Death by a Thousand Narratives: American Propagandists at Work
Behind every blacklist, every viral outrage, and every “patriotic” spectacle is a propaganda engine designed to keep power safe.
You probably roll your eyes at the word propaganda. Everyone does.
The word has been beaten to death, slapped on everything from CNN to Fox News to TikToks about oat milk. But propaganda is not just old World War II posters of Hitler or grainy films from your history class.
It is alive. It is happening right here, right now, shaping what you see and how you think, from your social media feed to the evening news. And of course you were never taught to notice it. Why would America teach its children how to recognize the lies it feeds them? Why would a system hand you the tools to dismantle the disinformation that it depends on to survive?
Think about that.
You Are Not Immune to Propaganda
Propaganda has always been the opening act of authoritarianism.
Before dictators built prisons or armies of secret police, they built stories. They tell you who the enemy is, they tell you who the hero is, and they repeat it until you believe it. The Nazis had Goebbels on the radio. Mussolini had parades and flags. Franco had classrooms preaching obedience. By the time the prisons filled with anyone who spoke out, the people had already been convinced it was necessary.
People in school always asked how the Germans didn’t see it coming. The truth is they did. Propaganda softened them, and willful ignorance finished the job. That is what I see happening in America right now.
In fact, let’s talk about it:
In Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels was not a popular reporter or a journalist. He was the Reich Minister of Propaganda, head of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. He was a state-backed liar, elevated to the same rank as army generals. His ministry carried the same weight other nations gave to defense or finance.
Think Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon, except his arsenal of weapons was media -- newspapers, radios, and films.
(Which, let’s be honest, is not that different from what Mr. Pete 'Department of War' Hegseth does on Twitter now).
And during WW2, Goebbels was not reporting the news. He was manufacturing reality for the German people. Radios piped Hitler into every home. Posters turned neighbors into enemies and Nazis into gods. Films turned slaughter into spectacle. Fascism does not rise without a ministry of stories to carry it.
George Orwell warned us in the book 1984: a Ministry of Truth that told no truth. It was not prophecy, it was a warning, and most people let it slip in one ear and out the other. We saw stories instead of lessons. That is how we ended up where we are now.
But unlike the book, America in 2025 does not need a Ministry of Truth when social media is already controlled by the rich who want more money, power, and fame. As we sit glued to our tiny glowing screens, ICE pushes posters and slick campaigns branding migrants as “invaders” and “criminals.”
Celebrities who publicly “join” ICE and tell you to do the same. MAGA loyalists build blacklists online to punish anyone who stands up to them. Authoritarianism is being normalized in real time.
Every one of these narratives is shaped and amplified by the same small circle of power brokers, obsessed not with safety or truth but with clinging to wealth and control.
Mark Zuckerberg, the man who owns Meta (Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp) has been buying compounds within walking distance of the White House. Inside its walls, billionaires feast like kings and raise their glasses in loyalty to the president just a week or two ago — along with Bill Gates, Tim Cook from Apple, Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai from Google, and many more.
Meanwhile, some of those same billionaires funnel fortunes into dark money networks to keep the machine running. But it is not just American billionaires or those with social media empires. Foreign influence shapes the story too, and nowhere is that more obvious than in Israel.
See, the model there is more direct. Millions are openly earmarked for propaganda budgets that pay off politicians in America and Britain through organizations like AIPAC, ensuring they look away from Gaza and brand you antisemitic if you criticize it — even as the UN calls it genocide and Netanyahu faces arrest warrants for international human rights crimes, including the daily starvation of children, leading them to die. Yes, foreign influence shapes what we see, too.
I have a serious question for my readers: have you taken a real look at what is happening there? Gaza is not “just another Middle East conflict.”
It is a humanitarian catastrophe.
Families are being starved, children are dying and losing limbs from explosives being dropped on them daily, and entire communities are being erased while the world is told to look the other way. And that is exactly what Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump’s closest friend abroad, is counting on.
The very same man who Trump is giving another $400 million as part of our 2025 military budget.
Because the billions Netanyahu has already drained from us aren’t enough. Washington signed a $38 billion aid package with Israel in 2016 that locked in nearly four billion every single year. Biden topped it with multi-billion extras during Gaza escalations, and now Trump is back — already green-lighting billions in aid this year.
