You're Not Immune To Propaganda

Propaganda isn’t mainly about dramatic war posters or obvious lies—it thrives through everyday language, economic policy, and “common sense” framing that shapes what people want, fear, and accept. The clearest example comes from the post–Cold War era: just as World War II and Cold War messaging made enemies and emotions feel natural, modern neoliberalism builds a subtler kind of control by turning market logic into personal identity.

The argument starts with definitions. Propaganda is often treated as sensational deception, but it can also be influential rhetoric—information and framing that nudges public opinion without needing to be outright false. That broader view connects to Edward Bernays, credited with modern public relations, who described propaganda as the “conscious and intelligent manipulation” of mass habits and opinions. Bernays’ work is presented as a bridge from advertising techniques to state politics, including a major U.S. PR campaign tied to United Fruit (now Chiquita) that helped stoke fear of communist takeover in Guatemala. The resulting CIA-backed coup replaced a democratically elected president with a military dictatorship and triggered decades of civil war.

From there, the focus shifts to neoliberalism as a system of governance that uses both rhetoric and policy to produce “neoliberal subjects”—people who think like markets and therefore accept market-centered outcomes. Neoliberalism is framed as not simply “small government” but a different kind of government: the state actively builds the conditions for markets to operate, while reshaping welfare, labor, and daily life. Policies cited include tying welfare and healthcare to work requirements, criminalizing poverty and homelessness, expanding surveillance, and creating new property rights such as intellectual property to marketize areas of life. Even when violence is not overt, control is described as persistent—using sanctions, threats, and invasions to open countries to foreign capital, and bailing out private capital when banks fail.

The rhetoric accompanying these policies is portrayed as a moral story about freedom and responsibility. Market logic is said to colonize everything: governments are judged by budgets rather than outcomes; strikes and labor conflict get reduced to economic costs; education becomes job training for “human capital”; self-care becomes consumer tech; and democracy is reframed as voting with dollars. Politicians and commentators are also criticized for shifting blame for unemployment onto individuals—paired with reforms that make unemployment benefits harder to access—creating a contradiction where people are told they can do anything if they just adopt the right mindset, even as safety nets are cut and job quality deteriorates.

Finally, the discussion returns to propaganda as a persuasion tool in everyday media. A concrete example compares how outlets headline the UK junior doctors’ strike, emphasizing how wording choices—what facts are foregrounded or omitted—steer readers toward different emotional conclusions. The episode ends with a practical suggestion for media literacy: Ground News, which aggregates tens of thousands of sources and lets users compare coverage, ownership, and “factuality” ratings to spot bias without doing hours of manual research.