A Refutation of Propaganda

Sometime in the second half of Taylor Swift’s dowry offering, er… I mean Superbowl 58, a commercial for a little-known and upstart company breaking onto the scene was aired. Competing amidst the cinematic powerhouses of other various commercials that feature the modern pantheon of celebrities; this company brought intellectual weight and enterprising triumph to this national gladiatorial circus. They painted a portrait of themselves as exuberant, intrepid doers who conquer the world through beakers and lab coats. They roll out of bed and can’t help but do good - shit, they even help cure kids with cancer. All to the soundtrack of an electric classic rock song.

Well, just kidding, mostly. This commercial I’m describing is how Pfizer would like you to see them. This megacorporation has aired a truly abhorrent piece of propaganda amidst one of the most watched events in modern American culture (around 100 million viewers). When such a company makes so many egregiously conflated and self-interested claims in front of so many people, it seems like it’s worth some time to dissect the big ones, so we can stave off the noxious fumes of such insulting and disgusting lies. So, if that tickles your fancy, let us commence.

This Is Definitely Not Propaganda

At the heart of all propaganda is the coopting of complicated truths reduced and packaged into meme-able tidbits that serve the interest of some vast conglomeration of parties – whether this be a government, person or corporation. We are bombarded with this type of messaging on a daily basis. It has always been; captured in the oft-repeated aphorism "history is written by the winners".

This is not to be confused with mere marketing, where sellers in a marketplace compete to attract consumers to purchase their products through a gamut of psychological trickery. Though propaganda may employ some or many of these same techniques, it rises to the level of propaganda when the messaging is intended to impact the public sphere that is dedicated to adjudicating fundamental truths that set the playing field for the Overton Window.

This is exactly what Pfizer is trying to do in the wake of the COVID-19 collective hysteria by which they made a great deal of money. They have duly garnered a great deal of skepticism and mistrust because of their continual abuse of the intelligence of the average American and dubious medical practices. They lied about the effects of the vaccines, they lied about side effects and they continue to try to sabotage many who would attempt to have conversations about the long-term effects of their products. Anything that at all smells like scrutiny and attendant accountability, that could get in the way of their massive profit margins, is taken as a threat to be destroyed.

They do this by somewhat sophisticated, but often heavy-handed messaging. So without further ado, let us address the salient ideas that Pfizer is trying to impress upon your vulnerable basal ganglia in order to persuade you to let them off the hook and get out of their way. The commercial itself is brief, only approx. 90 seconds (which only cost them a cool $21 million) but it contains very big themes.

The first is the idea that our dear departed Anthony Fauci (not dead, just enjoying retirement from meddling in people’s lives) oft parroted in his cuddly and relatable Brooklyn(?) accent via his head in a box screen on CNN or wherever else you consumer your pharmaceutically sponsored propaganda. The idea is that there is such a thing as ‘The Science’. That somewhere, out there, beyond the confines of reality and in a windowless basement lab lies a set of incontrovertible facts that will exist for all time. This is, as with most complicated things partially true. But on the other hand, it’s mostly not true. It’s also a gross way of mischaracterizing what science, aka empiricism, really is.

Empiricism is simply a process of understanding reality. It is a way that human beings over time, place and an almost infinite number of variables, can go about comparing their answers in investigations into certain questions. At its most basic it goes exactly like the way you hopefully learned in high school: observation to hypothesis to experiment to observation and finally to conclusion. It gets more complicated in clinical trials but ultimately that is what science is. What Fauci, Pfizer and all other disingenuine Scientism-ists abuse you with is the collection of results of many past experiments that constitute the body of scientific knowledge.

And herein lies the rub; since the scientific revolution has proliferated its benefits to mankind, we now have a wealth of knowledge about a great many complicated things that the vast majority of people will not have first-hand understanding of for a variety of reasons. This dynamic gives those who possess this technae-knowledge power because it takes a great deal of time to garner such knowledge and it dramatically increases one’s ability to manipulate matter at scale. This is another form of power.

So, one in such a position as Fauci or Pfizer simultaneously has knowledge most don’t and can’t access easily, they also can use that knowledge to ends most other can’t as well. These two dynamics combined grant them the ability to make a lot of money – a third source of power. And one that creates an incentive structure to double down on attaining and aggregating more power along the previous lines.

