Propaganda establishes some ideas as extreme to ensure anything the ruling class really fear becomes unthinkable. It is a clever strategy and it seems to work, especially if they can absorb the troublemakers. Anyone they can’t is usually ignored.
Much of what happens in Western democracies is narrative management. A lot of effort is put into promoting narratives, protecting them from scrutiny, and seeing off challenges, usually in the form of competing narratives.
We are ruled by stories, myths and well-financed marketing. The goal is saturation, with alternative views hidden or dismissed.
When challengers do emerge they have to be dealt with so the propaganda can be maintained.
Propaganda, absorption, exile
The sequence to maintain this system of mental control is well documented.
Propaganda is used to establish the approved narrative but also to define its limits. Anything outside approved opinion must be considered extreme.
Opposition voices that inevitably emerge can sometimes be used to reinforce this. They illustrate what extremism looks like and provide an opportunity to demonstrate social punishment in action. This is useful if managed correctly.
Serious challengers are absorbed by the establishment if possible. Their message is then softened over time while maintaining their image as rebels and anti-establishment outsiders. This is common. Everyone has their price.
That is why open rebellion often fails. The rebels are usually absorbed long before they are known about by the public.
If challengers cannot be absorbed and their message softened, they are ignored. The traditional media play a key role here. Every major nation has credible threats dismissed as cranks no matter how rational their position.
The social climbers can be expected to learn these lessons without being told. The system is self-learning and propagates automatically.
We see this everywhere
Much of this happens all the time in every Western country. The same tired stories attempt to tell the masses what to think.
Environmentalism is a key vector that has long been hijacked to encourage draconian controls we would otherwise reject as despotic. Net Zero, energy rationing and now food controls would be inconceivable without well-funded campaigns to make them seem essential.
Warmongering requires elaborate media control to whip up enthusiasm despite how extreme conflict with distant foes really is.
Today the existential threat facing most Western countries comes in the form of mass immigration, a historically novel idea most instinctively reject.
Western populations are gradually being replaced, and this is now far enough along its path we see it is going to end our cultures forever if significant changes are not made.
The extreme nature of large-scale population movements naturally attracts critics who must be managed and provides the clearest examples today of how threats are handled.
Establishing boundaries on discussion
The same techniques to manage this are seen in most Western countries. Here is how it works in Britain.
Immigration propaganda is everywhere. It has one clear message. Mass immigration is good, the country needs it, and it must continue.
No deviation is allowed from this message. No one prominent ever challenges the supposed benefits of immigration; this is forbidden. Those who unwisely hint that immigration may not be a good idea are hounded until they issue a retraction and apology.
Recently a prominent British billionaire unwisely remarked one of our cities had been colonized by foreigners and an entire PR machine kicked into gear within hours.1 He was forced to issue a guarded apology. Once done the event was forgotten. No further discussion was allowed.
The episode helped establish where the boundaries are. A famous individual spoke out of turn and was chastised. He communicated what extreme looks like which in turn reinforced the limits of acceptable thought by providing a brief illustration of wrongthink. His public condemnation did the rest.
Bring them into the fold
Every now and then someone breaks through who is not so easily silenced.
Where possible the challengers are absorbed into the establishment. Sometimes this means the establishment absorb a version of their policies and in this way they can act as a pressure group to encourage real change. Others are quietly paid off, deals are made. This is a sensible way to deal with threats and it works.
It is especially useful since the powerful can maintain the appearance of the group or movement to further their own aims for as long as possible, a more controlled version of the above example except this time the establishment control all aspects of the narrative.
In Britain Nigel Farage of the Reform UK Party fulfils a role useful to the powerful despite being presented as a dangerous rebel. He mainly discusses illegal immigration and has ruled out mass deportations but is branded as right wing and anti-immigration. Even labelled an extremist and dangerous. This is the part that sticks with the majority.
