Propaganda Warning #5: Manipulation via Guilt and Shame
2/3/25 11:01 PM
Naomi C.
In this post I encourage you to think a little about the emotions of guilt and shame and their use in modern propaganda. This is important because guilt and shame have played a pivotal role in brainwashing and continue to do so.
In looking at the factors of individual character that played into different ‘susceptibilities to thought reform influence’ (brainwashing), Robert Lifton found that the individual ‘tended to be influenced to the degree that his identity, whatever it may have been, could be undermined through the self-deprecating effects of guilt and shame.’
Lifton, R.J. (1961), Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of “Brainwashing” in China, Victor Gollancz LTD, London.p.150.
Lifton found that the more individuals were susceptible to guilt and shame, the more easily they were controlled by methods of brainwashing. Knowledge of this reality is highly relevant to our own day, a time when guilt and shame responses are used by the media, on a regular basis, to keep individuals in line with set agendas. There’s little doubt that this trend will continue, and it will likely play a significant role in the pressure that will be applied on the populace at the time of ‘the mark’.
‘And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.’ Revelation 13:16-17. (KJV)
While many of the pressures faced when ‘the mark’ is in place will be extreme, and unique to that time, guilt, shame, and fear will likely play a huge role in coercing many individuals to take it. Preparation for this time should be spiritual, mental, and physical.
Civic duties and responsibilities to others may be played, as a tool of manipulation, because it will serve the powers that be to do so, not because of any greater good, far from it. One of the most interesting elements of a recent global propaganda drive was how everyone, suddenly, was receiving mainstream media messages to think of others. Think of grandma, those in your workplace, the kids, those who you’ll spend Christmas with…. etc. This messaging was occurring in an era when, typically, complete selfishness, ‘do your own thing’ style messaging, has generally been the commercial messaging of our time. Top-down influences reminding others of civic duties and responsibilities toward others had, for a time, a public comeback in the modern world. This only occurred, however, while influencing individuals toward a very specific goal. MSN’s sudden ‘community welfare’ outlook and care for the wellbeing of humanity should have caused significant cognitive dissonance.
Guilt and shame are natural emotions, although great efforts have gone into deconstructing them, along with other less favourable emotional states. Despite this deconstruction, often via ‘self-help’ style literature that has championed moral relativism, they have also been aggressively used as tools of control over the populace. While people have been told guilt and shame are irrelevant emotions, of the variety they needn’t bother themselves with, all the while they have been played via guilt and shame more than ever. Likely, the broad societal deconstruction of the relevance of these emotions, and the active manipulation of humanity, via them, have come from the same questionable place.
We often feel guilt and shame when it is right to do so, they are emotions that can carry important messages, that something we are doing, or have done, is/was bad and damaging to ourselves or others. We’re all far from perfect and have likely felt these emotions when it has been more than appropriate for us to do so. Ideally, we listen to the message these emotions carry, ask for forgiveness from God, and move on along a more positive path aligned with God’s will, not ours.
Propaganda, however, uses our natural emotions for its end of control. We are often coerced to feel guilt and shame, repeatedly via modern propaganda, when it is NOT right for us to do so, but to make us more susceptible to cult like controls that operate in modern society. These controls seek to actively erode our own identities, rational bearing, and foundational sense of self and reality.
The transgender propaganda unleashed on society, and its techniques of shaming resistors, appears to have been as much, or far more, about breaking down common sense on broad scale, rather than just being about medically targeting, and creating, confused individuals and children. It has further opened many, especially people who are not ‘transgender’, up to being sold virtually any ideas. There’s a significant mindset switch, a lever, that this propaganda appears to have help move, one that’s gone in the opposite direction from God given reason and one that boldly blurs God’s creation, and the distinctions tied to it. Some have suggested this propaganda serves a greater transhumanism agenda. If a person can be made to believe they, or others, can ‘be’ or ‘do’ ‘anything’, including change genders, what’s to stop a person integrating future technologies into the body? The many media validated paths away from God’s will are ever presented as paths to personal ‘empowerment’.
