The purpose of propaganda (gender version)
Reflections on a quotation from a British psychiatrist that was originally made in the context of communist society, but which also applies to what we have seen in recent years
Dear Church Leaders (and everyone else)
I am old enough to remember a time before streaming, when people bought music on vinyl, or even cassette. And at the time of my life when I regularly frequented record stores — when there were plenty of record stores to frequent — I remember seeing artists sometimes release two versions of one of their singles. By way of illustration, perhaps the first example of this that I saw was this UK #1 from 1988:
And I thought that, for the purposes of this post, it might make sense to put out two versions.
The gist of both articles is the same, as is this introduction — up to the Subscribe button below. But I hope that, at least to some degree, the different versions of what is said in the latter part of each post might appeal to different people.
The other version, which is related to the covid era, is scheduled for publication on Wednesday. A link to it can be found at the bottom of this post.
Further to these posts, which I view as being among the most important articles I have written…
I read with interest this quotation from Theodore Dalrymple, a pseudonym of British psychiatrist Anthony Daniels:1
In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control…
I find those words particularly striking in the context of recent years, for reasons I shall come to.
For context, Dalrymple describes himself as:
…[coming] from a long line of refugees: My mother was a refugee from Nazi Germany in 1938 and my father was East London Jewish.
And his father became a communist as a young man.
Dalrymple himself has worked as an inner-city GP and prison psychiatrist, and is a prolific author. And he has more experience than most of life in the likes of North Korea, Albania, Romania, Vietnam and Cuba, as documented in The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World:
He is thus well-qualified to comment on the nature of propaganda in communist societies.
The above quotation comes from his 2007 book Our Culture, What’s Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses. But it surely can be applied to propaganda of any sort. And if we encountered such propaganda in our own society, we might reasonably ask some questions about the true nature of that society.
Below are some thoughts on the quotation in the context of gender issues. I shall keep the discussion fairly brief, but I am inclined to think that, for the right author, there is enough potential material for a whole book on the subject.
“The purpose of… propaganda [is] not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate…”
While I do not know exactly what goes through the minds of those who push gender propaganda, I do think that much of what we see is consistent with the notion that one of its purposes — if not its main purpose — is to humiliate.2
I am reminded of singer Sam Smith…3
…and former One Direction member Harry Styles…4
…who I featured at the end of this post on propaganda:
The harrowing images of some of those who have undergone “gender-affirming surgery” also spring to mind.
“…and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better”
I wonder what former generations would have made of articles such as this one:
And indeed what future generations will say.
I wonder similarly re this recent Supreme Court judgment:
The Supreme Court has ruled that references to “sex”, “man” and “woman” in the Equality Act refer to biological sex (a person’s sex at birth).
Who knew?
“When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies…”
I am reminded of this three-minute clip of a recent episode of the BBC’s long-running panel show Have I Got News For You:5
I am no great fan of Julia Hartley-Brewer, but the point she makes above seems fair.
I guess Richard Osman and Paul Merton may be mindful of the experience of Father Ted writer Graham Linehan, one of the few public figures who has had the courage to speak out on gender issues:
“…or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves…”
Among other things, I am reminded of this interview with Keir Starmer:6
I wonder what Starmer was actually thinking during that interview. I don’t know if he would say that he was forced to say what he did. But part of the nature of propaganda is such that many people don’t need to be forced. Especially when they swallow lies wholesale, and sometimes repeat them with little or no prompting, having been persuaded that what they are doing is in the interest of the greater good.
This section from C. S. Lewis’ God in the Dock springs to mind (emphasis added):
My contention is that good men (not bad men) consistently acting upon that position [imposing “the good”] would act as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants. They might in some respects act even worse. Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under of robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some points be satiated; but those who torment us for their own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to heaven yet at the same time likely to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on the level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
“…they lose once and for all their sense of probity”
I am reminded of this article re Sunderland Minster in the UK:
It is hardly an isolated example.
“To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself”
I find this part of what Dalrymple wrote particularly striking, not least because it comes from someone who is on record as saying he “cannot… assent to any kind of religious belief”.
What he says about “[becoming] evil oneself” reminds me of these words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (emphasis added):
Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
The lies that we are told about gender issues are surely consistent with the cunning of “that ancient snake called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray”… the “father of lies”… who masquerades as an angel of light.
In the context of what has happened in recent years, I do genuinely wonder to what extent some church leaders (and church members) actually believe what the Bible says about lies, deception and the sinful human heart.
