TO MOBILISE A FRACTURED SOCIETY FOR WAR

From Fear to the Front Line: Mobilising a Fractured Society

A Living in the Air analysis

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Fast Track (30 seconds)

Twentieth-century states used a well-documented, repeatable process to move a population from indifference to a willingness to fight - fear, atrocity framing, collective identity, patriotic duty, legal obligation. It worked because "the nation" being mobilised was one people with one story. Knowing the process is a citizen's main protection against being moved by it unknowingly.

That process now faces a new problem. Mass immigration has replaced the old homogeneous "us" with several groups holding different cultures, religions and loyalties. This article sets out the process, then asks how it is likely to be adapted to work on a multicultural population that is no longer one people.

Mobilising a fractured society

1. Why This Matters

There is a well-established, historically documented process for turning an anti-war population into one that is ready to send its young men to the front line. This is not conspiracy theory - it is the subject of serious academic study, from Lasswell's dissection of WWI propaganda to Bernays and Lippmann's accounts of building and running the precess. 

Recognising the stages as they happen is the only real defence a citizen has against being moved by them.

Since then, the game has changed. The process was perfected across two world wars fought by nations that were, broadly, one people. Since the late 1990s, mass immigration has ended that homogeneity across the West. There is no longer one national story to activate - there are several, increasingly organised around different cultures and religions rather than simple nationality. This article is about how that process is updated for today's multicultural western society, and how to recognise the updated process as it starts to be rolled out (it has already started).

It matters because being aware of this process can protect you from being drawn into arrangements for your conscription.

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2. The Classic Escalation Ladder

Historians of propaganda identified a repeatable six-stage ladder (process) running through both world wars: 

1. threat identification, 
2. atrocity framing, 
3. in-group consolidation, 
4. patriotic duty, 
5. legal obligation, and finally 
6. the machinery of conscription itself. 

Harold Lasswell's 1927 study of WWI propaganda first mapped this sequence across British, French, German and American campaigns.

Fear opens the process, the first rung - it is the one stage that needs no shared identity to work - it is close to a universal reflex. Jacques Ellul later distinguished this short-term "agitation propaganda" (agiprop) from slower "integration propaganda", which does its work not by frightening people but by quietly normalising belonging: the message is "this is who we are, this is how people like us behave".

Fear is then converted into moral conflict through the atrocity frame by foregrounding. Foregrounding is documenting or exaggerating the cruelty of the adversary. The Institute for Propaganda Analysis catalogued these various foregrounding techniques in the 1930s specifically so citizens could recognise, name and question them as they happened, rather than unconsciously absorb them as simple plain fact.

Glossary - Integration propaganda: Jacques Ellul's term for slow, repeated messaging that normalises belonging to a group rather than provoking sudden fear. It works by making "this is who we are" feel ordinary and unquestioned, part of everyday life, rather than by frightening people into action.

Glossary - Atrocity frame: The technique of converting a strategic (elites') conflict into a (popular) moral one by foregrounding - by documenting or exaggerating an adversary's cruelty. Lasswell found every side in the First World War were mounting near-identical atrocity campaigns.

Foregrounding - sometimes by documenting, sometimes just by exaggerating - the cruelty by the adversary. Lasswell's original study catalogued how WWI belligerents each ran near-identical atrocity campaigns against each other.

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3. From Belonging to Obligation

The middle stages of the original mobilisation process assumed a single, settled, in-group that fear and outrage could activate. Bernays was explicit in Propaganda (1928) that this kind of messaging does not create loyalty from nothing - it activates loyalty that already exists.

Once that collective identity is switched on, Lippmann's Public Opinion (1922) describes how it is reframed from preference to obligation. 

His "pseudo-environment" - the manufactured picture of a distant war that we experience only through stories and images in the media, not being there ourselves - is what turns "I belong" into "I owe", and can ultimately produce a willingness to sacrifice ourselves for people we have never met. The final step is the logistical that converts that moral duty into codified law: conscription statutes and mobilisation orders, where persuasion ends and compulsion begins.

Every one of these stages, from the call to fight through to the front line itself, also maps onto Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. That is not incidental. Campbell's argument was that this mythic structure recurs because it mirrors individual psychological development - which is exactly why propagandists reach for a hero's narrative rather than a bureaucratic one when they need a population to accept sacrifice.

Glossary - Pseudo-environment: Walter Lippmann's term for the mediated, manufactured picture of the world that most people experience in place of direct reality. We rarely see a war firsthand; the pseudo-environment - the pictures, stories and repeated messages we are shown - becomes the reality we act on.

Glossary - The hero's journey: Joseph Campbell's monomyth, set out in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949): a recurring mythic structure - call to adventure, threshold, trials, sacrifice, return - found across cultures, and long used, consciously or not, to move populations toward sacrifice.

A mobilisation process

1. Fear — establish the threat.
2. Moral framing — turn the enemy from dangerous into evil.
3. Collective identity — establish who “we” are.
4. Patriotic duty — turn belonging into obligation.
5. Legal obligation — turn obligation into enforceable duty.
6. Operational mobilisation — turn legal obligation into people, training, transport and ultimately deployment.

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4. The Problem: There Is No Longer One "Us"

This is where the historical model breaks down. Sustained mass immigration since the late 1990s, pursued by Western governments often against the stated preferences of their own populations, as expressed by populist parties, has changed what "the nation" means. In-group consolidation (activating our natural loyalty) no longer has one audience - it has several, increasingly organised around civilisational or religious identity, sense of belonging, rather than plain vanilla nationality.

