You Don’t Think Your Thoughts—Propaganda Does

“People don’t have ideas. Ideas have people.” — Carl Jung

Most people believe they own their ideas—but Jung, one of the most profound psychological engineers of all time, saw it the other way around: ideas own us. Few slogans demonstrate this better than the seductive call to “Save Democracy.” It rallies millions, evokes moral urgency, and casts dissenters as enemies of the good.

This is no accident. It’s propaganda—and like a virus infects cells, propaganda infects identity through groupthink. By dissecting this narrative, we can reverse-engineer the human mind and reveal its deep wiring: built to embrace myths, especially those that serve power. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, and sociology, this piece explores why propaganda works so well—using “Save Democracy” as a case study in how narrative becomes control.

The Anatomy of Propaganda: The Viral Blueprint

Propaganda is a psychological virus. It doesn’t spread through facts—it spreads by infecting emotion, hijacking identity, and replicating through groupthink. Edward Bernays understood this in 1928 when he wrote Propaganda, describing how public opinion is engineered, not discovered.

The “Save Democracy” narrative is a near-perfect specimen. It frames democracy as sacred and endangered, rallying people to defend it—without ever defining it, or questioning whose power it protects. Like a virus, the strategy is elegant and ruthless: invade emotion, overwrite complexity, and bind the host to a collective identity. In doing so, the narrative empowers empire, cloaking control in moral urgency.

Who could oppose saving democracy? Dissenters are reclassified as threats, and fear of exclusion does the rest.

This narrative has been deployed repeatedly to advance U.S. power under the guise of moral intervention:

In Ukraine, U.S. involvement is framed as defending democracy from authoritarian aggression, while in reality, it sustains a proxy war to contain Russia and fuel the military-industrial complex.
In the Middle East, Israel functions as an enforcer of U.S. strategic interests—securing oil routes, disrupting regional unity, and checking multipolar resistance.
Sanctions are sold as ethical responses to tyranny, yet often target nations trying to escape dollar hegemony.

As historian William Blum once wrote:

“The United States is the only nation in the world that has been at war continuously since the end of World War II.”

Behind each war, each intervention, each economic chokehold—is the same mythic call: to defend “freedom” and “democracy.”

But when the slogan is peeled back, what remains is the cold machinery of empire. Does this surprise you?

Do you believe the United States is the Robin Hood of the world—or Captain Hook?

The Mythic Mind: Jung and Campbell

How does the U.S. sustain its propaganda machine? With the support of its people. But support doesn’t always look like flags and bumper stickers. Sometimes it looks like stock portfolios.

How many people do you know own shares in military contractors? Are they endorsing war—or just chasing returns?

And if it’s just about profit, where’s the moral line? Would you invest in a child trafficking ring if the dividends were high? Of course not. So why invest in war?

Carl Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious explains why “Save Democracy” hits so hard. These slogans don’t persuade with facts—they resonate with ancient archetypes:

The Hero defending the Good
The Villain threatening the Order
The Sacred Mission that must be fulfilled

Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey builds on this: the group becomes the reluctant savior, the empire the wise protector, and dissenters the shadowy evil threatening the whole.

“Save Democracy” feels like destiny. The narrative bypasses logic because it feels true. It becomes identity.

Jung’s warning—“ideas have people”—is literal here. The archetype doesn’t influence you; it possesses you. It makes you defend actions you’d normally condemn.

And we see this everywhere. Moral people investing in immoral systems. Why? Because narrative is stronger than morality—or maybe people aren’t as moral as they believe. Scripture reminds us:

It is [God] who gives you the ability to produce wealth… (Deut. 8:18)

And yet, many Christians fund systems of violence while calling themselves stewards. Stewardship is not just financial wisdom—it’s spiritual responsibility.

Right now, many are voting for destruction with their dollars.

The Divided Brain: McGilchrist’s Insights

Jung and Campbell reveal the mythic structure. Neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist shows how our brains are neurologically primed for propaganda.

In The Master and His Emissary, McGilchrist explains that the brain’s hemispheres interpret the world differently:

Left Hemisphere: favors control, abstraction, categorization, and certainty
Right Hemisphere: sees context, relationships, nuance, and depth

Propaganda exploits the left hemisphere—with slogans, binaries, and urgency:

“Defend our values.”
“Fight for freedom.”
“Stand with Ukraine.”

It’s all emotional shorthand for moral simplicity.

