Propaganda and Subversion, Part 1: Deception

He who controls the present controls the past; he who controls the past controls the future. – George Orwell

Since deception is the most self-explanatory of the six stages, rather than explaining how propagandists lie (especially since I’ve already done that to an extent), I will instead correct some not-so-common misconceptions about history, and maybe get you to rethink what you’ve been taught.

The word “propaganda” is derived from “propagate,” which is but one letter different from “propagare,” the Latin word meaning “to spread, enlarge, or increase.” Though the word itself is vulgar Latin (as opposed to Ecclesiastical Latin), propaganda as we know it is originally a product of the Roman Catholic Church. When it comes to grand narratives that have influenced modern society, all roads lead to Rome. Even before the rise of Christianity, Rome had firm control over narratives purely as a result of writing – the Romans wrote down everything, and at the end of the day, history belongs to writers.

Before I continue with dissecting deceptive grand narratives, I need to go on a tangent about polytheism. The Romans had contact with many other advanced civilisations (not just “barbarians”) even in the days after they took over the entire Mediterranean: Persia to the east, Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia) to the south, and the Norse to the north. The Romans made many notes about the pantheons of these respective cultures. Of the Norse, for example, they mentioned that they chiefly worshipped Mercury, but more commonly paid homage to Jove. They were using the Roman names for Hermes and Zeus, who respectively are closest to Odin and Thor. Now then, I don’t read Marvel comics, so if you do, kindly leave whatever assumptions you may have about the Norse gods at the door, m’kay? Odin, more properly spelt Oðin (ᚢᚦᛁᚾ), despite being known as the All-father and the head of the Norse pantheon, is more of a loner and a trickster archetype than a brash and bombastic magical philanderer like Zeus. The only other thing that Oðin has in common with Zeus is the tendency to shapeshift and roam around the mortal world in disguise for… whatever reason. Unfortunately, pre-Christian sources about the Norse pantheon are scant, and the best-known source for Norse mythology is a book from the 13th century called the Codex Regius, which contains both the Poetic Edda and its lesser-known non-rhyming counterpart, the Prose Edda. The Eddas are transcriptions of old Norse tales that were passed down through oral traditions for who-knows-how-long, but it’s not as if the Norse didn’t have a written language; runes have been around in one form or another since the Bronze Age. On a tangent to the tangent, you may have noticed that I spell my name out on my blog’s banner in both Cyrillic and Runic: Олександр Варяжский / ᛟᛚᛖᚲᛋᚨᚾᛐᛦ ᚠᚨᛦᚬᚷᛋᚲᛁᛁ. The runes that I use are primarily Younger Futhark, which were used during the Viking period (7th-12th centuries), but there are a few that are Elder Futhark (2nd-8th century), since I didn’t know what else to use. Anyway, there is something rather curious about the Eddas – they are the first mention of Loki, who is half-jötunn and Oðin’s blood-brother. Scandinavian runestones from the Viking period and earlier contain many of the tales compiled in the Eddas, but there is no mention of Loki – not one. Nor, for that matter, do Roman sources mention any analogue for Pluto (Hades) in their descriptions of the Norse religion. The various legendary beasts such as Jörmungandr and Fenrir being the spawn of Loki and Angrboða appear to be a ret-conned parallel to Greek mythology, in which many monsters are the spawn of Typhon and Echidna. While the origins of the Codex Regius are unknown, the book appears to have been very heavily influenced by Christianity. Celtic mythology is even worse in this regard, since the Scots, Irish, and Welsh did not have any written language prior to the arrival of Christianity, hence the complete bastardisation of their ancient stories and no source material, something that both Count Dankula and Red from Overly Sarcastic Productions regularly complain about when trying to discuss Celtic mythology. Can you see where this is going yet?

I have made my disdain for stereotypical Yankee ignorance abundantly clear by now, and there is none greater than their own religion. The majority of Americans are Christian, and the majority of them have never read the Bible. I have, on the other hand, several times and in multiple languages, which is why I know that there is no such thing as “true” Christianity, especially not if you take the book literally. Of course, even if you do adhere to a literal interpretation of the scripture, you must concede that Jesus Christ was not born on the 25th of December! As I’m writing this, it is the 17th of December, so western Christmas is right around the corner, and I may as well focus on it for the time being. Mind you, I personally don’t celebrate western Christmas (even though my adoptive family does), in fact I rarely celebrate Christmas at all, but that’s mostly because it’s a waste of time and money, and nothing to do with religious puritanism. The “pagan” origins of Christmas and most other “Christian” holidays have been an open secret within the Catholic Church since their very inception, the reasoning for which is fairly straightforward: you can’t get people to join your religion if you try to force them to give up their entertainment. Christmas, of course, is a winter solstice celebration, which the pre-Christian Romans had as well, and called “Saturnalia.” The trappings of modern Christmas, however, all come from the Norse tradition called “Yule,” such as the decorated conifer, a mysterious old man entering houses through the chimney – which is something that none other than Oðin was said to do – and gifts being left inside socks hung up to dry. The Celts, meanwhile, had their own autumn celebration called “Samhain” (pronounced “Sau-in,” for some reason) turned into “All-Saints’ Day” by the Catholic Church. Of course, this is really pedestrian knowledge right here. If I truly wanted to impress you with my knowledge of occult holidays, I’d go into things like Walpurgisnacht, the Feast of Saint Alexander, or Kupala Night. However, we should probably get out of the middle ages, otherwise you’ll be here all day.

