The Changing Nature of Propaganda

I appreciate you taking the time to, meet with me, to discuss with me, really, the, process and purpose of propaganda for those looking for their daily dose of alliteration. There it is. We spoke a bit earlier briefly about this concept of propaganda, and I want to sort of begin our discussion with just addressing what exactly is propaganda. I do have a couple of follow ups to that, but I think just defining it clearly and making some distinctions is is important, inshallah, for just how we just kick off the the the the conversation.

Well, I think propaganda I think it it's fairly straightforward what propaganda actually means and what it has historically been, which is just sort of the articulation, the crafting, and the delivery, of a message by those in power, to try to, impose an understanding about a particular topic, about a particular issue, about a particular situation, or more broadly, the world in general, to impose an an understanding that is in the interests of power and that a type of an understanding that would not probably otherwise have been reached by the population if left to their own devices. In other words, if you had left people unpropagandized, they would have reached different conclusions than the conclusions that power would like them to reach.

Mhmm.

It's it's it's kind of trying to impose a certain understanding of the world that's in the interests of those who are crafting the propaganda. Mhmm. Mhmm. That's that's basically what propaganda is or has been.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, hearing that definition, it takes me first and foremost to probably the first book I'd ever read about propaganda, which was manufacturing consent by Noam Chomsky, which he wrote in in 1988 specifically to address how mass communication, mass media in The United States, now this is in the eighties, was pretty much being utilized by various institutions, the, fifth estate, or the fourth estate, we're referring to to media, to carry out messaging to garner support behind everything from the aspects of the market and economy, internalizing certain assumptions about what it means to be an American, what it means to to be an an a non American, as well as just promoting self censorship of people without using using covert propaganda as a means of avoiding overt coercion. Right? But, and and just sort of kicking off the conversation, one of the other things that come to mind is a book that was written sixty years earlier by Edward Bernays, called propaganda.

And this was off of two of his books, crystallizing public opinion and a public relations council where he talked about the inception of combining these various components for essentially generate generating mass consent. So, obviously, from the time of Edward Bernays and and, you know, like, utilizing propaganda for the De Beers campaign, you know, diamonds are forever, diamonds are our girl's best friend, initially to to generate revenue to then, like, World War one, World War two, you know, the the these types of images. Even doctor Seuss, who was a Nazi and originally used his, you know, art artistic skills for, you know, furthering these types of messaging and stuff. I would say that it's become a lot more sophisticated now than it was back then. So what would you, like, isolate as the primary medium for delivering propagandization, if that's even how you would term it or or define it?

I think that, you know, the the the you mentioned Edward Bernays, the Chomsky book, which is I think he co authored, coauthored with, Edward Sherman, I think his name is. And before that, even in the same time as Renee's was Walter Lippmann, who was the first one to write the the the idea. I think he said it I think he called it fabricating consent or something like that. They they they used the they they sort of made a play off of the original name of Walter Lippmann's book. Since that time, I think that propaganda itself has sort of metastasized into a number of other industries, such as the PR industry, marketing, advertising.

And then there's a whole architecture of influencing thought that has also developed and become more sophisticated since those days. Because as we were talking about before we started recording. Mhmm. If you look at the propaganda from World War two, it's comical. You you can't believe that anyone would be swayed by this.

It's it's so blatantly

Yeah.

Biased. It's so blatantly deceptive and and and dishonest

It's literally

you can't believe. Yeah. You can't believe. Like, who would who would have thought that that having Bugs Bunny cartoons is going to influence public opinion? Mhmm. Know?

Popeye the sailor band.

Yeah. Popeye the sailor. All of all of the cartoons were were all of the cartoon characters were enlisted to support the the the war campaign and the and the official position of The United States, which was which also was always infused with racist, you know, very bigoted, very stereotyping ideas that had nothing to do with actually the cause that they were supposed to be involved in in World War two. Mhmm. But it was it it worked.

It was actually influential. And that, like you said, the Rosie the Riveter and and and these characters from propaganda

Yeah.

Even the invention of Uncle Sam as a character. Yep. All of these things now seem laughable

Yeah.

