What Is Propaganda? How It Works & Why You Can't See It

You've been propagandised today. Probably in the last hour. And I'm not talking about political ads or conspiracy theories—I'm talking about ideas that feel so obvious, so natural, so true that you'd never think to question them.

In this episode, we explore what propaganda actually is, how it works in modern society, and why the most effective propaganda doesn't look like propaganda at all.

Here's what surprised me most while researching this episode:

The best propaganda isn't loud. It's not flashy. It's quiet, repetitive, and boring. It blends into the background until you forget there were other ways to think. And the language we use every day, from news headlines to social media, is doing more work than you realise.

We dive into:

• Why billionaires buy newspapers (and what that has to do with your morning coffee routine)
• Why does how we talk about certain things matter more than you think
• How "both sides" became propaganda itself
• A trend you've definitely seen on social media that's actually a masterclass in normalisation
• The question that changes everything: not whether you're influenced, but whether you're aware

You'll hear from: Jacques Ellul, Antonio Gramsci, Stuart Hall, Michel Foucault, and Paulo Freire, but don't worry, I make it actually interesting.

Fair warning: Once you hear this, you'll start seeing propaganda everywhere. Your social media feed. Your work culture. Maybe even in this very podcast description. There's no going back.

Listen, if you've ever wondered:

• Why certain ideas feel "obviously true"
• How the media shapes what we think is normal
• What makes something "extreme" vs. "reasonable"
• Whether you can actually think for yourself (spoiler: it's complicated)

See you on the Scenic Route!

