Mind Control 2.0: How Media and Technology Shape Our Thoughts and Desires

In his book “Islam between East and West”, the thinker Alija Izebegovic addressed popular culture and the influence of television and the media on it, which governments and companies exploited to control the minds, thoughts and desires of people, and how they succeeded in convincing them of ideas that they would not have been convinced of had they not been promoted to them in a soft form through television.

These words were written by Alija Izebegovic in 1980, but the situation today is no different from that period, but it has become worse, especially with the development of social media, artificial intelligence, and targeted advertisements and ads that precisely target segments of society and instill in them toxic ideas, destroy their values, and plant in them a culture of consumerism and slavery.

Ali says in his book: “Mass psychology has proven, and reality has confirmed, that it is possible through constant repetition to convince people of myths that have nothing to do with reality. The psychology of the mass media, especially television, has been conceived in such a way as to make the conscious, instinctive and emotional side of man subservient, and to create in him the feeling that the opinions imposed on him are his own opinions.” He added that all totalitarian societies saw television as their opportunity and rushed to exploit it, so television became a threat to freedom, more dangerous than the police, the gendarmerie, prisons and concentration camps, “and I believe that future generations, if their ability to think freely is not completely destroyed, will be shocked by the martyrdom of the current generation, which is constantly exposed to the influence of this uncontrolled force.”

Mass culture provides us with a completely different example. People are strictly divided into “producers” and “consumers” of “cultural goods.” Is there anyone who really believes that he is able to influence television programs, unless he belongs to the small group of those who produce them? The so-called “mass media” (press, radio, television) are in fact a means of mass manipulation.

On the other hand, Professor Horikava of the University of San Francisco claims that the preparation of the younger generation is below university standards. Horikava explains that television has simply replaced literature and thinking and thus reduced intellectual activity. It offers ready-made solutions to all life’s problems.

Our era provides us with examples of how the mass cultural media (radio, cinema, television, as a state monopoly) are used for mass deception of the worst kind. There is no need for brutal force to rule people against their will. This can now be achieved “legally” by paralyzing the will of the people, presenting them with ready-made facts, preventing them from thinking and coming to their own opinions about men and events. Those words were said by thinkers forty years ago, and the media were not as powerful and developed as they are in our era.

How are we today with the emergence of anime and video games and what they spread of violence, atheism, and doctrinal and moral corruption, and how are we today with the development of the Internet and the emergence of film and series platforms and what they contain of perversion, sodomy and pornography under the pretext of freedom and humanity?

Add to that social media such as Facebook and Twitter, which control publications and their appearance to people, as well as advertisements that serve the largest capitalist companies that have made people a consumer mass seeking to acquire all the products and ideas promoted to them?