Frye on Advertising and Propaganda

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aiGNvhgv9s

Conservative attack ad on Michael Ignatieff, accusing him of (wait for it) attack ads — and, a la Kory Teneycke, not being sufficiently Canadian.  This is now a very familiar tactic from the right.

Further to the previous post

Frye in “City of the End of Things” in The Modern Century:

Similarly, the technique of advertising and propaganda is to stun and demoralize the critical consciousness with statements too absurd or extreme to be dealt with seriously by it.  In the mind that is too frightened or credulous or childish to want to deal with the world at all, they move in past the consciousness and set up their structures unopposed.

What they create in such a mind is not necessarily acceptance, but dependence on their versions of reality.  (CW 11, 13)

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