The Protestant Reformation is one of the least-understood events in the history of Christianity, especially to the Protestants themselves. The prevailing narrative is that Reverend Martin Luther was fed up with the corruption of the Catholic Church, particularly the sale of “indulgences.” This is a lie by omission. The corruption of the Church was well-known for over a quarter-millennium by that point, with multiple prominent aristocrats and theologians alike pointing this out, and none of them were ever burned at the stake. Of course, those of us who do know the history of Christianity are aware already that the Roman Catholic Church was established as a political institution from word go, but I’ll get into that in the next installment of this series, in which I discuss divisive narratives… because otherwise, I’ll have to go back in time, and we’ll be here all day. The primary issue that Luther had wasn’t with the institution itself, but with the doctrine. Luther was a biblical literalist, and saw the Catholic Church as being a bit too “liberal” in its interpretation of scripture… and yes, that was a deliberate choice of words on my part, you’ll soon see why. Early Protestants, Puritans very much included, were vehemently opposed to the celebration of pagan holidays that had been given a Christian veneer by the Catholic Church. In Protestant-dominated areas, Catholics were forced to celebrate their holidays in secret, lest they be punished for heresy. While the prevailing narrative in the Anglosphere is that the Catholics were the bad guys, persecuting innocent Protestants who just wanted to practise what they saw as the “true faith” in peace, in reality, Protestants persecuted Catholics and even other Protestants just as much as Catholics persecuted Protestants. This I will go over in greater detail in a future post, and possibly even an entire series, about the Thirty Years’ War. For now, let’s fast forward to the 19th century.

History is a lie agreed upon. – Napoléon Bonaparte

A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society. – Karl Marx

Both trade unions and welfare are a product of 19th century industrial society. Labour reforms begin in Britain during the Victorian period, and one of the most prominent voices was Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, who brought his concerns before Parliament in 1840 as a direct response to awful conditions in British coal mines that he had personally witnessed. Parliament subsequently passed the Mines and Collieries Act in 1842. The modern welfare state, meanwhile, can trace its origins to Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Prussia and later Germany, which became a unified nation in 1873. While proponents of “social democracy,” a phrase that I thoroughly despise and will rant about in another article, think that these policies were implemented from a place of genuine altruism, Karl Marx assumed the worst, i.e. that it was done purely out of a Machiavellian need to keep the public placated. The truth is somewhere in between, but Marx definitely has a point. Lord Ashley, for example, was motivated primarily by Victorian prudishness when he demanded an end to women and children under 13 working underground. The German doctrine, meanwhile, has always been some variation of the idea that the people are the property of the state, and therefore must be taken care of so that they may work for the benefit of the state. To put it in Marxist terms, the worker’s own body is a means of production, and all means of production must be collectively owned, therefore the workers themselves collectively own each other, and are thus obligated to keep each other in good working condition. In short, while fiscal conservatives can screech about welfare crumbs being “socialism,” Marxists argue that welfare crumbs are actually nothing more than the political establishment attempting to forestall the revolution… and in some cases, they actually have a point, hence the modern Marxist mantra “solidarity, not charity.”

I’m not actually defending Marxism here, and to understand why, you’ll have to wait for the next instalment in the “misunderstood ideologies” series. Marx himself may have had a few valid points, but Marxists are just as guilty of manipulating the historical narrative as the bourgeoisie, beginning with World War I. Nationalism, contrary to popular belief, did not cause the First World War. The real cause was the convoluted network of mutual defence treaties, otherwise known as international alliances. In other words, the real cause of the First World War was the growing pain of globalism, which is an inconvenient fact for the Marxists, otherwise known as international socialists. Nationalism, sometimes incorrectly called patriotism, did not begin to well up until 1915, by which point the war was already raging across all fronts. For the record: “a patriot is a person willing to defend one’s country from one’s government, a nationalist is a person who cannot tell the two apart.” – Karel Antonovič Janáček, paraphrasing Edward Abbey