That that would actually have any influence on anyone whatsoever. But, of course, as I was talking about before we were recording, the the approach at that time was for mass appeal, which meant that there had to be a lowest common denominator aspect to propaganda. We want to convince as many people as possible, the majority. We're not targeting intellectuals. We're not targeting particularly educated people.

We're targeting the masses. So there there was that sort of there's an element to it that probably even at the time, there were people who would have laughed at it. That, you know, there were I'm sure that there were sectors in the society who also found it laughable. But since that time, I think that institutionally and systematically, there has been the development of a much more sophisticated and much more comprehensive indoctrination system in The United States and in The West generally. But we tend to talk about The United States because, really, they're the they're the vanguard of this type of thing.

And they export it. And they export it. And then this is the problem. And and not to mention the fact that, of course, they they themselves did enlist the propagandists of their official enemies during World War two. They brought the Nazis over.

They brought Nazis over to help them understand propaganda and understand what you can sort of call mass thought control. So they're they that that's one of the things that they have been leaders in. America has really been a leader in, yeah. I don't know if you can even call it soft brainwashing, but it's a it's a type of brainwashing for for the for the population. I mean,

it it could even be safe to say that the advancement of technology is parallel to the sophistication the advancement of technology is parallel to trying to promote that mass appeal, to generate those mass messages. So we go from newspapers and books and cartoons and comics to motion pictures and Hollywood, and we go from that to, you know, the Nickel movie to, you know, radio, and everyone gets a radio, and then TV. And and so a lot of those things were already in place, on a governmental level, but then the mass access to these, tools, right, of of receiving and and disseminating information has definitely helped also serve as the medium for delivery of indoctrination as you as you termed it.

Right. But until recently, what what you have seen by the technology was the increase in the number of delivery methods. But the but the source of the information continued to be the same. The one who was delivering who was delivering the message via these means was still the same. So the same powers were making the movies, the same powers we're making we only had back in The States.

I don't know if you're old enough to remember. We only had three channels Mhmm. When I was a kid.

Just had Old enough to have heard about it.

Yeah. So that was before cable even. And then then there was cable, and it started that started to change and that there were more people who had the ability to deliver information. So the control of information until recently continued to be very tightly held Mhmm. Even though it was disseminated through more means, which just meant that you had, as you say, more ways of delivering to people.

But what was being delivered was still under the control of the same original set of powers. With with the advent of the Internet, that's what has really been a challenge to delivery of propaganda. I think that's that's has been a challenge. And social media and so on where people where anyone can create a website that can be accessed by anyone. Mhmm.

How how do you how can you control what information is being disseminated? Because that was the essential thing before. They were under they had the control over what was being disseminated, and the technology just gave them more ways to do it. But now with the Internet and with social media, you can't control as much what is being disseminated. It's now being disseminated by all of these by all of these technologies.

And this is why even now, you find I think it's, like, over I think it's around 60% by the by one poll that I saw, 60% of people in America get their news from social media, not from the mainstream media.

Yeah. This is a problem. This

is a problem for for the effective delivery of propaganda. Yeah. Because, you know, before, like I said, you just had three channels that could that everyone watched.

Mhmm.

You had and you had a handful of movie studios that that would produce. And even even with that, now you have many studios. Yeah. Yeah. And production companies and so forth.

Yeah. So the the the the real change has been the increased number of people who can sources of information, not delivery tools of information, but sources of information, has become more diverse. And I think that's become a difficult thing for for the effective delivery of propaganda. It was much easier before. Know?

You've seen I'm sorry.

No. That's alright.

Now I was just gonna say that then you have now you the the the way that this has developed or the the impact that this has had on the society, at least in America, and I think generally, you have what what has has become now known as the the echo chambers Mhmm. Where people people will go to the Internet, and they will go to what they agree with. They will choose the the sources of information that they already agree with.

So

then it becomes a type of self propagandizing.

Yeah. Self indoctrination.

