Some Notes on Right-wing Propaganda
George H. Blackford (2009/10)
I recently receive an email from a friend that started with this paragraph:
What if I had told you in October 2008, before the last presidential election, that before Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office, the federal government would be in control of both the mortgage and the banking industries? That 19 of America’s largest banks would be forced to undergo “stress tests” by the federal government which would determine that they were “insufficiently capitalized” so they must be supervised by the government? Would you have said, “C’mon, that will never happen in America”?
This paragraph actually says very little, as did the rest of the email that rambled on for ten more paragraphs, but it, as well as the rest of the email, reeks of sarcasm and innuendo, and it just screams SOCIALISM to anyone who is steeped in the Utopian Capitalist's propaganda of the Right-wing Propaganda Machine. [1] I imagine it would seem scary to anyone even if not steeped in this propaganda who is unaware of the history of our financial system and how it works. After all, it says that Obama has taken control of both the mortgage and the banking industries, forced banks to undergo “stress tests” to determine if they are “insufficiently capitalized” and thinks the banks must be supervised by the government. The tone of this paragraph suggests that Obama is going off the deep end and taking our country into uncharted waters that threaten unmitigated disaster.
But what is reality here?
Right-wing Propaganda Versus Reality
The fact is that the government has regulated and supervised our financial system since 1935 by way of a regulatory system created in response to the Great Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed. What’s more, the government has had the responsibility of regulating and supervising the mortgage market since the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act passed in 1994. There is nothing new in this.
In addition, it is quite clear from history that the regulatory regimen put in place in the 1930s was very successful in avoiding the kinds of financial crises that plagued our country throughout the nineteenth century up until 1929 and that we didn’t experience a similar financial crisis until 1987 after we began to dismantle the regulatory system put in place in the 1930s.[2]
It has been an accepted fact, outside the world of right-wing propaganda, for the past 70 years that the only way to avoid these kinds of catastrophes in a market economy is for the government to keep financial institutions from becoming “insufficiently capitalized,” and “stress tests” have become a standard procedure for determining if a financial institution is adequately capitalized. Furthermore, this is not rocket science. It is the kind of thing that is explained to 18 and 19 year old high school graduates all over the world in a first semester principles of economics course.
There is, of course, no reason why anyone who has not taken a first semester principles course in economics should know these things, and this brings us to the crux of the issue. Because most people do not know these things, it gives the right-wing propagandists who write these email the freedom to lie to people with impunity when they write them.
If you have any doubts about what I am telling you, you don’t have to take my word for it. Click on these links to various descriptions of the crises in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, and 1907, to get some idea what our financial system was like before New Deal regulatory regime was put in place. Read Galbraith’s book, The Great Crash of 1929, to see how reckless and irresponsible behavior in the financial sector lead to a speculative bubble that caused the Crash of 1929. If you can’t take Galbraith’s liberal bias then read Friedman’s The Great Contraction, 1929-1933 to see how the Crown Prince of Utopian Capitalism portrays the role government played in this catastrophe. When you read Friedman’s book you will find that Friedman’s withering criticism of the government is not to the effect that the government interfered too much in the financial system during the Great Contraction, but, rather, that the government did not interfere enough in response to the crisis.
If you want something more current check out Reinhart and Rogoff’s Banking Crises An Equal Opportunity Menace or their two summaries of this paper The Aftermath of Financial Crises or Is the 2007 U.S. Sub-Prime Financial Crisis So Different? An International Historical Comparison which document financial crises throughout the world since World War II. Or look at Chapter 4 of the FDIC’s History of the 80s which examines the way in which deregulation and the failure to enforce capital requirements on thrift institutions during the Reagan administration turned a $25 billion savings and loan problem in 1983 into the $160 billion financial crisis in 1988. If you read any of these things you will find that nothing I have said above is new or surprising.
Virtually everyone who knows anything about the financial system believes the financial system should be regulated by the government. People who do not believe this either have no understanding at all as to how our financial system works or are Utopian Capitalist fanatics, such as Allen Greenspan, who read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in his youth and never recovered from the insane delusion that a free-market utopia can exist if we just get rid of the government and all just get along. And even Allen Greenspan came to see the error of his ways, as witnessed by his testimony before the October, 2008 congressional hearing on Federal Regulation of Financial Markets after his reckless policies led to the worse financial breakdown since the Great Crash of 1929.