Rather less publicized is the way the party has welcomed many foreigners into the fold and even endorsed foreign nationals standing for council seats.
Farage’s role is to act as loyal opposition to show the masses what “extremism” looks like i.e. secure borders, deporting illegals, objecting to demographic change are at the very edges of what is acceptable, so anything more demanding will get you jailed.
Tommy Robinson is a less polished provocateur who has a similar role. Like Farage he is actually a civic nationalist who thinks anyone can be British if they “share our values”. His exclusive focus is Muslims in Britain.
He is quite comfortable with immigration, so they focus on inflammatory comments they can spin, mainly anti-Muslim statements.
Naturally he is branded as a far-right extremist.
He rocks the boat and makes quotable statements, but with the exception of Muslims he is generally in favour of most of the agenda. It is difficult to say if he has been absorbed but many view him as an actor playing a part, financed by those who dislike Muslims.2
Both men and their followers are widely promoted and used to teach the population where the boundary is.
Neither is particularly right-wing. Numerous videos exist showing their real views are quite mild. They are obviously a threat to no one.
To the comfortable laptop class barely paying attention they are the nasty right wingers someone ought to stop. They get to tut-tut while demonstrating their own compassion.
This is not to suggest Reform, Farage or Robinson are part of the establishment. Many authentic people and movements can be caught up in events and still serve the ends of the powerful.
Robinson seems to be sincere in his concerns about Muslims who he insists do not belong in Western nations. The focus here is how the establishment often coopts people and political movements to further its own agenda, even if just to show the faithful what is forbidden.
Over time it uses this to shape the narrative. Even things that appear to superficially challenge them.
The recent Unite the Kingdom rally in London organized by Tommy Robinson is a case in point. Only some are allowed this prominence. Britain is now a country where people are jailed for memes and posting stickers on walls. If you are permitted to organize a rally in Central London you are probably not threatening anyone.
Persona non grata
Farage and Robinson fulfil a purpose. They are useful. They don’t want anything that would overly upset the establishment but can be branded as lunatics. Neither is a credible threat except in limited ways.
But what about actual threats? The final technique when all else fails is ignoring. A total media blackout is usually the aim. The people and the movement do not exist.
In the past the British National Party were in this category. Their then leader, Nick Griffin, an elected politician at the time, was given almost no coverage by the media, not even to condemn him.
Today we see something similar with the emerging Restore Britain party and their leader Rupert Lowe, although they are a young party so we would not expect much coverage at this stage.
The technique is effective; just say nothing. Do not cover their events. Avoid all mention of the people involved. If they do somehow enter public consciousness they must be framed as cranks, fringe lunatics or extremists, ideally as dangerous.
One of the most powerful effects of this approach is how it encourages the emergence of caricatures unchecked by exposure to reality. In this way a spokesman for a political movement whose recent ancestors fought in WW2 can be branded a Nazi. Those making polite enquiries about immigration and its effects can be distorted to sound xenophobic or genocidal even if their views are mild and based on observation and data such as population volumes, crime statistics or visible demographic shifts.
This is surprisingly effective, particularly with a distracted population discouraged from checking facts or data for themselves.
How do we differentiate between the compromised and those who are likely more authentic? Neither Restore Britain or Britain’s various overtly nationalist movements would be allowed a rally in London under any circumstances. This is the giveaway that shows they are unlikely to be controlled opposition.
A recent statement from British conservatives who are discussing ways to “unite the right” explicitly ruled out the new party Restore Britain as some of their members are considered “extremists”, a perfect illustration of how the establishment absorbs and neutralizes manageable threats, but tries to isolate real threats.
Their fear is nationalism. Actual nationalists, or those who attract nationalists, cannot be absorbed as the ambition of the ruling class is the erasure of the nation-state in its current form, a deeply unpopular trajectory rejected by a majority. Nationalism is not compatible with this goal despite being the norm in most countries throughout the world.
