Guerrilla History - What Is Propaganda? w/ Lucia Hubinska

Episode Date: May 10, 2026

In this fascinating episode of Guerrilla History, we are joined by researcher and academic Lucia Hubinska to provide a (2 hour) introduction to the topic of Propaganda.  Even with the 2 hours of analysis and discussion here, we only started to scratch the surface of this topic, so stay tuned for further discussions with Lucia on this!  Additionally, for those of you who may have questions related to propaganda, listen to the full episode and you'll hear how to get those questions in for the next time we have Lucia on. Referenced towards the end of this episode was our friend Stuart Davis's article What is Netflix imperialism?, which we also discussed in our episode with Stuart and Greg Shupak  Media Narratives & Hegemonic Discourses, so be sure to check those out as well, both the article and the discussion are fascinating! Lucia Hubinska  is a Lecturer in Public Relations and Communications in China and is doing a PhD in Visual Communication and Propaganda. You can find her on social media on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You remember Den Ben-Brew in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history. It aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki.

Unfortunately, not joined by my usual co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, who of course is historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada, as he wasn't able to make it today. But don't worry, listeners, Adnan. Hopefully we'll be back very soon and hopefully for the very next episode of the show. We have a really interesting discussion ahead of us today on a topic that comes up periodically throughout guerrilla history's entire catalog, but that we haven't devoted intense study on the topic specifically yet.

So I am very excited for this coming conversation and we have a great guest to talk about it with. But before I introduce the guest or have her introduce herself and the topic that's at hand, I want to remind you listeners that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history with the reminder that you'll never hear an advertisement on the show and that we're 100% sponsored by you, the listeners. So if you do appreciate the work that we do on this show, do consider joining us on patreon.com,

again, forward slash guerrilla history, guerrilla with two R's. So with that being said, I mentioned we have a really great guest today, and we're going to be talking about propaganda, kind of an introduction to propaganda and understanding propaganda with Lucia Hubinska. Lucia, it's nice to see you again.

I know you and I have been talking on and off for a few months now, I think, at this point, but we finally had the opportunity to bring you on the show to talk about propaganda. How are you? And can you introduce yourself to the listeners? Yes, thank you very much, Henry, for having me on the show. I'm very well.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I know, yes, we've been talking about this podcast for a while now. And I have been always a little bit anxious or undecided as to what I am going to tell you and how I'm going to do it because propaganda is indeed a very rich field of analysis or a very rich concept or term to analyze. So hopefully I'm going to bring some interesting insight and perspectives to your listeners today. Just to say something about myself, I am currently a lecturer in the field of media theory. And my special specials,

My specialization or my background is in communications. I am specializing also in propaganda. So I'm pursuing a PhD in visual propaganda. I am specifically interested in my academic research in how political communication, visual culture, propaganda, how this intersect. I examine how media institutions and public narratives. shape our perceptions about the world and how they reinforce power in contemporary societies. I'm also a political commentator.

So because I have been previously a socialist candidate for the European Parliament, I now do some commentary work. I provide commentaries on unfolding political events in the world. world to various media outlets, including, you know, publishing in Slovakia and so on. So I have been also involved in some deal of activism and especially on the campaigns to release Julian Assange. So my interest, again, can span also, you know, media, freedom, information, freedom, rights to information, truth, transparency, you know, holding governments to account. And so on. So I think this would be pretty much a brief introduction I would provide at this point.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm really looking forward to the conversation. As the listeners of the show, I'm sure are aware. We talk about propaganda quite a bit on the show. And that is something that runs, again, for the duration of the show's history from basically episode one until episode whatever today is, 360 or something like that. We've very very much. We've very, talking about propaganda, we often focus on the propaganda of the imperial hegemon, but we often don't go and take the time to define what propaganda is and really understand what propaganda is. And it struck me relatively recently, and this was also prompted by discussions with our mutual friend, Ruhl Müller, that we should take some time and have a devoted study of

propaganda and an understanding of what propaganda is and that the listeners would really benefit from that both theoretical understanding of propaganda, but then also whether it be in this conversation or as we continue forward in future conversations to understand how propaganda works and concrete examples. And so I want to open the floor for you, Lucia. I mean, you're the specialist in propaganda here. I know I talk about it a lot, but you're actually the specialist in it. Defining propaganda is in some ways really easy, but in some ways it's really difficult because, you know, on one hand, there's a specific idea of what propaganda is. But on the other hand, we also have this idea that propaganda is just everything. Everything that you hear is propaganda in one sense

or another. So for the listeners, how would you like to introduce propaganda to them? What is the like base understanding of propaganda that you would like them to have to get into this conversation. Yes. Thank you, Henry. I mean, you have just made a very interesting point, and this is absolutely right. And these are the points that I will aim to address today. In terms of how I would introduce propaganda, I will start by perhaps saying or introducing my personal perspective for the moment in terms of, let's say, what it is like to study propaganda before I get to define her. So I think in today's world, in a world that is very highly mediated, that we can clearly see, you know, a very fierce competition of different

narratives going on. To study propaganda is perhaps one of the most revealing and unsettling areas of inquiry that where you can look at how communication operates as power in the contemporary world. So propaganda or the study of propaganda sits at the intersection of politics, media, communication studies, critical theory, which makes it very intellectually rich. But at the same time, this is precisely what makes it kind of conceptual. unstable, right? Propaganda is not even fully established as a field in its own right, despite ongoing calls by some critical propaganda scholars that want to formalize propaganda studies as a systematic and rigorous discipline. And that impulse is quite compelling, in my opinion,

Yet the very object of what we are studying here resists pure containment. So today propaganda is a deeply contested term. It is really difficult to define it in a way that remains both analytically useful, let alone, you know, to apply it in practice or whether to identify it in society or we should counter it. So this difficulty is, however, not a weakness of propaganda studies or propaganda, but part of what makes propaganda so significant, because it is a concept that is saturated with politics. It is shaped by competing interests. It both also constitutes competing interests or it enables interest.

And it is deployed very strategic. strategically and ideologically across different contexts. And we should take that quite seriously because every time the term propaganda is used, it really deserves scrutiny. What happens often, and I will touch on this later on as well, is that when we hear propaganda, we immediately dismiss that piece of information or communication. So in this way, rather than inviting some kind of serious analytical inquiry, it kind of switches us off from analyzing that and dismissing it immediately. And I believe that is not right.

That is not the right way to approach it. Propaganda is not only something that exists out there. It is not some kind of entity that is just used by, you know, those in power or those in, you know, who own communication channels and so on. It is something that exists in messages or institutions, and it has also become propagandistic in its own right. Again, and that is the very paradox that I want to kind of try to illuminate in this discussion today.

If I were to propose a definition to begin with, I would put it quiet broadly. Propaganda is typically understood as a form of communication that seeks to influence or shape people's perceptions, attitudes and behaviors in ways that align with the interests of those in power. And even at this point for anyone thinking more critically, this can already sound quite vague and not especially distinctive, I believe. Because it starts to resemble other forms of persuasive communication like marketing, like advertising, like strategic communication, or other forms of communication that are, let's say, involved in some form of salesmanship. Some would even argue today that because capitalism and that we have in the West

and because Western societies are primarily defined by capitalism and therefore, you know, our societies are also defined by the logics of capitalism, by the logics of, you know, market transactions and so on, and this idea that everything is for sale in capitalism, some could argue that if we want to distinguish propaganda from other forms like advertising or marketing in the West, it is impossible. Because if we say that advertising and marketing are forms of communications that are, that their objective is to sell us something, then how can propaganda be? something else when everything is for sale in capitalist societies, even ideas, if we think of

propaganda as selling rather than products, selling ideas. But again, advertising and marketing, they do precisely that too. If I go a little bit deeper into that later on, you will see marketing and advertising, of course, do not just simply sell products. They sell much more than that, lifestyle, ideas, values, and so on. So this immediately raises a problem, because if propaganda looks so similar to these other practices, then perhaps it is not a clearly defined category at all, but rather something closer to some kind of an umbrella term that is actually often used to describe forms of persuasion that are either politically inconvenient or ideologically uncomfortable.