Transcript

Welcome And Bold Premise

Jennifer Walter 0:00

Hey you, welcome back to the scenic route. I'm your host Jennifer. And well I ha I hate to break it to you. Well, you've been propagandized today. Is that even a word propandized? I think so. I don't know. Well, but anyway, you have been probably in the last hour, maybe in the last fucking five minutes. And so have I, to be honest. And I'm not talking about some conspiracy theory or political ad or whatever. I'm talking about ideas that feel so obvious, so natural, so true, that we would never think to question them. So by the end of this episode, you're going to see propaganda everywhere. So disclaimer, spoiler, whatever. In your morning routine, in the news, and how you think about work and what you consider normal. And honestly, you might not be able to unsee it, and that's a very fucking good thing. So we're ready to see the water you're swimming in. So let's go. There's a different way to think about mental health. And it starts with slowing down. Sometimes the longest way around is the shortest way home. And that's exactly where we're taking the scenic route. Hi, I'm Jennifer Walter, host of the Scenic Rad Podcast. Think of me as your sociologist's sister in arms and rebel with many causes. Together, we're blending critical thinking with compassion, mental health with a dash of rebellion, and personal healing with collective change. We're trading perfectionism for possibility and toxic positivity for messy growth. Each week, we're exploring the path to better mental health and social transformation. And yes, by the way, pretty crystals are totally optional. You ready to take the scenic route? Let's walk this path together. Okay, like what even is propaganda? Usually people have mental images of World War II posters and Laney Riefenstahl movies and angry men shouting, which is also true. Or we think about lies, manipulations, but that's all not the heart of it. We have to look at Shaq Kirill, um who wrote a book on propaganda in the Sikh, and he his core um his core statement in this book was propaganda isn't about changing your mind. It's about reinforcing what you already believe and setting the frame for what feels normal. And that's a very crucial part. Like we're every time you're in an argument with someone who has like a completely different view than you have, you're not gonna change their minds. So we're not gonna like that's just not how we work. It's reinforcing what at some part you already believe. Have a bit of tea tight truth, maybe, and then get a hook in it. So, one thing at a time. So, okay, reinforcing, cool. How does this work in society? Here we have to look at the work of Antonio Gramsci. He called, I guess this his idea of cultural hegemony. Dominant groups maintain power by making their worldviews seem like common sense. That's just how things are. Um, and of course, dominant groups are most likely white men. So these are just how things are. You know, they've always been this way. So the best propaganda isn't loud and flashy, although that seems to be working quite well for some presidents. It's quiet, repetitive, dare I say boring, right? Because it needs to be, because it needs to blend into the backgrounds of our lives until we forget that it's there. Until we forget that that's there's actually nothing normal about any of this. So, for example, the American dream, okay? Like, I'm not an American, but cultural who has cultural hegemony through movies and books and TV series and whatnot, the whole idea of work hard, achieve anything has rippled out. And notice the frame here, it's not success is good or bad, right? But it's often this success is an individual achievement. I work hard so I achieve it, regardless of what contributing factors like my sex, my race, all the public goods I used to get to get my success. And the same time, the same coin, just the backside of it, is failure is individual failing. If you fail, it's your responsibility. It's not that, I don't know, there should be a society, like we are living in a society, and society should like support you. Oh dare God forbid. So the framing is or looks at that we stop asking, well, what if the system is rigged? What if some people start miles ahead than I did? Who like work hard, achieve anything? Does this go for everyone? Does this go for people of color, for women, for marginalized people? Like, I don't think so. There we go. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Or like someone always dumping on the US. Like here in Europe, we all also have this whole work balance, work-life balance craze, right? And it's always framed as, well, you need better boundaries. Switch off your phone, opt Pomodoro the shit out of your day. Let's do like a workplace initiative to build resilience. And instead, we're not never asking the question, well, why do we actually why do we need to be more resilient in the workplace? Why, like, why is that? Why do we need better work boundaries? So this all becomes like an individual problem, right? Like people have to make sure they have good boundaries. And it's not about companies not ringing their employees at fucking 10 o'clock at night or their superiors. So burnout as well, then in consequence, becomes a personal time management failure and not a structural one, and it's very much a structural one. But we have past episodes on that. So go back after this one. Propaganda as a concept makes you forget that there were other ways to look at it or to think at all. It narrows the frame and it marks certain ideas invisible and it turns ideology, any kind, into reality. And we're gonna um look at that later on in the episode with the Overton window. But now we have to look at okay, but how how does propaganda actually work? So it's not just flashy billboards and shouting cheetahs. Um it's boils down to three mechanisms omission and normalization. Repetition. Again, we're not we don't want it's not the the glossy spectacle. We have a German saying that goals uh tropfen, hüllt Linstein. I don't know, constant dripping wears away the stone, swallows out the stone. Yeah, something along those lines. That's exactly what we