The Propaganda Value of These Emails
Do the people who write these emails really believe the government should not force banks to undergo stress tests to determine if they are insufficiently capitalized or that banks should not be supervised by the government? Do they really want to return to the economic chaos of the 19th century or the cowboy finance of the Bush administration? Are they really this crazy or are they just saying these things to further a political agenda? Who are the people who create this kind of propaganda anyway?
When I clicked on the link that supposedly identifies the author of this email (Steve McCullough) I am not at all surprised to be taken to a right-wing Republican website [now a year after this note was originally written a right-wing Tea Party website, the party started by Dick Armey and promoted by Fox News]—a website created by the very people who caused the current economic disaster in the first place—the people whose insane economic policies created the trillion dollar deficits they complain about, who lied to get us into a war for their own profit and that of their friends, who ignored the Constitution time and again as they pursued their personal goals, who turned us into a nation of torturers, who sold off our government piece by piece for the profit of their friends, who brought us the most corrupt administration in the history of our country, and who have brought our country to the brink of destruction. (Frank Isikoff Chandrasekaran Miller Ricks Krugman)
The email sent to me by my friend is a rather benign example of the kind of propaganda generated by the Right-wing Propaganda Machine, but in spite of the fact that it makes no sense at all on its face it is very effective with people who know little about its subject matter, and it is typical of the kind of thing generated by propagandists. It is the kind of thing the British government used in WW I and II to turn world opinion against the Germans, that Joseph Goebbels used to scapegoat the communists, unions, and Jews during the 1930s, and that the Republican Party perfected to a science as well as an art in the 1980s. This stuff is specifically designed by social psychologist and Madison Avenue types, not to be informative or to get at the truth, but to create negative associations in the minds of the reader toward Obama, Democrats, or anyone Republican propagandists call a liberal, an elitist, a socialist, or any other group they wish to demonize.
The purpose for creating these negative associations is to generate fear, anger, and hatred toward the people they are scapegoating by bypassing the rational thought processes of the subjects toward which this propaganda is directed and playing on the subject’s racial, ethnic, social, intellectual, economic, and political prejudices, fears, insecurities, and ignorance with the goal of controlling how the subject thinks. In other words, this kind of propaganda is an instrument of mind control deliberately designed to control how people think. The process involves an irrational appeal to emotion, and it creates a delusional view of the world that is almost completely out of touch with reality. (Westen Lakoff Hartman Frank Altemeyer Krugman)
This kind of propaganda is exceedingly effective in that once someone succumbs to it he begins to believe in the delusional world the propagandists has created—a world in which all of the world’s problems are created by blacks, Mexicans, intellectuals, elites, liberals, communists, socialists, and Democrats; a world in which government produces nothing of value, creates more problems than it solves, generates agencies and regulations that have no socially redeeming functions; a world in which government is worthless and must be opposed whenever possible; a world in which free-market capitalism is the savior of mankind and must be left to its own devices; and a world in which anyone who questions these things is some kind of intellectual, elitist, liberal, communist, socialist crazy to be feared and despised. (Westen Lakoff Hartman Frank Krugman Altemeyer)
Given the way in which this delusional world is created—bypassing the rational thought processes and playing on people's prejudices, fears, insecurities, and ignorance to generate fear, anger, and hatred—people who allow themselves to succumb to this kind of propaganda are susceptible to being influenced by the most outlandish ideas—ideas that make no sense at all on their face—the kinds of ideas put forth in the M. Jay Wells article I discussed in The Rise of Utopian Capitalism and the idea implicit in the paragraph above that Obama has gone off the deep end by taking control of both the mortgage and the banking industries, forcing banks to undergo “stress tests” to determine if they are “insufficiently capitalized” and by his thinking banks must be supervised by the government.[3]
The reason people who allow themselves to succumb to this kind of propaganda are susceptible to being influenced by such outlandish ideas is that once the propagandist is able to bypass the rational thought processes of his subject and tap into his subject’s prejudices, fears, and insecurities the propagandist begins to control how the subject feels about these ideas. Since how we feel about something is a major determinant of what we believe about that thing, at this point the subject begins to believe in the delusional world created by the propagandist.