And that is why I also say that propaganda as a term is also propagandistic in itself. That's why I want, and that's kind of where I want to situate today's discussion. So the aim is to unpack how we think about propaganda and why that matters, not only in a theoretical sense, but also practically because the label propaganda is. also often used selectively, right? So it can be applied to some form of communication, while others which function in very similar ways are deliberately left out. And that selectivity can itself be manipulative. So overall, if we are, you know, if listeners are, if we are humans or personas in in the societies, then if we are interested in pursuing or promoting some

form of truth in society. And it doesn't have to be, you know, a truth that is derived from any grand narratives. But if we want to, let's say, be at least more objective or balance out some kind of manipulative, communicative, communicative practices, then the analysis of propaganda and understanding of it becomes very useful. I am not claiming, that I will always have definite answers to these questions or perhaps how to resolve this always, but I want to at least open up some directions of thinking that might help us approach the concept of propaganda more carefully and more critically. Propaganda is also typically understood as a form of communication that manipulates or influences

people's perceptions and attitudes, as I defined previously. And I also want to make one point to begin with because I will often be, or I will be talking about, let's say, the use of propaganda in so-called democratic societies today. And that is, I think, a very important point that, or it's a very important discussion or notion that revolves around discussions on propaganda is that both in public discourses but also academic discourses, propaganda is often associated with authoritarian regimes. And it is often thought of as something that the other does or that the enemy does. But to begin with the distinction between the so-called authoritarian and democratic

regime saying that, you know, propaganda in democratic regimes doesn't exist, well, there is now quiet and there has been actually for, you know, from scholars like Walter Lipman or Harold Laswell, they all agreed, even Edward Bernays, they all admitted and agreed that propaganda, in fact, is a very essential tool for democratic societies, is an essential tool of, you know, control and maintaining of public opinion and so on. But even the fact that we try to distinguish between the use in authoritarian and democratic societies is already propagandistic again, because we are supposing that our societies are in fact democratic, that what we live in the West are, you know, liberal democracies and so on. So I want to make a make.

this distinction or make this point quite clear that when I will talk about, you know, use of propaganda in democracies and so on, I don't want to necessarily perpetuate, let's say, the democracy propaganda itself. There's a lot of things that I would love to ask about that was a very rich answer, I think, Lucia. I just want to make a small flippant point first, which is that, you know, you bring up Edward Bernays, and this is only to to obfuscate the division between marketing and propaganda even more, because as you noted, Bernays did discuss and wrote about the critical role of propaganda within, quote, unquote,

democratic societies. But listeners who are familiar with Bernays will know him as the father of modern marketing. He was, I believe, Siegman-Froyd's and public relations, exactly. So he was, if I remember correctly, Freud's nephew, a Siegman-Froid's nephew, and utilize some of Sigmund Freud's work in developing modern conceptions of public relations and marketing. And here he is, the father of modern marketing and public relations, talking about the criticality of propaganda even within democratic societies.

So to get back towards diving in a little bit deeper into this topic, it's really interesting because, you know, in one sense, you mentioned that there's this. this perception that propaganda is carried out by the other. And there's also this perception that propaganda is inherently false, which it is not. And we'll talk about that a little bit more now. But there's also a perception, and it would be the opposite perception. And it's not that it's incorrect that just by fact of those in ruling positions saying something, inherently what they say is propaganda whether they intend it to be or not because, as you note, thinking about what propaganda really is, is it's a way of influencing the way that people think

that then conforms with the ruling elite of whoever is going to be saying that it depends on what country, what society you're in, who that is. But the very fact that they would put out any messaging at all, they are going to have their own interests. And as a result, of them having their interests and saying something, whether or not they're trying to take some advanced technique of trying to shape your idea to fit theirs, it inherently is going to be propaganda, whether successful or not. But I want to dive in a little bit deeper on this point that many people tend to think of propaganda as being inherently false. And you point out, and this is something that we also talked about off the record in a previous conversation that we

had. You'd say that propaganda is defined by form and intent, not necessarily truthfulness, but that doesn't mean that propaganda cannot be truthful. So I'm wondering if we can discuss a little bit about how propaganda isn't necessarily trying to make people believe something that isn't true, but rather it is a tool that is used and there can be true statements that come out within the context of propaganda. And furthermore, how would we recognize it without access to the intent of the producers of the propaganda? Okay. Yes, absolutely. So if I start with the last part that you just said, how would we recognize it? I would say something that I have already before mentioned on a different interview. And that is like my proposition that,

you know, we are much more receptive or much more alarmed about propaganda or we are much more aware of it when we encounter it presenting or propagandizing ideas that we do not identify with, that we do not believe in, that just do not fit into our, you know, cognitive or moral or whatever value framework of our worldview. So it is much easier for us to label something or even not necessarily label, even just truthfully identified that is a piece of propaganda if it is kind of activating our cognitive dissonance, right? But in terms of going back to this other statement, which I also built my understanding

on this. And I also always suggest this about propaganda is that, yes, propaganda doesn't have to be based on lies. Yes, it is manipulative, just like other forms of communication I have already mentioned, then I will mention today, just like public relations, just like advertising, just like marketing. There is dimension or the axis of power that runs through all of these types of communications. All of these are persuasive. So there is always an objective to persuade us for some specific ends or interests. But it doesn't mean that propaganda is based on lies. It is a tool. It can be very well used for very positive, you know, and noble ends. It is just a tool of communication, but it can also be totally abused and it can be used to propagandize evil

and nefarious purposes. So in order to explain this in a more complex and also be a little more academic in this way, I'm going to talk about some conceptions of propaganda by different theories, by different scholars that wrote about. propaganda. So in order to understand the pervasive nature of it, I want to examine some key theoretical contributions that form the intellectual backbone of propaganda. And I believe this should illuminate these assumptions about propaganda being, you know, associated with falsehoods and lies and so on. So I would start with Harold Laswell. He was really a foundational figure

in the study of propaganda, and he framed communication as a process of managing symbols. So in his influential work from 1927 called Propaganda Technique in the World War, Laswell argued that communication serves the interests of powerful groups by shaping public perception. And for Laswell here, propaganda works by systematically controlling the symbols, that individuals rely on to make sense of the world. The crucial insight here is that propaganda is not about telling outright lies, but about selectively framing information in ways that resonate with the dominant ideological structures of society. In his model of communication, it asks or Laswell asks questions such as who says what, to whom,

in what channel and with what effect. And this is the framework that underscores really that propaganda is not merely about also transmitting information, but about shaping the effect or the outcome of that communication. But again, we already have the insight. It is not about telling lies. It is just about choosing, let's say, what to say, what not to say. Then we can talk about Walter Lipman. Again, around the time of 1920s, I believe a few years earlier, Walter Lipman brought very popular, very influential book called Public Opinion, and it discusses how the media constructs what he called this pseudo-environment for individuals.

And so Lipman argued that given the complexity of the world, most people rely on. on mediated images of reality rather than direct experiences. And if you think about this, it could not be more relevant than today when you think how we are experiencing everything through our screens, through our smartphones, through the mediated images that are fed and delivered to us through these devices. And he also said that these images are shaped by the media and political elites who very carefully curate and distilling information to suit specific narratives.

So in the context of propaganda, Lipman's theory is significant because it really emphasizes how media creates this constructed reality, a very carefully or a world that is very carefully filtered through the lenses of powerful groups. therefore becomes the strategic constructions of these pseudo-environments, often through simplified narratives or using framing devices that fit pre-existing ideological goals. Then we have another very influential scholar Jacques Elul, who's done very major contributions to propaganda. And he wrote a book in the 60s. He took a more critical stance, arguing that propaganda is in fact totalitarian force inherent to modern society.

For Elul, propaganda operates in mass society where people are constantly bombarded by an overwhelming amount of information. And he contended that modern technological developments or advancements in communications had created a situation where propaganda is not just a tool used by governments or political elites, but it is in fact a structural necessity of modern society itself. Now, he distinguishes between two types of propaganda. The first one is agitation propaganda, which would seek to disturb and unsettle the social order, and then it's integration propaganda, which works to stabilize and perpetuate

the existing system. So let's say in this way we can already think of perhaps being positioned in a society where we have some kind of dominating, you know, founding myths that shape our, you know, shared cultural and symbolic vocabulary and so on. And, you know, where we have groups of people with shared notions of reality and so on, this could be. seen as, or we can say that integration propaganda operates in this context, whereas the propaganda that seems as kind of more hostile or the other, the propaganda of the other could be the agitation propaganda, something that might come from outside that seeks to actually change our perceptions, whereas integration propaganda is more stabilizing and kind of affirming the status quo. So here... If I may ask

a small follow-up question here. Sorry to interrupt, Lucia. But I also see where you could very easily have a combination of these two, you know, stabilizing forces and agitational forces within the same propaganda. And it just depends on where your locus is. So what came to my mind when you were speaking here is that we have many examples of popular movements or popular leaders in other parts of the world that are not operating in accordance with what the imperial hegemon would like them to. So the ones that first jumped to mind are Nasser, Lumumba, and in Vietnam. These movements were all extremely popular when they came up, but there was a construction of propaganda coming from outside, coming from the imperial core that was targeted against them.

