{"id":64577,"date":"2023-09-17T01:00:38","date_gmt":"2023-09-17T05:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=64577"},"modified":"2023-09-16T09:36:32","modified_gmt":"2023-09-16T13:36:32","slug":"qotd-one-of-the-most-successful-propaganda-campaigns-in-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/09\/17\/qotd-one-of-the-most-successful-propaganda-campaigns-in-history\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: One of the most successful propaganda campaigns in history"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>[In the 1960s and 70s, mob-controlled cigarette smuggling seriously cut into tobacco taxes.] What the PTB<\/acronym> should’ve done at that point, of course, was simply repealed the taxes, learned to live within their means, and stopped trying to nag their citizens into good behavior …<\/p>\n

Ok, ok, is everyone done laughing yet? Go ahead, get it all out of your system; I’ll wait. Everyone back? Ok, moving on:<\/p>\n

What the PTB actually did, of course, was a multi-level propaganda campaign. It was brilliant. It took a few years, of course, but the evidence is all around you. Quick: When’s the last time you saw anyone smoking in a mainstream movie? Even period films about the Forties, say \u2014 the ones where they take infinite pains to get just the right period-appropriate shade of Formica on the diner’s countertops \u2014 ignore the obvious historical reality of people puffing away like chimneys.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it’s all but universal now, and has been for a long time, that characters who smoke are the bad guys.<\/p>\n

Here again, look at college kids. I hate to keep beating this dead horse, but it’s really the best example I know of the phenomenon. Any time I taught the Early Modern period, I had to mention the massive economic and cultural effects of tobacco. So I encouraged kids to try it for themselves \u2014 everyone here is over 18, I said, so it’s perfectly legal. Want to know what all the hype was about? Just run down to the gas station, buy a pack, and light one up!<\/p>\n

Around the turn of the century, I always had a few smokers in class, so I could say “bum one off So-and-So”. Even that would get me a few uneasy chuckles. A few years later, and not only were there no smokers in my classes, but the kids would be actively uncomfortable with the suggestion. By the end of my teaching career, when I couldn’t care less anymore, I was openly taunting them about it. You people have no problem with potheads, I’d say. I bet well over half of you are on Ritalin, Prozac, Xanax, Klonopin, shit that’s bad<\/em> for you, in ways we don’t even understand yet, but you’re balking at one cigarette? It’s unsafe<\/em>? Oh, come on, some of you are going to leave here and go light up a completely unfiltered ditch weed, and as for the rest of you, you know all about crazy sex fetishes I’ve never even heard of. You get blackout drunk at the football games every weekend, but oh no, you can’t have one cigarette, it’s so unhealthy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Such is the power of propaganda, and it’s the only repression that works for the PTB when they’ve truly set their faces against a behavior …<\/p>\n

Severian, “The Mob, Faux-tism, and the Ever-Rising Costs of Compliance”, Founding Questions<\/em><\/a>, 2021-02-02.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[In the 1960s and 70s, mob-controlled cigarette smuggling seriously cut into tobacco taxes.] What the PTB should’ve done at that point, of course, was simply repealed the taxes, learned to live within their means, and stopped trying to nag their citizens into good behavior … Ok, ok, is everyone done laughing yet? Go ahead, get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,84,66,7,28,41,13],"tags":[1205,956,269,244,1462,34,764],"class_list":["post-64577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-government","category-health-science","category-history","category-media","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-generationx","tag-millennials","tag-propaganda","tag-publichealth","tag-severian","tag-thought-control","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-gNz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64577"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84806,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64577\/revisions\/84806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}