Campbell's own research is instructive here. He drew the hero's journey from comparative mythology across many diverse cultures. The problem for a modern mobilisation campaign may not be that the mythic structure has disappeared - it is that competing populations now carry different, non-overlapping versions of their founding myths. A fragmented society can still climb the early rungs of the ladder easily enough; "fear and atrocity framing" barely need cohesion to work. It is the top rungs - patriotic duty, legal obligation, actual sacrifice - that could buckle under these dispersed loyalties.

A fragmented society can still climb the early rungs of the ladder easily enough. It is the top rungs - patriotic duty, legal obligation, actual sacrifice - that history suggests could buckle.

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5. What History Suggests Comes Next

The likely adaptation is that in-group consolidation must move up a level - from plain nation, up to a more abstract frame that a fragmented population can still share even where national identity is contested.

 "democracy versus autocracy", "the free world", "the rules-based order". 

But the atrocity-frame stage can proceed largely unchanged, since it depends least on shared identity.

The real friction should appear at the legal-obligation stage. We could expect continued official reluctance to name conscription as a live possibility for as long as possible - not because it may turn out to be not be needed as there is always a faint hope for diplomacy or surrender, but because a fragmented society makes it the single highest-risk step in the whole sequence, the step-too-far the people wan't buy.

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Bottom Line

The tools - fear, moral framing, mythic narrative - are unchanged and still work. What has changed is the audience: no longer a society with one dominant story about itself, but several. A mobilisation campaign that does not reckon with that may find the ladder holds for the first few rungs and buckles precisely at the step that has always mattered most - the one requiring a shared answer to "who is we?".

And the process that worked fine bottom-up is now replaced by one where values are imposed top-down... do you think that's going to work?

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References

Lasswell, H. (1927). Propaganda Technique in the World War.

Ellul, J. (1962). Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes.

Bernays, E. (1928). Propaganda.

Lippmann, W. (1922). Public Opinion.

Campbell, J. (1949). The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Further Reading

Institute for Propaganda Analysis (1937-1942), bulletins on wartime propaganda technique.

Creel, G. (1920). How We Advertised America.

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EDWARD BERNAYS - THE MAN NOBODY HAD HEARD OF

Edward Bernays: The Man Who Engineered Consent

Bernay's five-step process for engineering consent - still the basis of propaganda. Perhaps it will be used again to get a reluctant young public social media to the front lines.

The biggest cons we never knew. If a man could convince a nation that bacon was healthy, that smoking was liberation, and that a foreign government deserved to fall - would you still trust your own opinions?

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Fast Track (30 seconds)

Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, took his uncle's theories of the unconscious and turned them into a professional discipline: engineering public consent on behalf of paying clients. He convinced America that bacon was the healthy breakfast, that women smoking in public was an act of feminist liberation, and - working for United Fruit - helped lay the psychological groundwork for a CIA-backed coup in Guatemala. He called what he did "the engineering of consent." Everyone else eventually called it propaganda.

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You have scrolled past adverts that did not feel like adverts. You have watched a product review quietly funded by the company being reviewed. You have formed an opinion on a political candidate from a feeling you cannot quite explain. None of it was an accident, and almost all of it traces back to one man: Edward Bernays, born in Vienna in 1891, died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1995, at the age of 103.

Bernays is the reason breakfast looks the way it does. He is the reason women began smoking in public. He is a reason an elected government in Central America was overthrown. He did not merely sell products - he sold identities. And unlike most architects of influence, he wrote down exactly how he did it, in plain language, and called it "the engineering of consent." Others would later call it propaganda.

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Why It Matters

Bernays did not just invent techniques - he invented a worldview still governing how information reaches you today. Astroturfing, native advertising, manufactured expert consensus: all of it traces to a single man who believed the public could not be trusted to reason for itself, only steered. Understanding his methods is the first step to recognising them in your own newsfeed.

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Contents Cover the Following

This article covers: 

• Bernays's family relationship to Sigmund Freud and the psychoanalytic ideas he inherited
• his formative role in First World War propaganda
• his invention of the "public relations" profession
• four of his most famous campaign successes, including the 1954 Guatemala coup
• his own uncomfortable brush with Nazi propaganda
• and why his philosophy still shapes public life today.

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1. A Freudian Inheritance

To understand Bernays, start with his family. He was born the son of Eli Bernays and Anna Freud Bernays, the sister of Sigmund Freud. His father, in turn, was the brother of Freud's wife. Bernays was doubly related to the father of psychoanalysis, and Freud's ideas about the unconscious - hidden desires, irrational drives beneath rational behaviour - were dinner-table conversation in his childhood. They would later become his professional weapons.

The family emigrated to New York in 1892. Bernays studied agriculture at Cornell, graduating in 1912, though farming never interested him. What fascinated him was influence itself: how to get people to think, feel, and buy in ways they believed were entirely their own idea.

"He did not sell products. 

He sold the unconscious back to the people who owned it."

Glossary - More of Freud's Key Concepts

The id, ego, and superego - Freud's 1923 structural model split the mind into three forces in permanent tension: the id (instinctual, pleasure-seeking, wholly unconscious), the superego (internalised moral authority), and the ego (the mediator trying to reconcile the two with reality). Bernays essentially treated advertising as a lever on the id, bypassing the ego's rational gatekeeping entirely.

Repression and the return of the repressed - Freud argued the mind pushes unacceptable impulses out of conscious awareness, but they don't disappear - they resurface indirectly, in dreams, slips of the tongue, or symptoms. This is the theoretical basis for Bernays's assumption that people can't be reasoned with directly: the real desire is buried, so you have to reach it sideways, through symbol and association rather than argument.