So in one sense, it's stabilizing in my mind, and feel free to tell me if I'm wrong, because you're the specialist on this. In one way, it's stabilizing of the system, but if we're looking at it as a global system, as an imperialist hegemonic global system, and on the other hand, it's agitational in that it's trying to whip up and destabilize these popular national movements that are operating against the international system. Am I thinking of this in a somewhat logical way? Like can we have this two modes of analysis of what the propaganda is trying to do in the same piece of propaganda? Yes, absolutely. I think it's a matter of, let's say, perspective or the starting point of where you or the direction that you are looking. So whereas I imagine this, let's say, being inside a specific society.

So for those Vietnamese people at that moment, that propaganda of the imperial hegemon, let's say they have widely adopted already, you know, ideas or, you know, ideologies that they believed in and they were for them natural or inevitable, then that kind of propaganda, or at least for those who had interest in promoting these ideologies within the country, the propaganda of the imperial hegemon could have been the agitational propaganda, but at the same time, absolutely, from the global perspective, if we think of, you know, the world as being part of, yes, as being part of this big global hegemony of both, you know, the U.S. empire or global capitalism.

then it was totally stabilizing and normalizing integration propaganda. I'm not sure if that answers the question. It certainly does. And again, I apologize for interrupting your train of thought, but you did really bring up a very interesting point that, you know, prompted me to. So feel free to continue with where you were, Lucia. Absolutely.

No problem. Yes, and then we have, of course, Edward Herman, for example, and Noan Chomsky's propaganda. model. This was work done in the 90s, so this was of course a very famous work manufacturing consent, which critiqued most of all mainstream media's role in promoting the interest of powerful corporations and the state. So what they did to advance the understanding of how propaganda works is that they really suggested that media operates under set of filters that determine, again, what news is presented to the public based on factors,

you know, such as who owns the media like corporations or corporate ownership, you know, advertising revenue, how this might also determine what goes into news, what doesn't. So how these pieces of information broadcasted by the news or media corporations might jeopardize, perhaps the interest of the companies that are, you know, paying their paychecks through advertisements or through paying for advertising. And also how there was, of course, a deal of government influence in terms of determining, again, what is, let's say, permissible to be broadcast and whatnot. So all in all, these results in the media landscape that, again, was reinforced.

existing power structures rather than providing an impartial or diverse range of perspectives. And according to Herman and Chomsky, again, propaganda was in a democracy or in Western democracies was not necessarily about lying or coercion, but instead it involved controlling the flow of information in ways that privileged the interest of. elites, often, you know, by shaping the narratives that are presented as common sense. And in this sense, democracy was or can be seen as something that is, you know, manufactured through largely or too carefully curated information flows that will always marginalize dissenting viewpoints.

So tied to these ideas of Herman and Chomsky and that I'm, and that I'm not, you know, argued that propaganda in democracy is not necessarily about lying or coercion and who highlighted how media dominate or construct reality and how these perceptions or ideas in the media copy or reinforce existing power structures and serve the powerful interests. What comes to mind is the quote from Gabriel Rockhill latest book who paid the papers of Western Marxism. And I apologize if I don't quote it quite accurately, but I believe it said something like those who owns the means of production use their stolen wells to exercise near monopoly

control over the means of communication, while those deprived of property must fight tooth and nail to develop their own communication systems that help them spread their ideas and defend the basic argument that a better world is possible. And then there was, I believe, a second part where that said that, therefore, what happens being in this media environment that is largely, you know, defined by corporate interests, by the interests of the powerful, to fight against the dominant ideology is therefore extremely difficult. And those who are forced to fight imperialism are forced to fight as unorganized.

outsiders, spreading their message wherever and however they can. And I believe this was very well put and even reflects the our, I would say, own reality we are familiar with when we are trying to get our ideas across in our own political struggles. The same applies to me. I will have many people actually often judging and telling me what kind of media I speak to and speak for or speak with, where I don't believe in this kind of very selective approach because if we really want to reach the people, I believe we have to use every means possible to get the ideas across. And so therefore every media that provides platform for us to speak are, you know, our, let's say, media that we should talk to them in short. But that is kind of off topic, but it did remind me how this reinforces the point of, again, fighting against this dominant propaganda that is perpetuated by the mainstream media.

I just wanted to, so I have some kind of techniques of propaganda outlined. And I don't want to go into too much detail because, of course, I don't want to sound like this is a high school class of propaganda, right? But just to perhaps give some, if we think that we want to enlighten our listeners about, let's say, how they can also identify. identify forms of propaganda in society, then yes, I mean academically or in terms of propaganda studies or communication studies, there are patterns which emerge from this form of communication. And again, you will see how this can apply to various other forms of communications, which have been actually spared these negative reputation or connotations like propaganda. Actually, Lucia, that's the point that I want to ask about right now. So we'll save

the discussion of the specific techniques that are commonly used within propaganda for a little bit. But you just mentioned that the word propaganda itself has a very negative connotation of it. and the usage of the word propaganda in itself is a form of propaganda in terms of trying to get people to orient themselves away from what is being said. That's propaganda, therefore you have to orient yourself away from it. So I'm sure that listeners in the West will be extremely familiar that any time that there is something that comes out of countries that are adversarial to the imperial project, so Russia, China being the main ones on the international stage right now, any piece of information that is put out from those countries is labeled as disinformation or propaganda. So when Western media calls something Russian disinformation or Chinese propaganda, very rarely

do they do anything to then try to prove the claim that it is simply disinformation or propaganda? The usage of these words is enough to then dissuade people from believing. it. How do we, as anti-imperialists, avoid this same lazy labeling of propaganda as inherently a negative thing and then using this term itself in a propagandistic way that is to orient people away from what is being said by it? And furthermore, are there any positive criteria that you propose for identifying propaganda without it being just used as a dismissal of what's being said? Yes, I think you are absolutely right when you say that it is very easy to label something as

propaganda. And as I also previously mentioned, the moment that we do this, we kind of dissuade or we kind of start to think there is no need to. to do any analysis of that piece of communication that we do not need to think about that piece of information at all. So in this sense, the label or the term propaganda has been really weaponized and especially politically weaponized or ideologically. And it has become a really powerful tool to discredit something or delegitimize some sort of view. So when I was, for example, a couple of weeks ago when I was reading about propaganda,

I came across this Deutsche Welle article claiming that Chinese propaganda portrays the United States as a reckless aggressor in the Iran war. And the example that was cited in this article was this AI-generated animated video aired on this Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. And that's why I want to point to this deeper problem, right? I don't have a problem with the Deutsche Welle calling this piece, this video a propaganda, because I think we might quite accurately label it propaganda, because I think if we talk about certain criteria or techniques. It does use them, right?

It is a very, it is an animated video that is using, you know, humor or this context of animation and it uses, you know, humor and comics as some sort of persuasive device. It might obscure some information. It might rely on some kind of symbols that are widely accepted. and it relies on other presuppositions that are widely accepted. But the deeper problem is, again, not that they called it propaganda, but what followed afterwards? Because they used the term propaganda to actually distract from their own propaganda

that followed in the article. And this is what happens. And this is what I mean when I say that propaganda in itself has become propagandistic. That means that media outlets, politicians, commentators, you know, sometimes even academics, they will routinely deploy this word propaganda as sort of a weapon, right? So they use it to delegitimize, dismiss, and preemptively almost discredit, you know, politically inconvenient narratives that while simultaneously trying to obscure their own propaganda that is embedded with their own communication,

And again, the label is applied very selectively before any serious analysis takes place, right? So in this sense, calling something propaganda functions not or is there, not because we have analyzed something critically. And we have come to the conclusion that this form of communication is indeed propaganda, that we have applied some kind of rigorous set of assumptions or criteria to conclude that, but it's actually a substitute for that analysis. Again, that means that we have granted in our societies and because of the negative reputation that propaganda has, and I will also address this in a minute to say how it actually happened. So we have granted propaganda far too much power, right? So, again, we operate with the assumptions that something is false, something is untrue,

and something must be condemned or it's condemnable. So again, we treated as something that is unworthy of serious consideration. So, for example, in this particular case of Deutsche Welle, it really is convenient to label the Chinese video as propaganda to then follow with their own propaganda run, right? So it redirects the attention away from the substantive claim that the United States has acted as an aggressor or the stabilizing force in the Middle East and instead this piece, for example, will shift focus to condemning how Beijing manipulates its citizens because, Oh, it broadcast this propaganda video to convey a message.

But we are the righteous ones. We don't do such things. So whatever we say after this must be true. So if this claim comes from Chinese propaganda, then it must be false. Obviously, whatever they claim, because it comes from propaganda, U.S. cannot be the aggressor and the destabilizing force in the Middle East. And if it is false, then that is signalizing to the readers, you do not need to engage with that claim, just discredited or, you know, dismiss it right away. So this is not any kind of neutral, you know, analysis or anything.

