Propaganda: Making Evil Seem Good

You know how Allah is always repeatedly telling us to reflect Mhmm. To think, to observe, to look at history, are always encouraging us to use our minds and to reflect and to ponder and to contemplate. If you you know, it's it's like the old the the old sort of advice for a lawyer. Never ask a question to a witness that you don't know the answer to. Mhmm.

Because you don't wanna be surprised by their answer. Yeah. So those those who are in power want to make sure that you have the answer that we want you to have. Therefore, we don't want you to be left to your own contemplation. We don't want you to be left to your own reflection, your own pondering, your own thinking, because you might come up with answers that don't serve our interests.

So we have to stop that process. We have to control that process. We have to implant the answers in you that we need for us. So this is I think this is one of the reasons why critical thinking is not encouraged at all, but also why there is such a presentation and and almost a a it's almost forced upon you what the issues are. We will force upon you.

Yeah. Yeah. Because I don't want you to tell me what the issues are because that's not in my interest as as someone in power. I'm not interested in your issues. I need to tell you what your issues are so that maybe whatever real issues you have, I never have to deal with that, and you don't have to think about it.

We never have to have that conversation, what your actual issues are. Like, the fact that you can't pay your rent. You know, the fact that you you can't pay for childcare and what have you. We're not gonna talk about that. I will tell you that your issue is whether abortion rights should be determined on the federal level or the state level.

Yes. This is the most important thing in your life. Because that way, we never have to talk about the things that are important in your life.

Haitians eating pets.

Haitians are eating the dogs and eating the cats, and Venezuelans are taking over apartment blocks in Colorado. I want you to think about things yourself because you might come up with the wrong answers.

So much agency being stripped from a person is is you're literally taking the human elements out of a human being. And then you look at the society, and you wonder why depression, anxiety, a lack of focus and attention, attention deficit disorders, every every manner of mental health, it keeps cropping up. I mean, you keep taking human elements out of human beings. You leave a husk full of problems and struggling on so many levels. I I think that there's a pretty common belief that I I would say many believe and and and forgive me if this is an exaggeration, but many believe that the only way to force someone to do something that they don't want to do or to believe something that they that that simply is not true is through some type of brute force.

If you don't put a, you know, proverbial gun to my head, if you don't strip me of my rights and my dignity, there's no way I'm going to just buy whatever you're selling. I'm not just gonna feed into whatever it is that you're giving me. That's what most people would like to think, but, obviously, that simply is not the case. Otherwise, many things in the world that are happening, would not happen, and and Americans would seize a lot more agency would really take their government to task, obviously, in peaceful and and meaningful, legal ways to to actually uphold these these rights and these limits. I wanna speak more to the covert and cerebral approach that makes propaganda, indoctrination such a a powerful tool for coercion of the masses despite the fact that many people, and I think this is fair to say, many people believe that they are 100% independent of propaganda's influence over them.

I mean, for first, sort of connecting it to what you said just now about, people believing that only brute force could coerce them into supporting something or believing something that they don't already believe or that that goes against their interests or what have you. Mhmm. Maybe there was a time in human history when that was the case when people had that level of integrity and that level of clarity. Maybe there was a time. But that that's not that's not even the case with Muslims.

That's not even the case with people who have strong belief and strong morals. Because the fact of the matter is that when you do have the strong beliefs and strong morals, those can be manipulated. Those exactly those things can be used Against to manipulate you to do something that is actually against your interest as long as you believe that you're doing it for reasons that affirm your morality and your beliefs. This is exactly this is exactly I I always when I talk about propaganda, I always go back to Iblis, Shaitan. How does he get you to do wrong?

By telling you that this is the wrong thing? By forcing you? No. By making you think it's good. By making you think it's good.

Making you think that this is the best thing you could possibly do. This is this is propaganda. This is this is indoctrination. This is brainwashing. This is manipulation, and this is how it works.

You create an identity for people that has a certain certain characteristics, a certain, as I say, morality or principles that are attached to that identity. And then now I have to support this thing or that thing because, well, that's what I believe in. And I'm not able to look at it independently. And, again, as I say, you're not you're not encouraged to reflect with your own independent mind. Now your mind is in this box, in this identity box, and this is the only response possible when you're in this particular box.

You understand? Yeah. This is the this is this is the definition of the good and right response according to the rules of the box. And if you're if you're out of that box, then we don't know what you're going to do. You might actually make an independent decision.

And you're not that's that's a problem. That's chaotic. Yeah. And then there's the fact that people themselves, especially in the West, by the way, I think the West is is obsessed with categorization. Yeah.

Absolutely obsessed with categorization. Absolutely. Absolutely. And labeling and and and and what they think of as putting things in order. They think of it that way, that that's what we're doing.

We're putting things in order. The problem is that once you right. Right. But once we once you put it, in this order, you can't tolerate anything that that, doesn't meet the rules of that order, and then you'll just be in denial about it. You know what I mean?

Like like, there can be no anomalies. Everything has to be forced into that. So for example, as I said, if you're a liberal, if you're in that liberal box, we've categorized you as such, and you have now categorized yourself as such, then there's only one position you can take on an issue like abortion or feminism or what have you. And when you have emphasized in your society, in your culture, the importance of this type of ordering of things and categorization of things, people will naturally feel uncomfortable in areas that haven't been categorized, that haven't been put in that kind of an order. They will feel uncomfortable and insecure, and, you take all of the thinking out of it for them.

Now you don't have to do that work. Now I will relieve you of the anxiety associated with things not being labeled and categorized. Thank you. I will alphabetize everything for you. You can relax.

You know? Then it takes the thinking out of it. So this has to do with the the the numbing of people as we were talking about, and this all has to do with the covert methods. No force is necessary. No force is necessary at all in order to get people to do what will affirm for them that they themselves are good.

If if you can find a way to make it affirming for them that they're good and that they are a a force of virtue and goodness in the world and they're standing up for what's right, you can get them to do all sorts of evil.