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The Greeks used theater and societal entertainment to promote causes within their communities. The early philosophical leaders knew that they were educated and could use societal gatherings to gain support for city-state causes and teach expectations. The Greeks were excellent at telling stories and would be able to coerce others through their engaging lectures and handwritten books.
The term propaganda was not known until 1622. Pope Gregory XV created a group of cardinals that were relegated to going to heathen lands to convert them to Catholicism. This was seen as a morally sound reason, and propaganda was seen as acceptable. Throughout the middle ages, it began to be used for dishonest reasons. And by World War I, the military began to understand it as a tool for war.
After the first World War, fascists, and communists revolutionized the media of propaganda. Their military studied the science of how effective the sharing of information and ideas could be in convincing their citizens to join a common cause. Both Hitler and Mussolini held tight controls. Hitler hired a propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels. This is where the “Big Lie” originated.
It did not take long for the United Nations to respond in kind with their own communication to combat the opposition. By 1990, propaganda stopped being subvert and was placed in stores as playing cards for the Iraq War were created and sold. Yellow ribbons tied across the nation to support the people of Kuwait and our soldiers. Since 1990 the world has changed, becoming connected through the sharing of ideas via social media and internet sites.
In 2020 a large propaganda campaign began at the height of the covid pandemic. There were two types of individuals: those who followed the information, and those who sought to research their own. The “machine” began going to work, limiting access to social media, blocking anything that strayed from the official narrative as dangerous and labeled as a deliberate misinformation spreader.
This was a playbook straight from Adolf Hitler. Hitler’s rules according to the OSS: Never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
The CDC and WHO controlled the official account, and they allowed pharmaceutical companies to publish persuasive information that lacked clear data.
This past week the narrative is finally crumbling. The DOE and FBI now acknowledge what was once claimed to be, a conspiracy theory, that Covid originated in a Wuhan lab. And yesterday, Dr. Marty Makary, a professor and surgeon at Johns Hopkins, has written 10 myths during covid which are now deemed true.
It’s time to correct the record, and today’s show is one of the first steps.
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