Self indoctrination. What do you call it? Reinforcing self reinforcing propaganda. And it creates as I was talking about earlier, it creates factions in the society. So now the the those who traditionally were the ones who were crafting the propaganda, I think, are still doing that, but they're doing it now in a more targeted way, in a in a in a way that targets this faction, targets that faction, targets the other faction to craft the message that will work with them.

Because the ultimate goal of propaganda previously and now is to mobilize people behind a certain sort of action or inaction. The whole point is that the point isn't just to control the mind, obviously. The the point of controlling the mind is to control the behavior. Mhmm. Mhmm.

What people will do. That's the ultimate goal. So if you wanna control a faction that's maybe on the left, you have to tell them something tailored to to them and tailored to their beliefs and their priorities. If what you in order to get them to do the same thing that you want the people on the right wing to do. But you have to tell it to the right wing in a different way in order to get them to do the same thing.

Well, even like right wing, left wing, you have to be propagandized just enough, indoctrinated just enough to put yourself in that box to hear that information too.

Sure. Sure.

It's like a I

think that that's that's that's part of what I was talking about in the in the in the since the time of Littmann and Bernays and so on.

Mhmm.

This indoctrination system has developed considerably, and it has become more sophisticated and comprehensive.

Yeah. It's like, two things came to mind when when you shared that. About our love, faith, may love bless you. I mean, the first is the the these proverbial silos or factions that people put themselves into and that sort of becoming the means of, okay. It's like a like a soda machine.

You know? You you you have these different types, and you just put the cup under, and you just drop it in. And and and you're the willful participant in that exchange. Right? Like, Subhanallah, the the first thing that that that comes to mind is is this notion of identifying as left or right or liberal or conservative.

And but we're not we're not intellectually creating the parameters for what that means per se. Not in every space. Not to say that there are not some intellectual spaces that better define those things, but, you know, this idea that, you know, it's Trump or Harris or this sort of dichotomous this or that and these sort of juxtapositions. It's it's like you have to condi you have to already be indoctrinated enough to say, well, here's where here's the the the cup that I that I put here, and this is the what I'm gonna fill it with. Another component of that too is this idea that, you know, the way that the information is disseminated, the medium, and then the the target audience.

Like, when I think about being a child, hearing about 09:11 for the first time when I was in school and then going home and everyone being huddled around these t the the television And people whether you're cycling through CNN, MSNBC, or Fox, like, it's pretty much the same messaging. And at that time, I mean, I was a kid, but I don't think anyone was really thinking so critically of it the way that, say, today with the terror attack that happened in Lebanon, people are picking that apart. And and just to that sort of siloing of information, I go on YouTube. I see a breaking news tab. I see, you know, I see Fox.

I see MSNBC. I see CNN. And they're all saying Hezbollah, you know, this, that. But no one is using the word terrorist, and no one is using the word Israel, and no one is talking about Zion. No one is using any of that to describe what's happening.

But then if you just scroll just long enough, you will see someone that then some news outlet that then does put the news forward like that. So it's like this sort of piece by piece, step by step, like, alright. So you it's it's like the Barnum effect or, like, the Fora effect where people have come up with sort of ideological horoscopes that they then say, oh, this is my whole identity, and then you just get fed that that message according to what you think is best, I I guess, like, relates to you, in that way. But that's just an analogy that sort of comes to my mind. When you think about the efficacy of of propaganda in that way, you would think that because we have far more freedom of choice, that propaganda would be diminished in its in its efficiency, but that's not the case.

So if we understand what it is and the medium that it's delivered and how target audiences are created, how is it possible that this is still effective when we can we can literally see through it? We have the options to choose. Why do people still buy into that indoctrination and not try to free themselves from that?

Well, I think it I think it is being challenged. I I I think that that that that the efficiency is not yielding the results that it used to. I mean, we can see that very clearly. The you're you're not able to get everyone on board the way you used to to to the interest of power. However, what I would say is to to touch on what you're talking about, and it goes back to the idea of propaganda itself had to be like, if you go again back to, say, World War two era, between then and now, this indoctrination system has become more sophisticated to where it used to be we want to deliver a message that, like, we already we we already assume certain aspects about the mass population that like I said, we're sort of appealing to a lowest common denominator in our propaganda so that we'll mobilize the largest number of people.

