Total Propaganda: From Mass Culture to Popular Culture

Designed as an answer to the question of the inclusiveness of the popular culture, this book argues that the values of popular music, media, politics, debates over social issues, and international trade have become everyday propaganda to which everyone relates in some way. The author seeks to demonstrate that the most important distinction that can be drawn between mass cultural and popular culture is its text, i.e. its propaganda. In a popular culture, everyone creates and consumes propaganda, whereas in a mass culture, almost everyone consumes but only a few create it. This book presents a new language of propaganda that makes it possible to draw comparisons between mass and popular cultures. The language is used to observe shifts in propaganda across various social issues - race, religion, sexuality, gender, gun control, the environment, print and broadcast media, new technologies, and politics. It also examines fashion, advertising, sports, and lobbying. Total propaganda is not defined only quantitatively; it mirrors the synergies that have come about in every social and political realm and the energies that these synergies produce. As such, the sum of total propaganda is greater than the sum of its parts.