Therefore we have the first big lie of this mini-cinematic piece de resistance: that Pfizer and the big-pharma compatriots are the purveyors of ‘The Science’ unlike the scientists they try to co-opt like Newton and Archimedes (of more we’ll get to later) who simply practiced empiricism. These great men of the past also didn’t aggregate their findings under copyright law nor did they pitch them to government-mandated programs that caused a variety of ill-effects both medically and culturally.

Black Irony

The second big lie is strongly related to the first. It is about the practitioners of the scientific method throughout history that are coopted by this mega-corporation. They place Archimedes, Hippocrates, Newton and Copernicus in the commercial like they all worked for Pfizer and are enjoying the premium returns of their shares attached to their 401k’s (I don’t have a 401k, is that how it works? Please comment below.). But that is another massive misrepresentation of ‘The Science’ proper. The idea that scientists of yore would be at all interested, let alone approving of the current state of "Science", is incredibly facetious.

It's facetious for several reasons. One, they would never call their experiments ‘The Science’. That is purely 21st-century marketing speech as we’ve already examined. These individuals were all extremely… individualistic. This is, by definition, greatly at odds with the corporate hegemony that Pfizer operates on as a business model. The current iteration of science that is widely practiced and can be correctly understood as ‘The Science’ is a widgetization of very small incremental gains of knowledge by many, many people.

Juxtapose this with the great men of yore who were wildly eclectic, antisocial and swung for the fences. They were often deeply wrong and would hit major dead ends. On the other hand, their intrepid nature provided for massive gains in knowledge. This inherently assumes a great deal of risk and independence. Risk and independence that the modern white lab coats chained to their desks on behalf of their corporate masters are deeply dissuaded from by a vast array of legal and managerial bureaucracy.

These men Pfizer grossly coopts would very likely abhor participating in a corporation to do science. They were all extremely independent and sovereign men who worked with their patients, ruling regimes or universities in a way where their work was not tied to the quarterly profits of shareholders, but to the unadulterated search for truth in as far as they could conceive of it. These men were often highly aloof creatures. They would undoubtedly hate mingling with their middling coworkers who slavishly navigate the petty world of middle management striving for an improvement in the latest iteration of Viagra. These men were about discovering things that literally changed the world.

Following from the previous point these men were able to achieve paradigm-shattering discoveries because they sought fundamental truths about reality and God. This is very unlikely of your average white coat and C-suite executive at Pfizer, but they would have you believe it anyway, because that aura begets a sense of awe from your average person that is extremely beneficial to these with the aim of making money.

Several anecdotes from the lives of these great men underscore these points well.

Newton not only was deeply concerned with physics but just as much, if not more so, with discovering alchemical principles in the bible that would likely have been seen as heretical by his peers, if not at least very weird. He was a virgin his whole life. Newton would rather forgo any of the sensual pleasure the temporal world can offer than taint his pursuit of understanding the unity of spirit and matter

Just so, there’s a story about Archimedes during the Roman conquest of Syracuse. He was so intellectually involved in solving a math problem that he was killed by Roman soldiers when he gruffly reprimanded them for interrupting him while they pillaged the city. The man would rather die than be interrupted in his intellectual pursuits.

Copernicus’s promulgation of heliocentrism was a massive risk to him at a time when it was not uncommon for burnings for heresy. His works were placed on the forbidden list by the Papacy. His works were considered ‘formally heretical’ by the Roman Inquisition. Were it not for the fact that he was living in tolerant Poland, he very likely would’ve been seriously harassed, or worse, by the church.

The last bit of vertigo-inducing black irony that is so replete in this horrendous piece of shill is the referencing of Hippocrates. His oath, which is the basis of all medical practice, is a complete and demanding one. It is about doing no harm, prescribing things that are beneficial and leading an exemplary and upright personal life. With Pfizer's legal record, it is an abdominal insult to coopt this noble man and what he represents for the medical profession. Pfizer has desecrated the spirit of this oath time and again. And with this commercial, does so with utter infamy and unrepentance in a tone of such casual perfidy as to make one sick.