In addition, since there is a natural tendency for people to filter information about the real world from the perspective of what they believe, the subject of the propagandists begins to filter the information he accepts about the real world from the perspective of the delusional world of the propagandists—to accept arguments, facts, and ideas that are consistent with the propagandist’s delusional world and to reject arguments, facts, and ideas that are inconsistent with that world.
Furthermore, there is a natural tendency to filter information about the real world on the basis of the source of that information—accepting only information coming from sources associated with the propagandist and rejecting information coming from sources associated with people who are scapegoated by the propagandist. When this happens, the mind of the subject is almost completely under the control of the propagandist, and the subject begins to live in the world created by the propagandist—the world created by the Right-wing Propaganda Machine—the world of Fox News, the Washington Times, Investor’s Business Daily, and innumerable other right-wing rags, talk shows, blogs, websites, and think tanks. (Westen Lakoff Hartman Frank Krugman)
And as I explained in The Rise of Utopian Capitalism, Why Blame Republicans, and Some Notes on Republicans and Torture the people who are creating this world are dangerous. They are true believers who have an abiding faith in their systems of beliefs that is completely out of touch with reality. They are so confident in the righteousness of their cause and ideas they believe their ends justify their means no matter how unconstitutional or unjust or inhumane their means may be. They believe in democracy only to the extent it serves their ends and reject democracy when it does not. They are following the path pioneered by the fascists of the 1930s and will not hesitate to impose their beliefs on a disapproving majority if they are able to find a way to do so. These true believers are the architects of the delusional world created by the Right-wing Propaganda Machine, and they live in the delusional world they have created.
Who Listens to This Propaganda
Who are the people the propagandists are appealing to?
First, we have the Christian Right. The rank and file of the Christian Right knows very little about the world their leaders envision for our country and would be shocked if they actually thought about it, but they don’t. They have faith in their leaders and think their leaders couldn’t possibly be fascists. After all, the Nazis were all a bunch of atheists, weren’t they, and the German people immoral degenerates?
They would be shocked to discover the German people of the 1930s were no more or less immoral than the average American and probably had a higher sense of honor and duty because of their military culture and traditions. They would be even more shocked to discover that Hitler and a large portion of the top leaders of the Nazi regime were Catholic, there were no professed atheists in their ranks, and Hitler himself believed he was carrying out the will of a Divine Providence. They would also be shocked to discover that virtually all of the Christian churches signed a pact with the devil and refused to speak out against the Nazi regime and that the vast majority of the Christian leaders in Germany actually supported the Nazi’s crusade against Godless Communism. (Shirer Bullock Altemeyer Utopian)
The leaders of the Christian Right, on the other hand, are another story. Most of their leaders speak as if there are only three books in the New Testament—Mark, John, and Revelations—and treat most of Mathew, Luke, and Paul as if they were included by mistake. They amass fortunes selling their beliefs attacking the welfare state as if Christ hated the poor and promised the kingdom of God to whoever can buy a needle big enough to fit a camel.
They claim to believe that all life is sacred while they support the death penalty. They declare to the world that sexual orientation is not innately determined but a choice that all of us are free to make in spite of the fact that it is obvious to most of us that we did not choose to be heterosexual, that there is an inexplicable innate overpowering drive that draws us toward members of the opposite sex, and that only bisexuals—those who experience this drive toward both sexes—have a choice in this matter.
They profess to believe in the literal word of the Bible but only adhere to those parts of the Bible that serve their ends and ignore those that do not. They preach the Earth is 5,000 years old and reject all science that contradicts this belief. Hence, they reject the very foundation of biology, archeology, chemistry, and physics and envision a world in which these subjects are taught in our public schools in accordance with Christian principles by which they mean the fundamentalist Christian principles as they define them.
They declare our country was founded by Christians as a Christian nation in spite of the fact this is obviously not true, and they treat the separation of church and state provision in the Constitution as if it applies to everyone but them. In spite of this provision they lead a crusade to have prayer in schools by which they mean they want to use the power of the state to force their prayers on other people’s children—your children as well as mine.