Symbolic displacement - Freud held that repressed desires often attach themselves to substitute objects, a person, an object, or an act standing in for the thing that can't be consciously wanted. This is close to the literal mechanism of "Torches of Freedom": the insight that a cigarette could become a symbolic stand-in for a desire, such as autonomy or equality, that couldn't be pursued directly.

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2. The War That Taught Him Everything

Bernays's early career included theatrical publicity and a stint reframing a taboo play about venereal disease as a public health cause - his first real lesson in the power of framing a message rather than the message itself.

Then came the First World War. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson formed the Committee on Public Information to convince a sceptical American public that the war was righteous. Bernays, aged 26, worked alongside Walter Lippmann and Carl Byoir, deploying posters, speeches, and "four-minute men" who delivered scripted patriotism in cinemas nationwide. It worked spectacularly. At the Paris Peace Conference, Bernays watched crowds cheer Wilson as a hero based entirely on manufactured messaging - and a thought took hold: if propaganda could send men to die for a slogan, it could certainly sell them a product.

Glossary

Framing - the choice of which subject a piece is placed inside. The same facts could sit within several different frames, but only one is chosen, and that choice decides what the audience is invited to think about and what is left outside the picture entirely. Bernays's staging of a play about venereal disease as a public health cause rather than a scandal shows this clearly: the play did not change, only the frame within which it was presented changed - and with it, what the audience was prompted, "pre-formatted," to consider.

Walter Lippmann - American journalist and CPI colleague of Bernays who wrote on how public opinion is shaped by mediated images and stereotypes rather than direct experience.

Carl Byoir - Publicist who worked alongside Bernays on the Committee on Public Information, later becoming one of the pioneers of the modern public relations industry.

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3. Inventing "Public Relations"

In 1919, Bernays opened his own firm with Doris Fleischman, a journalist and feminist who became his wife and lifelong business partner - and whose contributions to his work have been largely written out of history. Wary of the word "propaganda," Bernays rebranded himself a "counsel on public relations," a term that sounded benign while describing the same scientific manipulation of opinion for private gain.

He drew theoretical grounding from three sources: Freud's theory of the irrational unconscious, Gustave Le Bon's writing on crowd psychology, and Wilfred Trotter's concept of the herd instinct. In 1923 he published Crystallizing Public Opinion, the first book on public relations as a discipline. In 1928 came Propaganda, whose opening lines remain his starkest confession: that manipulating public opinion is essential to democracy, and that those who do it "constitute an invisible government" - the true ruling power of the country.

Glossary

Counsel on Public Relations - The title Bernays gave himself in place of "propagandist." It sounded neutral and professional, but described the same underlying work: the deliberate shaping of public opinion on behalf of a paying client.

Gustave Le Bon - French social psychologist whose 1895 book The Crowd argued that individuals in a crowd lose their capacity for rational thought and become susceptible to suggestion and emotional contagion. Examples: a football crowd, a protest crowd.

Wilfred Trotter - British surgeon and social psychologist who developed the concept of the herd instinct, the idea that human beings have a primal urge to conform to the behaviour of the group.

Bernays's Key Publications - Bernays set out his ideas across several books. 

• Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) was the first work to treat public relations as a discipline. 
• Propaganda (1928) remains his most quoted, opening with the claim that the deliberate manipulation of public opinion "is an important element in democratic society," and that those who do it "constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of the country." 
• The Engineering of Consent (1955) restated the same philosophy, three decades on.

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4. The Campaigns

Bernays's theory only matters because of what he did with it. Four campaigns define his legacy.

4.1 Bacon and the "hearty breakfast." Hired by Beechnut in the 1920s to reverse falling bacon sales, Bernays did not actually advertise bacon at any point. He asked a physician whether a heavy breakfast was healthier, then had that doctor survey 5,000 colleagues. The resulting headlines - "Doctors recommend a hearty breakfast" - never named Beechnut either, yet fixed bacon and eggs in the American morning, and the idea that breakfast is "the most important meal of the day" persists to this day.

4.2 "Torches of Freedom." Working for the American Tobacco Company, Bernays was asked to get women smoking in public. A psychoanalyst told him cigarettes symbolised male power in the female mind - so smoking in public could be reframed as defiance. On Easter Sunday 1929, Bernays staged young women lighting "torches of freedom" during New York's Easter Parade, presented to the press as a spontaneous feminist protest. It was, in reality, a Lucky Strike marketing campaign, and it helped more than double the female smoking market within a decade.

"The parade was not a protest. 

It was an advertisement wearing the clothes of a protest."

4.3 Green, soap, and the presidency. Bernays ran a national soap-sculpting contest for children on behalf of Ivory - "children," he noted bluntly, "are the enemies of soap" - and made green the fashion colour of 1934 to match Lucky Strike's packaging. He also softened Calvin Coolidge's stiff public image with a vaudeville breakfast on the White House lawn, proving that politicians, like soap, could be repackaged.

4.4 Guatemala. The darkest chapter. Hired by United Fruit Company after Guatemala's democratically elected government redistributed unused company land to peasant families, Bernays built a sustained campaign branding President Jacobo Arbenz as a communist threat - he sent newsletters to 250 journalists, he gave guided press tours, he planted stories. The narrative reached Washington, where senior officials had personal ties to United Fruit. In 1954 the CIA's Operation PB Success, driven largely by psychological warfare, forced Arbenz's resignation. Thirty-six years of civil war followed, killing an estimated 200,000 people. Bernays later described himself, remarkably, as "a casualty of the situation."