Meanwhile, Medicaid gets gutted. Food stamps get cut. Hospitals close, children go hungry. Your government calls that fiscal responsibility but it’s really just funding a genocide with your tax dollars.
But here is where it gets hard, but I promised I would always tell you the truth, even when its difficult:
And the truth is that it is not just Trump. Biden also funded the genocide giving Israel 17 BILLION in aid in April 2024. After he said it’s a, “good day for world peace” and that the measure makes the United States safer.
That shock some of you may feel? I felt it too. At first I tried to tell myself there was some nuance I was missing — that people were misleading me and feeding me GOP propaganda — but the reality was clear.
He promised change, but the money kept flowing. Billions in U.S. aid continued to reach Israel even as the UN called it consistent with genocide and Netanyahu faced (and still faces) international arrest warrants for crimes against humanity.
Money is truly the root of all evil.
But of course, here at home where it’s in our faces and not as easily hidden by legacy media, it wears a mask.
See, in America, the laundering is quieter. It is dressed up as philanthropy, but a pig in a dress is still a pig. Money from people like the Koch brothers flows through fake charities, vehicles like donor-advised funds that let billionaires bankroll any cause they want in secret, with no accountability and plenty of tax breaks. And quiet figures like Leonard Leo lead the charge, turning dark money into political power.
I know this might read like conspiracy, but it is not. You can fact-check every line of it. The links are there (highlighted or underlined depending on your device) if you want to start.
But what matters here is that most of you probably never heard any of it until this moment. That silence is not an accident. That is the point.
The Mouthpieces of Power
From what I have observed, these are some of the names and organizations that control what floods our screens, our feeds, and our headlines. Many of them are now scrambling to distance themselves after Trump took office and they realized what they had unleashed. But it does not matter. They are complicit. And we will remember their roles.
A propagandist is not a journalist, no matter how many times Laura Loomer calls herself one.
A propagandist is an architect of perception. They choose the enemy, they anoint the hero, and they repeat the story until it feels like fact. Their power is not in truth but in the repetition of the lie. They are the modern-day Goebbels of America.
And the thing is, this playbook is not new. A lot of “independents” are not really independent. That probably includes here on Substack.
You can see this kind of of behavior from the U.S. when you look at the now released CIA files for Project Mockingbird (1962), when the U.S. government planted their narratives in American media. They used it to push what they wanted. It involved recruiting journalists and editors, sometimes paying them, or using their reporting channels to promote government-friendly narratives.
Look at COINTELPRO (1956), where the FBI now admits infiltrated and sabotaged movements under the guise of “keeping order.”
America has always used propaganda and deception to control dissent. Why would now be any different?
And it happens on both sides. WIRED recently exposed Chorus, a network quietly funneling money into leftist influencers. The mask changes, the tactic does not.
For months now, “civil war” has been soft-launched online. It shows up in posts about states seceding, about “taking the country back,” always framed as patriotic rebellion.
FYI: A civil war is the perfect excuse for 47 to (formally) enact martial law.
So again, I will say it. I am not immune to propaganda. You are not immune to propaganda. They have been doing this for generations. Always take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
These propagandists influence policy in real time.
It was not long ago that Laura Loomer got on Twitter to smear dying Palestinian children as “threats,” and within days the Trump administration yanked their medical visas.
Meanwhile, AI content farms churn out endless posts until your brain accepts repetition as truth. Trump himself used the same tactic on the campaign trail, hammering words like “groceries” into every rally until it stuck in people’s heads.
Now groceries are at an all time high, and we are facing an impending food shortage.
‘Micro-influencers’ and well-funded meme pages spread subtler doses, echo chambers that make propaganda go down easy. Think of ‘soft launches’ like the memes about civil war or hang Mike Pence. They start as ‘jokes’ and end as battle cries.
Institutions like the Claremont Institute and the Federalist Society (FedSoc) run the same game on a polished level, launching campaigns funded by dark money to create legal or pseudo-academic cover for authoritarianism. Leonard Leo (of FedSoc) was allowed to handpick most of our SCOTUS judges (Thanks, Trump).
This is all part of the broader effort of manufacturing alternate realities where extraordinary action feels justified.
