Propaganda, in the Pejorative Sense

First a hypothetical:

Say the husband of the National Organization for Woman head wrote a series of 12 books (and three prequels later) that portrays anyone who doesn't agree with their stand on pro-choice, woman's rights, and a variety of other liberal causes - Christian fundamentalists, conservatives, other strongly religious people - and the like as essentially the epitome of all evil.

Say those books portray those purveyors of evil in such a way that they persecute the "true believers" in pro-choice, woman's rights, and a wide swath of traditionally more liberal causes, persecute them to such an extent that they guillotine them (and their children), brand them with marks of loyalty, butcher them, and exterminate them wherever they can find them.

Say for instance those books rely on some old time conspiracy theories involving Jews, coded international monetarists, conspiracy theories used by Stalin or Trotsky (or any pogrom inclined before them relying on the premises in the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion) to break the backs of the kulaks, and that those people (the 'Jews') are in cahoots with the evildoers, those traditionalists who are slaying the "true believers" in the left-wing cause.

Say those "true believers" in the left-wing cause break off into militant cells which harass the conservatives, assassinate their leaders, raid their anti-abortion clinics and lead the world into a final battle where Jesus comes down and wipe out all the fundamentalists and Jews so we'll live in a happy land of socialist peace for 1,000 years, violently portraying the annihilation of those against abortion or a variety of other stereotyped right-wing causes.

Say Jesus Christ himself is the ultimate leftist leader of this pogrom.

Pretty outrageous, eh?

And then say these books by the hypothetical husband of the hypothetical National Organization of Women leader were made into movies and the National Organization for Woman got some 3,000 abortion clinics and women's groups in the country to show the movies on their big screens to their "true believers" portraying a bloodbath coming to all those who don't think like them.

You'd think there would be a bit of outrage over that.

Well, the above tale is basically the same plotline as what is in the Left Behind books, but plug Tim LaHaye, one of the most influential Religious Right activists and authors for the past 30 years, into that hypothetical NOW husband role mentioned above. And flip the causes supported by that hypothetical NOW husband around to those closer to LaHaye's heart. For those who aren't aware, Tim's wife Beverly heads Concerned Women for America, which has been one of the leading voices yodeling about the movie Brokeback Mountain and the so-called Hollywood agenda to paint the nation pink. Instead of the conservatives, fundamentalists, traditionalists portrayed in this fictional scenario, in the Left Behind books the evil and violent apocalyptic persecution comes from leftists, secularists and humanists, Jews, Catholics, Muslims and virtually anyone outside of Protestant fundamentalist belief.

That millions of people, Americans as well as Christian fundamentalists outside the U.S., are gobbling up this hatred and violence should be alarming. That is real very propaganda and very real hatred. It's almost more alarming that more people on the conservative end of the spectrum don't speak out against this vitriol.

Take a look at this essay on Brokeback Mountain and the right-wing reaction to it, from American Prospect by Elbert Ventura:

Try as they might, conservatives just can't quit Brokeback Mountain. Weeks after its release, Ang Lee's critically acclaimed hit continues to be the object of fixation among conservative pundits. The grumbling has been relentless. The movie advances Hollywood's "radical agenda," says MSNBC's Joe Scarborough. Syndicated conservative radio host Janet Parshall calls it part of the "homosexualizing of America." Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, talking about the film's critical success, says the rapturous response is "about mainstreaming certain conduct."

That the right would reflexively reject a film romance involving gay men is no surprise. But what makes the conservative assault on Brokeback Mountain truly pernicious is not the strained squeamishness of insecure anchors. Rather, the campaign against the movie aims to accomplish a larger goal: turning liberal-leaning art into nothing more than propaganda, and enthusiasm for such art into a cause. Dismissing the praise for Brokeback Mountain as a political response from radicals is too easy.

Last year, conservative commentators pounced on Clint Eastwood's Academy Award-winning Million Dollar Baby, claiming the film was a pro-euthanasia message movie. The same tactics seem to be in play this year. The right-wing assault on Brokeback Mountain rests on two claims: One, that the movie is nothing more than shrill agitprop; and two, that the ecstatic media reception is evidence of the leftist conspiracy to shove progressive values down mainstream America's throat. Neither of these claims holds up to scrutiny.

I laughed a bit to myself while reading this because I can see people like Tim LaHaye hijacking this argument to defend the Left Behind books. The big difference here is that the Left Behind books are not art, they have no pretensions of attempting to be art, and LaHaye and his wife have long been activists producing propaganda in any form they can. Any attempt to equate similar circumstances to the producers of Brokeback Mountain is laughable. LaHaye and co-author Jerry Jenkins even admit the books are propaganda in a sense, though for them that means the intent is to proselytize. I didn't know propaganda had another meaning besides "in the pejorative sense" that Jenkins refers to in this interview.

In a way, it sort of makes sense that anything outside of their worldview looks like propaganda to them: All they are interested in is creating propaganda themselves.

That right-wing pundits can rage on and on about a homosexual love story, Brokeback Mountain, being homosexual propaganda, and say nothing about violent, bloodthirsty and genocidal fundamentalist propaganda being used by Christian activists that have lifted them to power is a bit like saying there's more danger from a snowflake falling on your head than an avalanche. There's a real lack of scale there. This type of framing also undermines efforts to combat Islamic fundamentalist propaganda abroad which often mirrors and emulates the apocalyptic narratives of its Christian brethren. It's probably also safe to say that it's far more likely that people who feed off these violent visions wrapped in a cloak of religion will themselves find excuses for their violence, as we have seen over the past few years, than for some straight person to go off on a romantic homosexual bender from watching Brokeback Mountain.