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5. The Uncomfortable Footnote

In 1933, Bernays learned that Joseph Goebbels kept his book Crystallizing Public Opinion on his propaganda bookshelf, using it against Germany's Jewish population. Bernays, who was Jewish himself, wrote only that this "shocked" him, before concluding that any tool could be used for good or evil. No deeper reckoning followed.

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6. Why It Still Matters

Bernays died in 1995, still giving interviews from Cambridge, USA, where he lived into his nineties. His tools evolved into social media, targeted advertising, algorithmic amplification, and influencer marketing - but the underlying philosophy is unchanged: that the public is irrational, that its desires can be mapped and steered, and that an unseen elite class must guide opinion from behind the curtain. He effectively invented astroturfing and native advertising, and perfected manufactured "expert consensus," decades before either had a name.

What he may not have foreseen is the democratisation of his own methods. Techniques once requiring a trained professional are now available to anyone with a smartphone - a shift that has made the "invisible government" he celebrated not just invisible, but diffuse and largely ungovernable.

Glossary

Astroturfing - The practice of creating a fake grassroots movement to simulate genuine public demand for a corporate or political goal. Bernays's 1929 "Torches of Freedom" march, presented as spontaneous feminist protest but staged for a tobacco client, is one of its first documented examples.

Native Advertising - Commercial messaging embedded within editorial content so seamlessly that audiences struggle to distinguish it from independent journalism. Bernays pioneered the technique by planting client-friendly stories in newspapers without ever naming the client, decades before the term itself existed.

Manufactured Expert Consensus - The strategy of enlisting doctors, scientists, or academics to lend their authority to a commercial or political message, creating the appearance of independent agreement. Bernays perfected this in his 1920s "hearty breakfast" bacon campaign, in which a doctor-led survey generated headlines that never named the client, nor "bacon," nor Bernays himself.

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Bottom Line

Bernays was not wrong that people are susceptible to emotional manipulation and herd behaviour; modern behavioural psychology largely confirms this. Where his philosophy turns dangerous is in the conclusion he drew from it - that an elite should therefore manage opinion on the public's behalf. That leaves the essential question permanently unanswered: who watches the "engineers of consent"?

Bernays worked, with equal professional detachment, for tobacco companies, banana monopolies, and authoritarian clients alike. His true legacy is not any single campaign but a worldview - that consent can be manufactured, and that reality itself can be designed and sold. He reduced citizens to consumers, and public discourse to marketing, and he told us so, in plain print, more than ninety years ago. We read it. And the machine he built keeps on running.

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● Living in the Air · Propaganda & Governance

Who Should Decide What Citizens Are Allowed to See

Beneath France's new push against “disinformation” sits an older and harder question: who gets to decide what a citizen may see, read, and share?

21 July 2026  ·  Translated & adapted for English readers

“La France va tout bloquer” — France is about to lock it all down. That's the blunt version circulating online. The measured version is subtler, and more unsettling.

This piece covers

— France's new proposals for regulating online information	— Who really controls platform algorithms
— Disinformation vs. misinformation vs. malinformation	— The case being made for tighter regulation
— What's at stake for free expression	— The risk to democratic pluralism

01  A new phase in information control

France appears to be moving toward a significant expansion of its power to intervene in how information circulates on social media.

The sharper reading

France wants full control over every social media platform operating within its borders.

The stated goal is to protect upcoming elections from manipulation, coordinated influence campaigns, and foreign interference — a concern shared by many democracies grappling with the power of major platforms. It is not uniquely French.

But some observers argue the tools being proposed reach far beyond simply combating false information.

The sharper reading

This is the end of democracy in France.

The real debate, then, isn't only about disinformation. It's about the line between protecting democratic debate and controlling it.

Disinformation
The deliberate spreading of false or misleading information.

Pluralism
The coexistence of differing viewpoints within democratic debate.

02  The birth of information “grey zones”

One significant shift is the widening of categories that could become subject to regulation. This would no longer be limited to punishing outright falsehoods — it could extend to content judged capable of creating a “distorted perception of reality,” even when built on accurate facts.

The sharper reading

They want the power to punish people who aren't lying.

This distinction — between disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation — is probably the most contentious part of the proposals. Critics worry it would gradually turn fact-checking into interpretation-checking.

The sharper reading

They'll be prosecuting thoughtcrime.

The legal problem becomes genuinely difficult here: when a fact is accurate but framed provocatively or critically, at what point does it stop being an opinion and start being treated as a threat to public debate? That is precisely the line now generating so much anxiety.

Malinformation
Using accurate information in a context judged likely to cause harm.

Misinformation
Spreading inaccurate information without deliberate intent to deceive.

03  Who controls the algorithm?

Parliamentary hearings appear to have exposed a gap between how platforms actually work and what some officials expect of them. Representatives from YouTube and X pointed out that their systems mainly recommend content matching each user's own viewing habits, not a single editorial line — meaning two people can see very different recommendations purely because their browsing histories differ.

Some lawmakers nonetheless believe this personalization fuels informational bubbles, and want more transparency — or more control.

The sharper reading

They want to decide which videos get promoted.

Critics respond that tighter control over recommendations could — intentionally or not — end up favouring certain narratives over others. The debate ultimately pits two philosophies against each other: should the algorithm serve individual preference, or should it be made to serve a state-defined “public interest”?

Algorithm
The set of computational rules that determines what content is shown to a user.