It's very much some kind of discursive maneuvering, right? It acts to simultaneously discredit an argument to discourage readers to critically. engage with the content of that article and whatever is being offered as a counter reaction to that. And it also serves to reinforce their own moral and political positions. In other words, the word propaganda itself is what does the ideological work. It's not even that piece of propaganda in question. It's the word itself. So here is the key point. Again, the word, the piece of communication can be propaganda and can be factually accurate because it is not defined by whether something is true or false.

It is defined actually by its form, by the use of this persuasive technique to shape perception much like advertising or marketing. And again, the difference is that advertising, marketing and PR have been deliberately stripped of the negative connotations attached to propaganda. perhaps because they are deeply embedded within capitalist systems of persuasion, right? So, and as, you know, in Slovakia, we had this one advertising executive who famously implied in an interview with him that for him selling cigarettes wouldn't be a problem, but choosing the wrong political side would be.

He wasn't even being implicit. He was very much explicit. And he said he would never do any work for the prime minister because in Slovakia, everything has been for the last, let's say, 10 years at this framed in terms of good and evil. And there are good guys and bad guys. So he would never work for that bad guy because that is politically the wrong side. But he would have no problem to participate in the capitalist logic of selling some. something that kills people. And that's kind of crazy. But it also brings me, so when I talk about

how public relations or advertising have been spared these negative connotations. And you mentioned Edward Bernays before. And it is actually part of this rebranding that Bernays himself participated on. So after the two world wars, he, He was very much aware of the fact that both, you know, the Nazi or all of them, Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, you know, even Soviet Union, right, they institutionalized propaganda within the core functions of governance. They use it for their own means and ends and so on. And so by the mid-20th century, Edward Bernays described that propaganda got to be bad words because of the Germans using it during the, you know, World War I and World War II.

And so what he said was that now I actually, and he admitted that what he did was to rebrand propaganda itself and came up with a new term or new institution rather, the Council of Public. relations, right? And since then, terms such as strategic communication, public affairs, political marketing, public diplomacy, perception management, even psyops, you know, have come to be used in order to describe all of the range of activities that would have once been called propaganda. Therefore, we can also say that rather than being, let's say, a serious mode of inquiry, propaganda or what happened to propaganda is that propaganda became propaganda, right? And authors like Taylor, for example, again, quite critical scholar in propaganda studies, he said that this rebranding of propaganda works to inhibit awareness of manipulation

through propaganda. And he said that an entire euphemism industry, and I'm quoting him here, An entire euphemism industry has developed to deflect attention away from the realities of what they do, ranging from spinoctoring and public affairs at the political level to international information or strategic influence at the diplomatic level and that information operations and perception management at the military level. They, and he meant the Western governments, are of course worried about the historical associations of propaganda as an activity of totalitarian regimes, but despite the euphemism

game, democracy have grown ever more sophisticated at conducting propaganda, however, labeled which only they denied to be propaganda in the first place. And so I think that's very telling. And, you know, one of the things that I also said when I was, you know, arguing about how this, why we condemn so much or why we pretend to be so above this propaganda, how in the West we are so dismissive of it, we are so, you know, we scorn over it. We think it's something, again, associated with this totalitarian regimes where people have no freedom in terms of getting information, making their own decisions.

So we'll go to great lengths to justify, you know, all other forms of persuasive communication but we are being propagandistic ourselves because we just keep labeling everything, you know, propaganda, everything that we do not agree with. And in that sense, we are also greatly, you know, manipulating discourses. And, you know, I had told you this just before we started recording because this example came out about two minutes before we started our call today, Lucia. But it's interesting, I think for the listeners as well, So this literally came out two minutes before we started today. The Economist put out an article.

And their caption for the article to get you to want to read it was, and I'm quoting them here, astonishingly, a murderous dictatorship appears to be winning the propaganda battle against the land of the free and the home of Hollywood, curious as to how, register to continue reading. and it's a story about how these Lego videos about Trump and the action in Iran have been wildly successful. Iran as supporters of Iran. I know some of them have come out from Iran itself. Others have come out from Iranian diaspora.

Others are coming out from independent people. But there are these Lego videos that are telling the story of what's happening in Iran from the Iranian perspective. And wildly successful. I know that the creator of the most popular of these YouTube channels that has been putting out, these Lego videos, just had their channel removed by YouTube a few days ago. I had seen that in the news. You know, the imperial hegemon doesn't sleep and allow themselves to lose. They have to, you know, manipulate their own platforms in order to ensure that they're winning.

But what is particularly interesting to me is not how blatant the, again, propagandistic framing of this is, a murderous dictatorship appears to be winning the propaganda battle. The interesting part of this headline for me is that it is framed as a propaganda battle against the land of the free, which would indicate that they're acknowledging, one, that the United States also does propaganda. I mean, they're calling the United States to land of the free. And that, of course, is propaganda as well. You know, this dichotomy between murderous dictatorship versus land of the free. But the, the, whole battle of propaganda line, that individual phrase is the most interesting part of this to me, because of course the economist is going to be trying to bias its readers against Iran and Iranian

perspectives and bias them towards the United States and American perspectives. But the fact that they almost, it seems accidentally, are acknowledging that the United States is conducting propaganda as well is particularly interesting. And what I'm sure I didn't, you know, register on the economist to read the article, and I wouldn't have had time anyway. It literally came out two minutes before we started the call. But I'm sure that they're not stating in their article, well, the reason why Iran's propaganda is going more successfully than the United States' propaganda is because their propaganda is true. And the United States' propaganda is all falsehoods. I'm sure that that's not what they're saying. But it is interesting that they're acknowledging the propagandistic side of the Americans as well. Okay, well, it's an interesting reading into that. I mean, yes, it definitely can be one of the interpretations, I guess. Personally, maybe I wouldn't necessarily think that.

But at the same time, and maybe this is just me, but to be honest, I cannot imagine who in their right senses believes still that the U.S. is the land of the free. And I think that this might be either deliberately exaggerated, simply it might be just a clickbait headline or something. That's my reading as well for what it's worth. Yes. Secondly, it is also absolutely, you know, clear example of propaganda as well. Like one of the things, one of the techniques that propaganda uses are these, you know, binary oppositions, this simplification of, again, being the oppressive tyrannical regime versus going against the land of the free and so on.

So this is just so blatantly obvious that it's suspicious even, right, as to how they really mean it. And I always tend to believe that, you know, whoever is in charge of this mass media or the elites in the government or that they maybe do not think of us as being really so brainwashed and stupid that we would believe it. So I give them at least this privilege of perhaps you know what you are doing and you are just trying to get attention. right, and you don't really believe that we will actually fall for this. I am not actually sure what they are, what they mean with this. And I haven't seen it, and I would also be interesting, interested to read the article and to analyze it perhaps might be. Maybe for a future episode, we'll both have the opportunity to read it before.

Hopefully they, you know, we'll have more time, more than two minutes next time. Yes, yes. So, Lucy, I want to turn us forward. I know that there's so much that we could say on all of these criteria. But one of the things that I think that might be interesting for us to turn to now are some of the methodologies of propaganda. So this is something that we had alluded to in the past, but it might be useful for the listeners to get a little bit more concrete now in terms of,

well, we've been talking about propaganda, and we've been talking about propagandistic actions, and we've been talking about propagandistic actors, and we've been talking about propaganda as propaganda, but we haven't actually talked about the methodology of propaganda. How does propaganda actually work? So can you break that down for us? How does propaganda work? And what are some of the more common methods that take place within propaganda? that allow it to perpetuate itself.

You know, that it's successful, obviously, because everybody does it and basically everything is it, but what are the common features or methods of propaganda? Okay, so yes, we can, you know, having explored this theoretical foundations or context and perhaps these common assumptions about propaganda, we can talk about some specific techniques used or methods, used in propaganda. Again, these methods have been historically used to shape public perceptions,

often in ways that might be unnoticed by the target audience, right? Because it's not only about what propaganda is saying, but how it is saying that. So, and I have mentioned this thing earlier, one thing is framing, right? So, so, So framing refers to the way that information is presented, which really significantly influence how it is understood. Now, framing is also a very dominant, or it's one of the earlier media theories. So it's about, it's not always about what the media is saying, but what it is also not saying or how is it saying it?

So it's not about, let's say, what media tells us to think, because that's a very simplified way of thinking about media that assumes or simplified way of thinking about propaganda in that manner. It assumes some kind of direct penetration into people's minds and so on. So this is about not what we should think, but how we should think about it or what we should think about. So again, this is about focusing on certain aspects of an issue while, you know, downplaying others. And in this way, propagandists can manipulate how the public perceives a certain situation.

