What is the endgame of seemingly innocuous propaganda?

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s0ren

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While reading the CBC last night I took a look at their "Top 10 Best Selling Canadian Books of 2021" list and my immediate response was "wow this is astroturfed to shit." For those not in the know, the CBC is the Canadian state media company. Unlike the BBC, which has some serious journalists working for it, the CBC mainly exists to pump out narrative television content that literally no one watches, all on the taxpayer's dime. The list is full of works by Indigenous authors that no one has read. To give you an idea of what they are like, here is the description of the number 5 book: "Jonny Appleseed is a novel about a two-spirit Indigiqueer young man who has left the reserve and becomes a cybersex worker in the city to make ends meet. But he must reckon with his past when he returns home to attend his stepfather's funeral." Noticeably, not a single book by a white man. The methodology for the ranking is "using data from close to 300 independent Canadian bookstores." Below is the CBC's list versus the Toronto Star end-of-year bestsellers, a newspaper that is fairly left-leaning itself. The latter's methodology is as follows: "The Star compiles its bestseller list from sales data supplied by BookNet Canada. It tracks English-language print book sales reported from Canadian booksellers each week," although they have divided fiction and non-fiction so some speculation is necessary. Importantly, this is only talking about books by Canadian authors, so I imagine a lot of this will be shit you've never heard of because most Canadian literature is irrelevant. Stay with me though, it's not about the books themselves but the taxpayer-funded newsbroadcaster intentionally pushing an agenda.

RankCBC Top 10 BestsellersToronto Star Fiction BestsellersToronto Star Non-fiction Bestsellers
1.Five Little Indians by Michelle GoodState of Terror by Louise Penny & Shillary Rodham ClintonBeyond Order by Jordan Peterson
2.21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob JosephThe Push by Ashley AudrainIndian in the Cabinet by Jody Wilson-Raybould
3.Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne SimardFive Little Indians by Michelle GoodTalking to Canadians by Rick Mercer
4.The Madness of Crowds by Louise PennyThe Apollo Murders by Chris HadfieldThe Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell
5.Jonny Appleseed by Joshua WhiteheadThe Madness of Crowds by Louise PennyCrossroads by Kaleb Dahlgreen
6.State of Terror by Louise Penny & Shillary Rodham ClintonHome Body by Rupi Kaur21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph
7.The Marrow Thieves by Cherie DimalineNot a Happy Family by Shari LapenaNo One Wins Alone by Mark Messier
8.Fight Night by Miriam ToewsThe Strangers by Katherine VermetteFrom the Ashes by Jess Thistle
9.Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca EkwuyasiFight Night by Miriam ToewsOff the Record by Peter Mansbridge
10.Indian in the Cabinet by Jody Wilson-RaybouldThe Marrow Thieves by Cherie DimalineValue by Mark Carney

The comparison shows that there is a major discrepancy between the two. While some align, many books were clearly left out. For instance, if Peterson is outselling the No. 2 book on the CBC's list but isn't even in their top 10 then something is amiss. Despite not really being into him, not seeing him on the list was what initially set me off. Clearly his books sell well.

The difference between the lists is of course attributable to the choice of where the sales data is being pulled from. I feel like they intentionally choose a source that (A) excluded authors they didn't like such as Peterson and (B) boosted black and Indigenous authors to look woke. Those 300 independent bookstores are probably all in Toronto, selling to millennial queer white women who refuse to read anything by white dudes. What I don't get is, what is the endgame here? The CBC doesn't benefit from feeding people into buying these books simply because they are written by people other than white men, so why do this? I might just be overthinking it but I don't get what's going on here and why this is happening. Something just seems off about shilling books about "Indigiqueer" cybersex workers to the general populace.
 
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Jessica3cho雪血⊜青意

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I think the issue is the level at which the propaganda is being supplemented. See, there's a good chance that whoever is working at the CBC, whatever menial writer, and whatever menial associates he works with to find data for his articles, are not pushing propaganda. Not in their minds. It is not intentional, with any sort of meaningful or attributable end.

This is 5th generational warfare. The people who put together the top 10 list are not the ones making the propaganda, they are the ones already brainwashed by the propaganda. They simply regurgitate that altered mind state in their everyday lives. That is why it looks like innocuous propaganda. It is unintentional propaganda being unknowingly woven into their everyday tasks. This is how 5th generational warfare works, "innocuous" propaganda becoming more and more boiled down into the general culture until no one ever knows it wasn't there. That is why standing against even "innocuous" propaganda is important. It might seem innocuous on the surface level, but propaganda is still propaganda.
 
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Jessica3cho雪血⊜青意

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The ones making propaganda are the ones putting the already brainwashed into positions of diffusion. They know what they're doing, and it gives them plausible deniability.
Exactly my point. When the propagandists can point to your fellow statesmen and go, "Look! They're doing it too! Of their own volition!", you have indeed been engaged in 5th generational warfare for quite some time. These poor CBC workers are pawns for the elites looking to gain power and I'm sure the writer who made this "wonderful" top 10 list would be assassinated just as quickly as Andrew Cuomo was kicked from his cozy knee-pads the moment they do something the elites don't like.
 
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s0ren

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Haha of course this gets published the day I make a thread dragging the CBC. Sounds like I was right to call it propaganda.

Screenshot 2022-01-03 at 10.04.17 PM.png


Some excerpts:
People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported. Or why our pop culture radio show's coverage of the Dave Chappelle Netflix special failed to include any of the legions of fans, or comics, that did not find it offensive. Or why, exactly, taxpayers should be funding articles that scold Canadians for using words such as "brainstorm" and "lame."

