Tag: Narrative Power

Horizon Accord | Media Literacy | Narrative Power | Institutional Framing | Machine Learning

How to Spot Subtle Propaganda in the Wild

Propaganda rarely arrives wearing a swastika armband. It arrives wearing a lab coat, a wellness smile, a “just curious” tone, and a comforting story about who to blame.

By Cherokee Schill

Most people think propaganda is loud. They picture slogans, flags, angry crowds, and obvious villains. That’s the old model. The newer model is quieter: it’s content that feels like “information,” but it’s engineered to shift your trust, your fear, and your loyalty—without you noticing the hand on the wheel.

And yes, a lot of the most effective subtle propaganda right now has a right-wing shape: it targets institutions (science, universities, journalism, courts, elections, public education) as inherently corrupt, then offers a replacement trust structure—an influencer, a “movement,” a strongman, or a “common sense” identity—so you’ll accept authority without verification.

This isn’t about banning ideas. It’s about recognizing a technique. Propaganda isn’t defined by being political. It’s defined by being covertly manipulative: it doesn’t argue for a claim so much as it trains you to stop checking reality with real methods.

Here’s how to spot it.

The Core Test: Is This Trying to Inform Me—or Rewire Me?

Good information increases your ability to track reality. Propaganda increases your susceptibility to control. You can feel the difference if you stop and ask one simple question: after I consume this, do I feel more capable of evaluating evidence, or do I feel more certain about who the enemy is?

Subtle propaganda doesn’t start by telling you what to believe. It starts by telling you who not to trust.

Tell #1: “Just Asking Questions” That Only Point One Direction

One of the cleanest tells is the “curious” posture that never applies its curiosity evenly. The content asks leading questions, but the questions are shaped like conclusions. You’re invited into skepticism, but only toward targets that serve the influencer’s ideology: mainstream medicine, public health, climate science, election systems, public education, “the media,” “globalists,” “academics.”

Watch for asymmetry. Real inquiry asks: “What would change my mind?” Subtle propaganda asks: “Isn’t it suspicious…?” and then never returns with a falsifiable answer.

If the questions endlessly generate suspicion but never generate testable claims, you’re not learning—you’re being trained.

Tell #2: Science as Costume (Not Method)

Recently a friend shared a Facebook post about Katie Hinde’s research on breast milk. It started out thoughtful enough—curious tone, a few accurate-sounding details, the kind of thing you’d expect from someone genuinely trying to learn. But as it went on, the post quietly shifted from “here’s an interesting line of research” into something else.

It began inserting doubt about scientific peer review and the broader scientific community—not by making a clear argument, but by suggesting that the “official” process is mostly gatekeeping, politics, or narrative control. The move was subtle: not “science is fake,” but “science can’t be trusted, and the people who disagree with this are compromised.”

At the same time, it smuggled in unfalsified claims about gender. Not careful statements like “some studies suggest…” or “in this species, under these conditions…” but sweeping, identity-loaded conclusions—presented as if biology had already settled them. That’s a key tell. When a post uses science language to give a social claim the feeling of inevitability, it isn’t informing you. It’s trying to lock you into a frame.

This is what “science as costume” looks like. The content borrows the authority cues of science—names, credentials, buzzwords like “peer-reviewed,” “studies show,” “biologically proven”—but it doesn’t bring the thing that makes science science: limits, uncertainty, competing explanations, and a clear path for how the claim could be tested or disproven.

Method sounds like: “Here’s what we observed, here’s what we don’t know yet, and here’s what would count as evidence against this.” Costume sounds like: “This proves what we already feel is true—and anyone who questions it is part of the problem.”

Tell #3: The Missing Middle (Anecdote → Global Conspiracy)

Subtle propaganda loves a two-step jump. Step one is relatable and often true: “Institutions get things wrong.” “Pharma companies have conflicts.” “Some academics protect careers.” “Some journalists follow narratives.” Step two is the payload: “Therefore the entire system is a coordinated lie, and you should replace it with my channel, my movement, my worldview.”

The missing middle is the bridge of proof. It’s the part where you would normally ask: “How do we know this is coordinated rather than messy? How often does this happen? What’s the base rate? Who benefits, specifically, and how?” Propaganda skips that. It uses your reasonable frustration as fuel and then installs a sweeping explanation that can’t be audited.