They have made their belief that we should be defined as a Christian nation clear—even though no other nation on Earth is as religiously diverse as ours—and have made their goal of accomplishing this end clear as well. And by Christian nation they mean a fundamentalist Christian nation whereby anyone who doesn’t believe as they do is a heathen condemned to hell. (White Altemeyer Kuo)
There can be no doubt that the stalwart leaders of the Christian Right fully embrace the delusional nonsense of the Right-wing Propaganda Machine. They are among the most fervent of the true believers and direct their flocks accordingly.
Second, we have the White Supremacists and Right-wing Militias. These are the folks, mostly in the Deep South but spread throughout the rest of the country as well, who believe blacks are a privileged group that run this country and are responsible for the desperate conditions of white America because blacks are stealing jobs from whites. They believe all of this in spite of the fact that blacks comprise only eleven percent of our population, have always experienced higher unemployment rates than whites, and by every objective measure of economic and social wellbeing blacks are the least privileged in our society. (Math was not the White Supremacists best subject in school.)
The White Supremacists and Right-wing Militias desperately cling to their guns in the hope of defending themselves against our government and the Trilateral Commission as they try to take their freedom away by forcing socialism on them by way of a world government.
The anger of the White Supremacists and Right-wing Militias is focused on the Republican Party’s scapegoats, and they see themselves as the foot-soldiers in the coming anti-socialist counter revolution that is, in their minds, imminent. At the same time they seem to be totally oblivious to the fact that they are preparing to fight the United States Government in their quest to defend our country against those who, in their minds, are defiling it and seem to be totally oblivious to inevitable result of any conflict between them and the United States Army, Marine Corp, Navy, and Air Force when their day of judgment comes.
Third, are the ordinary racists who want to return to Jim Crow. These folks are also mostly in the Deep South but are spread throughout the rest of the country as well. They believe everything the White Supremacists believe, but they have nothing against blacks as such so long as they know their place and don’t seek special privileges. They don’t see themselves as the vanguard of the coming anti-socialist counter revolution. They just want blacks out of their neighborhoods, out of their schools, out of their government, out of their voting booths, and to stop stealing their jobs. (They also are not very good at math.) They see the Republican Party as the only conduit by which they can accomplish these goals, and most would not believe in torture or in the Fascist government their leaders envision for our country if they thought about it, but they are so fixated on their grievances against blacks they don’t think about it.
Fourth, are the agents of the Right-wing Propaganda Machine. They find their home at Fox News, the Washington Times, Investor’s Business Daily, and innumerable right-wing rags, websites, and blogs. They also have a home at the more than seven hundred Right-wing Think Tanks listed on the Heritage Foundation’s website (HF) and in the innumerable Republican Political Action Committees.
This group is composed mostly of political and intellectual hacks who are paid to create the intellectual foundations of the Right-wing Propaganda Machine and to generate and distribute its propaganda. They are told what to believe and what to think and it is their task to find new and creative ways to repeat what they are told to believe and to think. They view life as an intellectual game in which they score points by winning arguments and selling their point of view. They have no compunctions at all about making up facts and quoting false statistics to win an argument. (Westen Lakoff Altemeyer Krugman)
It is impossible to tell what they would think about torture or the fascist government they are selling if they thought about it because they are incapable of thinking about it. They are only capable of thinking about scoring points in the game, whatever side they may be on, and they are true believers, not because of any deep well thought out convictions they hold but because they have suffered the fate of all propagandists who devote their lives to the game. Even though they know that most of what they say is nonsense, in the end, they come to believe their own propaganda.
Fifth, we have the Crony Capitalists who finance the Right-wing Propaganda Machine. They are the cadre of wealthy and corporate elites drawn from the ranks of the Military-Industrial Complex and Wall Street bankers who fund the Right-wing Think Tanks and Republican Political Action Committees. They have amassed vast fortunes as a result of the tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation of markets, and privatization of government functions that has occurred as a result of their economic and political support of the Republican Party and selected elements of the Democratic Party. They and their minions move in and out of corporate and government centers of power with ease, and they are true believers in the Utopian Capitalist's fantasy only when it serves their ends of accumulating wealth and power. (Harvey Krugman)
They were the most fanatic supporters of deregulated, free-market capitalism when they were amassing fortunes during the 1980s, 1990s, and at the beginning of the new millennium and were the first to show up at the public trough to slop on government bailouts when the disastrous consequences of their economic policies led to a worldwide economic catastrophe.
