If the Trojan War were being fought today, the Greeks would not need to hide inside of a big, wooden horse and hope to be dragged inside Troy’s city gates. They’d simply disseminate all kinds of lies on social media and wait for the Trojan people to fight each other. Such is the power of corrosive ideas: They can destroy a civilization before its defenders understand that they are under attack.
Information warfare is the name of the game today. It exists all around us. Soundbites attack us from every phone, computer, tablet, and television screen. Succinct messages ripple through social media platforms until people from opposite sides of the world repeat the same words without knowing why.
The most powerful bits of information are the ones that sound unquestionably true. “Believe all women.” “Black lives matter.” “Build back better.” Their simplicity assists their deception. We certainly shouldn’t distrust women, right? Who wants to argue that black lives mean nothing? Surely nobody wishes to build something worse than it was before. People hear the soundbites, nod their heads, and repeat those words to their friends and neighbors. Some place signs in their yards with those three-word messages, as if they were brilliant expositions of fundamental truths.
Successful information warfare propagates ideas without triggering in those who receive the message any need for reflection. Like the Greeks’ wooden horse, the communication is hollow. It is intended to be just attractive enough that listeners drag the soundbite into their heads but sufficiently harmless in appearance to avoid real scrutiny. Great propaganda does not conquer by force. It seduces. It knocks on the door, smiles, and charms its way into unsuspecting minds. Then it waits — patiently — until the day arrives when it can do the most damage.
Effective propaganda, however, is inherently fragile. Should anyone take the time to reflect on those three-word messages above, their magic spells are broken. Once someone asks, “Don’t some women lie?” people remember that accusations matter less than evidentiary proof. Once a person is shouted down for saying, “All lives matter,” it becomes clear that “diversity” and “equity” have nothing to do with equality and justice. When anyone stops to ask, “What are we building, and why are we building it?” the World Economic Forum’s plans for a “new world order” stand naked and exposed.
In other words, thinking is the enemy of information warfare. Those who engage in its dark arts see independent thinkers as missile shields that must be eliminated. Reason and rational debate remain the most effective defenses against propaganda. People who ask questions build forts for society with their minds. The entrance to those forts are adorned with this sign: Come let us reason together.
Reasoned debate is not scary; on the contrary, it is the path upon which we walk toward enlightenment. It is why people who demand compliance should never be trusted. Anyone who says, “The science is settled,” or, “Trust the experts,” seeks to deprive the listener not only of his capacity to reason but also of his prospect for salvation. When we forsake the mental gifts that God has given us, we hobble our potential for spiritual growth. Nobody has ever been redeemed for “just following orders.” A good life comes from good choices, and good choices come from faithful contemplation. In this way, attacks on free speech are attacks on our very souls.
When propagandists attack our souls from all directions, it is difficult to know who is waging war against us and why. But there are telltale signs. When groups and governments attempt to “cancel” individuals for their personal beliefs, they are waging war against individual conscience.
Sometimes acts of war are obvious, as when a British communist allegedly bludgeoned well-known conservative Ann Widdecombe to death with a hammer. Other times, information warfare is more subtle, as when the British government banned Christian and Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen from flying through London’s Heathrow Airport because she boldly defends the Bible’s prohibition against sexual sin, something that both Finland and the United Kingdom have now officially criminalized as “hate speech.” Along the same lines, the Polish government recently convicted a young, pregnant mother for the “crime” of speaking at a public rally against mass immigration. Found guilty of “inciting hatred,” Oliwia Olejniczak has received a harsher punishment for expressing her opinion than many illegal immigrants have for committing rape.
When governments abuse their criminal justice systems to persecute Christians and mothers concerned about their families’ safety, the signs are clear: Those governments are at war with their own people. When governments “cancel” citizens for their beliefs, politicians and bureaucrats identify for us which independent thinkers they most fear. As is written in the Gospel of Matthew (5:10), “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” When people stand up for moral truths — while bearing the brunt of their governments’ hatred — pay attention. Those people are building forts for society with their minds. Seek the shelter of those forts; then expand those forts to protect others. This is the way to defeat government propaganda.
Those who engage in information warfare have a propensity for projecting their crimes onto the innocent. This is why leftwing groups and governments accuse Christians of “hate speech,” while saying the most hateful things about Christians. It is also why governments and NGOs insist on categorizing citizens’ dissenting speech as “disinformation” or “misinformation,” when governments and NGOs manufacture false information on an industrial scale.
There has never been a time in human history when self-appointed public censors turned out to be the “good guys.” Communists, fascists, Nazis, and military dictators all believe in censoring public speech and rigging public debate. The globalists, socialists, collectivists, and other Big Government parasites that have infiltrated and seized most national governments today likewise believe in censorship and the criminalization of dissent. Information — whether true or false — does not belong to any one group of people. Oligarchies are not filled with angels; they are filled with sinful human beings.
We saw how evil oligarchies can be during the COVID lockdowns. Government bureaucrats and self-described “experts” told us explicitly, “Now is the time to do what you’re told.” Western governments committed unforgivable crimes against their citizens in the name of “science.” Australia rounded up people into “quarantine camps,” and we now know that pretend-President Joe Biden’s CDC was planning to do the same thing in the United States.
For eighty years, American schoolchildren have been taught that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII was an unconscionable violation of Americans’ constitutional rights that could never be permitted to happen again. Yet it almost did happen again. The U.S. government was preparing to imprison Americans who refused experimental pharmaceutical injections or expressed unapproved speech. In January 2022, majorities of Democrats believed that “unvaccinated” Americans should be fined, locked in their homes, sent to quarantine camps, and imprisoned for questioning the effectiveness of the experimental injections. A third of Democrats believed that the government should remove children from homes with “unvaccinated” parents.
How did we get so close to completely destroying the Bill of Rights? Health bureaucrats and government authorities engaged in an all-out information war against the American people. They pushed lies into American homes just as the Greeks pushed a wooden horse into Troy. And their attack on the American people almost worked. Americans hated each other more than ever before and nearly tore each other to shreds. COVID was weaponized into the kind of irrational fear that destroys civilizations.
In the end, it was not the “experts” or government ministers who prevented Western civilization’s collapse. It was the people who saw through the propaganda and refused to submit to tyranny. The next time governments send a Trojan Horse, just light it on fire.