Informational bubble
An environment in which a user mostly sees content that matches their existing preferences.

04  “Trusted” media

Another idea on the table: officially flagging certain sources as especially reliable. Supporters say this would help citizens separate real journalism from online rumour.

The sharper reading

They'll pick the “trusted” outlets and quietly bury the rest.

Opponents fear such a system would create an official hierarchy of information. The obvious question follows: who decides the criteria for that label? Even framed with protective intent, several analysts note the mechanism could favour certain actors at the expense of others — narrowing, over time, the diversity of opinion actually available to the public.

05  ARCOM and the power to punish

The proposals also envision expanded powers for France's media regulator, ARCOM. Supporters argue current tools are too slow to keep up with fast-moving manipulation campaigns.

The sharper reading

Give ARCOM sweeping new power to punish people even when they haven't lied.

Critics see this differently: an expansion of sanctioning power that could set a significant precedent, opening the door to much broader intervention in online content generally. The balance being sought is genuinely delicate — how do you protect public discourse from manipulation without eroding the freedom to speak?

06  The case for, the case against

Both sides of this argument have real substance behind them.

The case for reform Democracies now face sophisticated manipulation campaigns that exploit social media to shape public opinion at scale. Leaving platforms to self-regulate, on this view, hands over an essential piece of democratic infrastructure to private companies with no accountability to voters.

The case against The state should never hold the power to arbitrate which opinions are acceptable to hold. Once the tools of control exist, nothing guarantees a future, less scrupulous government won't inherit and use them. Emergency powers granted for one purpose have a long history of outliving their original justification.

07  A question bigger than France

This debate isn't purely a French problem. The UK, the EU, the US, Australia, and numerous other democracies are wrestling with the same three-way tension: free expression, resistance to digital manipulation, and s0-called "protection" of the electoral process.

Everywhere, the same question resurfaces: how far can a democratic state go in policing information before it becomes a neo-totalitarian arbiter of public debate itself?

This isn't a clean choice between absolute freedom and absolute control. The real task is preserving a space where citizens can keep confronting different - even uncomfortable, to the ruling elite - ideas, while limiting or masking deliberate manipulation campaigns. That balance is hard to strike. And it is precisely in moments of political tension that free expression and pluralism are tested most severely.

Free expression
The right to communicate one's opinions within the limits set by law.

Democratic pluralism
The durable existence of a genuine diversity of thought, media, and opinion that makes real public debate possible.

Who decides — and who watches the ones who decide?

Translated and adapted from the original French — Living in the Air, 21 July 2026

livingintheair.org

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QUI DEVRAIT DÉCIDER DE CE QUE LES CITOYENS PEUVENT VOIR

le 21 juillet 2026

La France va tout bloquer

Et si le débat sur la désinformation masquait une question plus fondamentale : qui devrait décider de ce que les citoyens peuvent voir, lire et partager ?

Image

Ce billet couvre les points suivants :

• Les nouvelles propositions françaises concernant la régulation de l'information en ligne
• La distinction entre désinformation, mésinformation et malinformation.
• Les conséquences possibles pour la liberté d'expression
• Le rôle des algorithmes des plateformes numériques
• Les arguments avancés en faveur d'une régulation renforcée
• Les risques potentiels pour le pluralisme démocratique.

[Entre crochets : formulation moins nuancée]

1. Une nouvelle étape dans la régulation de l'information

La France semble s'orienter vers un renforcement significatif de sa capacité à intervenir dans la circulation de l'information sur les réseaux sociaux. [La France veut récupérer le contrôle total de toutes les plateformes de réseau social.]

L'objectif officiellement affiché est de protéger les prochaines échéances électorales contre les manipulations, les campagnes coordonnées et les différentes formes d'ingérence pouvant influencer le débat public. Cette préoccupation n'est d'ailleurs pas propre à la France ; elle existe dans de nombreuses démocraties confrontées à la puissance des grandes plateformes numériques.

Toutefois, certains observateurs estiment que les instruments envisagés dépasseraient largement la simple lutte contre les fausses informations. [C'est la fin de la démocratie en France.]

Le cœur du débat ne porte donc pas uniquement sur la désinformation, mais sur la frontière entre la protection du débat démocratique et le contrôle de celui-ci.

Glossaire

Désinformation : diffusion volontaire d'informations fausses ou trompeuses.

Pluralisme : coexistence de points de vue différents dans un débat démocratique.

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2. La naissance des "zones grises" de l'information

Une évolution importante réside dans l'élargissement des catégories susceptibles d'être régulées.

Il ne s'agirait plus uniquement de sanctionner des informations manifestement fausses, mais également certains contenus considérés comme susceptibles d'induire une perception erronée du réel, même lorsqu'ils s'appuient sur des faits exacts. [Ils veulent pouvoir punir des gens qui ne mentent pas.]

Cette distinction entre désinformation, mésinformation et malinformation constitue probablement l'aspect le plus controversé des propositions.

Les critiques craignent qu'une telle évolution ne transforme progressivement un contrôle des faits en un contrôle des interprétations. [On va punir le délit d'opinion.]

Le problème juridique devient alors particulièrement complexe : lorsqu'un fait est exact mais présenté sous un angle polémique ou critique, à partir de quel moment devient-il une menace pour le débat public plutôt qu'une simple opinion ?

C'est précisément cette frontière qui suscite aujourd'hui de nombreuses interrogations.

Glossaire

Malinformation : utilisation d'informations exactes dans un contexte susceptible de produire un effet jugé nuisible.