mean with repetition, mechanism one of propaganda is repetition. It's just constantly the same, the same. The mill is going and running and running and running, it's just always the same fucking shit. In the 1920s, um American journalist called Walter Lippmann wrote a book called Public Opinion, where he introduced this idea that public opinion isn't um some organic thing that bubbles up from the people, um, but it's actually manufactured by those who control media and information. And then in the 80s, we had Chomsky and Herman who wrote Manufacturing Consent, where they showed exactly how this manufacturing happens. Disclaimer, yes, um Chomsky's later affiliation with Epstein are beyond horrendous, unethical, deeply disturbing affiliations with Epstein. So they identified five filters that kind of media passes through. Ownership, like who owns the media company? Like, think about why billionaires are buying up newspapers like Jeff Bezos' Washing Post, Elon Musk Twitter. Like, it's not a conspiracy, it's not rocket science. The people, the person who signs the paycheck influences what gets covered and how it gets covered, and especially how it gets covered. Like, kind of like the whole you don't buy the hand that feeds you kind of thing. Um, advertising is another media needs advertisers to survive, so stories that might upset major advertisers, you probably get buried. Sourcing is a big one, like who gets quoted as an expert? Uh it's usually people of from institutions of power, and rarely voices of marginalized people with flack, um, negative responses that discipline the media when they step out of line. No negative responses to expect. Well, if you don't get a smack, then you will not stop. And just kind of like dominant ideology, what worldview is considered sensible. Um, and all these kind of like shape um what gets reported and how it gets reported on. So these filters ensure certain narratives get repeated, while others kind of like just completely disappear. And again, it's the point, is the propaganda doesn't need to be exciting or fresh or new. It just needs to be constant. Right? I mean, how many times in different iterations have you heard hard work pays off? It doesn't need to be true, it doesn't need to be trash, flashy, trashy, it's trashy. It doesn't need to be flashy. It just gets repeated until it feels true. Second mechanism is omission. And that's a big one, right? What stories aren't told when I tell the story in a certain way? What questions aren't asked? I think here it's important to talk about Stuart Hall and his work. Um he spent years studying how media actually creates meaning. And one of his big insights was that the frame determines what we can't even see. So if the frame is set in a very particular way, certain possible possibilities become visible and others literally become invisible. Kind of like, I don't know, when you when you're a chef, when you're a chef and you're putting out the menu of your restaurant, what you put on becomes visible and others becomes invisible. Or like a good example is uh crime coverage. It's almost always framed as individual moral failing. And again, that is only that only works because there is like a a really tiny grain of truth in that. But what gets what store what stories aren't told? It's usually the stories of poverty, lack of education, systemic racism over policing. Or look at the like how on war crimes and genocides. I mean, how many times have we heard have we read the headline, 100 people killed in Gaza? Well, killed by who? People don't just get killed. Someone actively kills them. But the passive voice erases agency, erases responsibility, it makes violence sounds like a natural disaster, a consequence of some kind. Like something that just happens and we we can't do anything about it, rather than something people with power choose to do. Now with the Epstein files, right? And the whole media report on sexual abuse in general, like relationships with underage women. Stop the fuck! Cut it out. We have a word for underage women and it's girls. So the language makes it sound like I don't know, a consensual relationship of sorts. Underage women. What the holy fuck? What's omitted? What's omitted that these are children, that this is rape, the propaganda isn't is also in what what but it in what they say, but we need to be very, very conscious of the language that obscures what actually is happening. Mechanism tree, normalization. Here we have to draw on uh Michel Foucault's work. He was a French philosopher who spent his career studying how power actually works in society. His key insight was power doesn't just operate through force or loss, it operates through creating what we think of as normal. So once something becomes normalized, it's incredibly hard to challenge and successfully gets challenged over decades, generations. And it's not because anyone is kind of like forcing you with a gun to your head, but because it just feels like this is just how things are. Things have always been this way. For example, a grade one, I think, is always kind of like hustle culture. How dare you to be so frivolous that you have a hobby? So if the audacity. So if you have a hobby, you better make sure it's monetized. Because otherwise, how fucking dare you? Or rest must be earned. Um, excuse me, no, rest is just like a natural part of our like how bodies work. Thank you very much. Or oh, that's uh always um my personal favorite. Your worth is tied to your output. Huh. Okay, my worth is tied to how much I I can bring put into this system. Sure, how much can be extracted of me. Love it, love this for us. Uh and no one is like literally figuratively holding a gun to your head. The killer is like, we are actually holding our own gun to our own head with that. But see, these ideas feel true because they've been repeated and embedded and normalized over and over again. And the even absolute fucking cherry on top is that the most effective propaganda makes you believe you arrived at these conclusions yourself, that you're some kind of grand thinker who did something who did something very logical and rational and realistic and came to this conclusion