I just talked about framing to my students last week in a lecture on a narrative. And I made it clear to them that, you know, you can have, let's say, the same set of facts or evidence or even, you know, let's say the same reality. And we can talk about it in very different ways. And the ways that in which we talk about that is very influential. So we can see like news coverage of war can be framed in terms of battle between, you know, the tyrannical, oppressive. regime that kills its own people and the righteous, you know, good government of the land of the free that want to bring democracy and advance human rights and so on. And again, this can be used to influence the public support to, or to influence the public to support military interventions

by presenting something as, you know, moral imperative. Here, even, the concept of pseudo-environment that I talked about earlier by Lipman is deeply related to this because it explains how people form opinions based on these frames provided to them. So, again, we can think of these frames as some kind of pictures in our heads, right? And those pictures can shape attitudes and behaviors. But really, a frame is like a window, right? You see something, but depending on the angle, you approach that window, let's say, you can see different parts of that same reality. It's even like a frame when you take a photo with the camera, right? You might be focusing on smaller or larger parts of that same picture, right, that is

presented to 10 people there, but 10 people might take different photos of the same thing. Second technique that propaganda will use is this repetition and familiarity. So I will put this together. And again, this is one of the most effective techniques in propaganda. So the more a message is repeated and the more sources it will come from, it becomes much more likely for people to accept it as a truth, right? Because if everyone is saying something, if all the media outlets are saying this, if all the politicians and so on, if they are saying it, then it must be true, right? And I know that I previously made the point that propaganda does not have to be based on lies. Again, it can be simply just a way of framing, right? But it is so significant in terms of how much it is repeated that it becomes accepted as a very objective truth. And we can relate this to, for example, Elos theory of integration propaganda, again, which works as this normalizing device of certain

ideas up to the point that they become or they become taken for granted. This also has to do with other things like myths, for example, right? Mids and propaganda actually go well together. And again, I will not go into too much depth on this. But in my perspective, myth and propaganda are very much intertwined, right? Because actually, propaganda operates based on these myths, widely accepted stories and narratives in societies that people share. This can be, you know, founding myths about, you know, why people should accept the authority

of the state or their government or how they should, you know, relate to each other as a as this kind of homogeneous community and not to think about the fact that they are just complete strangers just, you know, surrounded by this invisible lines that have been completely made up and so on. But again, by continuously repeating specific ideas, propaganda creates this illusion of consensus, even if public opinion can be deeply divided. Third, and I would say, again, for me, this one is very very, very important. really important is the appeal to emotion. And that is something that I think I mentioned before

is that propaganda will often use techniques that tend to bypass rational or logical reasoning, right? So it will instead rely on human faculties that, uh, pro, information rather than rationally or logically in this emotional way that stems, you know, again, from this deeply embedded truths or myths that they have come to adopt. And again, this is particularly effective in creating moral panics or justifying aggressive actions like military interventions and so on. If we, you know, frayings, something as imminent threat, as danger, as something as being evil and being someone, you know, seeking to destroy us, then this can all elicit, you know, very powerful responses.

You know, we have emotions like fear, anger, patriotism, all of these emotions drive action. Actually, again, that is one of the things that I mentioned to my students last week when I talked about, let's say, the narrative paradigm. So this is Walter Fisher's theory about the or describing the shift or, you know, suggesting that we should shift in our thinking about humans as being, you know, homo-economics or homo rationalis to homo-narans, right? how stories and narratives and, you know, emotions behind these stories and the fact that we can identify with the heroes in the stories, how we organize and structure events and facts

through these kind of narratives, how all of this is actually psychologically much more powerful than, again, you know, taking a set of facts and assessing all of the possibilities that can come out of them. And again, emotional appeals, however, are very often used in advertising. Actually, it is one of the three persuasive devices, also as defined by Aristotle, right? One of them is logos, which depends on rational, logical evidence. Second, is dependent on the credibility or authority of the speaker. And the third device is emotion, is pathos.

So emotional appeal is very commonly used in propaganda just as in other forms of persuasive communication, because that's just very much psychological matter, how human psychology works. And you mentioned Edward Bernays before, and you said that he was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. And indeed, and that's why he was. very skilled propagandist and he was very smart because he was directly using insights from psychoanalytic theory to influence you know his his campaigns whether it was for the tobacco industry or he was actually actively working on destroying the communists in in Central America and so on.

Sorry, just to underscore that for the listeners who may not be as familiar with Bernays. You just mentioned two examples of things that Bernays worked on, and I think that it bears mentioning that you mentioned he worked for the tobacco companies. He was the one who was responsible for the first large-scale advertisements for women to begin smoking. And prior to Bernays's marketing genius, smoking rates amongst women were extremely low. It was not something that was done typically. he used, as you mentioned, psychoanalytic theory to construct advertisements that would make women see smoking as a feminine thing. And tobacco smoking rates amongst women, beginning in the United States, but then expanding beyond that, exploded at that time as a direct result of his advertising. So, you know, here's Bernay's advertising for the sake of profit and not for the sake of health, because,

because, you know, they didn't know as much at the time about the dangers of smoking as we do today, but it wasn't a mystery at that time. Sorry to interrupt. I think he actually admitted at some point that he already knew that smoking was, in fact, you know, harmful and that it also led to cancer and so on. But then we can actually come to a point where we also see how much even the research was manipulated. And, you know, how much the tobacco industry lobby was manipulating, what was research, what was presented, which kind of results. You know, they manipulated that bribed think tanks and other organizations to come up with evidence that was not supporting these claims that smoking was, in fact, dangerous or even cost concern could lead to death and so on. all of these done just for profit, right?

And if I... That's exactly right. That was exactly the point that I was going to make is that there already was information out there, but that they also used the public relations knowledge that they had to figure out ways of obfuscating and hiding a lot of that information for as long as possible, even though that it was known.

And then just briefly on the communists in Central America, because this is something that we've talked about on the show before, but it's been quite some time. So the listeners will be familiar with the CIA-backed coup in Guarmalo against Jacobo Arbenz. What the listeners may not know is that Bernays was hired directly by United Fruit Company, which is now Chiquita. And United Fruit Company was the company that was most heavily involved with having their fallow lands. And again, it's worth mentioning that the lands that were named. nationalized were not actively being used by United Fruit. They were fallow lands in Guatemala.

But when Arbenz began the process of nationalizing these fallow lands for the benefit of the country, United Fruit hired Bernays to construct a media campaign that would paint Arbenz as a communist, which he wasn't, and then to not only shift American opinion, American public opinion, away from Arbenz into this belief that he was a communist, but also then legitimizing any action that took place against the government. And so when there was the CIA-backed coup against Arbenz, there wasn't this huge backlash against a coup against a democratically elected leader in Latin America. And there was not any sort of examination of the role that United Fruit played when they

then retook all of the lands that were in the process of being nationalized. So what did we have with these two examples that you laid out? One example was to the detriment of the health of people, knowingly to the detriment of the health of people in the interest of profit. And the second was detrimental to the national sovereignty of Guatemala and national interest of the people in Guatemala for the sake of profit for an American company that was then hiring Bernays. So I know that I kind of belabored these explanations a little bit.

but you did bring up those two points. And so I think it was worth underscoring those for the listeners. Absolutely. Yes. No, thank you very much for bringing up these examples. I think that the first example of smoking, yes, as you said, you know, this was a campaign that very skillfully used the sentiments of society. Combined them, you know, with this psychoanalysis.

or psychoanalytic theory and then constructed this narrative of smoking being a form of women's emancipation or liberation, right? He even came up with the name for the campaign, Torches of Freedom. So because, again, smoking or tobacco industry was realizing that they were only actually able to sell to about maybe, let's say, 15. 50% of the market, right, if we don't count children, of course, only to males, right? And that wasn't enough for them, right? So they want to increase this market.

There is a huge potential, you know, in this untapped market of women. So actually, the wider, white societal belief of women or smoking being associated as, you know, undignified or, you know, not being worthy or of women or, you know, just being inappropriate and just rough and so on. They completely rebranded this perception. They changed not, they didn't only, again, work to sell cigarettes. Yes, that was the end goal of that, but they completely changed our way of thinking about cigarettes and women. And that myth of, you know, being a symbol of coolness or being a symbol of a woman can do it because it's a form of emancipation, that persists today. Actually, that's another point that we can make about propaganda, that there is no such thing necessarily as a propaganda campaign being isolated and being clearly marked as to where it starts and where it stops or when it starts and when it stops.

Actually, I would say the biggest dangers associated with propaganda are that it carries on after, you know, long after. And it actually produces this deeply instilled myths and beliefs in society that live on long after, let's say, a propaganda campaign has ended. But when you were talking about the United Fruits and about the case of this active, again, not even having to do anything with fruits or selling bananas and so on, but having more to do with the fact that the U.S. Empire just wanted to appropriate another part of a land that didn't belong to them and wanted to, and you know, what capitalism will always do is that it will aim to expand, that it needs to expand. Otherwise, it won't survive, right? So it needed that it needed those resources.

