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Anatomy of a propaganda blitz

Updated Mar 29 2025

Copying this straight from Propaganda Blitz (David Edwards and David Cromwell) because it’s immensely helpful to reference.

Propaganda blitzes are fast-moving attacks intended to inflict maximum damage in minimum time. They are:

  1. based on allegations of dramatic new evidence
  2. communicated with high emotional intensity and moral outrage
  3. apparently supported by an informed corporate media/academic/expert consensus
  4. reinforced by damning condemnation of anyone daring even to question the apparent consensus
  5. often generated with fortuitous timing
  6. characterised by tragicomic moral dissonance

Every one of these things, much less the concatenation of all of them, signals red flag, red flag, red flag. Do not fall for it! See below to expand on each item.


​Dramatic new evidence

Emotional tone and intensity

Appearance of informed “consensus”

Demonising dissent

Timing and fortuitous coincidences

Tragicomic moral dissonance


Or, to put it a lil’ bit more bluntly: 💀

There’s little or no relation between what the mass media direct people to care about and what actually matters. If you get all worked up about the Hot Topic of the Day like everyone else you’re usually just clapping along with a plutocratic puppet show made for stunted children. —Caitlin Johnstone, Notes from the Edge of the Narrative Matrix