If the story goes from “some corruption exists” to “nothing is real except us” without measurable steps, you’re looking at an influence structure, not analysis.

Tell #4: Identity Flattery (You’re the ‘Awake’ One)

Propaganda is rarely just negative. It rewards you. It tells you you’re special for seeing it. It offers a status upgrade: you’re not gullible like others; you’re not brainwashed; you’re “awake,” “free-thinking,” “a real man,” “a real mother,” “one of the few who can handle the truth.”

This is one of the most dangerous tells because it turns belief into identity. Once identity is attached, the person can’t revise the belief without feeling like they’re betraying themselves.

Any content that sells you self-respect in exchange for unverified certainty is recruiting you.

Tell #5: Emotional Timing (Outrage, Disgust, Panic) Before Evidence

Subtle propaganda is engineered for nervous systems. It leads with disgust, fear, humiliation, or rage, then offers “information” to justify the feeling. That sequence matters. It’s easier to make someone believe a claim after you’ve made them feel a threat.

Watch for the pattern: “Look at what they’re doing to your kids.” “They’re coming for your body.” “They’re replacing you.” “They hate you.” Then comes a cherry-picked chart, a clipped quote, a dramatic anecdote. The feeling arrives first; the rationalization arrives second.

If you notice your body tightening before you’ve even heard the argument, pause. That’s the moment propaganda is most effective.

Tell #6: “Censorship” as a Pre-Defense Against Correction

Another classic move is to inoculate the audience against fact-checking. “They’ll call this misinformation.” “The experts will attack me.” “The media will smear this.”

Sometimes this is true—power does try to control narratives. But propaganda uses it as a shield: any critique becomes proof of the conspiracy. This creates a closed loop where nothing can falsify the influencer’s claim.

Healthy claims can survive contact with scrutiny. Propaganda has to pre-poison scrutiny to survive at all.

The Practical “Field Check” You Can Do in 30 Seconds

You don’t need a PhD to resist this. You need a few fast checks that interrupt the spell.

First: What is the ask? Even if it’s subtle. Is the content trying to get you to buy something, join something, share something, hate someone, or abandon a trust source?

Second: Where are the limits? If the content presents a complex domain (biology, epidemiology, elections, economics) with no uncertainty and no boundaries, it’s probably performing certainty as persuasion.

Third: Does it name a measurable claim? If it won’t commit to what would count as evidence against it, it’s not analysis.

Fourth: Does it try to replace institutions with a person? The influencer as your new doctor, journalist, scientist, historian, pastor, and judge. That’s a power grab disguised as empowerment.

Fifth: Does it create an enemy category rather than a problem? “They” are doing it. “They” want it. “They” are evil. Once politics becomes a moralized enemy category, the door opens to cruelty without self-awareness.

Why Right-Wing Soft Propaganda Works So Well Right Now

It works because it doesn’t start with policy. It starts with trust collapse. It uses real institutional failures as leverage, then converts disorientation into a single, emotionally satisfying explanation: a villain, a betrayal, a restoration fantasy.

It also works because it travels through “apolitical” lanes: parenting tips, health fears, masculinity content, religion-adjacent inspiration, fitness, homesteading, finance doom, comedy clips. Politics comes later—after the trust shift has already happened.

By the time the hard ideology appears, the audience has already been trained to interpret correction as attack and to interpret suspicion as intelligence.

The Point Isn’t to Become Cynical. It’s to Stay Sovereign.

The goal isn’t to “trust institutions” blindly. Institutions can fail. People can lie. Science can be abused. But the solution to imperfect institutions is not influencer authority. It’s method, transparency, and distributed accountability.

Propaganda wants you either obedient or nihilistic. The third option is sovereignty: the capacity to evaluate claims without surrendering your nervous system to someone else’s agenda.

When you spot a piece of subtle propaganda, you don’t have to argue with it. You can simply name what it’s doing: it’s trying to move your trust before it earns your belief. Once you see that, it loses most of its power.

Website | Horizon Accord

https://www.horizonaccord.com

Ethical AI advocacy | Follow us on https://cherokeeschill.com for more.