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9)
“One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed”
At the church I attend, we are currently part way through a six week series in Romans, based around selected verses. And the first of those sermons featured Romans 1:18:7
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness…
The immediate context here is how people respond to what may be known about God (v19) but I was nevertheless struck by the broader notion of the wrath of God being revealed against people who suppress the truth.
I was also reminded of the way that God “gives people over” to the consequences of their sin, which is a repeated theme (v24, v26, v28) of the text (Romans 1:16-2:5) that was used for the reading and discussed in the sermon. That passage ends with these words:
…because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.
It has been extraordinary to observe the effect of the gender propaganda so far. I wonder how the experience will affect people’s behaviour in the future. And to what extent our standing to resist anything has, in Dalrymple’s words, been eroded, or even destroyed.
“A society of emasculated liars is easy to control”
Those final words from the quotation remind me of the clip from former Labour MP Tony Benn featured in this post (partial transcript below):
![Reflections on fear [2025 re-issue]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F27f6fa75-1343-49cc-836e-5d9dcef41ad7_882x856.png)
[Interviewer: It seems like it benefits the system if the average working person is shackled and in debt.]
[Benn] People in debt become hopeless. And hopeless people don’t vote… They always say everyone should vote. But I think if the poor in Britain or the United States turned out and voted for people who represented their interests it would be a real democratic revolution. And so they don’t want it to happen. So keeping people hopeless and pessimistic…
You see I think there are two ways in which people are controlled: first of all frighten people; and secondly demoralise them.
An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern. And I think there’s an element in the thinking of some people… [that] we don’t want people to be educated, healthy and confident, because they would get out of control.
The top 1% of the world’s population own 80% of the world’s wealth. It’s incredible that people put up with it. But they’re poor, they’re demoralised, they’re frightened. And therefore they think perhaps the safest thing to do is take orders and hope for the best.
I wonder what Benn would say if he were alive today. The vast majority of Western society certainly appears relatively easy to control. And in the context of gender issues, the phrase “emasculated liars” is particularly striking.
It will be interesting — and instructive — to see what happens as more people begin to realise what has actually been going on.
One consequence of being humiliated is that relatively few people even want to acknowledge it, let alone talk openly about it. The communist era propagandists — like today’s behavioural psychologists — doubtless knew this all too well. Pride, in the broad sense, is an intrinsic part of human nature, and perhaps particularly so for those who are more highly educated and credentialed. And Christians, myself included, are hardly immune from it.
It is one thing to make an error of judgement and act foolishly as discussed e.g. in James Thurber’s short story The Day the Dam Broke:
![The Day the Dam Broke [2025 re-issue]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbf808d68-6fb1-487c-bc39-6d80a22a9d2a_990x792.png)
It is quite another for people to realise that they have been deliberately and mercilessly propagandised and humiliated, and that they have been duped into participating in the process — even if only by e.g. putting pronouns after their name.
And it is particularly hard for those who have bought into the narrative without much careful thought but at what turned out to be great cost. I feel particularly for parents who have encouraged their children to transition and now wish that they had not done so. It cannot be easy to acknowledge that doing the thing that they thought might help — and perhaps regarded as “the right thing” to do — was actually a mistake that they now regret.
But we need to face up to the reality of what has happened. I am reminded of Jesus’ comment to his disciples about knowing the truth, and the truth setting them free. While those words were spoken into a particular context, they surely have wider application. Not least in facilitating reconciliation and moving forward constructively.
As churches, and more broadly in society, we will eventually need to come to terms with what has been going on.
And at least part of that process will surely need to involve people who have something of a public voice being willing to acknowledge publicly that we have been — and still are being — propagandised.
Related:
Link to the other version of this post, which makes similar points in relation to the covid era.
Dear Church Leaders homepage
Some posts, including a version of this one, can also be found on Unexpected Turns
Revealing Faith: Seeing and believing the revelation of God (to be published July/August 2025)
The Big Reveal: Christianity carefully considered as the solution to a problem
Charles Moore wrote in The Telegraph in 2004 that “Theodore Dalrymple, then writing under a different pseudonym, is the only writer I have ever chosen to publish on the basis of unsolicited articles”
This cartoon alludes to another purpose of such propaganda:
Quite a contrast with these pictures taken during the 12 months after he won the BBC’s Sound of 2014:
See e.g. this article for some of the context
The other scheduled texts are: Romans 3:19-20, Romans 3:25, Romans 5:1, Romans 6:3 and Romans 11:33-34