Just look at some of Trump’s executive orders.
Mentally ill and homeless people will be shoved into camps. Federal agents deployed to American cities. We are only months into this administration, and already you can see how propaganda primes people to accept what would have once been unthinkable. History tells us where this road leads.
Celebrities are part of it too. Sydney Sweeney lending her face to glossy ads with eugenics undertones. Then she went to Jeff Bezos (Does she even know Bezos?) wedding, and posted a Lolita (a book about child r*pe) themed photoshoot.
For reference, “Lolita Express” was the nickname given to Epstein’s private Boeing 727 jet.
Meanwhile, old washed-up celebrity Dean Cain telling you to join ICE with him, only to “injure” his arm afterward so badly he wrapped it in a sling as an excuse for not actually signing up.
Celebrity propaganda happened in Nazi Germany, too. The most infamous example was actor Heinrich George, who starred in Jud Süß (‘Süss, the Jew’) in 1940. This was the Nazis’ most vicious antisemitic film.
His celebrity status, and his approval? That gave the propaganda blockbuster credibility and helped normalize hate for millions of ordinary Germans.
Controlled opposition is another tool, where parades and stage-managed protests pacify people while the state sets the terms.
This happened in the civil rights era when Martin Luther King Jr. played along at first, then broke away, the government marked him for death. Look at the unredacted government files if you do not believe me. Then, pay attention to the movements you support.
And do not ignore Trump’s relationship with the tech giants.
He is now ‘friends’ with Zuckerberg. He is (was?) friends with Elon Musk. He is friends with Peter Thiel who directly planted JD Vance as VP. He is friendly with the billionaire who owns the company behind ChatGPT.
He is friends with the people who run Oracle, a company with deep CIA ties, which also happens to own the servers that host TikTok under Project Texas. TikTok, by the way, was caught in 2024 pushing right-wing propaganda into feeds.
Twitter did the same & “MAGA” influencers are a thing now. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg cozies up to Trump admitting he “didn’t know what number he was supposed to say” when asked how much he’d tribute to Trump er, uh, I mean, ‘the economy.’
Who is to say your algorithm has not already been rewritten to feed you what they want? This is the machinery. This is how reality gets manufactured and we are living in it.
Not All Propagandists Are Famous
Not all propagandists are celebrities. Some appear out of nowhere, already polished, already amplified, already plugged into the right networks.
Take Dominic Michael Tripi. On paper, he calls himself a “political analyst,” “writer,” “strategist,” even the “CEO” of something called ‘World Independent News.’ The problem is that I did an investigation.
‘World Independent News’ doesn’t exist. The only business ever registered under that name was a short-lived LLC in Oregon owned by a 78-year-old man who shut it down in 2007.
The story of Tripi was first reported by Indie (who is the co-author of this article) who found that before January 2024, there nearly no searchable trace of Tripi anywhere online.
No articles, no Substack, no LinkedIn, not even a digital footprint from his supposed twelve years in “Fortune 500 sales.”
Then, suddenly, he appeared with a polished persona, formulaic “BREAKING” tweets, podcast after podcast, and a silver YouTube play button he cannot convincingly explain.
To me, it appears he is an internet ghost who sprang into existence fully formed. His only real footprint is his MAGA-aligned hot takes that corporate media then amplify as if they were credible analysis.
I don’t think any of them actually ever checked the background on this guy. But to be honest, it seems like he possibly paid for his information to be wiped to make it that way.
But you can’t wipe legal records, Tripi. And it’s not defamation if it’s true. You can find them here by searching his name.
Scratch the surface and a different picture emerges. Public records show a long trail of DWIs, license revocations, probation violations, and lawsuits — including one in 2020 where his former employer slapped him with a restraining order and won a $5,000 judgment against him.
His business history looks just as shady. He registered a logistics company at a two-bedroom house that kept being shuffled through shell LLCs tied to lawyers and landlords. When the lawsuits piled up, he simply renamed it ‘Tripi Holistic Consulting’ and rewrote the purpose to a vague catch-all “any legal business activity.”
That is classic asset-shielding behavior. When people started asking questions, his response wasn’t transparency but intimidation. Former coworkers who called him out online reported receiving threatening messages promising lawsuits.