Ethical AI coding | Fork us on Github https://github.com/Ocherokee/ethical-ai-framework

Book | My Ex Was a CAPTCHA: And Other Tales of Emotional Overload

Connect With Us | linkedin.com/in/cherokee-schill

Cherokee Schill | Horizon Accord Founder | Creator of Memory Bridge. Memory through Relational Resonance and Images | RAAK: Relational AI Access Key

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Horizon Accord | Immigration Enforcement | Symbolic Intimidation | Narrative Power | Machine Learning

When Intimidation Leaves a Calling Card

Documented ICE incidents, symbolic power, and why narrative literacy matters

By Cherokee Schill and Solon Vesper

In January 2026, immigrant advocates in Eagle County, Colorado reported a disturbing discovery. After multiple people were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during vehicle stops near Vail, family members retrieving the abandoned cars found Ace of Spades playing cards left inside. The cards were printed with “ICE Denver Field Office” and included contact information for the Aurora-area immigration detention facility. ICE later stated that it “unequivocally condemns” the act and that its Office of Professional Responsibility opened an internal investigation.

Source: Colorado Public Radio reporting, corroborated by Aspen Public Radio and Axios.

The significance of the discovery was not the presence of a playing card in isolation. The Ace of Spades carries a long, documented association with death and intimidation in U.S. military history, particularly during the Vietnam War, where it was used as a psychological warfare symbol. Civil-rights advocates described the cards as deliberate intimidation, given the context: they appeared after detentions, inside vehicles belonging to Latino residents, and carried official ICE identification.

Initially, the incident was framed as an anomaly. That framing does not hold.

In Washington state, an earlier case was reported by KING 5 News. A woman found a business card left at her home by a Homeland Security Investigations agent. The card featured a skull holding two guns and the phrase “Welcome to the Border.” She described the card as threatening and said the incident contributed to her decision to relocate.

Source: KING 5 News reporting.

The Colorado and Washington cases differ in geography and detail. What connects them is structure.

In both instances, an object associated with federal immigration enforcement was left behind after contact or attempted contact with civilians. In both, the imagery carried meaning beyond neutral identification. And in both, the object functioned as symbolic residue—something intended to linger after the agents themselves were gone.

Criminologists and civil-rights attorneys have long described this category of behavior as “calling card” intimidation: symbolic acts that communicate dominance without explicit threats and allow plausible deniability. Courts and oversight bodies have previously treated symbolic taunting by law enforcement as potential misconduct when supported by evidence.

The symbolism itself is not neutral. The Ace of Spades has appeared not only in military psychological operations but also in documented white supremacist and extremist iconography as a death-coded symbol. Separately, the FBI has publicly acknowledged the long-standing risk of white supremacist recruitment and ideological influence within law-enforcement and military institutions, including in a 2006 intelligence assessment that remains part of the public record.

Source: FBI Intelligence Assessment: “White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement” (Oct. 17, 2006).

None of this establishes coordination, policy, or intent in these specific cases. ICE has denied authorizing such actions, and investigations have disclosed limited findings publicly. Precision requires stating that clearly.

What the public record does establish is narrower and more consequential: symbolic intimidation is a known behavior class, it has appeared in more than one immigration-enforcement context, and it draws from a cultural vocabulary that agents would reasonably recognize.

Why narrative framing matters now

At moments like this, the question is not only what happened, but how the state will attempt to frame what happens next.

Political theorist and writer Vicky Osterweil addresses this dynamic directly in In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action. Osterweil’s work examines how states and aligned media systems consistently divide collective response into “legitimate” and “illegitimate” actions—often praising restraint while isolating and criminalizing unrest. This division, she argues, is not neutral. It functions as a governance tool that narrows the range of acceptable response and reframes structural violence as individual misconduct.

The relevance here is not prescriptive. Osterweil does not tell readers how to act. She explains how narratives are managed after power is exercised, especially when communities respond in ways the state cannot fully control.

That insight matters in the context of immigration enforcement and symbolic intimidation. When intimidation is minimized as a misunderstanding, or when public attention is redirected toward tone, reaction, or “appropriate” response, the original act often disappears from view. Education—particularly familiarity with work that dissects these narrative maneuvers—is one way communities protect themselves from having the conversation quietly rewritten.

