Principles Of Propaganda Lenin Used To Consolidate Power

A raft of promises — land to Russia's peasants, bread to starving cities and peace to War-weary soldiers — V.I. Lenin  dispensed with every one of them by advancing civil war from 1918 to 1921 to justify his acts by crisis.

In place of promises of liberty and rights, Lenin gave Russians propaganda, Bolsheviks governed through knoutish messages, if not the barrel of the gun. He undermined a weak democracy and  transformed society.

Propaganda of a forceful and brutal kind," was used not to win people over with ideas but by bludgeoning them with coercion, repression and making examples.

1. Ends Justify The Means

The broken promises delivered the opposite. He guaranteed a free press, but he halted it, ordering opposition newspapers shut down and censorship re-instituted. He called it temporary, but it was not.

Lenin won power with promises to broaden land ownership, but immediately issued 60 decrees to end private property. Lenin promised peace But immediately impressed soldiers into the new Red Army, holding their families hostage to ensure loyalty.

 This justified by one idea: consolidating power. In setting off civil war, Lenin   justified any atrocity, broken promise or use of propaganda that served to establish communism.

2. Firstest With The Mostest

Besides implementing a strategy of lies, Lenin swiftly altered and manipulated the meanings of words, intellectually disarming opponents.

"Bolsheviks," were majoritarians,  his opponents "Mensheviks,"  or minoritarians. It didn't matter that Bolsheviks never were a true majority; what mattered was the perception of power.

Lenin dubbed Bolsheviks "Reds" to signal an affinity with the bloody violence of the French Revolution, while their battlefield opponents were  "Whites" to link them with the discredited French Bourbon dynasty. Lenin also took title to the word "democracy," disarming opponents who were then unable to project a coherent message. By controlling words, Lenin controlled perceptions of reality.

3. Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste

As propagandists, the Bolsheviks were not especially persuasive.  They "never looked for and did not find devilishly clever methods to influence people's minds, to brainwash them." Their newspapers were notoriously gray, mechanically spouting simple, choppy messages such as "All Power to the Soviets!" "Create a New Socialist Man!" and "Bread! Peace! Land!"

What they were expert at was making these gray organs into monopolies. Instead of persuading with words, Lenin simply closed other papers.,  The  monopoly intensified the impact of his message,

4. Demonization

In denouncing opponents, Lenin was obsessive, virulent and personal, calling them "bloodsuckers," "insects," "spiders," "leeches" and "vampires." The bourgeois were "ex-people." The murder of Czar Nicholas II and his family was termed "a humane act." There were "hoarders," "wreckers," "saboteurs" and, worst of all, "Kulaks" — the prosperous and industrious peasants of whom Lenin spoke only "with the most seething hatred.," 

5. Propaganda of Example

.. the use of example as part of a reign of terror. Public hangings and shootings forced Russians into submission. "These swine have to be dealt with so that everyone will remember it for years." Terror wasn't confined to those who defied Lenin. "We must execute not only the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more," 

To reinforce the Bolsheviks' monopoly of ideas, churches were targeted for destruction. Sacred objects were looted and saints' relics tossed into the dirt as priests were shot.  The old faith was dead. Lenin used poison gas on at least one village before it was leveled. "The dictatorship means —  unrestrained power based on force, not law." 

6. Blame Your Predecessor

Socialism was a failure. Civil war cost 13 million lives and his ruinous economic policies triggered the famine of 1921-1922.  Lenin blamed his predecessor, the Czar, for the economic havoc.

He would have to backtrack on communism to hold on to power. But error was never admitted. His New Economic Plan foreshadowed even worse horrors under Joseph Stalin..

Josef Goebbels

"The truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.

There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the **er, and this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.

Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.

If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.

Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.

Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.

...the rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious.

The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.

It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.

We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear's work, that is its affair. We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals.  We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come.

The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed."

Fox News - Republican Oligarch Propaganda Organ

Roger Ailes - Head of FoxNews, serial groper and road company Jabba the Hut sent a email every morning to all Fox Affiliates. All Stations were required to use Meme of the Day: The Daily Meme was also propagated to all Republican officials, pundits and surrogates:

“Not Gonna Play the Race Card”

“Mommy Pants”

Sinclair Broadcasting

Requires all stations to air pro-Trump propaganda daily.