Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - The Propaganda Playbook: Holy War (How the Pentagon Is Selling a Crusade to American Troops) - #Marketing - Ep. 123

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

There’s a moment when a message stops being information… and starts becoming identity. And when that shift happens, logic doesn’t just lose - it becomes irrelevant. That’s the thread I couldn���t stop pulling on this week. Because what’s unfolding right now isn’t just about war, politics, or headlines… it’s about one of the oldest persuasion frameworks ever created quietly running in real time. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. In this episode, I break down what I call the “Moral Crusade” technique - how leaders take a cause and elevate it into something sacred. Drawing from Gustave Le Bon’s crowd psychology and the origins of modern propaganda, I show you how identity gets fused with belief… and why that fusion is so powerful it can move people beyond reason. Then I bring it back to what we do as entrepreneurs - because the same psychological drivers behind movements, religions, and even wars… are the exact same ones behind the most successful brands and communities in the world. Key Highlights: ◼️The “Sacred Propaganda” framework and why turning a cause into a belief system changes everything ◼️Gustave Le Bon’s 130-year-old discovery about crowds (and why it still runs the world today) ◼️How identity fusion makes people defend ideas like they’re defending themselves ◼️The real reason movements outperform products (and why logic alone never wins) ◼️The 5-part “Identity Stack” I’ve used to build tribes, not just customers At the end of the day, this episode isn’t about agreeing or disagreeing with what’s happening in the world - it’s about recognizing the pattern underneath it. Because once you understand how identity is shaped, you start to see the same mechanics everywhere… in media, in movements, and inside your own marketing. The real question is: are you consciously building something that empowers people… or accidentally creating something that controls them? ◼️If you’ve got a product, offer, service… or idea… I’ll show you how to sell it (the RIGHT way) Register for my next event →⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://sellingonline.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ◼️Still don’t have a funnel? ClickFunnels gives you the exact tools (and templates) to launch TODAY → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clickfunnels.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you have a funnel, but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com slash podcast. That's selling online.com slash podcast. This is the Russell Brunson show. A U.S. military commander told his troops this week. President Trump has been annoyed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.

That is not from a church. That's from a combat readiness briefing at an American military base. And over 200 service members have now filed complaints about commanders across every single branch of the military saying the exact same thing. The propaganda technique they're using is over 130 years old and it might be the most powerful one ever created.

Because once you understand how it works, you'll see it everywhere, not just in wars, but in every movement, every brand, and every business has ever turned customers into true believers. This is the propaganda playbook where I take the biggest stories in the news and decode the propaganda techniques hidden inside of them. And then I'm going to show you how to use the ethical version of those same techniques to grow your business. So that said, let's get right into it.

If you watch the last few episodes, you know that the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran just a couple of weeks ago. We broke down how the consent for that war was manufactured step by step before the first bomb ever dropped. If you haven't had a chance to watch that video yet, go and watch after this one. I'll put the link down in the description below. But here's what's happened since then. The war is now in its second week. Eight U.S. servicemen are dead. Over 1,200 Iranian civilians are dead.

Oil is past $110 a barrel, and the White House still hasn't given a clear strategic reason for why we're in this war. And into that vacuum, something really wild is happening. Military commanders across every branch are filling gaps with religious language. They're telling troops that this isn't just a war. It's a holy war, and that it's been ordained by God, that it's going to bring about the Armageddon and the return of Jesus Christ. Now, this isn't just some kind of rumor, okay?

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received over 200 complaints from over 50 military installations, every branch from Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Space Force, all of them. And it goes all the way to the top. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been hosting monthly Christian prayer services inside the Pentagon Auditorium, broadcasting them on the Pentagon's internal TV network. He's invited a pastor who has publicly said that women's rights to vote should be repealed and that America should become a Christian theocracy. And Hegeseth himself has a Jerusalem cross tattooed on his chest.

That's a crusade symbol from the actual medieval crusades. Okay, now actually, before I show you that, I want you to see something first because describing this just doesn't do it justice. The defense secretary, the guy who's in charge of the most powerful military on the face of the earth, just made a video where he's reciting the Lord's Prayer. And they cut it together with some footage of fighter jets, launching, missiles, flunkers, flying, paratroopers jumping out of planes, and an American flag waving. And I'm not just making this up. Just watch this real quick.