And we know certain qualities about these people, and therefore, for example, they like Popeye the sailor man, so we'll put it in the mouth of Popeye the sailor man and and call us, it will work. And the same thing goes with marketing celebrity endorsement. Well, we know there are people who like this actor or this actress or this singer and so on. So will work. We don't have to do a lot of thought about that.

But what they have done is now they want to determine the qualities of the person receiving the propaganda. It's not just about the delivery of the propaganda. Now we want to also have some control over the receiver of the propaganda and how they will receive it. There it's the the delivery and the reception. They wanna control end to end, and that's what indoctrination is about.

So then you have this whole thing what you were talking about where there's an indoctrination system that decides what your identity is, what your priorities are, what your beliefs are, and you don't even understand that that's being done to you. That is all being decided for you. That that now we're controlling the whole parameter of discussion without you even thinking about whether or not I have to accept those parameters or not. You are given these parameters. Like you said, it's a it's a soda dispensary machine, and you don't even think about the fact that maybe I don't even want a soda.

I have to take this one or that one. Maybe I don't even want one. Maybe I want juice. Maybe I'm not even thirsty, but you're putting it in front of me. And therefore, now I must decide this one or that one because it says something now about my identity.

That, like you don't even say, well, theoretically, if I were thirsty and if there was no other option, then between these two options, I would choose that one. It's just choose that one.

You gotta Yeah.

I'll do it. This yeah. It it becomes an unthinking thing. So this is beyond propaganda. This is beyond.

This is really, like, controlled I don't wanna even use the term because it just sounds so over the top, but it's mind control. Yeah. Yeah. You're you're you're it it is mind control because you're controlling people's even ability to understand options, and and you're putting them in a situation mentally that they don't question in any way. They don't question the framing.

They don't question the parameters and what have you. And the the the thing that has helped with regards to the delivery of propaganda, the delivery and the controlling of messages and the receiving of messages that power wants to have delivered and adopted by the population, while they have been challenged by the increase in the number of sources of information, this has led to the creation of boxes in the society that have predictable beliefs and predictable behaviors. This is the factionalization of the society as I was talking about to where we now we know there's these people in the Republican box. There's these people in the Democrat box. There's these people in the woke box and so on and so on and so on.

And we and and they have their own set of beliefs that are all predictable. They have a certain menu, and no one even questions that. So now we can use targeted messaging, and we can, for example, employ social media influencers who have this audience, who have an who who typically have, for example, Black Lives Matter audience or who have Christian evangelist audience, who have Trump supporter audience, people who who are red pill, people who are feminist, whatever, now we can employ those people to deliver the message that we want, and we know that it will target those particular people because we can't do mass appeal anymore. Mhmm. Because the nature of the of the thing has has become so complicated and has become more complex with these all of these different sources of information available to people that they do have choices.

So now we have to overcome the fact that they have choices by controlling what is in the choice that they will choose. You see what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah.

What's being delivered by the choice by the by the faction that they belong to.

You know, to your point, and and and not to dwell on this too much more, but, you know, when you mentioned, like, red pill, blue pill, like, when you say that immediately, my availability heuristics kicks in and I start thinking pink pill, black pill, all these different pills, and no one is wondering why are we taking these pills, these thought pills. Right? Kinda to the point of, like, I don't what if I'm not even thirsty? Right? And one of the just an ayah, a verse from the Quran that comes to mind is from Surah the seventh chapter of the Quran, the heights verse chapter seven verse a 179 where Allah tells us about human beings that we have hearts, but some people they but they don't think with them.

They're not utilizing these resources that Allah gave them. Allah gave us eyes. But you're not even looking with them. And you have ears. You but you're not listening.

It's like I remember as a kid growing up, sometimes, like, a teacher or someone would say, like, you're looking at it, but you don't see it, or you're listening to it, but you don't hear it. You know? You're touching it, but you don't feel it. And Allah says when people are in such a state, God almighty says, You are they are like livestock. They follow the call of the of of the of the shepherd or the herder even if it's to the slaughter.

