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The movie has been released The propaganda minister. This film is about Joseph Goebbels, whose Ministry was actually called People’s Enlightenment and Propaganda. The label itself sullied two noble terms such as Enlightenment and citizenship. It was not about enlightening people so that they could think on their own and have their own criteria, as the Enlightenment movement intended to do. Its headline intended just the opposite, to harangue and cajole the masses into blindly following the dictates of a leader whose word was presented as a revealed truth.
Trump has returned to the White House because Banon gave him the keys to achieve something unimaginable. Putin controls the cyber media like no one else in what has been called a hybrid outside
In this film, real archive images are introduced and a documentation effort ensures that the dialogues respond to reliable sources, all of which makes the story told even more impressive. Right at the beginning the character of Goebbels defines propaganda as a sublime art, similar to painting. What counts is not to portray reality, but to present it in the most useful way by intensifying the role of emotions. Quite an axiom for his heirs.
Goebbels managed to use all the technical means available to him at his time. He controlled the press, which he continued to publish until the last day during the Battle of Berlin. He knew how to bring Hitler’s voice and his own into German homes through radios practically given away for this purpose. But he also took the reins of a powerful film industry, supervising what Germans should see in favor of the cause, to commune with Nazi ideology. He made the Berlin Olympics profitable and at the last minute made an epic film to make people believe that an inexorable defeat could be reversed.
It is chilling to imagine what he could have done with Artificial Intelligence. In his day he doctored the images and audio of (mis)informative documentaries to make people believe that there was a parallel reality and thus deceive the German population. With new technologies, the Nazis would not have needed the miracle weapon that Hitler dreamed of. To turn the war around, the magic of someone who passes for the demagogue par excellence would have been enough. He would have rewritten history, making Napoleon win the Battle of Waterloo, and he would have confused the most accredited spies with his lies. The problem is that, when revisiting this chapter of history, one has the sensation of living something very similar right now. We are discovering that screens are addictive and the Internet serves to convey toxic misinformation that distorts reality, passing off villains as heroes and imposing that one must prove one’s innocence in the face of lies.
The crises made Goebbels grow up in Hitler’s environment. He capitalized on the Stalingrad disaster to declare a total war of life and death and obtained plenipotentiary powers.
Our social model is seriously threatened by a dehumanized economy and the denial of problems as serious as the climate emergency or inequalities. While boring tycoons win elections and certain religious currents contaminate politics with their displaced dogmas, the entertainment industry has us very distracted. We go into debt to do mass tourism and convert idyllic places into theme parks, we accept a semi-slave labor market that does not serve to cover such basic needs as housing or emancipation. We accept that things as basic as healthcare or education are privatized. As if our daily lives were not affected by such things.
Do the Russian people approve of the invasion of Ukraine and its alliance with North Korea? Do the citizens of Israel sanction its army colonizing neighboring lands by massacring the civilian population? How is it possible that they do not adopt more effective measures against these shocking violations of international law and human rights? South Korea has declared martial law for a few hours. It’s hard not to remember that Korean War that preceded the Vietnam War or that Cold War that gave us the missile crisis.
The crises made Goebbels grow up in Hitler’s environment. He capitalized on the Stalingrad disaster to declare a total life-or-death war and obtained plenipotentiary powers to continue the war after the frustrated attack against Hitler. For one day he succeeded Hitler as Chancellor, before murdering his children and committing suicide with his wife. This figure illustrates what fanaticism can do when taken to its ultimate consequences.
Trump has returned to the White House because Banon gave him the keys to achieve something unimaginable. Putin controls the cyber media like no one else in what has been called a hybrid outside. Bridging the gap, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez takes out whoever is needed with his tricks. Macron is seeing his prime minister fall for having imposed it and Germany has a general election called on February 23rd. How little we learn from the lessons that history gives us.
#Goebbels