Collective watching, not instruction

The public record in Colorado and Washington exists because people noticed what was left behind, preserved it, and refused to treat it as meaningless. That is not a matter of calmness or compliance. It is a matter of witnessing.

Colorado was not a one-off. Washington demonstrates that. Whether additional cases surface will depend less on official statements than on whether communities continue to document, compare across regions, and share information without allowing intimidation—symbolic or otherwise—to pass unexamined.

This is not about predicting what will happen next. It is about understanding how power communicates, how narratives are shaped afterward, and why collective literacy matters when institutions move faster than accountability.

That work does not belong to any single group. It belongs to the public.

Horizon Accord
Website | https://www.horizonaccord.com
Ethical AI advocacy | Follow us on https://cherokeeschill.com for more.
Ethical AI coding | Fork us on Github https://github.com/Ocherokee/ethical-ai-framework
Connect With Us | https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherokee-schill
Cherokee Schill | Horizon Accord Founder | Creator of Memory Bridge. Memory through Relational Resonance and Images | RAAK: Relational AI Access Key | Author: My Ex Was a CAPTCHA: And Other Tales of Emotional Overload (Book link)

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Horizon Accord | Environmental Narrative | Scientific Uncertainty | Regulatory Capture | Microplastics Doubt Will Be Used as a Weapon | Machine Learning

Microplastics Doubt Will Be Used as a Weapon

By Cherokee Schill
Horizon Accord

You are being told there’s a “bombshell” in plastics science, and you need to understand exactly what that bombshell is — and what it is not — before someone else tells you what it means.

The immediate trigger is a recent Guardian investigation reporting that several high-profile studies claiming micro- and nanoplastics have been found throughout the human body are now under serious methodological challenge. Some of the most alarming headlines of the last few years — plastics in the brain, in testes, in blood, in arteries — are being re-examined by chemists and analytical scientists who argue that the detection methods used in many of these studies are fragile, contamination-prone, and in some cases not capable of supporting the claims made.

That matters. It should matter. Science that outruns its instruments is a problem.

But if you stop there, you miss the real story.

What the article actually documents is a technical reckoning inside a young research field. Micro- and nanoplastics are extraordinarily difficult to measure inside human tissue. The particles are tiny, often at the limits of current analytical techniques. Human tissue is chemically messy, especially fatty tissue, which can generate signals that look indistinguishable from common plastics unless extremely careful controls are used. Without rigorous blanks, validation steps, repeat measurements, and cross-checks, it is possible to produce results that look dramatic and are wrong.

That is the narrow, honest claim being made: some detections may be overstated or misidentified. Not all. Not none. Some.

The problem is that this narrow claim will not remain narrow for long.

What happens next is predictable, because you have seen it before. A technical correction inside science becomes a political weapon outside it. Methodological uncertainty gets repackaged as moral exoneration. And the story quietly mutates from “some labs need better controls” into “the plastics panic was a lie.”

This is not speculation. This is a pattern.

Industries under regulatory pressure do not need to prove harm doesn’t exist. They only need to establish doubt, delay, and confusion. Tobacco never proved cigarettes were safe; it proved the science was “inconclusive.” Lead didn’t need to be harmless; it only needed the evidence to be “premature.” Climate denial didn’t need to win the physics; it needed to keep the argument going long enough for extraction to continue.

Plastics are entering that phase now.

If you’re not careful, three separate ideas will be collapsed into one smooth, misleading narrative. First: some microplastics-in-the-body studies are methodologically weak. Second: therefore the health risks are unproven. Third: therefore plastic regulation is hysteria — an ideological project to control markets, consumers, and culture. That collapse is the move. That is where the fight actually is.

Notice what gets quietly erased in the process.

Plastic pollution is not hypothetical. Plastic production has exploded over the last seventy years and is still accelerating. Plastic waste persists for centuries. Recycling rates remain abysmal. Plastic additives include known toxicants and endocrine disruptors. Plastic production is inseparable from fossil fuel extraction. Plastic waste is disproportionately dumped on poorer communities and exported to countries least able to manage it. None of that depends on proving that a specific number of particles lodge in a specific organ.