that your worth is tied to your output, so you better work more, work harder, and with the consequences. So we've talked about how propaganda works through repetition, omission, and normalization, three mechanisms. But here it gets kind of really interesting. And we're circling back to what we said before about kind of like the frame of what gets talked about. It's the the core, the propaganda doesn't just influence what you think, it determines what's even thinkable in the first place. Here we have to draw on a concept called the Overton window, named after a policy analyst Joseph Overton. It's the range of ideas that are considered acceptable in public discourse at any given time. And if you're talking about something outside the Overton window, you're a pariah and you're like you should you're loony and you're crazy, whatever. So what does this mean? Practical example. US presidential debates. So we you have two people arguing about market regulations. How much we should regulate markets. Like one is like, mm, 45, and the other is like 47% we should regulate. But not the question is not, well, whether markets should be the primary way we organize society. Like that would have been an interesting thing to talk about that. But no, no, that's not that no no, we cannot. No, no, no. We cannot talk about this. It's not inside the opportunity. Or we talk about how much uh percentage of BIP should be spent on military spending. We're not talking about whether current spending levels make sense at all. Or if we just should not do any military spending. Oh God forbid. Certain ideas, uh, universal healthcare is a good example, basic income, good example, cutting military spending in half or something like that. They get labeled as extreme or unrealistic. And not because they're logically impossible. Or another great example of nation border, like just erasing nation national borders. I mean, they're not logically impossible. You can do that. You can cut military spending, you can say, well, we introduce basic universal basic income. They're logically very much possible. So they're not extreme or unrealistic because of that, but because they fall outside the window of what's considered acceptable to even discuss. And God forbid, I I think episode 91 of the Senior Ground I talked about nationalism. I mean, the comments I got for this episode, like, how dare you even like nation nation states are super. I'm like, are you for real? Sure. Yes. Could we actually discuss about other ways how we could organize things? No. Okay, cool. Let's move on. And again, how is that window maintained? Through the free mechanisms just talked about, repetition, emission, normalization. So through propaganda. And I think here we need to we don't need to. I just really want to mention this because it has been bugging me forever. That both sides. Okay, so this is the perfect example of how this works. The both sides framing we're here all the fucking time. There are good people on both sides. So the truth is in the middle. We need to hear both perspectives. And yes, look, I mean, I'm all for nuance, right? But the both sides framing becomes propaganda in the very second when it creates false equivalencies. For example, climate change was a good example. For years, media gave equal time to climate scientists and climate deniers. That's even happening to this fucking day, and I'm like sick of it. So framing this as a debate, all the while scientific consensus was and is overwhelming. We know climate change is happening. We know climate change is real. So that whole setup of climate scientists versus climate deniers and having equal airtime, that's not neutral. That's not both sides. It's propaganda. It normalizes the idea that this climate change is a question with two equally valid answers. That it's not. One is an opinion at best. Shitty one at that, but anyway. So, like. So, okay, the point neutrality itself can be propaganda. When you frame something as balance, you're reinforcing the status quo, making the current arrangements seem like the natural center, and anything else is deviation. Yes. Side eye for those listening. Where we feel is the most, or I feel the most, gender roles. Of course, gender roles. If you play bingo, it's just like Chen, how long does Chen mentions gender roles? Women still do most emotional labor and household work and management, even when working full time. But we notice science tells us that service can say all that. That's not enforced by law. Like, there's no law who says we must so. Well, there isn't. Yeah. So I wanna don't wanna give many policymakers the wrong ideas here. But like it's just enforced by normalization. That's just what women do. Women are caring, women are nurturing. And yeah, we are. But not the point. So think about the whole tradwise thing. It's not presented as propaganda, it's presented as personal choice, an aesthetic return to authenticity. Whatever the fuck that means. But the frame again is interesting. So modern feminism has made women miserable. Like they look haggard and they feel miserable, their husbands are not having enough sex. So traditional chender roles are natural and fulfilling. The nuclear family is the only real path to happiness, and of course, like the only natural thing anyway. Because I mean, gender is natural anyway, like whatever, and there are just two genders anyway, so why bother? Um again, what's submitted that this tradition is actually a very specific kind of 1950s and not a timeless truth at all. That it requires uh very much economic privilege. Most people don't have. It takes privilege, economic privilege to have one partner at home, and then that partner also needs a lot of trust or trust funds to know that they will not end up in poverty when they're old and their partner dumps them. But anyway, personal choice, people. Again, it's not timeless truth, right? It frames structural problems, unaffordable child care, lack of parental leave, wage stagnation, like all these things, all these structural problems are framed as like personal lifetime choices. And it's like, no. So the propaganda is not, oh, just be a housewife, right? It's the framing