Our father, who art in heaven, hallow would be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. As we forget those who trust the past against us. Deliver us from evil. Amen. Okay, so as a propaganda expert, that video is masterful, and I mean that technically, not morally. whether you agree with it or you disagree with it for just a second. Just look at the technique. What they're doing is fusing two identities into one, a soldier and a believer. And once those

two identities merge in your mind, then questioning the war becomes the same thing as questioning God. And that is incredibly powerful. And I want to know, did that video move you even a little bit, even if you know exactly what they're doing? And I want you to be honest in the comments, because I think that most people are not going to be willing to admit it. But that clip hits completely differently than a press briefing. And there's a very specific reason for that. So what you just watch has a name. In the world of propaganda, it's called sacred propaganda, or what I call the moral crusade. Here's what that means. When a leader wraps a cause in religious language, something fundamental changes. It's no longer a policy debate. It's no longer about strategy or

cost-benefit analysis or whether this is the right call. It becomes a test of faith. And you cannot argue with someone's faith. That's what makes this the most powerful propaganda technique ever created. Now, in the first episode, I taught you about Edward Bernays, the man who invented public relations. And a lot of people think that Bernays came up. with all this stuff from scratch, but he didn't. He had a teacher, and his teacher's name was Gustav Le Bonn. Le Bonn was a French social psychologist who wrote a book in 1895 called The Crowd, a study of popular mind.

And this book I actually have right here is a first edition copy of one of his books, and this book changed everything because LeBahn figured out something that nobody else has put into words before. He said that when an individual forms a crowd, they lose their individual rationality. They become susceptible to three things. Images, symbols, and sacred words. Not arguments, not logic, not evidence, images, symbols, and sacred words. And here's the quote from the bond that I really want you to sit with.

The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with the illusions is easily their master. Whoever attempts to destroy their illusion is always their victim. He wrote that in 1895, 130 years ago. And then he said this, and this is the key part. The most powerful propaganda technique in the world is to give a cause the character of a religion. Because religious beliefs operate below logic. They operate at the level of identity.

And once something becomes part of someone's identity, no amount of facts or arguments will change their mind. You're not arguing with their brain anymore. You're arguing with their soul. Now, Berners read this book before he ever read Freud. LeBahn was the foundation that everything else was built on. Hitler studied LeBahn. Mussolini studied LeBond.

Every mass movement leader in the 20th century studied this man. And right now in 2026, the same playbook is being run out of the Pentagon. So let me show you how this has worked before because this isn't new. This is ancient. In the year 1095, Pope Urban the 2nd needed to do something that should have been almost impossible. He needed thousands of Europeans, men, farmers, blacksmith, normal people to leave their homes, march thousands of miles across the continent and fight and die in the desert. For a city most of them had never actually seen.

against an enemy most of them had never met. Now think about that for a second. How do you get someone to do that? You can't pay them enough. You can't threaten them enough. There's no logical argument that works. Hey, I want you to leave your family, walk for months, and probably die in a foreign country. Nobody is going to sign up for that. So what did the Pope do?

He didn't make a strategic argument. He stood up at the council of Clamont and he told the crowd that God wills it. Deus Volt. God wills it. And the crowd started chanting it back. Deus Vault, Deus Vault. Thousands of men signed up on the spot. They sold crosses onto their clothing. They literally became crusaders.

The identity shift was instant. You weren't a farmer going to war. You were a soldier of God on a sacred mission. And dying wasn't a risk. It was a reward. You go straight to heaven. That was LeBahn's playbook. Give it the character of religion

and logic becomes irrelevant. And here's the thing. The Defense Secretary of the United States has that exact symbol tattooed on his chest. A Crusades cross in 2026 while commanding a war in the Middle East. Now, I'm not to be a war in the Middle East. Now, I'm not to say,