Suffice it to say the moral and intellectual character of the men Pfizer so egregiously tries to coopt is vastly different than the people who populate that company contemporarily.

Even Edward Bernays is Blushing

Lie number three within this very brief commercial is the subliminal messaging from the very specific Queen song that they chose to overlay on the mad montage of co-opted philosophers. The song is aptly titled – “Don’t Stop Me Now”. With that lyric being repeated over and over again in the chorus, one can easily see the message they're trying to impart: We, Pfizer, as representative of ‘The Science’, that has only ever done wonderful things by very smart people (Newton, Penicillin, etc.) are making rapid progress all the time that (did we mention?) is only ever good. So don’t be a bigoted luddite and get out of our way. Don’t stop us now.

This is the lie of progress. This big lie, once again, butchers a nuanced truth in order to selfishly squash all opinions or history of misdeeds in the name of progress and science. The list of horrors and catastrophes perpetrated in the name of progress is massive. Pfizer was already on that list prior to COVID with it’s mass proliferation of SSRIs and antidepressants that – guess what – made a lot of money and were misrepresented in clinical trials by doctors. They have been convicted of fraud many times over. But now, they’re the shining white knights advancing science forward for your own good, dammit.

Human beings and humanity, of course, do progress. They have progressed greatly through the scientific method. But, of course, a great deal of failure is also baked into the cake. Anyone with an ounce of humility in their heart knows that and is honest about it. Pfizer and the lizard people currently running that company damn sure know that progress isn’t perfect. It’s not an exponential growth curve, ever exceeding ad infinitum. Yet they would have you believe otherwise.

Instead in this commercial, amidst the torrent of imagistic and musical associations of great men of the past, successful inventions (that were begat of thousands of failures or pure accident), corporate laboratories, fascinating models, and portrayals of *women* in *STEM* (blowing the diversity check-box out of the water) – they portray a never-ending whirlwind of Progress.

They erase all the failures, gaslighting you and then offering a command bolstered by vague threats through sexy music. ‘Don’t stop me now’. ‘Going to make a supersonic *woman* outta you”. “Defying the law”. These are verbatim the lyrics they blast at you via the Queen classic. It’s vintage Pavlovian conditioning, no doubt honed to perfection by a graduate of the Wharton Business School with a master's in Marketing Psychology making $400k/year. Progress, is always good, never bad, especially when Pfizer does ‘The Science’.

Children are the Future, Man.

The final big lie propagated by this commercial is at the end. After the wild tour through the exultant, progressive and sexy highs of scientific invention by one mega-corporation aspiring for monopoly; they hook your heart on a serious, heart-melting note in the last fifteen seconds. Not only is science sexy, smart and cool – did we mention we cure kids with cancer?

Here we are again, the conflation of two things to bully you into silence. A truly reprehensible and gross trick. Of course, pharmaceutical companies are greatly beneficial in curing cancer. I would not write this article if Pfizer made a commercial solely demonstrating the benefits of their cancer research and touting the beautiful successes it had in fighting to spare a young life from a horrendous disease. But, in the entire context of the preceding lies, is a gross attempt at manipulating our heartstrings.

Considered in totality, the message of the commercial is: that Pfizer is racing towards unparalleled success and advancement as a single mega-corporation. Instead of brilliant individuals accomplishing feats of genius, a mega-corporation of faceless widget drivers is taking over. We’re progressive, badass and smart. Get out of our way. Oh, and if you disagree you want kids with cancer to die. That’s all! Enjoy your foosball America! We’ll be in our lab inventing more bad-ass shit while you enjoy your idiot sportsball. Thanks for all your money, forgetting about all our fuck-ups and not following up on any investigations! Idiots…

Now, one could say this is all hopelessly cynical and the product of sour grapes. And perhaps it is. But that would be a denial of a great deal of the facts. Pfizer has again and again been prosecuted by the DOJ. For guess what… fraudulent marketing. They are clearly unremorseful about lying and misrepresenting themselves in the chase for profits. Unfortunately, as is often true and the theme of this article, they do indeed do good.

But the ultimate question is – at what cost?