It needed that cheap labor there. And it needed to control that. So whoever was claiming that they had any kind of, let's say, natural right because it was on their territory, whoever was claiming that they had the right to it, that needed to be changed by any means necessary. And that brings me actually to another, I would say, noteworthy point to make about how propaganda operated, let's say, at least from the second half of 20th century in the West. And that is actually, that brings us to neoliberal propaganda and how this is embedded in modern

societies. So neoliberalism as, you know, a set of, or being a set of political doctrines, but also an economic system has become really deeply embedded in our societies in ways that it has made it almost invisible. So we take it for granted today. You know, we are like the fish in the water that we don't necessarily realize the water around us, the water that neoliberalism is. Again, this was not always the case.

At some point, there might have been different assumptions about the role of the government and role of the state in economy and so on. But the discourse of freedom, of individual rights, free markets, you know, all of these concepts that were chosen and picked to be or to form the basis of the discourse about neoliberalism, they circulate, you know, very widely and effectively today, not just through policies, but also, you know, through the infrastructure of communication, through advertising, through public relations and even, you know, popular culture. And that is because there has been this omnipresent propaganda that is not always recognized as such because now it has been normalized and it is the default way of thinking and acting.

Now, I think that one important work or that influenced me or that at least, you know, enlightened me in thinking about this was the work by Alex Carey. And I believe that he was an Australian psychologist, but he was really interested in writing about propaganda and psychological operations and so on. And so he wrote this. Actually, it's like a set of his writings. He's not necessarily a book he put together, but it's called Taking the Risk Out of Democracy. And he described in this collection of writings put together in this book how neoliberal propaganda has evolved into. something, you know, far more subtle and insidious that this was very widely orchestrated series of campaigns that really reshaped public attitudes about government businesses. And the consequences

of these campaigns were really profound to this day that, you know, it leads to a loss of public faith in, you know, democratic institutions. And it's also convinced us that there is this natural alignment of national and business interests. It's like what is good for business is good for the country, right? You know this kind of doctrine that now I cannot recall actually who said it. But you know, all of these assumptions are again something that has become so embedded in our societies and they benefit the elite few, the the oligarchy is, you know, in power, again, presenting this set of very constructed, fabricated

claims as universal truth. So he reveals a key insight in these writings that says the risk to democracy was constructed as a threat to business interests and not the other way around, right? So he says that democracy is something that is threatening the corporate interest. And again, this was written or this was actually something that was written in the 70s, the crisis of democracy by the trilateral commission, right? Again, where they saw that there was too much democracies in societies and so on. And they were making kind of similar argument when they were so preoccupied.

with the traditional institutions and elites losing its grip over public institutions like universities and so on. But in his works, he tracks how business elites, especially in this post-World War II era, have systematically portrayed government intervention in the economy, whether that was through labor unions, whether it was through welfare policies or environmental protections, all of these were framed as a threat to freedom, right? And this is where neoliberal propaganda has been highly successful because it always framed corporate interests,

not as sectional or class-based concerns, but as national interests. And by extensions as democratic imperatives, that's why we also have this very deeply embedded myth of how, you know, capitalism is the only system that can work with democracy, which is completely untrue. Actually, it directly excludes to be democratic, right? So in other words, you know, the argument goes that if business interests are threatened,

democracy itself is under threat. And terms like freedom or free enterprise, free market, all are strategically linked here through this propaganda. to patriotism, creating really this narrative where business interests become indistinguishable from national interests. There is this, you know, from early 2000, like after 9-11, there is this video of Bush proclaiming that we cannot allow this terrorists to make us being so fearful and scared to the point where people don't.

shop, right? So the shopping, business as usual, again, was here linked directly to, you know, security, to freedom, to safety and so on. And Bush, just to step in here for a second, Lucia, Bush took it a step farther. As I recall, and I'm having to recall a long time ago, because I was only six at the time, but I do remember, and then, of course, I've looked at the news since then, archival news reports.

Bush proclaimed that the attacks of 9-11 were an assault on the American way of life and the American, the American spirit in such that, you mentioned this capitalist ideal of people going out and shopping, is what was the root of 9-11 and the root of, you know, why there had to be a war on terror. We had to defend the national interest, to use this term again, and we had to defend Americans' way of life. And therefore, because we are taking this military action, we want you to know that not

only is it safe for you to continue to carry out your way of life, continue going to the malls, continue going to the stores, continue buying consumer goods. but because we're protecting that, you know, it's not only safe. It's actually your duty as a citizen because you have to uphold this as our ideal because if you, you know, succumb to fear. If you go against this American capitalistic ideal of shopping, you are giving into the terrorists and allowing them to win. It's your duty to continue shopping.

You are not patriotic enough. You don't care about your nation. You don't care about this great democracy of freedom and human rights that we have created. Absolutely. So I think that was very well put. Exactly. So and it's exactly this kind of. And I think even that this already reflects actually the success of this neoliberal

propaganda, right? because this neoliberal doctrine took place, you know, it started to kind of settle itself in about 70s, right? So in this early 2000s, it was, I think, quite, you know, firmly in place. And this is really this rebranding of business interest as the very fabric of, you know, nation-state creates this powerful alignment between these corporate agendas and national identity and making it really politically risky and undesirable to challenge either one. And this is precisely then to the way or through these narratives, then, you know, we see how

business elites to this day have been able to convince the public that, you know, the policies that do not favor them at all, that go, you know, quite directly against the working classes, let's say, and that favored the wealthy instead, and whether that is in terms of, you know, tax cuts or deregulation or corporate subsidies, bailouts and so on, they were able to convince that these are actually in public interest, right? And so this slate of hands really allows the economic elite to advance their goals under the guise of protecting democratic values. And one of the most striking features of neoliberal propaganda here is also the fact that it is the horizontal circulation across society, right? Just as it might have started as, you know, some sort of top down or it came from certain source, it has become so widely adopted and circulated that it's, you know, it's not just infiltrated the government discourse.

It's of course very deeply embedded in mainstream media, in advertising in popular culture. So unlike this traditional top-down forms of state propaganda, again, which we typically associate with governments with centralized powers, neoliberal propaganda is, and it makes it even much more powerful because it's like almost the Foucauldian view of this diffused power in modern society. Like it's much more difficult to pinpoint actually where it is coming from, because if we don't know where it is coming from, we are much less likely to say in whose interest that is.

So it circulates, you know, through numerous channels embedding itself very, so in a very sophisticated and a subtle way in the fabric of everyday life. Again, just think about advertising, you know, you have the language of freedom, choice, individual empowerment, all of this is ubiquitous in corporate messaging. And it has been widely adopted in terms of, you know, all of these self-help courses and books and then, you know, circulating on social media like these short videos where people will always advocate, you know, you have to do what is right. for you, this is your freedom, you know, you have the choice and empower yourself by, you know,

dismissing whatever anyone else wants, right? And it's, and I find this always, you know, a form of neoliberal propaganda because if we imagine ourselves in a society, in the society as being, you know, the most important point, And like if we think that our interests should always be above someone else's, that's just unhinged individualism that goes hand in hand with, you know, the political doctrine of neoliberalism and that will always enhance or, you know, reinforce this sense or notion of, you know, competing against others rather than collaborating

with others, right? Rather than considering the needs of others and seeing ourselves as part of community, this is a clear example of, you know, putting ourselves first because choice equals

freedom, right? And freedom is nothing else but individualism. So again, it's almost impossible to think now of the consumer as, you know, anything other than just being very empowered individual that has to make free choices. And for some or at some point, this rhetoric might be perceived as benign, but it carries,

you know, very questionable, to say the least, ideological underpinnings. of neoliberal thought, right? And that's where I also can tie it to what I said earlier. I believe that marketing and advertising don't just sell products, right? They sell, you know, consumers' desires. And they not only sell them, but they fabricate them first. So they will sell ideas. They will sell values like independence, you know, self-expression.

Again, ideas of personal freedom all tied to the market economy and reinforcing the market economy. So the neoliberal propaganda here circulates both through advertising, through public relations, through political marketing. Again, if we don't have to just call it, you know, being propaganda, but it is actually carried to other forms of communication, right? So you had mentioned, this is just a comment before I get into our final big question. And it's not our final question because I'm out of things to talk about.

It's because I realize I have so many more things to talk about that rather than diving deeper and deeper and deeper, we can save these deeper conversations for a future conversation in which I'll also hopefully solicit some questions from listeners. And listeners, stay tuned for the end of the episode. I'll tell you how you can get in touch since I'm not really on social media these days. but we have a guerrilla history email that those of you who are polite can email into, and I'll take some questions from there for Lucia as well for a future conversation. But before I get to the closing question, I just want to mention that you had talked about this conflation of corporate interests with national interests.