telling you what to think about that. I'm just asking you to see the technique. It doesn't stop with the Crusades. In World War I, and this is where Bernice comes in, both sides claim that God was on their side. German soldiers had got Mitt-unz on their belt buckles, which means God with us. Allied propaganda portrayed the war as a Christian crusade against barbarism. Bernays used this. Make the world safe for democracy. That's not policy. That's a sermon. It's a moral absolute. You're either for it or you're against it. And Le Bonn predicted all of this. He wrote that in times of crisis, leaders who speak in absolute moral terms will always defeat leaders who speak in nuance. And that's exactly what's happening right now. Okay, so you

might be thinking, okay Russell, the Crusades were thousands of years ago, World War I was 100 years ago, and that's completely fair. So let me show you something from this week. This is a religious war. Who wins it at the end of the day? This is a big deal. So what we're facing right now is a moment of decision that will set the course of the future of the Mideast for a thousand years. A thousand years. Think about that framing. He didn't say that this will make us safer.

He didn't say this protects American interests. He said a thousand years. That's not policy, that's prophecy. That's LeBahn's playbook, running in real time on cable news network. And I gotta know, when you heard him say a thousand years, what was your gut reaction? Just type in the comments down below.

One word, I wanna know what you think about that inside of your gut. Now look, I know that this is heavy. We just went from the Crusades to a sitting US center calling this a religious war live television. You might be sitting there wondering, what if any of this has to do with growing your business? But here's the thing, the psychology that turns a policy

into a crusade, the psychology that fuses someone's identity with the cause so deeply they'll fight and die for it. That's the exact same psychology behind every movement-based business has ever been built. I don't just study stuff, I'm obsessed with it, and I use it every single day. So let me show you what this looks like when the intent is to help people instead of sending them to war.

Okay, so when we launched ClickFunnels, we weren't the only marketing automation software the market. There's a bunch of competitors and most of these software companies then and now they compete on features. My software is this, their software does that. Mine's got more integrations, theirs has got better analytics, blah blah blah. That's the policy, it's a debate, that is logic. And the bond told us 130 years ago that logic loses to identity every single time. So instead of selling software, I built the movement I created on an identity called the funnel hacker. And everything we did, everything was designed to make people feel that they weren't just buying a tool, they were

joining a tribe, they were becoming something. And when I look at what the Pentagon is doing right now with this Holy War language, and I compare it to what I built with click funnels, the parallels are honestly kind of scary. So let me walk you through them, okay? Number one, the sacred text. Every religion has a sacred text, right? The Bible, the Torah, the Quran, the Book of Mormon. It's the foundational document that the entire belief system is built on.

Well, for me, I wrote three. Dotcom Secrets, Expert Secrets, and Traffic Secrets. And our community doesn't just read these books, they study. them, they highlight them, they bring them to their events, they stack them on their desks, and these books became our Bible. Number two, the rallying cry. Every crusade has a battle cry. For the Crusaders, it was Deus Volt.

God wills it. For us, it was your just one funnel way. I can tell you right now that if you say that to any of my funnel hackers on the planet, watches their eyes light up. It means something special to them. It's not just a marketing slogan, it's an identity statement. It's saying, I believe in this and I am part of this. Number three, the gathering.

Every religion has a pilgrimage, a place where you travel to, where you gather with other believers, and you have a shared experience that bonds you together. Ours is Funnel Hacking Live. And I'm telling you that when people show up to that event, they're not coming into a software conference. They're coming into a revival. They fly in from all over the world. They wear their t-shirts. They bring their books.

They stand in line to get photos. And when somebody walks across that stage and gets their two-comical award, meaning they just crossed a million dollars through a funnel. People are crying. The recipients are crying. The audience is crying. I'm usually also crying. Okay. Number four, the visible commitment. The Crusaders sewed crosses onto their tunics.

That's how you showed the world that you were part of this movement. Well, for our people, they put their I build funnel stickers on their laptops, they wear t-shirts to the gym, they put the two comical plaques on their office walls, and that's not just branding, that's identity, that's someone telling the world, this is who I am. Number five, the enemy, and this is a big one. Every movement needs something to fight against. For the Crusaders, it was the infidels. For the funnel hackers, it was the traditional website, the old way, the broken model. I didn't position click funnels against lead pages or infusion software, whatever the competitor of the week was. I positioned them against a category.

