Don't Fall for It
How to realize your true power
Back in the 1970’s, when I was a teenager, television news consisted of a choice between ABC, NBC, or CBS. Most cities had several daily local newspapers, with most of them including a lively “letters to the editor” page.
My Dad encouraged me to follow current events, to watch the news and to read more than the headlines of the newspaper, yet he offered the following advice, “Believe only about 10% of what you read in the newspaper and see on the TV news.” He also urged me to read the op-ed page, as it was important to be aware of the varying points of view on any topic.
I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been raised in a home where I was encouraged to question, rather than blindly accept, the status quo. “Think,” my Dad would say, encouraging me to reflect on topics, and seek further education before forming opinions or taking action.
I understand that the majority of people were not raised this way, thus I frequently remind myself that meaningful dialogue is only possible when the participants in a conversation try to understand how others have come to the opinions that they defend and hold dear.
I get that it can be scary for most people to question things that they simply believed in for their entire lives. It can feel like the whole world has suddenly been turned upside-down. If a person was never encouraged to question what the TV news anchor, or the schoolteacher, or the minister, or the President said; that person will readily accept the status quo (the existing state of affairs, especially regarding social or political issues) as “simply the way things are.”
“Usually when we hear or read something new, we just compare it to our own ideas. If it is the same, we accept it and say that it is correct. If it is not, we say it is incorrect. In either case, we learn nothing.” Thich Nhat Hanh
I’d like to encourage you to distrust the mainstream media, to distrust the status quo, to question everything, to learn to think for yourself.
What am I referring to when I use the term “mainstream media”?
The media industry covers a wide variety of areas—advertising, broadcasting and networking, news, print and publication, digital, recording, and motion pictures—and each has its own associated infrastructure. . . The top media companies are involved in advertising, broadcasting, news, print publication, digital media, and motion pictures. . .The largest media companies include Apple, Disney, and Comcast. Consolidation among media companies, such as Disney's partial buyout of Fox and AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner, is expanding the offerings and reach of many media giants. . .
(The quote above was pulled from an Investopedia article written in 2022. There have been numerous changes since then, further consolidating ownership of all media into the hands of a few corporations.)
So, the mainstream media is not just newspapers and TV networks; the MSM includes video games, theme parks, Netflix and Amazon Prime, clothing, hotels, radio, and more.
Let’s just look at the Disney corporate empire, one of the largest controllers of media internationally, as an example. (I am choosing Disney not because it is any worse than the other big corporations, but because Disney is an entity that most people have heard of.)
Disney includes: Media networks: everything within TV, radio, and cable networks and related operations; Parks and resorts: theme parks, hotels, resorts, sports complex, dining and entertainment facilities, and water sports establishments; Studio entertainment: live-action and animated pictures for distribution in the U.S. through subsidiaries and worldwide through partner companies; Consumer products and interactive media: online and mobile games and gaming consoles; licensing and retailing of trade names, characters, and properties, plus educational books and magazines.
Why should one care that Disney (or any large corporation) has its hands in so many things? Because corporations exist to profit their shareholders (the wealthy own the majority of shares), and profits come from sales (and stock buy-backs, but that’s a whole other story), and sales (of products and ideas) come from advertising presence. Therefore, we are constantly swimming in a sea of advertising, and most of the time we are not even aware of it.
This is a part of what Noam Chomsky refers to as the “manufacturing of consent.”
First of all, you find that there are different media which do different things, like the entertainment/Hollywood, soap operas, and so on, or even most of the newspapers in the country (the overwhelming majority of them). They are directing the mass audience.
The real mass media are basically trying to divert people. Let them do something else, but don’t bother us (us being the people who run the show). Let them get interested in professional sports, for example. Let everybody be crazed about professional sports or sex scandals or the personalities and their problems or something like that. Anything, as long as it isn’t serious. Of course, the serious stuff is for the big guys. “We” take care of that.
