response, which oftentimes revolves around how they initially feel – will simply turn themselves off to it. This is something that also works both ways. For instance, many people shut themselves off to the above example with Trump and his message supporting the adoption of red flag laws and simply resorted to relying on propaganda catchphrases like fake news, draining the swamp, and four-dimensional chess because it was too difficult to wrap their head around the idea that they were being deceived. You know the saying, it is easier to fool someone than to convince them they were fooled. That is a statement that potentially applies to everyone my friends. Look at how many so-called gun owners are coming out with messages that support increased gun control for the advancement of public safety. Believe it or not, many people are influenced by these messages for the reasons mentioned above. They appeal to emotions.
Most people have no clue that they fall into one of two categories identified by persuasion researchers. The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion suggests that people are either able to contemplate a political message, or they are not. You are either in the stimulus-response or cognitive theory category. These are known as the central and peripheral routes of persuasion. If the central route of persuasion is taken it is because it has been determined that the targeted audience has the ability to compare and contrast the information with what they already know about the topic, or, they have demonstrated an ability to think beyond the limited confines of the message itself. Once this determination has been made, the message is reframed based on the attitudes and behaviors researchers have discovered through various polls and other means of study, (think about the one by the American Political Science Review) and fed back to the public again in an effort to further gain compliance. Of course, this doesn’t work for everybody. There are people on both sides of the aisle who are smart enough to think for themselves and see what is going on. These people are not the targeted audience. The thing to take note of concerning the central route, or people with high elaboration likelihood, is once the message is reframed within the existing worldview or belief system of the intended audience, attitude change in the desired direction is more probable than with people who fall into the stimulus-response category. Why? Because they simply don’t care. People falling in the central route category pride themselves in their self-perceived intelligence, therefore, when they change their opinions based on a reframed message, they are unlikely to deviate from it. Think about this for a moment. A popular belief among Trump supporters, one no doubt reinforced by the popular way he insulted the liberal left with his admittedly, hilarious rhetoric towards them, was that he was in fact working to expose and drain the swamp. Researchers knew this. Why? Because they were the ones that created that perception in the first place. When Trump expressed his support for red flag laws people simply didn’t believe it because that information automatically fell within their pre-existing perceptions that Trump was fighting, not cooperating with, the left. The goal of the propagandists from this point of view was not to get the Republicans to necessarily support red flag laws but to see what the attitudes were in relation to Trump’s support for them. Again, to gauge party loyalty. In essence, they essentially got the public to ignore the fact that a Republican president, on live television no less, advocated for policies that destroyed the very foundations of representative, republican government. After his comments expressing support for such policies, seventeen states, including several with Republican governors, passed their own versions of red flag laws, stripping people of their constitutional guarantees to the protection of due process of law. In the meantime, people trying to draw this to other people’s attention were ridiculed as “never Trumpers,” which of course was nothing but another useful catchphrase slogan meant to silence opposition much the same way the word racist is. This is what Joost Meerloo meant when he said in his book, The Rape of The Mind, that propaganda is used to keep the mind trapped in a narrow, totalitarian view of the world. It was extremely helpful to the political propagandists that Trump supporters were ignoring what he said, and they were likely, laughing their collective butts off at how true their theories turned out to be.
The thing that readers need to understand is that these are not my opinions, but the theories and conclusions written by the researchers themselves. I am only sharing them with you and showing how they could potentially apply to the events we are witnessing. The fact of the matter is this, these researchers know beyond any reasonable doubt on their part, that the masses do not think beyond the limits of what is portrayed in the media. Most people simply fall in the stimulus-response category, and it is believed that they are easily guided into compliance simply by the nature of the message, and how it is aimed at their emotions. For those that think a little deeper, messages are reframed to fit within the confines of their worldviews and are oftentimes changed in real-time to reflect changing opinions and build on attitude change momentum. The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion has been used to infiltrate social media groups to gauge public attitudes toward Covid-19, masking, and vaccine compliance. They also do it to gauge attitudes toward political candidates and use that information to send specifically tailored ads that fit the audience’s preexisting beliefs. They do this to understand the attitudes of the public and what it will take to change them. This is why I write the way I do. As I stated earlier, most people do not take the time to research anything, making them very susceptible to methods of persuasion. Doing the research, however, solidifies the mind, and creates a resisting attitude that isn’t easily influenced. I would rather possess a robust skepticism, in the name of defending liberty, toward any message from any political candidate as opposed to not questioning anything they say. People always want a solution after being presented with a problem. The solution is self-evident. Cleon Skousen said it best in The Naked Communist. “If enough people will study the problem and move across the world in one united front, it is entirely possible that the race can close out the twentieth century with this monumental achievement. Freedom in our time for all men!” We are a little past the end of the twentieth century, but I believe the solution starts with understanding what these people know about our cognitive processes and how we respond to their messaging.
Thanks for reading. Be sure to visit my website www.defenseofournation.com