McGilchrist argues that modern culture is increasingly left-brained—favoring systems over wholeness, data over wisdom. In this state, we accept simplified narratives that soothe our anxieties and affirm tribal belonging.

Rather than sit with discomfort or complexity, we grab the script—and in doing so, surrender the very agency propaganda claims to protect.

The Crowd and the Surrogate Self: Le Bon and Haidt

In The Crowd (1895), Gustave Le Bon showed how individuals lose reason in groups. The crowd doesn’t think—it feels. It reacts. Propaganda builds a surrogate self—a collective identity that replaces critical thought.

Once inside the crowd, questions disappear.

Jonathan Haidt, in The Righteous Mind, reveals why: group allegiance is powered by moral emotion, not logic. Loyalty. Sanctity. Fairness. These emotions bind us to the group—and propaganda lights them up like fireworks.

On the Left, “Save Democracy” becomes chants, hashtags, and institutional trust.
On the Right, it becomes rage, suspicion, and apocalyptic dread.

Both sides believe they’re righteous. But both are being emotionally programmed.

In this dynamic, the narrative is the self. It gives identity, clarity, and purpose. The empire pulls the strings. The individual thinks they’re acting on conscience—but they’ve become a puppet for a story they didn’t write.

Cognitive Vulnerabilities: Kahneman and Girard

The mind wasn’t built to resist propaganda—it was built to survive.

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman explains that the brain runs on two systems:

System 1 is fast, automatic, and emotional. It makes snap judgments to keep us alive—detecting threats, reading social cues, reacting to danger.
System 2 is slow, deliberate, and rational. It analyzes, questions, and thinks critically—but it’s lazy. It only kicks in when absolutely necessary.

Propaganda is designed for System 1. It bypasses analysis and floods the brain with emotional urgency:

“Democracy is under attack!”
“We must act now!”
“This is a turning point in history!”

It simplifies complexity into moral binaries. It uses fear to shut down doubt. And it overwhelms us with threats before System 2 has a chance to wake up.

That’s the trick: the more emotional and urgent the message, the less likely we are to think clearly. Not because we’re stupid—but because we’re human.

René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire adds the final weapon to propaganda’s arsenal: imitation. Humans don’t just copy behavior—we copy desire. We want what others want, fear what they fear, and hate who they hate. Propaganda exploits this by creating scapegoats—dissenters, doubters, or foreign threats—who can absorb collective anxiety and blame. Unity isn’t built around shared ideals, but around shared enemies.

In the “Save Democracy” myth, anyone who questions the narrative becomes a threat—not because of what they say, but because their doubt disrupts the illusion of moral clarity. They must be silenced, shamed, or exiled.

And just like that, the brain’s deepest reflexes—fear, imitation, belonging—pave the way for control. The narrative wins not through debate, but through contagion. Truth doesn’t even get a chance to speak.

Narrative as Empire: Harari’s Shared Myths

In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari writes that societies are not built on facts—but on shared fictions. These myths unite people behind common causes.

“Save Democracy” is one of these fictions. It binds citizens to empire under the illusion of virtue.

Its genius lies in emotional intimacy. People believe they’re defending their homes, their children, their values—not empire’s geopolitical dominance.

But that’s how all good myths work. They meet our need for meaning, for identity, for belonging—and they weaponize it.

In this myth, you are not a civilian.
You are a Hero. A Defender. A Guardian of the Good.
And in believing this, you serve the very structure that wrote the story.

Reclaiming the Mind

The “Save Democracy” myth reveals how human nature is exquisitely vulnerable—not to violence, but to narrative.

Our deepest traits—empathy, pattern recognition, group bonding—make us susceptible to story-based control.

But awareness is resistance. We cannot fight propaganda with more slogans—but we can illuminate the mechanism. We can pause, slow down, and ask better questions.

Whose democracy?
Whose values?
Whose story?

The mind is the final battleground. And reclaiming it is not just resistance—it’s redemption.

Support Independent Thought

If this piece helped articulate something you’ve long felt but struggled to name, consider supporting the work via BuyMeACoffee or Patreon. Independent thought isn’t free—and your support helps keep voices like this alive in an age of slogans and silence.

Because in a world where narratives want to own your mind—
thinking for yourself is a revolutionary act.

References

Bernays, E. (1928). Propaganda.
Jung, C. G. (1959). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.
McGilchrist, I. (2009). The Master and His Emissary.
Le Bon, G. (1895). The Crowd.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind.
Campbell, J. (1949). The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Girard, R. (1986). The Scapegoat.
Harari, Y. N. (2014). Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.

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