And that's of course absolutely true. There is a conflation of corporate interest with national interest. But I also just want to state that from my perspective at least, this concept of national interest, except in a specific context, which I'll mention in just a second, in itself is a flawed understanding of interests because national interest, if you can consider what national interests are, this is a way of obfuscating what the class interests are. And so this idea of there being a national interest in most contexts that are relevant to you listeners, and again, I'm going to get to the other context in just a second.

If you're thinking what is the national interest, you're forgetting about individual class interests, and in this way, you are most likely going to be propagating the will of the ruling class of your country. Now, I mention that there's a specific context in which this isn't the case, and this is because I hold that in the vast majority of the world, the primary contradiction is that of imperialism. And so if you're outside of the imperial core and you're at the locus of a struggle between the imperialist hegemon against your country, and you are struggling against the imperialist hegemon, in an anti-imperialist, you know, national liberatory struggle. In this case, there is a national interest that can and should be upheld. So, you know, if we're looking at, again, given what's happening today, Iran, there is a national interest in Iran today that is not necessarily in accordance with a class interest. It doesn't mean that class interests don't have differences within Iran, but there still

is a national interest that should be upheld in this context because they are the locus of a struggle of anti-imperialist national liberatory struggle against the imperialists. But if you are in the imperialist core, in this case, if you're thinking about what a national interest is, you are erasing class interests. You're not saying that there are separate interests, but rather it's a wholesale erasure of what the class interests are. So I do want to make that distinction as well. I don't know if you want to comment on that, Lucia, or if I should get into the closing question. You kept nodding, so I'm hoping that you're going to say something in agreement with me. I was just wondering why you were saying it, whether there is going to be a question

come out of it, because actually I kept, as you went on, I kept feeling like, you know, you are making an increasingly more and more, you know, relevant point that it's exactly what I would say. And I feel a little bad that actually I did not point. out this distinction when I was actually taking the term national interest for granted, and you are very right to point it out. And I think the comment you just made was really good. And I really actually have personal experience with this. And now again, this may be a little bit of topic of propaganda, but I was also part of a

socialist party in Slovakia myself when I was the candidate for the European Parliament a few years back. And a lot of our clashes in the party actually came up precisely from this perception or from this approach to national interest. And I think that I was making exactly this argument that there is a difference between national or nationalism or whatever and nationalism, right, or national interest. And I was trying to explain to my comrades, Western Marxists, right, that you cannot think of our national interest, the interests of Slovakia as the same as the national interests of the UK, Germany or the US and so on and all these, you know, big, powerful or China even for that matter, these countries that, you know, and China actually

it's a, I would say an interesting point, right, because actually at some point it also had to formulate its national interest to defend itself from Western imperialism. Now it has become much more mighty and powerful, actually, its own national interest might start being projected perhaps even more outwards that in some ways could be interpreted also as being imperial ambitions. But I don't want to get into that discussion. But I think that you are completely right that there is this distinction to be made about class interest and national interest and it depends on the context or the position and that national interest or nationalism or, you know, forging some kind of national unity and, you know, developing this discourse or rhetoric

around it, it's a form of, you know, anti-imperialist strategy for many countries in the world. Yeah, and understanding the role of the specific country within the imperialist world system or outside of that system, whether they are a core country, whether they are a peripheral country, the semi-periphery is where things get interesting. If we're using this, you know, this analytic of imperial core periphery and then the semi-periphery, so countries like Russia, like China, these are where the analysis. has to get much more nuanced and nuance is something that's necessary but also often prevents us from having a clear analysis on what should be done and how we should orient ourselves towards things. But in any case, that is where the particularly interesting discussions lie. But for me, if we're just analyzing core and periphery, these two sites and leaving the

semi-peripheral countries out of it for now. there is a very, for me, a very clear distinction between where a national interest should be considered and where a national interest should not be considered. And just to reiterate the point that I had made earlier, again, in my view, thinking about a national interest within the imperial core is mistaken and it's just going to prevent you from looking at class interests. Whereas if you're in a peripheral country in which your country is, again, facing its primary contradiction of imperialism pressing down upon you and acting against you, there is a national interest that play and ensuring that the national interest is one that is truly liberatory and against the imperial interest is critical. What came to my mind is actually a good example of both how national interest works or how it can

differ from country to country, right? And how also it can also be itself a propagandistic term. And Marco Rubio came to Slovakia for a state visit on either 15th or 14th February this year. And he made this very propagandistic statement in the press conference. And he said that he expects that each country will and should act in its own national interest, because this is exactly how the United States will also act. So he is encouraging or, you know, he's trying to legitimize the fact that the U.S. is done with, you know, protecting interest of any kind of, you know, post-World War, world order or anything. think. Now, it's time for the U.S. to pursue its all national interest, and we can say that, you know, these are very closely tied to those oligarchic business interests, corporate interests. But he is also trying to convince the rest of us that we should also do the same as if we really were able to do

the same in that same capacity, right? So at the first glance, or, you know, when you hear it first, It sounds like it's a trivial truth like, right? As long as nation states will exist, they will and they should act in their own national interests. But in reality, this statement is completely propagandistic and is very manipulative because national interest never exists in a vacuum. You know, the world is not just a collection of isolated states that they can follow and pursue their own national interest. interest, you know, without clashing into each other's national interest. So here, it is, of course, what follows is that they will come into conflict. Different national interests are competing with each other and ultimately they will come into conflict. And that is exactly when it will show

what this statement means. Because when a national interest of a weaker country comes into conflict with the national interest like the US, for example, or other superpower, you know, this a romantic image or perception sees this to apply, right? There is this romantic imagination of equality of interest that is just, you know, an illusion because the geopolitical reality is different than this abstract phrase, that, you know, American national interest has the capacity, has the might, has the power to pursue this interest, whereas other countries, like Slovakia, you know, they cannot. You know, the national interest of the U.S. has the capacity and will, you know, prevail

because it is supported by the economic, military and political power. So that's, again, I think a great example of, you know, propaganda in practice. You know, it's just, let's say, yeah, it's actually an example of wider propaganda of the discourse of national interest is that it seems as a universal principle. But actually, it is only, it only serves to legitimize power, right? So to say that everyone should act in their own interest and actually it ties even to, to the previous example I gave about this individualism, like on the level of just individuals. If I am to pursue my own interests, they will inevitably come into conflict with other individual

interests. And that is the same principle that applies with states or with geopolitical reality. So it's not just a statement about reality, but it's propagandistic statement. Yeah, there's a lot that I could say on that, but this is not the Henry speaking show today. And I want to save some of these discussions for the future conversation. So before I ask the closing question for you, Lucia, for those listeners who are still around at this point in the episode, I will let them know how they can email questions in because I think it's really useful for us to have these discussions to understand propaganda. because as I mentioned at the very beginning of the show, we have discussed propaganda since pretty much the very first episode of the show. But with a few exceptions here or there, I know that

we've had our media studies comrades like Stuart Davis on the show several times. And we've talked about the media and propaganda within the media. We have had some examinations of propaganda in these ways, in a more rigorous way on the show. But usually we just discuss. propaganda in passing. So it's really useful for the listeners, I think, to have this deeper focused study of propaganda, what it is, how it works, the methods, and analysis of examples of it on the show, because it is something that we face every single day, regardless of where we are and who we're listening to, we are exposed to propaganda every day. So having an understanding of what propaganda is and how we should feel about it and how we should analyze it and how we should

absorb it and how we should try to prevent some of the narratives from getting into us is a particularly useful thing. This is a very much a practical episode, I think, even though it's a theoretical discussion. So with that being said, listeners, the next time that we bring Lucia on, which I hope will be in a fairly near future, Lucia, we're going to get even deeper and hopefully also break down some examples within that episode. But listeners, if you have, questions for Lucia on this topic of propaganda broadly conceived, you can email these questions into Gorilla HistoryPod at gmail.com. So that's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A HistoryPod at gmail.com. And yeah, hopefully we get some good submissions that we can include in that next discussion,

because I'd like to know what you would find useful for yourself in terms of understanding propaganda listeners. But I do want to turn to the final question now, Lucia, which is that you had talked a bit about the neoliberal era and how propaganda in some ways is morphing in this period. So I'm wondering if there's anything else. It's kind of a two-part question. The first is, is there anything else that you would like to say in ways, in terms of ways that propaganda is kind of changing or morphing in the world today and how we should understand these changes in the way that propaganda is being created, distributed, produced today. But then also the second part of this closing question, and this is again to try to focus on the fact

that this is a practical episode, even though there has been a lot of theoretical discussion in it. So for our organizers and activists who are listening to this episode, Are there things that we should think about in terms of the production of counter propaganda, but without just becoming cynical manipulators ourselves? What would an honest anti-imperialist propaganda look like and how does one know if it's working? In terms of how propaganda might have evolved in this day or in the 21st century, is what I would say, and not everyone has to agree with me on this, is that the basis for some of the greatest, you know, myths or the basis for these major systems like capitalism and neoliberalism and liberal democracy and so on, the foundations have been late in the last century. for these systems to operate.

