Goebbels Would Be Proud

Last night we were watching Storage Wars reruns on television. We watch that program occasionally because we like to see if our price estimate on a vintage item is close to the "official" estimate. Actually, I was switching channels between Storage Wars and the Steelers/Vikings football game. I wouldn't normally do that because I am a football fanatic, but the game looked like a non-competitive rout so I kept checking back only to see if the score had changed.

It was at 9:00 PM that Storage Wars ended and we expected to see a continuation with another episode. Instead what was being shown was what I thought was the weirdest advertisement I'd ever seen, but it didn't end and instead kept going on. I felt uncomfortable, and asked Maribel if she knew what we were watching and had she changed the channel. When she answered no to both I thought that somehow the television had been hijacked and that we were being subjected to wild conspiracy theory propaganda. Ten minutes into the program - titled While The Rest Of Us Die, I realized why I was feeling unsettled.

During the years 1933 to 1945 Joseph Goebbels was the Reich Minister of Propaganda for Hitler's Nazi Germany. During that time period Goebbels utilized every source of information dissemination available to him...the news media, the arts, school curriculum, and radio and film to promote Hitler's favorite theme...that the Jews were responsible for Germany's and the world's problems and that Jews and all Slavic people were "sub humans" who should either be held in slavery or preferably eliminated. Through the use of pamphlets and film Goebbels would use misdirection, insinuation and outright lies to convince Germans of the truth of Hitler's beliefs. And it worked. The vast majority of Germans; over 90% supported Hitler. Goebbels realized that an appeal to emotion trumps an appeal to reason, and that if you tell a lie loudly and long enough people will buy it. Many of the educated Germans saw the danger and emigrated, but the average German was all-in. 

The program While The Rest Of Us Die uses the same misdirection, spins and insinuations  that Goebbels was so familiar with. Apparently Jeff Bezos's flight into space and being a billionaire takes advantage of the rest of us and perpetuates the Covid pandemic. And there is a shadow government apparently analogous to the High Table organization in the John Wick films that is controlling us, or at least the circumstances we live in. And there was so much more fluff that, if I did not know that it had worked in Germany, I would find laughable. Instead I find it disturbing.

Over the last two years a large segment of our population has demonstrated their susceptibility to misinformation, misdirection and conspiracy theory. Sowing the seeds of doubt while appealing to emotion is a powerful methodology. It worked in the 1930s and 40s, and it's working today. Goebbels would be proud.