I said that websites are dead, funnels are the future. That's not a feature comparison, that's a crusade. And people don't join feature comparisons, they join crusades. Now, I want you to see what this actually looks like in practice. How many people ready to get your first click funnel worth? My set, that's me. It's like an Oscar show or something. Say it from your doggone heart.

I can. I will, must count on me. All right, nobody actually cries about software, right? Think about that. Not a single person in that room is crying because of a drag-and-drop page editor. They're crying because they became something. They found their tribe. They proved to themselves and to the world that they could do it.

That is identity. That is LeBond's crowd psychology and action. And here's the most beautiful part. It works for good. That person just crossed to me. million dollars their life was actually changed so let me ask you this and I really want to hear if you're building a business right now are you selling a product or are you building a movement what's your deus vault what's your rallying cry that could turn your customers into a

community tell me down the comments below because I want to hear what you guys come up with all right so here is the framework and if you'll take nothing else from this episode take this I call it the identity stack and there are five elements that turn a business into a movement element number one the sacred text what is your foundational teaching Not a sales page, a manifesto, something people study, not just read. For me, it was three books. For you, it might be just one. Or maybe it might be a video series or a framework or a challenge.

But it has to be the thing that your entire belief system is built on. Element number two, the rallying cry. What's your one sentence that makes your believers light up? You're just one funnel away. Just do it. Think different. It has to be short enough to chant and deep enough to mean something. So what's yours?

Element number three, the gathering. Where do your people come together? Could it be a live event? Could it be a Facebook group? Could it be a weekly Zoom call. But it has to feel like more than just business meetings. It has to feel like church. People have to walk out of that room differently than when they walked in.

Element number four. The visible commitment. How do your people show the world that they belong? A sticker, a shirt, a badge, a hashtag. When someone puts your logo on their laptop, they're doing the same thing the Crusaders did when they sold across onto their tunic. They're telling the world, I believe. Element number five, the enemy.

What's your movement fighting against? not a competitor, a broken system, an old way of thinking. People don't get fired up about being slightly better than the alternative. They get fired up about replacing a broken paradigm with something new. If you have all five of those, you don't have a business, you have a movement. And movements don't compete on price because price is logic and identity is religious. Okay, so here's the question I keep circling back to with this one. And it's probably the hardest question I've asked in any of these videos so far.

LeBahn said 130 years ago that the masses have never thirsted after, They thirst after illusions, and whoever supplies those illusions becomes easily their master. So when I build a movement around click funnels and people are crying at my vents and they're wearing the shirts and they're putting plaques on their walls, I've had people literally tattoo our logo onto their bodies. Am I giving them the truth or by giving them a really compelling illusion? When those military commanders tell the troops that this war is God's divine plan to bring about the end times, is that really any different? Or is the same psychology pointed in a different direction?

Honestly, don't have a clean answer for that one. and I've been thinking a lot about this since we started making these episodes. The line between a movement that changes lives and a crusade that destroys them might be thinner than any of us are willing to admit. If you think about that kind of stuff, too, I would love to hear where you stand in the comments down below. And what I've just showed with you is literally just one technique from a playbook that's been built over 130 years. It started with Gustav Lebon, figuring out the crowds aren't driven by reason. They're driven by images, symbols, and sacred words.

Then Sigmund Freud mapped out the unconscious mind underneath all of it. Then Edward Bernays took both of their ideas and weaponized them to sell wars, overthrow governments, and rewire what entire country's desire and fear. And then a man, my mentor named Dan Kennedy, figured out how entrepreneurs could use those same dark arts ethically. And I spent the last 20 years taking all of it and turning into a system that bootstrap click funnels passed a billion dollars in sales without any venture capital. And I actually made a video that tells the entire story from Freud to Bernays and how to use the exact same techniques today to sell anything online.

And if what you just saw in this video fascinates you, that video is going to blow your mind. So go to Secrets of Propaganda.com or hit the link in the descriptions and go watch it right now while this is fresh. And if you haven't already subscribed yet, please do because this is the propaganda playbook. Every episode, I take a big story from the news. I decode the propaganda behind it and I show you how to use the exact same techniques to grow your business. Same science, same playbook, different story. The next episode is coming soon. I'll see you on the next one.