They are the most ardent supporters of less government when it comes to cutting or eliminating government functions that provide for the public welfare, and are the most ardent supporters of big government when it comes to defense contracts and privatizing government functions that are turned over to corporations.
They are the most ardent supporters of cutting taxes when it comes to their taxes, but they lose their fervor when it comes to cutting taxes on ordinary people. After all, who is going to pay for the defense contracts and government services that are turned over to the corporations and the interest on the debt that is accumulated as a result of their tax cuts and expansion of the government to their benefit? They certainly aren’t going to pay for these things.
The Crony Capitalists are the seminal power within the Right-wing Propaganda Machine and the Republican Party since they control the money, and they extend their reach into the Democratic Party as well. The extent to which they have corrupted the Democratic Party can be seen in how the Democrats vote on crucial bills.
If we look at the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act (FSMA), one of the key pieces of legislation that brought on the current economic disaster, 75% of the Democrats in the House and 40% in the Senate voted for this bill. (House Senate) In addition, 37% of the Democrats in the House and 46% in the Senate voted for the draconian 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPA). (House Senate) There can be no doubt that the Crony Capitalists have corrupted the Democratic Party as the votes on these two bills show.
While it is clear the Crony Capitalists have bought off a significant portion of the Democratic Party, it is also clear the Crony Capitalists literally own the Republican Party!
While a majority of the Democrats in the Senate voted against these two bills and a majority of the Democrats in the House voted against BAPA, only five Congressional Republicans voted against either of these two bills—no Republican in the Senate and only five Republicans in the House voted against FSMA, (House Senate) and no Republican in either the House or Senate voted against BAPA. (House Senate)
This pattern of voting is repeated over and over again in the Congress, and I am quite certain that if a roll call vote had been taken on Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), another of the key pieces of legislation that brought on the current economic disaster, the same pattern of voting would have been repeated on this bill as well.
Not only do the Crony Capitalists fully embrace the fascist policies and methods of the Republican Party, they are the chief architects of these policies and methods. It is no accident that the chief spokesman for the Republican Party in their defense of torture and the person who actually designed and implemented the Republican torture policy is Dick Cheney, a former CEO of Halliburton and Secretary of Defense.
The Crony Capitalists don’t really care what kind of government we have, democratic or fascist, so long as they control it.
Finally, in looking at people who believe in the delusional world created by the Right-wing Propaganda Machine we are left with those who still consider themselves to be a Republican but don’t fit into one of the above categories. Many are lifelong Republicans from the moderate wing of the party who are still trying to figure out what went wrong and why the Democrats are at fault. To the extent today’s Republicans are not true believers they are Republicans in name only—what the true believers in the party call RINOs—they have no influence in the Republican Party and they are rapidly being forced out of the party by the true believers. (HE)
This is not a Game
In April the Washington Post/ABC news poll showed that only twenty percent of the electorate identify themselves as Republican. (Cillizza) The above are the people from which this twenty percent is drawn. They make up the base of the Republican Party, and the Republican Party can’t win elections without them. As a result, these extremist are the movers and shakers of the Republican Party and the Republican Party must and does pay homage to them at every turn. They are the people who organize and go to tea party rallies and town hall meetings to shout down and intimidate those with whom they disagree.
They both live in the delusional world created by the Right-wing Propaganda Machine and they are the people who have created this world. They are all that is left of the coalition put together by the Republican Party in the 1970s, and the Right-wing Propaganda Machine has been pandering to them for the past forty years. (Westen Harvey Krugman) They are totally out of touch with reality, and as I have explained many times before, they are dangerous.