And so therefore today, and as I also mentioned before, it's not like we have some kind of, you know, propaganda campaign that now decides we are going to instill this system or something like this. We are already living in these systems. And what is happening is that they are just perpetuating themselves through various means. Now, I don't want to say that everything is propaganda,

because if I say everything is propaganda, then perhaps nothing is propaganda. But there are, let's say, devices or institutions that help to disseminate, help to, you know, naturalize certain beliefs and values in society, right? some of these, I will call them devices. I cannot think of a better word now. But we can think of popular culture as being, you know, highly propagandistic because it perpetuates, you know, some stereotypes, you know, ideals of, you know, whether it's beauty, whether it's, you know, femininity, whether it's success, whether it's, you know,

it's, you know, again. Whether it's imperialism itself. I know, sorry to interrupt, but just to remind the listeners that we, I mentioned Stuart Davis already, a comrade, a very good comrade of ours who's a media studies professor. He has a really interesting article that came out several years ago titled Netflix Imperialism. And the article is terrific. And to remind the listeners, we have an episode with Stuart, at least one episode that we've mention Netflix imperialism in.

So I'll link to that in the show notes. If I remember, otherwise you can just find it by going to the the guerrilla history page or on your feed and looking up Stuart Davis's name. And it'll be one of the episodes was about Netflix imperialism. Sorry to interrupt again, Lucia. No, no, no.

No, absolutely. So popular culture, maybe it's not even a device, as I called it. Maybe it's just we can call these institutions, right? So we can think of popular culture as being an institution that, you know, facilitates dissemination of dominant values and ideas that are propagandistic or, you know, it uses those techniques that are also propagandistic. And then we can even think of the role of, you know, NGOs, think tanks in societies.

This also play, you know, a very important role. They play a role in, you know, giving authority to certain forms of knowledge over others, right? They manage, you know, visibility of information, you know, associate or attach credibility to one piece of information to another. So again, the question is here, not just what is being said, but like, who is saying it, who is in a position to say it, you know, and will we believe it? So here we can talk about think tanks. Again, think tanks do not generate information in neutral sense, just like we, for example, mentioned earlier, about the research on the effects of smoking. We could clearly see that science was actually in service of business interest at that point. And this has not changed, right?

So we have NGOs, think tanks, institutions that they participate in the production of what can be, you know, understood as some kind of authorized knowledge. And this is, again, where I might bring Michelle Foucault and, you know, whatever, anyone, things or whether they agree with him or not, you know, it's particularly useful this notion of regimes of truth, right? Because it reminds us that truth is not just something discovered, but it is actually produced also within institutional frameworks, right, that determine what counts as valid knowledge and who is authorized to speak and which forms of evidence are recognized and legitimate. And I think this view is useful for people.

propaganda. So think tanks occupy a powerful position in this regard, such and so do NGOs. And these are all, you know, networks of of interest, of power that, you know, they will produce some things that appear very highly authoritative, credible, independent, right? Reports, policy briefs, you know, expert commentary. They will be cited in media and consultations. by governments, you know, interwoven or integrated into digital platforms. And some will have, you know, more authority over others, not depending necessarily on, you know, any kind of scientific or academic methods they are working with or set of facts, but, but only, you know, depending on their affiliations or their, you know, view or the views

that they affirm and perpetuate again. So the authority here is not something that comes out as a sort of, you know, result of this any kind of scientific or academic rigor, but it is constructed through networks of funding, through institutional affiliations, you know, proximity to political power or the status quo, right? So these are also a very important mechanisms or institutions that work as propaganda devices as well in the 21st century. Again, going back to the idea that power in society is diffused and it comes through this sort of networks. In terms of the techniques or in ways in we can, let's say, shield ourselves from propaganda if we are to adopt this kind of solution-oriented approach where we have a problem that

we think of, you know, is the propaganda and solution would be some kind of form that can counter it or some kind of antidote. And you might call me even a post-modern in this sense, but I do believe that in society today, it is very hard to tell really what the truth is. And there are competing interpretations of reality and of truth and so on. And, you know, in this environment where everything kind of becomes very propagandistic, very much focused on persuading people and leading to some kind of goals. So every act of communication, let's say, would be goal-oriented and would be very deliberate and would be very much focused on achieving something. In this sense, we don't always have the luxury to really say with

certainty, what is truth and what not. That's why I also greatly mourn the fact that the Wikileaks don't operate anymore because I believe that for a long, long time, if not ever actually in history, that's exactly like that's the closest we've ever been to really knowing, let's say, the truth, right? So what I say to when people ask how we can shield ourselves from, you know, propaganda and so on. Well, I mean, it's very difficult to shield. It's not possible to shield ourselves in propaganda. But what matters is like how we act, you know, in relation to it, like are we going to get influenced by it or not? And I think that's where it boils down to thinking about the fundamental values that we believe in. I think that this

should serve as a basis of, you know, that can guide our actions. that can guide our morality, like if we are to accept at least fundamental concepts such as, I don't know, freedom or sovereignty or, you know, human rights and or, you know, the point I'm trying to make is that this should be our guiding principles. Like, we are confronted with certain form of communication or with set of facts or information. and we should perhaps ask questions, who does this serve? So whose interest does this serve? Who is going to benefit from this, right?

And again, it comes down to the fact that do we believe that, and it doesn't even have anything to do with utilitarianism, for example, but do we believe that at least we should act in ways that will ensure, let's say some, you know, more and more well-being for most people, then, you know, it serves rather the well-being of some kind of elites. I think this can be one of the distinguishing, let's say, principles as to how we should act, like, are the people, are the, is the population, is the common population, those who might be vulnerable, who might be disadvantaged at some point, are they being,

you know, are we doing something to take them out of this oppression? Are we doing something to improve their situation? Or are we just perpetuating the same logic of violence and oppression and inequality that is currently prevailing? I think if any person that is, you know, sane and... at least to some extent, has some kind of common empathy, they will recognize that today's world is deeply unequal, unjust, extremely violent. It's full of suffering and so on.

And I think that should be really something that we should look towards to. We should do everything we can to alleviate this suffering. And when there is a piece of information that you can identify, is doing something to perpetuate suffering, then, you know, that is perhaps telling us something. Well, on that note, it's been a really great conversation, Lucy. I really enjoyed it and thought that it was extremely useful for me. And I'm sure that the listeners also are going to find it useful for themselves as well. I would like to, again, invite you back on to the show in the near future to continue the conversation,

because there is a lot more that I would love to talk about. But in closing, can you tell the listeners for those who would like to keep up with your work and if you have any social media presence that you'd like to direct them to, can you let them know where they can follow you? Great. Thank you very much, Henry. So thank you also for already inviting me to the next episode would be great because, yes, as much, as long as we talked, we still have so much to go through.

So this is a very rich topic. So we can take another tens of hours. It is hosted, really. Okay, for the listeners who would like to keep up with my work, I am on most social media, or at least the Western social media, like Instagram, Facebook, X. And you can just kind of type in my name, which is Lucia Hubinska, and you will find me like that.

I have also started recently a YouTube channel which now has maybe about five or six followers because I have not been doing that for a very long time, but you can give it a try. Perhaps I will come up with something that might interest you. Yes. And also if you just want to read my articles I often publish, most of the time it will be in Slovak. But yeah, if you just look for my name, some result should come up and I'll be really glad to, you know, get in touch with you or connect with you on this social media.

Great. And we'll have at least some of your social media pages linked in the show notes. So listeners, you'll be able to just scroll down and click on that and follow Lucy on whatever platform is convenient for you. So on that note then, listeners, and I'm just going to remind you that, again, my co-hosted Nan Hussein wasn't here today, but we're hoping that he'll be here for the next conversation, both with Lucia as well as the next episode of guerrilla history more generally. But you should check out Adnan's show, Adnan Hussein show.

It's on YouTube and on the audio platforms that you listen to guerrilla history on. As for me, as I've been mentioning for months and months, I have not been on social media for over a year because it's basically impossible for me to get on there. But you can follow me at Huck 1995 on Twitter if you so wish. And at some point in the future, I may be back. on there. Gorilla history is on various social media platforms at Gorilla underscore pod on Twitter, for example.

But again, I haven't been able to log on there for over a year. But eventually, I may be able to. It's things calm down here in Russia a little bit. And most importantly, in terms of guerrilla history, is just to remind you again, listeners, that the show is completely listener supported. So if you appreciate the work that we do, you can go to patreon. com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-R-I-L-A history. And that really is what allows us to continue making this show. So with that said, and until next time then, listeners,

solidarity.