Mésinformation : diffusion d'informations inexactes sans intention délibérée de tromper.

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3. Qui contrôle les algorithmes ?

Une autre question concerne le fonctionnement des algorithmes qui déterminent les contenus proposés aux utilisateurs.

Les auditions parlementaires semblent avoir révélé un décalage entre la logique technique des plateformes et les attentes de certains responsables politiques.

Les représentants de YouTube et de X ont rappelé que leurs systèmes recommandent principalement des contenus correspondant aux habitudes de consultation de chaque utilisateur plutôt qu'à une ligne éditoriale uniforme.

Autrement dit, deux internautes peuvent recevoir des recommandations très différentes simplement parce que leurs historiques de navigation diffèrent.

Certains parlementaires estiment néanmoins que cette personnalisation peut favoriser la constitution de bulles informationnelles et souhaitent davantage de transparence, voire davantage de contrôle.

Les critiques répondent qu'un contrôle accru des recommandations pourrait conduire, volontairement ou non, à privilégier certains discours plutôt que d'autres. [Ils veulent décider quelles vidéos seront mises en avant.]

Le débat oppose donc deux conceptions : faut-il laisser l'algorithme répondre aux préférences individuelles, ou faut-il lui imposer des critères d'intérêt général ?

Glossaire

Algorithme : ensemble de règles informatiques déterminant les contenus proposés.

Bulle informationnelle : environnement où un utilisateur voit principalement des informations conformes à ses préférences.

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4. Les médias "de confiance"

Parmi les pistes évoquées figure également la possibilité de mieux identifier certaines sources considérées comme particulièrement fiables.

Les défenseurs de cette approche estiment qu'elle aiderait les citoyens à distinguer plus facilement les contenus journalistiques des rumeurs circulant sur Internet.

Ses opposants craignent au contraire qu'un tel système crée une hiérarchie officielle de l'information. [Ils vont choisir les médias de confiance et invisibiliser les autres.]

Une interrogation apparaît alors : qui déciderait des critères permettant d'attribuer ce label ?

Même si les intentions sont présentées comme protectrices, plusieurs analystes soulignent qu'un tel mécanisme pourrait favoriser certains acteurs au détriment d'autres et réduire progressivement la diversité des opinions disponibles.

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5. Le rôle de l'ARCOM et les pouvoirs de sanction

Les propositions envisagent également un renforcement des moyens dont disposeraient les autorités de régulation.

Les partisans de cette évolution considèrent que les outils actuels sont insuffisants face à la rapidité de diffusion des campagnes de manipulation.

Les critiques estiment, à l'inverse, qu'une extension des pouvoirs de sanction pourrait créer un précédent important en permettant des interventions plus larges sur les contenus diffusés en ligne. [Donner beaucoup plus de pouvoir à l'ARCOM pour pouvoir punir même ceux qui ne mentent pas.]

L'équilibre recherché apparaît particulièrement délicat : comment protéger l'espace public contre les manipulations sans porter atteinte à la liberté d'expression ?

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6. Les arguments des deux camps

Les défenseurs de la réforme avancent plusieurs arguments.

Ils rappellent que les démocraties sont désormais confrontées à des campagnes de manipulation sophistiquées utilisant les réseaux sociaux pour influencer les opinions publiques.

Selon eux, laisser les plateformes s'autoréguler reviendrait à abandonner un élément essentiel du fonctionnement démocratique à des entreprises privées.

À l'inverse, les opposants considèrent que l'État ne devrait jamais disposer du pouvoir d'arbitrer les opinions recevables.

Ils soulignent qu'une fois les outils de contrôle créés, rien ne garantit qu'ils ne seront pas utilisés demain par des gouvernements moins respectueux des libertés publiques.

L'histoire montre que les pouvoirs exceptionnels accordés dans un contexte précis tendent souvent à perdurer bien au-delà de leur justification initiale.

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7. Une question qui dépasse la France

Ce débat dépasse largement les frontières françaises.

Le Royaume-Uni, l'Union européenne, les États-Unis, l'Australie et plusieurs autres démocraties cherchent eux aussi à concilier liberté d'expression, lutte contre les manipulations numériques et protection des processus électoraux.

Partout, la même interrogation demeure.

Jusqu'où un État démocratique peut-il intervenir dans la circulation de l'information sans devenir lui-même l'arbitre du débat public ?

Il ne s'agit pas d'une opposition simple entre liberté absolue et contrôle absolu.

Le véritable enjeu consiste à préserver un espace où les citoyens peuvent continuer à confronter des idées différentes, y compris dérangeantes, tout en limitant les campagnes délibérées de manipulation.

L'équilibre est particulièrement difficile à trouver.

Mais c'est précisément dans les périodes de tension politique que les principes de liberté d'expression et de pluralisme sont le plus sévèrement mis à l'épreuve.

Glossaire

Liberté d'expression : droit de communiquer ses opinions dans les limites fixées par la loi.

Pluralisme démocratique : existence durable d'une diversité de courants de pensée, de médias et d'opinions permettant un véritable débat public.

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WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT PROPAGANDA

12 December 2025

How your attitudes are shaped, without your realising it.

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PROPAGANDA: HOW MODERN SOCIETIES ARE SHAPED WITHOUT REALISING IT

Taken together, the ten articles summarised here explore propaganda not as crude lies imposed from above, but as a subtle, pervasive system that shapes attitudes, narrows "permissible" thought, and conditions populations to accept their elite by taking down their resistance. Drawing on thinkers such as Jacques Ellul and observing contemporary media, war reporting, and political discourse, the series shows how propaganda works through repetition, emotional framing, moral binaries, and the implicit - systemic really - the implicit, system-driven alignment of governments, journalists, analysts, think tanks and cultural institutions. This doesn't require "managing" or intervention or coordination, only shared assumptions. 