that kind of like makes questioning traditional gender roles. Seems like you're against nature. Because that's because women are naturally nurturing and thus need to take care of house and home and children. I did not get that memo. Um and again, the scary part. Once something becomes normal, questioning makes you seem extreme. Push back on hospital culture, you're just a lazy cunt. Questioning capitalism, you're just like one teeny tiny left-wing unrealistic snowflake, aren't you? Challenging traditional channel roles. Howdy cool. How dare she? Or how dare they. See what I did there. So the propaganda isn't just in the message we receive and in the very frame that determines what counts as reasonable in the first place. So now we're at the point of like, okay, I got it. Thanks very much. But now what the fuck do we do? At first we have to be very honest with ourselves. We're not immune to propaganda. You are not, I am not, we are not. We're human, we live in this culture, society, censpool, pick one. But we can develop and we should, we must what Paulo Freire I think that's how to pronounce it. Uh called critical consciousness, the ability to see contradictions and take action. We we have five, I think we have five tools that uh are at our disposal and we must use them. One is named a frame. Ask, what is this assuming? What worldview does it take for granted? So the frame's kind of like retirement security is individual responsibility. Um and yes, that again, it only holds true because there is like a teenal seed of truth in there. But we're not talking about stagnant wages, pension decline, any of these things. So what is what is this assuming? What worldview does it take for granted? Follow the omission. We have to ask what's not being sent. And then my benefit qu my favorite question of all, who benefits? Who benefits from this thing not being sent? From this thing being left out, who benefits from that? Three, another two we have count we have to seek counter narratives. We actively have to seek perspectives that challenge common sense. Read people, read more, read books, read, just read, listen to different experiences. And this isn't kind of like the both sides bullshit. It's seeing what kind of dominant discures obscures. We have to just read we have to we have to read more books. Seriously, we have to. And crucial one, we have crucial to you, we have to sit with a discomfort. When something feels obviously true, logically true, naturally true, get curious about why. Why is that? Is it your own privilege that makes you think so? The most obvious stuff is what we're least likely to question. And the that process of questioning that creates discomfort. Again, that discomfort is where the work happens, where you sit with it and you wait through the discomfort, realizing okay, the discomfort like where it comes from, from your own privileges, or and then kind of like work with that. And again, I think lastly, we're not above it. We're all subject to propaganda, including you, me, even the fucking smartest people, you know. And so the question isn't whether you're influenced, the question is whether you're aware. And I think humility is the beginning, the very beginning of developing critical consciousness. Propaganda isn't evil or good. I think it doesn't operate in that, in those terms. It can be it's a tool, it's a social force. It's how culture works, how norms get established, how power gets exercised. And it could go in either way. And right now we have too much of the wrong way. But the goal isn't purity, being completely free from ideology. I don't think that's possible. But we have to become more aware. We have to build a capacity to see the frame, to be aware, to see the frame, to notice when something is presented as invitable and to ask, is it dough? Is it really bitch you sure? Like when we can see the frame, we can and we can name it, we can step outside of it, even if it's just for a moment, and like look at it from a distance and be like, huh. Um, and then we remember that there are other ways to think, other ways to live, other ways to organize the world. So for this week, notice when something feels obvious or just how things are, and get curious. Like ask who benefits from this being normal? Who benefits from me naturally being the nurturer in the family? Who benefits from like me like answering my boss's email at 10 o'clock at night? What alternatives am I not seeing? Like, why do I see that goes back to my episode of nationalism? Like, if you look at the weather report, why are they like state or country borders on the weather map? The weather doesn't really care about it. And again, be gentle with yourself. The work is hard and you're doing the work while you're swimming in this cesspool. So, again, I've mentioned it before. If you want to go deeper on some of how the specific mechanism works in a specific context, check out episode 91 on nationalism. Really great example of propaganda and action. So that's the scenic route for this week. No shortcuts to the truth, but slowing down enough to see what's going on and self-find time to smell roses and enjoy the view. So thanks for being here. Share this with someone who might need to hear it, and see you next episode. And just like that, we've reached the end of another journey together on the Scenic Groot Podcast. Thank you for spending time with us. Curious for more stories or in search of the resources mentioned in today's episode? Visit us at scenigrootpodcast.com for everything you need. And if you're ready to embrace your scenic root, I've got something special for you. Step off the beaten path with my Scenic Groot Affirmation card deck. It's crafted for those moments when you're seeking courage, yearning to trust your inner void, and eager to carve out a path authentically, unmistakably yours. Pick your scenic root affirmation today and let it support you. Excited about where your journey might lead? I certainly am. Remember, the scenic road is not just about a destination, but the experiences, learnings, and joy we discover along the way. Thank you for being here, and I look forward to seeing you on the scenic route again.