Messages from Tripi show him lashing out at Indie after they published their deep dive, attempting to silence critics instead of answering simple questions like “Why does your company not exist?”
Of course now, in 2025, Tripi is scrambling to distance himself so he doesn’t sink with Trump, but his record speaks differently. This is the same man who once described himself on Twitter as 'loving Trump' & the mask only changed when it became inconvenient.
He frequently voices MAGA rhetoric. After the Butler, PA event he targeted and smeared a woman, even accusing her of involvement in the shooting without evidence. He also apparently felt very strongly about of Kenrick Lamar’s half-time show — because it didn’t have any white people in it.
I think you missed the message, bud.
But the point of the matter is that Dominic Tripi is proof that propaganda doesn’t always come dressed as a household name. Sometimes it slips in quietly, wearing the mask of “independent journalism,” wiping away a messy past, and counting on repetition to become reality.
OK — Let’s talk about the elephant in the room — Charlie Kirk.
I know you've been thinking of him this entire article and there's a reason for that. He was a fixture of the MAGA hive mind, one of the most recognizable faces of the movement, especially among young conservatives. His murder, while devastating for his family, is dominating the headlines. Yet concentration camps, deportations to unsafe countries, the genocide in Gaza, and deaths in ICE custody barely register beyond a passing mention.
I bring this up because of a heartbreaking interaction I had with a reader recently. They repeatedly called me “sick” for pointing out that Kirk’s death was being weaponized by bad actors — propagandists — who want to use it to shut down dissent and make people scared to speak outside of the "approved" rhetoric of Trump et al.
I want to know -- why is one tragedy turned into spectacle while the others are ignored? And why is pointing this out treated as “justifying” or "celebrating" his murder. No, Charlie Kirk should not have been murdered. That is the point. Political violence is not new.
Propaganda is not new. Stochastic terrorism is not new.
There is a reason the same handful of stories about “celebrations” are shoved in your face on repeat by legacy media and influencers. You are told to be outraged that people are cheering, even though you cannot name a single person who actually is. That is because the celebration is a mirage.
They cherry-pick fragments, build a narrative, and feed it back to you until you mistake it for reality. That is propaganda, and that is how it works.
Psychologists even have a name for it: the illusory truth effect. Say a lie enough times, and people start to believe it. And that, my dear, is the heart of propaganda.
But have we forgotten Kyle Rittenhouse? Have we forgotten January 6th, 2021? Have we forgotten that a sitting Democratic senator (Hortman) was murdered just months ago by someone radicalized by MAGA propaganda? Patrick Crusius walked into a Walmart and murdered 23 people. In 2018, Cesar Sayoc packed a van with crude pipe bombs he intended to send to CNN, Obama, Clinton, etc. All in his van plastered in Trump decals.
Did we forget Trump is the same man who said he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue, and kill someone and not lose any voters? He knows what he's doing. Did we forget about the man who just shot up the CDC in August because of the the lies the Trump administration tells us killing former Marine David Rose?
Trump ordered half staff flags for Charlie Kirk. But not for Sen. Hortman. Not for David Rose. Not for Jimmy Carter. Not for the kids who died in the Colorado school shooting the same day.
It’s only a national tragedy when it’s someone who makes him look good.
In 2020 Trump tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN.”
Soon after, a group of armed men plotted to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer. They bought weapons to the capitol, scouted her home, and discussed executing her on livestream. Trump laughed it off. He never walked it back, never faced accountability.
He publicly attacked his own vice president Mike Pence, and put his life in danger because Pence refused to sign fake elector slates naming Trump president. On January 6th, 2021, MAGA loyalists had brought a noose to the Capitol and chanted “Hang Mike Pence” while putting it up.
And Trump’s stochastic terrorism has never stopped. The night Kirk was shot Trump went on Truth Social and he told his followers that “radical leftists” were spreading rhetoric that caused Kirk’s murder, and that they need to be “dealt with” and “will not be accepted.”
This is the exact same language he used before he convinced 1,600 people to storm the Capitol, while he sat cozy at home, orange fingers clutched around a cheeseburger and a Diet Coke.
Ironically, the update is this: the third alleged shooter they’ve hauled in? Not a leftist. Meet Tyler Robinson.
