Anatomy of a propaganda blitz

Updated Apr 10 2025

• bias
• narrative
• list

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.

• the basic theme: this changes everything!
• facts and evidence don’t matter — power doesn’t need facts or evidence, just narrative and ideology
• durability of the claims is not a chief concern; attention will rapidly move on (often distracted by another blitz)
• the hype may eventually be exposed as a fraud but it’s too little too late, and attention is intentionally diverted from it
• Examples: Gulf of Tonkin, the Iraq WMDs, Kuwaiti war crimes, Gaddafi/Benghazi, Syria chemical weapons, Corbyn anti-semitism, Venezuela regime change, Srebrenica massacre, Libya, Iran, Ukraine, Russiagate, literally too many to list
• Note: in 2025, watch all of this list unfold in real time with the atrocity propaganda against targeted enemies (Gaza, Yemen, Iran, on and on)

• the tone is always shrill, vehement, and hysterical
• using this kind of outrage, the message to the public is that there is no doubt
• the picture must be clear-cut, the public made to feel there is no reasonable basis for uncertainty—the “bad guys” are absolutely appalling and must be removed
• relentless repetition for days, weeks, months, even years
• the implicit or increasingly explicit claim that if you are not equally outraged then you are despicable yourself

• certainty and outrage across the entire media “spectrum”
• generates the impression that everyone knows the claim is truthful
• this is why the myth of a “media spectrum” is so useful—the snowballing consensus forces any dissidents to toe the line
• the consensus is “all right-thinking people”—if you don’t join them you are despicable and wrong

• to challenge the narrative is to risk becoming a target
• dissidents smeared as “useful idiots,” “apologists,” “genocide deniers,” etc., or even “sexist,” “misogynist,” “racist,” “anti-semitic,” etc.
• fake moral outrage
• extreme black/white thinking: if you question or speak out, then you support tyranny, dictatorship, fascism, etc.
• lasting damage to the dissidents’ career and prospects
• thus, anyone in the media quickly learns to keep their head down and toe the line, lest they find themselves in the crosshairs
• the chilling message: best to just keep quiet
• examples: Julian Assange, Jeremy Corbyn, Edward Snowden, on and on

• conveniently hits at the worst possible time for the establishment target, and/or with impeccable timing just ahead of key votes at the UN, Parliament, elections, etc.
• the “official enemy” does the one thing most likely to trigger invasion, bombing, electoral disaster, and so on, at exactly the wrong time (i.e. Assad used chemical weapons exactly when chemical weapons inspectors entered the Syrian capital, etc.)
• calls on the Hollywood trope of idiotic blindly self-destructive Dr Evil villains, so you can think “he’s nuts, he’s really asking for it!”
• Milosevic, bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Chávez, Gaddafi, Assad, Corbyn – basically the same Bond villain over and over again
• examples: the almost daily terror warnings in US and UK ahead of the Iraq war, a “softening up process” that was really a form of psychological terrorism Bush and Blair perpetuated on their own people; atrocity claims peaking in 2013 until Obama chose not to bomb Syria, at which point the daily headlines simply dried up (cf. us exceptionalism is abusive narcissism on how that “tenderizing” terror works)

• targets are Official Enemies whose actual, alleged, and often invented crimes are dwarfed by the crimes committed by the western governments and their allies
• dissidents afforded vitriolic treatment that is never experienced by western presidents and prime ministers who devastate whole countries
• judging the mere words of outsiders as worse than the actions of insiders that result in mass death
• example: raging at Gaddafi for allegedly threatening a massacre, but not a peep for US and UK leaders who killed over a million Iraqis, including 500,000 children
• propaganda blitzes never make moral sense
• ethical posturing generated by a structurally violent, greed-driven system for immoral ends
• pacifies the public so the powerful can do as they please

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

• see also: mute the narrative soundtrack for global politics to get a much clearer picture of what’s going on in the world
• see also: “complexity” is sometimes noise, a mountain of apologia to make something evil and stupid seem smart and good
• related: the three stages of gaslighting and how to beat a manipulator
• related: tools for thinking about censorship