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New Zine in the works
🕑 Added 2023-04-27 13:00:05 +0000 UTCThe first edition will be available to you all when it's ready, but in the meantime I thought I'd give ya'll a look at a few sections of the (very rough) first draft.
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Why I’m writing this zine
It’s mostly advice to myself as a maker of anti-capitalist propaganda, in an attempt to wrap my head around what makes effective modern propaganda, and why.
I also wrote it because I want to see more artists making effective anti-capitalist propaganda. Because capitalism needs to end.
(here will be a rant about capitalism — I won't get into it here)
A better world would allow us to do work that gives us life rather than grinds us down. A better world would allow us to work less, and be more human. This is the world propagandists need to bring to life.
The role of propaganda is to contextualize the current cultural moment, synthesizing it with the experiences and sentiments of the people.
A growing number of us are feeling the oppression of capitalism, and seeing the cracks in the system widen. Many of us are suffering, toiling endlessly just to be able to survive and pay rent. What’s causing this suffering?
This is the question propaganda must answer. A propagandist gives a reason for the conditions we face, providing us a why for the suffering and the unrest. A propagandist tells the hurting population who is responsible for our pain, and what is to be done.
We are already awash in propaganda. There is a propagandist in every workplace and community, contextualizing their struggle, telling the people why this world is not working for them. Looking at some studies, a few of the most influential propagandists include: Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro. Right-wing propagandists, who according to views, ratings, and discourse, are much more effective at contextualizing the current cultural moment than any propagandists from the left. (It’s worth pointing out at this time that prominent ‘left propaganda’ under capitalism is also subservient to capitalism and therefore also right wing). These dominant propagandists insist that no, it is not capitalism that’s making you suffer. It’s the opposing political party, it’s Antifa, it’s transgender people (or whatever new culture war item they’ve moved on to at the time of reading). It’s not capitalism or your job or your boss, they assure us, it’s actually socialism. It’s cultural marxism that’s taking away your freedom.
And they’re very good at persuading people. They’re good propagandists. They have the money, the platform, the audience research, and the institutional backing that can allow them to be good propagandists.
But also, their message is garbage, and while they may be the most influential propagandists, they are not necessarily the most effective. The most effective propagandist is someone people know directly. Someone at their job, at their church, or in their neighborhood, further contextualizing the conditions and making them even more relatable.
We need a propagandist in every community and workplace.
A bit of firsthand anecdotal experience: I live and work in Los Angeles, a big liberal city. A lot of people are organized by generic milquetoast liberal propaganda. During the Trump years, the narrative was: things are bad because Trump is president. Then during the Biden years, the dominant narrative became: things are bad because Trump was president, and was able to appoint judges, etc. Here’s where our message must come in: Things are bad because of capitalism, a system designed to exploit the workers and enrich the rulers, regardless of who the rulers are; and the only way to make things better is to struggle together as a working class.
I started making propaganda with this messaging in 2020, posting it publicly on social media. And here’s the wild thing that happened: my coworkers, my friends, and my acquaintances met me there. People in my life wanted to talk about what I was making, and wanted to talk about class struggle more than the Trump indictment or whatever other spectacle was going on. The political conversations I was having shifted from being centered on electoral politics to being centered on class struggle - the workers against the capitalists. But there’s a wilder part to the story: that narrative manifested itself in an actual workplace struggle that resulted in us organizing a work stoppage, and winning a 12% pay raise.
I’m not for a second suggesting that my propaganda was in any way responsible for our growing class consciousness or for urging us into action – but it did provide a jumping off point for conversation to develop. Hey, B.Y., you posted about striking; do you think we should organize one?
People trust people they know. People want to relate to people they know. When the most charismatic coworkers are getting their talking points from Tucker Carlson, many of their coworkers will want to relate. When the interesting coworkers are getting their analysis from Marxist Theory and sharing about it openly, you’ll find that the other coworkers want to engage in the conversation (in some cases, to debate, but in many cases, to relate). And this can help create a foundation for organizing.
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That's the draft for part of the first section, the framework for the zine. From there, we'll dig into the goals of propaganda, the various target audiences, how to reach them, and dive into dissecting what makes it effective from experience. I'm aiming to make this a living, communal document, with experiences from artists in different areas of the struggle. So, more to come!