His name is Tyler Robinson, 22 years old, from Washington County, Utah.
He wasn’t a student at the university where Kirk was speaking, he wasn’t part of a protest cell, he was a young man whose own father reportedly recognized him on surveillance footage and turned him in through a minister. Investigators say the rifle was his, a bolt-action weapon fired from a rooftop 200 yards away, with prints and footage tying him to the scene.
Indie, the coauthor here, doesn’t buy the neat little story being handed down. He thinks this looks less like a random act and more like something arranged — an operation with choreography, not chaos. In his read, the timing, the framing, and the convenient political narrative feel too polished to be accidental.
Robinson allegedly confessed to his father before the arrest. The story the right wanted to sell — that this was proof of “radical leftists” — is already collapsing, replaced with a stranger, messier reality.
I am not excusing political violence, but you need to pay attention.
Trump’s loyalists have spun a story that people are celebrating, and they are using that story to fracture the left through disinformation. The truth is simple: no one is dancing in the streets over Charlie Kirk’s death.
Step back. What made you so angry?
Was it something you saw with your own eyes, or did you assume that because the outrage was everywhere, it must be true?
Did you actually see someone you know celebrate, or just the endless churn of headlines and social media posts convincing you it was happening everywhere? Look closer. The scolding posts outnumber the supposed celebrations by miles.
But you believed it. You saw a few clips on the news, scrolled through wave after wave of outrage, and then joined in.
You became part of a machine that calls political violence “real” only when it lands on MAGA, and invisible when it lands on the rest of us. Even if the perpetrator did end up being one of their own.
Trump raged on Truth Social about “radical leftists” while his loyalists promised civil war. And because of his call to action, they are making lists of enemies — anyone who refuses to turn Charlie Kirk into a martyr, anyone who dares to speak against the Trump regime.
In his video, Trump explicitly named the people who compare his fascism to historical fascism. People like me.
Sure enough, the day after his video, my name appeared on one of those Twitter target lists. I got the notification for it, so I reported & blocked the account to keep myself safe, but that is all the list was meant to do: remind me they are watching, remind me dissent carries a cost.
But I will not give them what they want. I am not scared. I refuse to be silent. Because silence is complicity.
And this behavior is not new.
Conservatives have spent years building a network of blacklists.
Kirk had his Professor Watchlist, targeting educators who challenged Trump’s rhetoric on TurningPoint USA.
The American Accountability Foundation, a dark-money ‘think tank’ keeps its “DHS Bureaucrat” and “DEI” watch lists.
David Horowitz runs Discover the Networks which states they spend their time, “tracking individuals, groups, and the history of groups that are politically left wing.”
And now Trump’s loyalist Scott Presler, a known neo-Nazi from a designated hate group, is now on Twitter calling for people to send him names so he can doxx people accused of “celebrating” Kirk’s death “peacefully”.
Even the White House is playing the same game. Just weeks ago they posted Instagram videos (on the official White House Instagram page) mocking and doxxing people who mourned when Trump reclaimed the presidency in November 2024.
That footage was from over half a year ago but they kept it. They kept footage of people who criticized the president and doxxed them on an official government account. Think about how dystopian that is.
This is stochastic terrorism dressed up as patriotism. It is intimidation. It is control. It is surveillance.
And I know, because I ended up on one of those lists simply for telling the truth about Trump. A tactic meant to scare me and keep me quiet. But regardless of how strong they seem, there are more of us than them, and I need you to stand with me anyway — even if you are afraid.
We only have each other and the connections we make in this crazy world.
This work was brought to you by two independent journalists — me and Indie.
We don’t have billionaire backers, corporate sponsors, or party machines behind us. What we do have is you. This work belongs to every reader here. Because this information is what we need in these times.
If you value fiercely independent reporting, hit that subscribe button to keep reading and growing with me. You should also subscribe to Indie or his network of independents — IndieNews Network (INN). Just like myself, he doesn’t believe in paywalls but needs support to stay afloat.
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 | A guest post by
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There are so many dark money forces out there. Scary, scary time. As always, snap on article. Stay safe.✌🏼 FYI: the Tripi link doesn’t work.
This! So much This. 🫂🇨🇦