Propoganda only works 100% when media channels are few, under control, and one way.
That is not the situation today and I doubt even the neocon thinkers had consulted a Futurist in the 3 decades they have been planning all this.
I am pretty sure that they predicted compliant media, not increasingly decentralized information media, such as this one, that we are in now.
Had we had compliant and centralized media today, the picture would be very grim. Even worse. Because the Americans would still be waving flags and looking forward to the next demonstration of US might and right.
So, another technological advance changes the game. Just in time. (though the seeds of the Internet were sown long ago) You can't be me, I'm taken
It's yet another attempt by the big telecoms companies to get their hands on a bigger slice of the Internet pie by state-sponsored monopoly powers. They've been at it since the Internet started growing.
On one hand, had you lived in a country with controlled media, you knew that many/most people don't trust it by default, trusting rumours more than papers or TV. On the other hand, the 'decentralised media' we have has a lot of problems: 1) it has done very little in terms of getting information -- it excels in analysis, making connections, and pushing some information in the forefront; 2) it is very fractured: Kos, Eurotrib et al are only reservates for the fact-based comunity, while other sites serve to further fanatise the faithful, turning propaganda from one dinosaur into a hundred-headed dragon surrounding the supceptible from all sides, and spewing out counter-spin to the other side1s analysis at record speed and no costs involved; 3) the Blogosphere is still a minority phenomenon, something for relatively well-off political junkies, not reached by the wide majority. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
In reality propaganda only seems to work up to a point. Even when you lock down all of the media and force them to be on-message, private thoughts and semi-private conversations guarantee that dissenting points of view will spread. In fact a state-wide campaign of violence and terror - such as the one in North Korea - will always be necessary to minimise dissent. Media control on its own can never be enough.
Bush's US is a good demonstration. Even with a solid and unified media campaign, the majority of the public aren't buying the official line.
A useful activist thing to do would be to start debunking the power of propaganda. Marketing and PR types make a living by pretending that it's more powerful than it really is. It would be naive to pretend it's not influential, but claims for its omnipotence seem to have been more than a little exaggerated.