But then Allah says when human beings take on this com this this this trait, they're actually even more astray, and their defining attribute is These are people who are immersed in heedlessness and absent mindedness. There's no critical thought whatsoever. So is the efficacy of propaganda itself, is that what makes it so powerful, or is it people's numbness to it that makes it so powerful? Is it really that people are just uncritical thinkers and that they have to with with more exposure because of the mass media world that we live in on a scale no one could have probably predicted, is that is that what causes people to wake up? You know?

Or is it just, like, maybe there's some cracks at like, what would you say rates what makes it more powerful or less effective and for who and why?

I I don't know if there is one, between those two options. I don't know. See, you're setting the parameters for me now. You're you're you're you're enforcing parameters on me.

I don't mean to indoctrinate. I

don't know if one if one of those two things is more important or less important, and they are certainly intertwined. Because because when you are as as in America, when you come up through an indoctrination system and are heavily propagandized your whole life Mhmm. It creates a condition in your mind. It it so it you can't say that people are just this way. We don't know what people would be like in America had there not been the indoctrination propaganda system.

Yes.

It has. We have no way of knowing what they would be like, except that I know for sure they would be much healthier than they are. And and I think that to a certain extent, you know, like, when you were talking about the ayah and when you're talking about your teacher saying you're looking at it, but you're not seeing it Mhmm. That's actually a really important sort of way of describing it because it's not that they're not seeing. It's that something is specifically being shown to them.

It's being explained to them. So you don't have a chance to look at something else or to understand it in your own way. Yes. We're showing this to you. This is what you will look at, and this is what it is, and I'm telling you what it is.

And so, therefore, now you think you know something that you didn't even necessarily need to know, that you didn't even necessarily need to look at, but now I've put it in your mind that this is what this is the thing you're supposed to look at, and I've explained to you what it is. Because the best way to get someone to not look at what you want them to avoid looking at is to show them something else. That it's deflection and and and misdirection. And and, for example, you you we we were talking about it the other day, the the the debate between Trump and and Harris. Mhmm.

I haven't until until now, I haven't watched the whole thing.

We need to

watch I couldn't and react. We should. We should. Because I haven't like I said, I started watching it, and then it seemed to me that they were going endlessly about abortion. As if the overwhelming majority of American citizens, this is their top priority.

You're telling me that. You're putting that in front of me. You know, the like I said, there's more than one way to blind someone. You you don't you can either blind them or you can just cover their face with something else. You can cover their eyes with something else.

You put something in front of them that so they can't see around it. They can't see anything else because you're putting this in their vision. You're insisting that that I must care about abortion rights, so called, more than anything else, more than inflation, more than immigration, more than genocide, more than anything else. I'm supposed to because this is obviously the most important thing because you're taking up a huge portion of the debate talking about it and talking very passionately about it. And you're important people?

Yes. Of course. And and you're and you're drawing a distinction between you and the other candidate on this issue. So that so now I have to decide which one I'm going to be with because, well, you're putting in front of me this very divisive issue that apparently is very important because you're talking endlessly about it. And now I have already forgotten about the things that actually matter to me.

You know? So they're you're they're they're blinding you by showing you something and then explaining to you what it is and explaining and and then and then you're supposed to determine what your position will be about that thing according to the identity that they have assigned you. So I I will I will I will take the position on that thing according to to the identity that you have the the identity option that you've given me. Because I wanna fulfill that identity option. You know?

I'm a liberal, so the liberal position is such and such. I will now prove my credentials as a liberal by taking the official position with regards to that thing, or I will I will prove my credentials as a conservative by taking the official position according to the faction that I'm in. You know? So they they they've created these these these factional group dynamics of identity, and it goes across the board. You know, obviously, identity is a whole thing in America where there's all of these various versions of identity and all of these various criteria for what can what can be the basis of identity, and it never comes to behavior.

It's never behavior unless it's sexual behavior, but it's never, like, actual morality, for example. Being a moral person isn't an identity.