Marketers of everything, from anti-depressant drugs to rainbow ideology, have long employed guilt and shame to achieve their ends and continue to do so.
For years now there has been a headline, appearing on MSN that seeks to shame certain celebrities by labelling them ‘transphobic’ or with other popular shut-down shaming words, sometimes for simply stating the blatantly obvious. You may have seen the type of headline that I’m referring to. Each time it appears as if it is a new story, posted only an hour ago, or two days ago, never ‘three years ago and repeated with monotonous regularity’. Yet, it remains the same rehashed story being posted, month after month, year after year, often with the same faces and same examples given. Such headlines are mechanisms of public shaming, used as repetitive tools of ‘social learning’ for the rest of the populace, i.e. if you too hold the same unfriendly views as these celebrities, toward the agenda that is being pushed forward, you too will be associated with unfavourable words, be unpopular, and even open yourself to the same kind of public shaming. It is a powerful technique of conditioning.
Guilt and fear are similarly played upon by media influences to achieve sought after ends, most noticeably, via one of the most extreme methods of emotional manipulation: marketing threats of suicide. Countless examples now exist of suicides being threatened to the public unless they fall in line with the ‘right’ agendas.
I recently read that a regional ‘Queer festival’ had lost a major sponsor, and that the Mardi Gras president had stated: ‘We’re not talking about having nothing to do for the weekend, we’re literally talking about saving lives.’
This is essentially the equivalent of saying if we don’t get the party money…there will be deaths. Realistically, it does seem to be about having nothing to do for the weekend…. and manipulating the public via guilt.
Why aren’t we hearing about the tremendous number of youth suicides where alcohol has played a significant role? This relationship is solidly known because of the coronial investigations. The marketers have reason not to go there, the alcohol sellers might represent some of their largest clients and making them feel guilty about presenting their products in an attractive manner to youth isn’t on their agenda.
When the pharmaceutical marketers moved to make Japan a suitable market for their anti-depressant drugs they had a significant problem. Japan had always had a favorable cultural position towards melancholy. The marketers had to change cultural mindsets first, to move their product in Japan. To help them do so, ‘…the drug companies leveraged the populations growing concern over the high suicide rates.’ E. Watters. (2010) Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche. Free Press, New York.
The marketers ended up naming depression ‘a cold of soul’ and then put the message out that without medical help this ‘cold of the soul’ could ‘kill you’. While other techniques were also used to change cultural mindsets, the one leveraging concern over suicides was the most emotionally manipulative.
The campaign leveraged fear and guilt, it encouraged individuals to act on the agenda intended, because how bad would it be if they did not? Wouldn’t they feel guilty if they didn’t recommend the ‘help’ on offer to those they felt needed it?
What is important to take out of these true stories is that when certain individuals and powerful marketers are determined to sell us something, and wish to change established mindsets toward set agendas, they often use fear, guilt, and shame, even the threat of suicide. They are not beyond employing profound tactics of emotional manipulation to change mindsets, even of entire cultures, if it serves their purposes.
While some sell bad vibes to entire countries and apparently feel justified in doing so to move their product, the rest of us are conditioned to have ‘GOOD VIBES ONLY’ toward everything. Is that to shut down critical thinking and ease the way for the many BAD VIBE manipulations that have been occurring, and that will likely continue to escalate?
Rather than comfortably flee from the discomfort of guilt and shame, it may serve us well in the future to give necessary time to thinking through our emotions instead. Guilt and shame have played a key role in the process of brainwashing, in shifting and maintaining desired mindsets. We have good reason to believe that these emotions will continue to be used in the process of changing and controlling minds in the future as well.
‘The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.’ Numbers 6:24-26. (KJV)
‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ 1 John 1:9 (KJV)
‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Romans 8:1. (KJV)
Photos courtesy Depositphotos
