Distraction or Diversion
The Systematic Shaping of Our Consciousness
The main element of social control is the distraction of our attention from important problems and decisions through the constant saturation of the information space with insignificant messages.
In other words, our minds are subject to an intense and constant bombardment of covert ideological messages from tens of thousands of stimuli a day. There are dozens of messages every hour, targeting our attention, emotions and identity, often without our awareness, that reframe our brains and keep us diverted from considering the true nature of our material reality.
How Distraction is Achieved
Advertising and Commercial Messaging
It is estimated we are exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 ads per day whose psychological impact is to encourage consumerism, FOMO (fear of missing out), and to set unrealistic standards of living or appearance. Not only that but just imagine how peaceful your brain would be without those constant stimuli. Processing that much crap daily is tiring, it wears us out – which of course is the intention. Tired, weary workers can’t make trouble, can’t make revolution!
News Media and Agenda Framing
On average we consume one to three hours of news a day from TV, radio, newspapers and apps with the bias filters of corporate ownership, government spin, and editorial bias and omission, which inevitably skews our perception of global events, and promotes nationalism, moral panic, or manufactured consent. Check out who controls the output you receive. It is the same few people whose interests are diametrically opposed to your own. If all the sources of our daily intake of propaganda featured a nazi swastika we would immediately recognise them as malevolent and avoid them but because they shroud their intent with attractive logos, we assume their innocence and legitimacy.
Social Media and Algorithmic Feed Manipulation
We spend around two to four hours daily (especially among 16–44-year-olds) being fed tailored content that reinforces existing beliefs (echo chambers), increasing our anxiety, tribalism, and distractibility. This feeds nicely into corporate interests where engagement is monetised; algorithms prioritise outrage, aesthetic envy, and addictive dopamine loops.
Entertainment Media (TV, Streaming, Gaming, Music)
Our average daily screen time is six+ hours including passive consumption of subtle ideological messaging normalising imperialism. Think of action films that glorify war stories, that reinforce class hierarchy and racial stereotypes that promote western exceptionalism. Even when something appears innocuous it if likely shaping the way you think.
I was recently reading a fiction novel set in France during WW2. It told the story of two sisters’ fight and survival against the invading nazi forces but when it covered the end of the war and France’s liberation, it suggested the British and Americans were the saviours of western Europe when history knows it to be the Russians who fought and defeated 90 percent of the German forces. Such an omission is part of the capitalist imperative to remove the great victory of the Soviet Union and provides a perfect illustration of the imperceptible indoctrination we get every minute of every day. Our minds are shaped by this crap.
Workplace and Institutional Indoctrination
In our ever-burgeoning corporate workplaces, messaging is trained on self-branding, team culture and productivity worship. Our education system meticulously omits class struggle, repressive colonial history or critiques of capitalism. Today it is much more overt: it has removed, silenced or sanctioned university lecturers who dare to question the State’s narrative in their lessons; demonstrations against Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians are brutally quashed, anti-Zionist student organisations are demonised.
We are engineered to internalise self-blame for our material realities involving debt, no housing or low pay, and to internalise dominant feelings of helplessness. Not only that but as our feelings of helplessness and anxiety grow, we are encouraged to take medication that helps us to cope. We are the victims of the crimes of capitalism but the perpetrators continually go free.
Surveillance Capitalism & Data Extraction
Even if we were perceptive enough to recognise this constant mental intrusion, our harvested data is used to subtly nudge our behaviour, undermine our autonomy and promote hyper-individualised consumption. In other words, the algorithms are sent to keep us fixated, neutral, busy, demoralised … essentially to keep us from finding solutions. And there are solutions! Of course there are. Humans are capable of solving any problems faced but if the fundamental imperative of the system underpinning our society is profit, those solutions do not serve the working class, the majority; they serve the few, the ruling class.
Distraction as Part of Cognitive Warfare
The tools of the ruling class – the media, laws, education, and state and corporate institutions – are weaponised to manufacture consent, pacify dissent, and internalise control. Information, psychology, and technology are in continuous application to alter your perception of reality, to weaken your capacity for resistance and to control your behaviour without physical force. And it is working a treat! Look at how shit life is now; how much of a struggle it is to make enough to feel secure; how comparatively worse off your children are to you; and how when you look to the future all you see is war, inflation, job losses and hopelessness.
You think you are free spirited, free to make up your own mind, free to live the life you choose – think again, if you can!
And if you can think again, think long and hard. Take a break each day from your usual cycle of social media, western news propaganda, streaming crap etc., and just think. Why is life so tough now? Who is in control? How do you wrest your mind back? What would it be like if workers of the world united! It’s been done before in Russia, China, Iran, Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba to name a few; it will be done again. Play your part. It begins with an independent thought.
Class Consciousness Project 
Leave a comment