Most of what we know about the Second World War, particularly from the German perspective, is outright false. For example, the diary of Wilhelm Hoffman is an outright forgery created by Marshal Vasili Chuikov. Moreover, Heinz Guderian and other German generals seem to have invented and propagated the myth of “madman Hitler” in their memoirs in order to excuse their own strategic mistakes – of which they made many, usually in direct defiance of Hitler’s orders. Hitler was wrong about a great deal, and he was irredeemably evil, but he was neither stupid nor insane, and routinely got annoyed with his generals over their incompetence… and arse-covering *cough cough* Erwin Rommel *cough cough*. Okay, about that: the north African theatre served more of a propaganda purpose than a strategic one, providing the German people with a vastly more romanticized picture of the war than the depressing mire of the Eastern Front. Rommel was thus basically allowed to do as he pleased and write his own legacy in the process, as long as he provided plenty of heroic film reels to Josef Göbbels. The Allies waged their own propaganda war in order to artificially drum up support for the war effort. In January of 1942, most Americans were annoyed that their boys were being shipped to Britain and north Africa, since they saw the European theatre as a largely British affair, and in no way America’s concern. To counter this sentiment, the US government propped up its own propaganda figure to drum up support for the European theatre, George Patton.

The Soviets had a nasty habit of exaggerating the disasters that they faced, thus making themselves seem more heroic than they actually were. The threat posed by Nazi Germany was one such example (and I will keep clobbering that sacred cow until it finally drops dead), and the Chërnobl nuclear meltdown in 1986 was another. The latter is almost single-handedly responsible for all the modern-day fearmongering about nuclear power, and is the reason that plentiful clean energy will never be a thing. The reality is that, unlike Three Mile Island, the Chërnobl meltdown wasn’t the result of an equipment malfunction or inadequate instrumentation, but an unauthorised experiment. I can’t help but wonder if fire water (essentially Ukrainian whiskey) was involved.

The entire Cold War was itself a propaganda war with no defined front. Marxists and national socialists alike had been infiltrating western institutions since the 1930s, though the natsocs in their various forms largely disappeared after 1945, leaving Hollywood to be utterly dominated by Marxists, and eventually that spilled over into mainstream academia as well. But NOOO, that’s a “far-right conspiracy theory!” When the conspirators are caught, first they deny. When confronted with incontrovertible proof, they then shift the goal-posts and try to justify. There is always a double standard when it comes to imperialism and ideological subversion, and since one side dominates the mainstream discourse, one side has vastly more prolific arguments. I feel like I show this meme a lot, but it’s a good one:

The classical religions are just as guilty of subversive activities as the modern secular ideologies, with evangelical Christians and the Muslim Brotherhood alike all worming their way into American institutions with things like the Discovery Institute’s “wedge strategy” and the MB’s assassination of Philip Haney, author of the book See Something, Say Nothing. To prevent this post from turning into a full-length novel all by itself, for my purposes, I’ll focus on standpoint “theory,” the pseudoscientific postmodernist drivel of one Sandra Harding that kicked off “the science wars,” documented in a book titled Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, originally published in French in 1997, then re-published a year later in English under the title Fashionable Nonsense.

Standpoint theory is the idea that the identity of the scientist somehow has a bearing on the validity of the scientific research. Sandra Harding only got her dumpster fire of a dissertation approved because it was filled to the brim with moral grandstanding, and her words successfully brow-beat almost anyone who reads her work into agreeing with her. In other words, her atrocious doctoral thesis is nothing but pure emotional blackmail, read it at your own risk. Now then, I’m not saying that Harding was a Russian spy or even funded by the Soviet government, but the origins of her ideas can be traced to Soviet-backed ideological subversion. The propaganda war had already been raging throughout central Europe and even the west prior to the rise of fascism, and continued throughout academia with the likes of French postmodernism. Academics, at least in America, are mostly a bunch of educated morons, easily impressed by the use of metre-long words (side note, the word for “sesquipedalian” in Russian directly translates to either “foot and-a-half” or “metre and-a-half,” depending on whether you are talking about a single word or an entire diatribe, though I suppose that’s rich from a language in which dodecasyllabic names are commonplace), hence postmodernist word-salad spinners naturally dominating.

If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit. – Aron Ra

To be clear, I hate Aron Ra, but that line was brilliant, and he came up with it as a rebuttal to Kent Hovind, whom I hate even more. I’ve been told that brevity is the soul of wit, that vigourous writing is concise, and that people who waffle on forever usually have nothing to say. The latter, to waffle, to baffle, to bullshit, is the Hegelian method, and it was inherited by the postmodernists. Anyone who doesn’t make an attempt to be clear is trying to lie to you. I’ve gone through this in my dissection of logical fallacies, the ideological method, Machiavellianism, and so on and so forth. Anyway, this article is already long enough, so if anyone is curious about any of the specific narratives that I brought up, I’ll happily explain them in a comment. The next instalment in this series will probably be a lot shorter and clearer as I explain the principles behind a divisive narrative, and then briefly discuss some examples. Na shledanou!