Propaganda has rather negative connotations.

Because it is generally used in pursuit of an agenda, truth may be irrelevant or even an obstacle. Whether you agree with the terminology, it is considered propaganda when a country prepares its citizens and military for war.

Because it is not generally acceptable to want to kill another person, the military mostly trains its soldiers to hate the enemy.

It would be quite difficult to motivate soldiers going into battle to do what is necessary if they viewed enemy soldiers as good people, family men, or as friends. In other words, if you need your young men to shoot and kill enemy soldiers, you must convince them that those men facing them across the trenches need killing!

They must see them as posing an existential threat to themselves, their families, and their country.

The reality, of course, is that most of the young men in the opposing trenches are probably nice young men who do not, of themselves, want you dead, but they have also been propagandized by their government to hate you! And so, you aim your rifle, or your rocket, or your grenade at people who in another time and place you might be very happy to sit down and have dinner with!

The difference is that someone who has influence in or over your life has convinced you that that other person is your enemy!

While the term “propaganda” may be used in a variety of ways, its primary meaning is that of manipulating people for political purposes. Its negative reputation comes from the fact that those who use propaganda tend to play loosely with the truth. Anyone who would desire to please God should be uncomfortable with the deception and be sensitive to being moved by propaganda.

It is for that reason that Christians and anyone who loves truth should be aware that the nation is under siege by propagandists as never before. If, as Christ said, “the truth shall set you free,” then we understand that the lies of propagandists will enslave us.

If a person must use lies to persuade others to his cause, then it is likely that his cause is not good.

Sixty years ago, Leftists scorned the use of propaganda by the US government to prepare young Americans to go to war in Vietnam. I recall the dire warnings put forth by our government regarding the progress of Communism in Southeast Asia.

They warned us of the “Domino Effect,” of Communism spreading from nation to nation to the point where it would become a threat to the United States. Whether that message was believed to be true by its proponents, or was mere propaganda, I do not know.

While Leftists opposed the use of propaganda by the government then, (because they were Communist or Communist leaning) they use it adeptly today for their own destructive purposes. At that time, they hid behind a veil of passivism and tolerance, but they were in fact, neither.

Their anti-war rhetoric was a façade hiding anti-Americanism and anti-freedom intentions, and in those things they have not changed.

It is ironic that today the Left, which is the modern iteration of Communism and includes such groups as BLM and Antifa, still hiding behind its veil, is using propaganda, the use of which they once criticized, to generate hatred among Americans. Leftists do not portray conservatives as well-meaning but misguided.

No, with half-truths and outright lies, conservatives are tagged as haters and bigots, the worst of the worst, people who ought to be shunned or coerced into submission. Do not overlook the fact that when a person has been fired from his job and blacklisted, his very life may be in jeopardy. Considering the treatment of people labeled as haters and bigots, such accusations are akin to death threats.

Leftist propaganda is creating real hatred between Americans!

Critics of the Vietnamese War have maintained that the propaganda of the federal government was misinformation intended to fool Americans into supporting an unnecessary and immoral war. They contend that had Americans known the truth about the Vietnamese people and their leaders, the nation would never have supported the war in the first place. This may be correct.

But those Leftists who had such scruples about truth and the use of propaganda by the federal government in the 1960s have certainly lost their scruples regarding their use when it suits their own purposes.

The Left could never achieve their objective of subjugating Americans if they allowed the truth to be heard. Their labeling of conservative Americans as haters and bigots is a malicious and intentional lie.

The reality is that Americans have generally been quite tolerant of others because principles derived from Christianity largely guided our culture. Those principles include patience, grace, bearing with others’ faults, and being slow to render judgment against others.

While the radicals have received some push back by Americans over the years, the fact that they have been allowed to spout such false accusations for as long as they have is itself proof of Americans’ tolerance. In many other countries they would have been imprisoned or worse. Here they have been merely scorned.

America’s historic Christian-conservative culture has been a formidable bulwark against the Lefts objective of overcoming and conquering the United States.

Fifty years ago, anti-communist rhetoric and action were virtually ubiquitous in American evangelical circles because Communism is virulently atheistic. Leftists knew that evangelicalism had to be weakened and the nation divided if it were to be defeated, as Abraham Lincoln, quoting Jesus Christ, said, “a nation divided itself against itself cannot stand.”

Evangelicalism has been weakened and America is divided as never before. It is not accidental.

But the Left has no intention of fixing America’s problems, or of bringing unity and prosperity to our communities. They have no concern regarding the difficulties Americans face or addressing real issues such as poverty and crime.

Remember that during the riots which followed George Floyd’s death, there were no statements made by the rioters, even when repeatedly asked, as to their goals or how they would heal America’s ills, only, “BURN IT DOWN!”

They have never stated their objectives for rioting or laid out their plans for the country because their goal for over seventy years has been to destroy the Republic and establish Communism. Obviously, stating their plan would have been a huge tactical error! We need only study their methods to see that they are totalitarian in their politics.

Yes, there are problems and failures in American Society as there have been in every society and will be in every society until Christ returns to institute His glorious, peaceful, and prosperous Kingdom. But what Americans must do is put many of these troubling issues on the back burner for the moment and confront the truly existential threat that the Communist Leftists pose.

It is their objective, tactics and lies which must be confronted.

We must apply the same response to the Leftists’ violence and threats of violence that our government has traditionally used against terrorists: we do not negotiate with them. Just as the federal government pledged to never give in to terrorists or those who took hostages, so we must determine to yield nothing to Leftists who threaten retaliation against anyone who opposes them.

Americans must see the similarity between what the Leftists are doing and what terrorists have done in the past. Regardless of the immediate cost, Communists must be resisted because they will not be satisfied until they are in control. And once freedom is lost, it is virtually never reestablished.

If violence is the Leftists’ practice when they are not in control, imagine their willingness to use violence when they are in control! If you doubt this, just think China, Cuba, and North Korea.

It must not be said of Americans that they didn’t know what they had until it was gone!