[Opinion] - Propaganda Restricts Speech More Than Censorship Does: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix - Caitlin Johnstone ( caitlinjohnstone.com )

yiliu , 10 months ago

To paraphrase:

We live in a society with something much worse than censorship: we live in a society where I can say whatever I want, but other people disagree with me!

Obviously, this isn’t because I’m wrong, or my opinions are debatable. Clearly it must be because everybody is too stupid to see the truth, and they’re easily tricked by my ideological opponents, who are liars and who don’t actually believe anything they claim to believe.

The ideal society would be one where everybody was totally free to agree with me and my opinions, and all other opinions and viewpoints were recognized as being incorrect!

Arotrios OP , 10 months ago

Dafuq you talkin' about Willis?

The article doesn't say that at all. It's an analysis of the influence of corporate propaganda on the exercise of free speech, and how that influence is more powerful than censorship attempts, as it creates a narrative matrix in which true challenges to the status quo are drowned out by the weight of the propaganda.

There's no place where the author argues for censorship. Rather they argue that censorship holds little weight in comparison to corporate propaganda when it comes to constructing a political narrative. This is arguably true, and an interesting debate.

I think you need to go back and actually read the article instead of commenting on the headline.

yiliu , 10 months ago

I’m just reading between the lines. I did skim a bit, but I didn’t miss much.

The culture war is a psyop? By who? Are Biden and Trump in cahoots? Is Trump much, much, much smarter than he seems? Or are they both puppets? And if so, of whom? Don’t tell me it’s a big conspiracy of ((International financiers)) or something…

The culture war is just tribalism and populism in a new medium. It’s not a fucking conspiracy by a shadowy elite, it’s mobs getting worked up and then politicians pandering.

Again, the implicit suggestion is: the reason people don’t agree with the author about shit is because they’re being tricked. I agree it’s frustrating that polarization has made American politics stupid as shit, but it doesn’t take a corporate conspiracy to make people behave stupidly: it comes to us very naturally.

Arotrios OP , 10 months ago

You missed the entire point of the article and put in your own interpretation. Don't read between the lines if you're not willing to make the effort to read the post.

The author is describing the large scale paradigms put in place by multiple corporate and governmental power structures. This isn't a mysterious cabal - this is something that media execs and political lobbyists will openly admit they're aiming for to increase engagement so that their political power and wealth increases.

It's not a new phenomena - look at the government sponsored propaganda films of the past, the war on drugs (but not Oxycotin, conveniently), the revival of racist rhetoric in the GOP, and the constant reinforcement of capitalist thought throughout the education system.

There's no implicit suggestion that I can find other than the author's hopelessness at this state of affairs. This is the most political statement (other than support for civil rights) within the work:

It’s been this way for generations, and it’s all people know. That everything is confined in this way starves the populace of all nourishment of mind and heart, and it narrows the scope among artists on their ideas of what is possible and what’s worthwhile. It has shrunk the confines of what artists have been willing to explore by orders of magnitude, and it’s resulted in a mainstream culture that is shallow, power-serving and uninspired from top to bottom.

Humanity would look much different and the world would be a much better place if this hadn’t been happening all these years. Capitalist culture is brain poison.

Someday the leaders of ecocidal corporations will be put on trial for their crimes against our planet, and their defense that they did it to generate profits for their shareholders will be treated the same as war criminals saying they were just following orders.

This isn't about the author's politics, she's decrying a state of affairs that makes the exercise of political speech feel fruitless, because the conversation is always the same. The conversation is always the same because the subjects we talk about are set by the propaganda we consume every day, to the point where, like in Brave New World, most of the population can't even be bothered enough to care enough read the whole article.