Not only are they dangerous by virtue of their self-righteous ends justify their means attitude, they are also dangerous because the incessant fear and hate mongering of the Right-wing Propaganda Machine feeds the paranoid delusions of the lunatic fringe that finds its home in their midst. The end result of this fear and hate mongering is people like Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, Michael Griffin, Paul Hill, John Salvi, Eric Rudolph, James Kopp, David Lane, Russell Henderson, Jim Adkisson, Matthew and Tyler Williams, and countless other right-wing crazies inspired by the twisted logic, blatant distortions, outright lies, and vicious innuendo in the hate filled rants of Glen Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Francis Schaeffer, W. A. Criswell, Oliver North, G. Gordon Liddy, Pat Buchanan, and countless other fanatical de facto leaders of, and spokesmen for the Republican Party.
The legacy of the rhetoric of these leaders of the Republican Party is blown up government buildings, burned out abortion clinics, bombs set off in public parks, the torture and murder of gays and lesbians, doctors murdered in the middle of the night, anthrax laden letters sent to government and media officials, and wingnuts who walk into churches to murder people whose politics they disagree with. And all of this is done in the name of patriotism, freedom, Christian love, Republican family values, and defending the country against the dreaded socialist liberals who, in the rhetoric of the Right-wing Propaganda Machine, are destroying our country.
It is a serious mistake to think the rhetoric of these spokesmen for the Republican Party is part of some kind of game in which liberals and conservatives argue back and forth scoring debating points where the team with the most points wins, and in the end we all go home and live happily ever after. It is just a matter of time before another Timothy McVeigh rises up from the midst of all this hateful rhetoric and insane set of beliefs to take revenge for all of the delusional wrongs committed against society by the scapegoats of the Right-wing Propaganda Machine. But there is much more at stake here than random acts of violence committed by the lunatic fringe that finds its home in the delusional world of the Right-wing Propaganda Machine.
The economic crisis that led to last fall’s financial crash is far from over. The only thing that kept us from experiencing a complete, worldwide economic meltdown last fall is Ben Bernanke’s heroic efforts to keep this from happening. (Wessel) You can get some idea how heroic Bernanke’s efforts were by examining the following chart taken from the Cumberland Advisors web site that shows the extent the Fed has gone to prop up the financial system since this crisis began. If this chart doesn’t scare the hell out of you, all I can say is that it should. If this chart were drawn back to the beginning of the Federal Reserve System you would not see anything like this. The only time periods that would even stand out would be during the two world wars when the Fed monetized the federal debt to facilitate the war efforts, and even then it would not compare to what is in this chart today.
You don’t have to know anything about the individual items in this chart or what it measures in the aggregate to be able to see that something went terribly wrong back in March, 2008. What’s more, this chart provides a guide to the strength of the financial system today. Virtually everything above $950 billion of the assets held by the Fed in this chart represents funds created by the Fed to prop up some part of the financial system, both foreign and domestic, and until these funds can be withdrawn from the financial system through the Fed getting most of these assets off its books the financial system will not be functioning normally.
This is not going to be easy. If the Fed sheds these assets too quickly it will cause a halt to the recovery and exacerbate the recession. If it acts too slowly it will allow a massive inflation to come into being. We are in uncharted waters here that require a kind of balancing act that has never been done before. There is almost infinite potential for economic chaos if this is not done right, and there is no guarantee that it is even possible to do it right. The reckless regulatory policies and practices Republican free-market ideologues brought into being over the past thirty years—policies and practices that reached a crescendo during the Bush Administration—may have left us in such a precarious situation that the system is going to eventually spin out of control no matter what Bernanke or anyone else does.
It took almost four years from the Great Crash of 1929 to reach the bottom of the Great Depression in 1933, and it has been less than one year since last fall’s crisis. All we can do now is keep our fingers crossed and hope that Bernanke is able to make his policies work. (Andrews) It is too soon to be certain how this is going to turn out, but at least one thing is certain. If the right-wing fanatics who control today’s Republican Party and live in the delusional world created by the Republican Right-wing Propaganda Machine are able to regain control of the federal government it will be an unmitigated disaster. If that should come to pass may God help us all. [4]
Endnotes
[1] See The Rise of Utopian Capitalism.
[2] Where Did All the Money Go? and Understanding The Federal Budget.
[3] See also It makes Sense if You Don’t Think About It, and How Propaganda Works.
[4] See also Where Did All the Money Go?, Understanding The Federal Budget, and A Primer in Crisis Economics.