It is most effective precisely because it feels normal, humanitarian, and rational - because it presents itself as common sense rather than persuasion. Propaganda in modern societies is self-organising. Whether examining war narratives, journalism’s loss of scepticism, the theatricalisation of politics, or the psychological exhaustion of Western societies, the core argument remains the same: modern propaganda does not demand belief, it demands acquiescence. It replaces debate with reflex, doubt with certainty, and citizenship with spectatorship. 

The danger is not merely that we are misinformed, but that we gradually lose the capacity - and even the desire - to think independently.

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1. JACQUES ELLUL – THE FORMATION OF ATTITUDES

This post draws on Jacques Ellul’s insight that modern propaganda does not primarily aim to persuade us with arguments, but to shape our attitudes over time. Ellul explains how constant exposure to simplified narratives, repetition, and emotional framing gradually conditions individuals to accept certain positions as “normal” or “obvious", long before any explicit opinion is formed. The article argues that modern citizens mistake information overload for freedom of thought, when in reality it produces conformity and passivity.

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2. PROPAGANDA, THE WAY IT WORKS, THE HARM IT DOES

This article explains propaganda as a psychological system rather than a set of lies. It shows how slogans, moral binaries, and emotional triggers short-circuit rational thought, encouraging people to react rather than reflect - this is very important to understand, and a proper understanding of propaganda requires knowing the methods and tools employed and just how calculating the campaign is and how coordination is achieved at the system level. The harm lies not only in false beliefs, but in the erosion of independent judgement, social trust, and nuance. Over time, propaganda damages democratic culture by replacing reasoning with reflex and a kind of conditioned instinct.

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3. PROPAGANDA FIT FOR THE EDINBURGH FRINGE

Using satire and irony, this post compares modern war propaganda to a theatrical performance - exaggerated, repetitive, Punch and Judy almost, and designed for applause rather than truth. It argues that many media narratives are so absurdly scripted that they resemble fringe comedy, except with deadly consequences. The piece highlights how certainty, moral grandstanding, and simplification replace serious analysis, turning war into entertainment for distant audiences. "Politics is the entertainment division of the MIC."

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4. JOURNALISM AS PROPAGANDA

This article argues that journalism has increasingly abandoned its role as a sceptical check on power and become a transmission belt for elite narratives. Rather than investigating, challenging, contextualising, much of the media now amplifies official positions while marginalising dissent. The post shows how framing, omission, and selective outrage can be as powerful as outright censorship in shaping public perception.

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5. THE EFFECT OF TROLLS ON THE OUTCOME OF THE WAR IN UKRAINE

This post examines the real and exaggerated role of online trolls in the Ukraine conflict. It argues that while information warfare exists, blaming “trolls” often serves as a convenient excuse to dismiss legitimate scepticism and policy failure. The deeper problem, the article suggests, is not manipulation by outsiders but the fragility of public trust and the unwillingness of elites to tolerate dissent.

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6. WESTERN GOVTS, ANALYSTS AND MEDIA – HOW PROPAGANDA WORKS

Here, the focus is on the alignment between governments, think tanks, analysts, and media organisations. The article explains how a narrow consensus forms, how soft power works -  career incentives, access journalism, reputational risk. Once established, this consensus polices itself, marginalising alternative views without needing explicit coordination. Propaganda emerges as a systemic outcome, not a conspiracy. Question outside the box and a journalist loses influence and access and gets relegated to podcasts, substack, the bloggosphere.

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7. PROPAGANDA PODCAST

This post introduces and frames this podcast series, which is dedicated to unpacking and "de-fanging" propaganda in modern politics and war. It emphasises slow thinking, historical context, and scepticism as antidotes to emotional manipulation and the tools of the propagandaist's trade. The aim is not to replace one narrative with another, but to help listeners recognise techniques of persuasion and reclaim a minimum of intellectual autonomy.

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8. THIS IS NOT OUR WAR

This article challenges the claim that the Ukraine war is a moral crusade binding all Europeans. It argues that public consent has been manufactured through fear, moral pressure, and selective information. The post questions whose interests are truly served and warns that democratic legitimacy erodes when populations are told a war is inevitable, righteous, and beyond debate.

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9. IS AMERICA’S MADNESS REVERSIBLE?

This piece reflects on the United States’ political and psychological trajectory, describing a society locked in permanent crisis mode. It argues that constant outrage, polarisation, and moral absolutism are symptoms of deeper institutional and cultural breakdown. The article asks whether restraint, pluralism, and self-doubt — once American strengths — can be recovered, or whether the system now feeds on permanent instability.

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10. THE WEST HAS BEEN DEFEATED IN UKRAINE, BUT IS IN DENIAL OF THE…

This post argues that the West has already lost strategically in Ukraine, but cannot admit it without confronting deeper failures of leadership, planning, and honesty. Rather than reassessing, elites double down on narrative control to delay political consequences. The article frames denial as a final stage of propaganda - not to mobilise victory, but to postpone accountability.