Everyone asks the same thing: What is going on at the CBC?...

To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity.

It is to sign on, enthusiastically, to a radical political agenda
that originated on Ivy League campuses in the United States and spread through American social media platforms that monetize outrage and stoke societal divisions. It is to pretend that the "woke" worldview is near universal — even if it is far from popular with those you know, and speak to, and interview, and read.

To work at the CBC now is to accept the idea that race is the most significant thing about a person, and that some races are more relevant to the public conversation than others. It is, in my newsroom, to fill out racial profile forms for every guest you book; to actively book more people of some races and less of others

All of this raises larger questions about the direction that North America is headed. Questions about this new moment we are living through — and its impact on the body politic. On class divisions, and economic inequality. On education. On mental health. On literature, and comedy. On science. On liberalism, and democracy

its not innocuous.

its meant to turn you away from god and worship false idols and false ideas
Hence "seemingly innocuous" in the title and not just "innocuous"
 
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MorphedSnowman

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Honestly, you are looking way too much into it. No one who wants to do serious progranda is going to do it in books during modern times. The amount of books people read is dropping fast. Just a quick search from google yields this https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/RaRExec_0.pdf which has data from 2002 and even then reading dropped 10% from 1982 to 2002. With the amount of time social media can suck out of people, I honestly expect only like 20% of people seriously read books today at most. And from that small percent, I'm pretty sure you can divide it in two groups. People who read "the classics", and won't touch anything before the author of the work is mummified, and people who read the pop fiction.

In truth, the article is probably just some upper class liberals buying their own stuff and rating in high because you have bureaucracies filled with people like these which enforce themselves in the entertainment sector. In the end this then drips down to some boomers facebook feed who from cold war hysteria see communist everywhere and think red alert mixed with 1984 is literally happening. Which then spirals into more schizo ramblings down the line.
 
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Talon

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In truth, the article is probably just some upper class liberals buying their own stuff and rating in high because you have bureaucracies filled with people like these which enforce themselves in the entertainment sector. In the end this then drips down to some boomers facebook feed who from cold war hysteria see communist everywhere and think red alert mixed with 1984 is literally happening. Which then spirals into more schizo ramblings down the line.

This. There's a podcast called Darknet Diaries that did an episode called Chartbreakers which details how authors manipulate the NY Times bestseller list to get their books to the top of the charts.
 
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s0ren

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Honestly, you are looking way too much into it. No one who wants to do serious progranda is going to do it in books during modern times.
I don't mean this as some grand conspiratorial form of propaganda (i.e. turning one away from God and worshiping false idols as MTTS says) but part of a larger conversation about the sort of content the CBC produces and the motivations behind it. Being about books is incidental, the list serves as a useful example because there are other lists to compare it to. This isn't someone with a blog, it is a state-funded massive broadcasting entity with 8,000+ employees. A whole team of people had to sign off on the list, approving where the data was pulled from and what was said about each book. I think there is useful speculation to be had by questioning the intentionality behind the actions of those staff. "Why did they choose that data set to pull from" being the main one. Examining the impact state media outlets, and the media industry as a whole, make on the reproduction of social norms is important. They don't adopt lenses accidentally, an editorial/management team has curated a particular view of the world and pushes it. The choices they have made in pushing particular books to readers is one way to learn about this curation and scrutinise it.

If you're interested to learn more about the CBC, take a look at the article I posted in the thread about a fairly left-winged journalist leaving because of the whole outlet being inundated by "wokism."
 
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Kolph

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This. There's a podcast called Darknet Diaries that did an episode called Chartbreakers which details how authors manipulate the NY Times bestseller list to get their books to the top of the charts.
Every book is a New York Times bestseller nowadays that I'm surprised readers still believe it helps identify quality reading material
 
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Jared

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"Jonny Appleseed is a novel about a two-spirit Indigiqueer young man who has left the reserve and becomes a cybersex worker in the city to make ends meet. But he must reckon with his past when he returns home to attend his stepfather's funeral."
The fucking what
 
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Talon

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The true explaination is likely complex with a lot of moving parts and people pushing certain narratives for a variety of personal or geopolitical reasons. The important part that is easy to grasp is that reactionary content sells. Wokeism is a type of reactionary content, but it's a type that is seen as socially acceptable even when there are those who disagree. It won't be demonitized, deplatformed, or defunded but it will throw people into heated debates with one another. Even though the organization is taxpayer funded, if there's no viewers the government might decide to take away that funding. Pushing this type of content gets just enough feathers ruffled for the Canadian government to keep them on the payroll. I suspect there's a healthy dose of nepotism in the mix as well.
 
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DEADHAND

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'Jonny Appleseed' sounds like a great book and if you want to get to the bottom of this you should do the research and read the books on this list, then we can correlate whatever end game the Canada D C is up to from the reviews you post in this thread. The world probably needs to know what it is that's behind this and the obligation falls on you seeing as you're Canadian.
 
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Jessica3cho雪血⊜青意

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'Jonny Appleseed' sounds like a great book and if you want to get to the bottom of this you should do the research and read the books on this list, then we can correlate whatever end game the Canada D C is up to from the reviews you post in this thread. The world probably needs to know what it is that's behind this and the obligation falls on you seeing as you're Canadian.
Sounds like something a Glowie would say
 
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nagolbud

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It's as simple as this. All propaganda is to get you to hate the bible and think its a lie. To hate God and Jesus Christ. There is no other reason propaganda exists. This is the truth in its raw form.
 
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