It is difficult to say how many people are simply ignored by establishment media. That is of course the point.
But their narrative techniques only work if they control the flow of information completely, and that era has now ended.
Containment has failed
Multiple issues in Britain are managed with propaganda, not just immigration. Taxation, environmental issues and energy policy, Brexit and the EU. Each attract challengers to the official narrative the powerful prefer to pursue. Their ideal is always to encourage people to vote for policies the ruling class favour rather than use coercion.
It makes sense to attempt to control perceptions around important issues for this reason. This has worked well for over a century.
But today’s information landscape includes the internet which they do not fully control.
With traditional media you only need to own the message since it is a one-way broadcast. Now they have to manage a series of two-way conversations and this is not really working.
When managerial elites do allude to this it is clear they view open discussion as misinformation. They fear it, but they mentally frame it as dangerous and wrong, something the masses cannot comprehend so their betters must make decisions on their behalf.
They have become lost in a mental culdesac where normal people noticing the disastrous effect of their policies become an enemy of the state. They are seen as extremists.
But their enemy is not online extremism, it is reality.
The effects of their policies often take time to be felt, but the scale of mass immigration is now so great it is visible everywhere in Britain, even in tiny towns and villages. Everyone comments on it.
No amount of narrative management changes what people can see every day, and they discuss this with others.
As the policy makers cling to their narratives, absorb threats and attempt to ignore serious challengers, ordinary people go looking for answers. This is perfectly normal.
Therefore, the attempts to shape a failing narrative around population change become increasingly abnormal and grotesque. Some councils in Britain have declared flying our ancient national flags is racist such is the fortified bubble they now live in.
That is where we are now. Mass immigration has failed in Britain, multiculturalism has very visibly failed, and the narratives no longer reflect real life. None of it works. They have nowhere else to go except to demand obedience and that isn’t working either.
This is Britain now. No one can escape what is happening.
The “extremists” are the only ones willing to discuss the subject so that is where people find themselves, on sites like this, trying to make sense of a world they did not vote for. But as more voices emerge to challenge these terrible ideas the old ways no longer work. There are now too many “threats” to the narrative to effectively absorb or silence.
Interesting times ahead for Britain’s rulers.
His comments reflected the views of many Britons. Virtually every pub contains people having conversations about the subject and many will use the same terminology. We are being colonized by foreigners who do not assimilate. It is an uncontroversial thing to observe except for the narrative controllers. Even popular views cannot be allowed.
Most are unaware how much Robinson condemns “racists”, many of them often working class patriots forced to see the effects of diversity up close unlike their detractors.
He has boasted in the past of stopping nationalists in their tracks. Any discussion of this is scrupulously avoided by the traditional media. Tommy is always presented as a hardcore racist Nazi despite being well disposed to non-whites generally.
"Much of what happens in Western democracies is narrative management."
Agree except they are not democracies.
"In Britain Nigel Farage of the Reform UK Party fulfils a role useful to the powerful despite being presented as a dangerous rebel. He mainly discusses illegal immigration and has ruled out mass deportations but is branded as right wing and anti-immigration."
That concept of controlled opposition is also used in the United States. Usually played out as good cop/bad cop, sometimes in the form of democrat vs republican or even intraparty.
As always, Spiff, a great analysis of the situation in Britain, and applicable to all of Western Civilization.
The only thing missing is a solution.
Even people who don't use the internet to look for alternative views know something has gone seriously wrong. They all seem to have stopped believing the narrative! Complete strangers on dog walks now openly tell you that uncontrolled immigration, illegal immigrants, two-tier treatment of foreigners and, especially, the state pandering to Islam is wrong and unfair. They will tell you they are not racist and don't mind people coming here who want to be British (not English because that's a race of people), assimilate, work, pay taxes, eat bacon butties. They will also tell you that they are sick of the media and government implying they are right-wing racist nutters because they happen to love their country. The controlled narrative is now being seen for what it is!