The Secret War to Occupy Your Mind

Conversation with Author and Propaganda Expert Mark Crispin Miller

“Who needs conspiracy theories when we have con’s piracy facts?” -- Swami Beyondananda

If you’re like most Americans I know, you are watching the train wreck that is American politics chugging down the track to oblivion, and wondering how it is that the likes of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln have devolved into the (dis)likes of Trump and Biden? How is it we have hunkered into angry rival political camps spending our fury on one another rather than coming together to face our multiple crises together? As the Swami has noted, we are no longer rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. We are now throwing them at each other.

If this toxic “shituation” has left you feeling baffled … disheartened … enraged, then you will find this week’s Front and Center conversation with author, NYU professor, and propaganda expert Mark Crispin Miller illuminating and elucidating, as he shines a light on how entire populations are manipulated, and don’t even know it. To quote Swami again, “The truth shall upset you free.”

Mark Crispin Miller is a long-time faculty member of New York University, and author of numerous books on the political and cultural scene, including Boxed in: the Culture of TV … The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder … Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order … Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them) … and Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008.

And while Mark didn’t exactly “write the book” on propaganda, he did write the introduction to the 2005 edition of Edward Bernays’ classic 1928 book, Propaganda. (For those who don’t know, Bernays was Sigmund Freud’s nephew and has been called “the father of modern public relations”. Perhaps his best-known stunt occurred at the Easter Parade in Manhattan in 1928, when he was in the employ of the American Tobacco Company, makers of Lucky Strike cigarettes. At an appointed moment, young women marching as suffragettes stopped, lit up cigarettes, held them aloft and proclaimed them “torches of freedom.” Prior to that time, it was considered unladylike to smoke. After that … well, you’ve come a long way, baby. For a deeper look at Bernays and his work, check out the 2002 BBC documentary, Century of the Self. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s)

Curious to learn more?

In this riveting and highly-informative conversation, Mark shares how a truth-teller becomes a “conspiracy theorist”, and how being branded as such led him to discover how and why that term was popularized. He walks us through the untold history (i.e., provable facts that have been conveniently left out of the narrative) of post-World War II American history. Mark says, “They call people conspiracy theorists so that no one will pay attention to what they're saying.” Speaking of how the term “conspiracy theorist” was used to delegitimatize those who questioned the official JFK assassination story, he says, “The purpose of the propaganda is to persuade people to ignore a threatening counter narrative. The tactic of dismissing dissidents as conspiracy theorists has worked like a charm, and put a lot of people to sleep.”

Mark offers his own story of having his NYU class on propaganda de-platformed because he had the audacity to discuss how propaganda was being used to “sell” the official COVID narrative. And … he offers this caveat – no one, no matter how “smart” they are, are “infoolable”. And he cites his own experience and discomfort confronting his own cherished “truths”. He tells us, “Many things that I believed, and believed ardently, I came to discover were groundless. And I came to that discovery through the critical study of propaganda. You can actually learn a great deal about reality by studying propaganda.”

Above all, Mark says, it is much, much easier to see how others (particularly the “other side”) are being manipulated by propaganda, while we stay convinced our side is telling us “The truth”. He says, “Bernays understood that propaganda has to be disguised as something else. It has to be disguised as news, has to be disguised as entertainment, and if it is disguised in this way, then people have let their guard down, because they don't know that that's what it is that's confronting them. And they tend to believe it that much more readily.”

One of our key missions at Front and Center is “seeking the whole truth together”. Join our quest, join the upwising, join the conversation.

Mark’s website https://markcrispinmiller.com/

Mark’s Substack Site https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/

Propaganda in Focus http://propagandastudies.ac.uk/propaganda-in-focus/

Watch on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINmvhod1so

Watch on Locals. https://frontandcenter.locals.com/

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify.

Listen on Stitcher

Front and Center can also be found on most other podcast providers.