The “people who run the show” are not the politicians, but the oligarchs who own the politicians. And those oligarchs want to be sure that ordinary people never realize their true power.
Let’s use Disney, again, as an example. What springs to mind first when hearing “Disney.” The Happiest Place on Earth? Or the Super Bowl quarterback who tells the fans, “I just won the Super Bowl, and now I’m going to Disneyland.” Or the “Make a Wish Foundation” that sees to it that a child’s final wish is realized? All good things, right?
But there’s another side to Disney. The Disney employees who are so poorly paid that they live in their cars. Abigail Disney, an oligarch with the sensibilities of FDR, tried to bring attention to the plight of Disney employees:
Abigail Disney started a public campaign demanding more taxes for the rich, called Tax Me More. In a televised interview, asked about Bob Iger’s salary, she spontaneously responded that “not even Jesus Christ is worth that much money.” There was a huge outcry on social media, where she received encouragement and criticism, and was also called a hypocrite. But she insisted on the message and made it all the way to the Senate to demand a law that would rein in “corporate ambition” and executive pay. At the Senate session, she was called a “Socialist” and a “Marxist.” As she explains in the movie, the Disney lobby had done its job before her own appearance.
This is a perfect example of “the manufacturing of consent.” The message to the people: There’s nothing to see here, folks. Just another Marxist trying to tear down our government. Pay no attention. Go back to the movies and enjoy the freedom that our capitalist system affords you. Freedom to have a choice of movies to watch on the Disney Channel (which you can view on the app on your iPhone while you are getting comfortable before sleep in your bed, . . .er . . . your car.)
Don’t forget how Disney supports the military!
The appeal of a Disney partnership comes from the Company's historical collaboration with the US Army. In WWII, US Army units marched into Walt Disney Studios. Animators not drafted into service were put to work creating propaganda cartoons for the war effort. By 1943, “over 90 percent of the Studio’s work consisted of government contracts for the military.” In designing a military informational approach, “the Disney war utterance was the most coherent, unified, popular, and powerful: the American answer to the whole of the swastika project.”
Disney was the most recognizable animation studio worldwide, even Hitler loved Silly Symphonies and Snow White. The US military capitalized on Disney’s genius: “The brand was fighting the war, and that meant that the line between America, its military, and Disney, a private company, was erased.”
Designing Army insignia and painting bombs and aircraft with beloved characters like Pluto, Dumbo, and Donald Duck, “Disney as a design house was now synonymous with America.” The US information campaign began years behind the Nazis, but the Walt Disney Company’s expertise made incalculable contributions to the war effort.
And while you may be thinking, well they can’t be bad if they supported the war effort, there was also an unspoken message in all this coziness between a corporation and the military. America was being propagandized into acceptance of the necessity of the military-industrial-complex (MIC), that Eisenhower, in his farewell address of 1961, warned was increasing in power.
And the other implied message was that capitalism was required to save our country from enemy forces that wish to destroy our way of life. An excuse to build empire. A reason for colonization in the Global South.
An eye-opening account of this process was described in How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic. When first published in 1971 in Chile, the entire third printing was dumped into the ocean by the Chilean Navy, and bonfires were held to destroy earlier editions. When the book was translated and imported into the US in 1975, Disney managed to have all copies impounded. (comment on the back of the current paperback published by OR Books).
If this is all too scary for you to contemplate, the oligarchs have reached their goal. Most people will feel more comfortable in thinking that this Disney collusion idea is just a bit far-fetched, and therefore not deal with any internal discomfort. Most people have become comfortable living in a state of cognitive dissonance.
But, a few will want to look further into this. And, that few who do will discover more and more lies and complicity in the mainstream media’s propaganda and the ills that we face in the world today (non-ending wars, poverty, global warming, homelessness, etc.)
And those few will join together. And people may one day realize that the Emperor has no clothes; that the people hold the power.
There are no guarantees in life, but the path towards a more peaceful world, an improvement on current conditions, is before us. We just have to overcome our fear.