Playlist for Show: Long Waves

Beginning a month long series examining propaganda in the US and globally.

Drawing on the classic text of Jacques Ellul and other works, I begin a month long series.

This first show opens with a discussion of an article in The Guardian regarding the high tech media employed by ISIS as a mimicry of Western propaganda, films, TV, and news. This introduces the examination of the differences, if any, between what passes as mainstream news in the West and that which is called out as propaganda originating in foreign countries.

The histories of propaganda in the West is traced through Leni Riefenstahl, Frank Capra and others.

Agitation propaganda is differentiated from integration propaganda, particularly in the modern form.

This modern form translates news events into political persuasion technologies designed to lead the audience to particular conclusions about the world and others (racial shooting, police killings, wars, etc. for political ends. Above all, they create fear and uncertainty leading to people’s doubting their sense of themselves in the world and replacing this with a social imperative and a prescription for action, or in some cases, inaction.

The necessity of self- and social-consciousness are discussed as ways of developing a critical consciousness of the propaganda.

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