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1. JACQUES ELLUL – THE FORMATION OF ATTITUDES

https://www.livingintheair.org/2024/09/jacques-ellul-the-formation-of-attitudes.html

2. PROPAGANDA: THE WAY IT WORKS, THE HARM IT DOES

https://www.livingintheair.org/2022/06/propaganda-the-way-it-works-the-harm-it-does-us.html

3. PROPAGANDA FIT FOR THE EDINBURGH FRINGE

https://www.livingintheair.org/2024/09/propaganda-fit-for-the-edinburgh-fringe.html

4. JOURNALISM AS PROPAGANDA

https://www.livingintheair.org/2022/07/journalism-as-propaganda.html

5. THE EFFECT OF TROLLS ON THE OUTCOME OF THE WAR IN UKRAINE

https://www.livingintheair.org/2023/07/the-effect-of-trolls-on-the-outcome-of-the-war-in-ukraine.html

6. WESTERN GOVTS, ANALYSTS AND MEDIA – HOW PROPAGANDA WORKS

https://www.livingintheair.org/2022/08/western-govts-analysts-and-media-how-propaganda-works.html

7. PROPAGANDA PODCAST

https://www.livingintheair.org/2024/12/propaganda-podcast.html

8. THIS IS NOT OUR WAR

https://www.livingintheair.org/2025/05/this-is-not-our-war.html

9. IS AMERICA’S MADNESS REVERSIBLE?

https://www.livingintheair.org/2024/01/is-americas-madness-reversible.html

10. THE WEST HAS BEEN DEFEATED IN UKRAINE, BUT IS IN DENIAL OF THE…

https://www.livingintheair.org/2025/03/the-west-has-been-defeated-in-ukraine-but-is-in-denial.html

IN SUMMARY...

Propaganda today isn’t about telling crude lies. It works by shaping attitudes through repetition, emotion, and “common sense” narratives, aligning media, experts, and elite. 

Its real effect isn’t to make us believe everything, but to narrow what can be questioned... in effect, propaganda replaces real debate with an instinctive purely emotional reflex and turns us into spectators.... it's not enough to think that we are above such manipulation, we aren't, we need to be aware, all we have in self-defense is knowledge of the methods and techniques used and the end purposes and outcomes sought by the manipulators.

Take care!

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PROPAGANDA PODCAST

6 December 2024

Propaganda

https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/2944804a-e048-4ef4-a33b-b6c89a6b3fa6/audio

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THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA IN PROLONGING THE WAR IN UKRAINE

22 September 2024

THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA IN HELPING THE WEST ACCEPT DEFEAT IN UKRAINE

Ukraine has run out of men, equipment, munitions, transport and supplies, the war is more or less lost, but the Mainstream Media is holding back on an honest debate with the public. 

It’s no good labelling Putin a monster or the second coming of the moustachioed or accusing him of wanting to rebuild the Russian Empire or claiming sanctions will wreck the Russian economy or insisting that Ukraine can retake all land lost since 1991 or insisting on the strategic defeat of Russia.

Fact is, this war is un-winnable and the media should be supplying the information to support a wholesome, open discussion of alternatives to current military and economic strategies. The MSM needs to fulfil its traditional role in a democracy of helping to adapt the public to reality by generating options for debate. 

This war cannot be won and was wrong-headed from the get-go. Progress and prosperity need global peace and stability and we need to adapt to the reality of defeat before it's too late.

SUMMARY

1. Are Western media outlets asking tough questions about the West's current strategy in Ukraine, or is dissent being suppressed?

2. Is the mainstream media failing to honestly discuss whether Ukraine can realistically win the war with the current levels of Western support?

3. Should the media encourage a public debate about alternative strategies, including negotiations, as Western military and economic support wanes?

A RANGE OF QUESTIONS

Here are some questions that the mainstream media could be discussing in order to smooth the process towards adaption and acceptance of defeat.

Are we asking enough hard questions about the West's current policy in Ukraine - we surely don’t want a repeat of the Iraq war experience when Western media failed to question the WDM claims?

Are we allowing a fair and open debate on Ukraine, or is challenging Western strategy being dismissed as defeatist or pro-Russian?

Are we overlooking the need to question whether the war in Ukraine is actually winnable, given the power of Putin’s Russia as demonstrated every day on the battlefields?

Are we scrutinising these claims of Western invincibility enough, because sanctions seem to have backfired badly on Europe and if it came to a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia it is by no means obvious that NATO could prevail and there would likely be a World War 3 with the threat of nuclear escalation?

Why isn’t the possibility of a defeat on the battlefield for the West being discussed more in mainstream forums, we can see Russia’s capacity and the depletion of Western military supplies?

Why are we avoiding deeper discussions on whether current strategies are sustainable, and instead pushing optimistic narratives, this stops us from developing compromise strategies or ways of preparing and managing defeat and risks making the final shocks even more shattering?

Wouldn’t it make sense to rethink whether retaking all of Ukraine, including Crimea, is realistic, fact is there is no clarity on the West’s war aims beyond backing Ukraine “for as long as it takes” - takes what?

How realistic is it for Ukraine to win with current Western support levels unable to match Russia's, not in troop numbers, not in equipment and not in munitions?

Scholz has suggested negotiations, why is this not being seriously considered or discussed by other Western leaders or in the MSM?

Are we being honest about the likelihood of victory, given that Ukraine’s Western allies may not have the capacity to continue supporting the war indefinitely?

What alternative approaches should Western leaders consider, given that the current strategy is not enough to achieve victory?

Are journalists asking these tough questions needed to hold leaders accountable in honest discussions about Ukraine’s future? The media is crucial to informed debate and adapting public opinion to reality, why isn't it happening, why are we stuck in a bubble of propaganda.

Who is responsible for handicapping debate? Is it the Mainstream Media or the politicians? 

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