Who Are the Baddies?

Why propaganda works and how we fight it

This episode looks at evil in the world and how the stories people hear shape their political thinking. Andrea Pitzer considers the horrors of governments running concentration camps, and her encounters with people who insist that one group of perpetrators is supremely evil in ways other humans could never be. From Germans to Russians, Palestinians to Israelis, and even Americans, she asks listeners to consider the power of narrative in shaping hatred.

Using the viral is-it-blue-and-black-or-is-it-white-and-gold debates about The Dress a decade ago, Andrea talks about the persuasive worldviews that lead people to abandon reality and her own experience growing up immersed in a delusional perspective. She addresses the commitment that moneyed, powerful interests have in building these narratives as a distraction—one that further isolates and divides the public, the better to fleece it. She closes with why this process isn’t inevitable and how you can shore up the country and the world to resist it.

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art to support Next Comes What.