You know, this, point that you made, it's it's landing even more powerfully for me because there's an ayah I mean, there's several ayats in the Quran, but there's a verse in the Quran in particular that really stands out from what you shared from chapter six verse a 116. If you obey most of the people on the earth, you they will take you away from the path of God. They only follow assumption. They're not they're not following anything that's concrete. You put enough of an assumptive view in front of people, and you just essentially let it's it's like it's like fishing.

You just put this lure in front of people, and nothing about it is truly organic, but people still bite, and they get hooked. And so maybe it's this idea of I don't know. The identity of of Americans or Westerners. Like, I can speak for myself. I've seen I've seen the impact of this sort of shallow thinking on my people firsthand.

Primary example, gang culture. Nothing about a flag, nothing about a color, nothing about the side that you wear it on intrinsically implies really very much of anything except the whatever you pour into it. But the fact that you would let that level of indoctrination of mind control of really buying into the system goes so far as to cause you to kill someone else or to hate someone else just because it's not the same color, it's not the same side, it's not the same whatever, is a testament that as wrong as it is, if you follow most of the people, they're gonna take you away from what's correct. I don't see that to be as, you know I mean, obviously, people die on that front, and and it's a different type of of jahili, of ignorance. But you see these videos and these clips of the woke left and the, you know, conservative, you know, the the red pillars and stuff debating with each other, and it it's just it's just a circus.

It's just certified madness that on a more human level, like you said, abortion is not the most is it an issue? In different circumstances, sure. But is it a greater issue than unemployment, than social unrest and hyper militarization of police and how our taxes are spent and all this? That's certainly a far more significant issue, but it's kinda like a bait and switch. Like, look over here, and, you know, someone's winding something up right right there in front of you.

It's it's it's terrifying.

And and, you know, they don't the the the the whole thing here is 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 interest. 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, sir.

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.

You know?

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 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 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, 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'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.

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.

There's only one position. So it takes the thinking out of it. And and I think this

Yeah. It's just When

you yeah. And nuance. Excuse me. 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.

They now you don't have to do that work. Now I 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 that 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.

Yeah. SubhanAllah. Know, to that to that point, two things that that sort of stood out to me as you were sharing is this this idea of labeling fallacies, how it promotes intolerance and denial. I mean, it's one of the first things that a student, learns in general psychology if you go to school for psychology, which is labeling fallacies. The minute you give something a label is the minute that you've failed to try to understand it.

And so if you are white, if you are black, if you are you know? And then when you have this high class sophisticated social conditioning, conditioned stimulus, conditioned response, reward punishment, and and and you don't even need a bell anymore. You don't need Pavlov's bell or any, like, anything like that anymore. You just drool on command. Right?

People see hear Islam and think terrorist. That's the label. There's no nuance. There can't be anything other than what I've already heard about it. Right?

Yeah. I already know all about that. You know? Oh, you know, black people are like this. Hispanic people are like that.

White people are like this. The minute that you give something a label is the minute that you fail to try to understand it. And people respond on cue. And as you said, like, when you give when or as you implied and what I've taken away from what you shared is, when you give that power to someone else, people can make you do some of the most ridiculous things. They can make you believe some of the most ludicrous things under the sun.

In fact, and I remember talking about you talking about this with you a couple of days ago, there is a very specific story in the Quran in the seventh chapter, the one hundred and seventy fourth and a hundred and seventy fifth verse about a a man named Balaam. Now his story is actually found in the bible too in the book of Judges, but it's very different. So I'll stick with the Quranic version because this is a bit more verifiable. But one of the things about is he was from the children of Israel. Tell them the story about a person who God almighty had given signs and proofs.

But the minute that he was given that, Satan followed up on him and caused him to actually go astray. In the story and I'll be brief in Inshallah. But in the story, this man, he could call on God with a name that caused his his supplications to be readily accepted and answered. And so he would use that for the benefit of the Muslims, of Bani Israel, of the children of Israel, of the Hebrews in the time of Moses and Aaron. And so as the children of Israel were gearing up to go into the promised land, the Canaanites knew about Bela'am, and they specifically came to him and enticed him with women and wealth and land and power.