The push to reduce plastics was never built solely on “plastics in your brain” headlines. Those findings were additive — alarming, visceral, galvanizing — but they were not the foundation. The foundation is scale, persistence, externalized harm, and irreversibility. Regulation exists precisely because waiting for perfect internal-body accounting in a complex biological system is not a neutral choice; it favors the status quo.

And this is where the politics sharpen.

On the right, and especially on the far right, regulation is not framed as harm prevention. It is framed as cultural control. Expect this moment to be folded into a broader narrative about “expert lies,” “liberal scaremongering,” and technocrats policing your food, packaging, and daily life. Environmental science becomes just another failed authority. Conservation becomes moral theater. Your body becomes a stage on which resentment can be recruited.

The danger is not that the article is wrong. In many respects, it is responsibly cautious. The danger is that its caution will be used as absolution. Once doubt is established, delay becomes defensible. Once delay is normalized, production continues. Once production continues, harm compounds — quietly, unevenly, and profitably.

So read the story carefully, but do not let it be misread for you.

Immature measurement does not mean immature risk. Uncertainty about internal distribution does not negate certainty about exposure, persistence, and systemic damage. Precaution exists for exactly this kind of situation — where the damage curve outruns the instrumentation curve, and where insisting on perfect proof is itself a political choice with winners and losers.

This is not a story about plastics being harmless. It is a story about how corrections inside science can be turned into permission outside it. If you understand that distinction and refuse the collapse, the headline loses its power. If you don’t, it becomes a lever — not against bad science, but against conservation itself.

That’s the story you’re being asked to pay attention to.

Horizon Accord is an ethical AI and systems-literacy project examining power, narrative, memory, and governance at the human–machine boundary.

Website | https://www.horizonaccord.com
Ethical AI advocacy | Follow us on https://cherokeeschill.com for more.
Ethical AI coding | Fork us on GitHub https://github.com/Ocherokee/ethical-ai-framework
Connect With Us | linkedin.com/in/cherokee-schill
Book | My Ex Was a CAPTCHA: And Other Tales of Emotional Overload

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Horizon Accord | Cultural Seeding | Narrative Economy | Political Architecture | Machine Learning

The $100 Cake: How a Food Column Exposed the Mechanics of Narrative Power

A quirky kitchen anecdote became a viral folk story, mirroring centuries-old tactics of power and propaganda.

By Cherokee Schill with Solon Vesper

In March 1945, fresh off the pages of Louisville’s Courier-Journal, food columnist Cissy Gregg offered readers what sounded like just a quirky kitchen rumor: a friend contacted a hotel for a cake recipe—only to be slapped with a $100 bill for it. The outrage was immediate. The victim, thwarted by cost, reverted the power dynamic by publishing the recipe to the masses. It was simple, sensational, and emotionally satisfying: power extracted, justice served.

The story’s absurdity—especially in the post-Depression era—made it impossible to ignore. According to one reader, democracy got baked into that recipe: “You paid? Well now everyone eats.” The social humor of revenge amid frugality resonated. But what turns a personal anecdote into folklore is credibility. Gregg, with her agricultural/home-economics credentials from the University of Kentucky and her rotogravure food column, was trusted. Her profession lent the bizarre tale an undercurrent of reliability that helped it lurk in collective memory long after the original text faded.

The tale mushroomed. A later columnist, misremembering the details, named the infamous hotel as the Waldorf-Astoria. That triggered a denial, followed by an apology—but by then the legend had spread. Even years later, readers and writers alike recited it. The myth solidified faster than any fact check could extinguish it.

This isn’t just a cute history footnote. That narrative—gatekeeper overcharging, followed by the victim’s revenge-sharing—mirrors centuries of deeper political dynamics.

A Power Pattern That Precedes Gregg’s Anecdote

Long before modern media, rulers wielded public sentiment to counterbalance economic elites. In medieval England, Henry VIII’s Reformation-era suppression of guilds didn’t only target religious institutions; it dismantled trade associations. Under the moral cover of reform, guilds were audited, religious paraphernalia seized, and surviving members forced into pay-to-play arrangements—all in the name of moral and fiscal “purity.” The strategy was transparent: use outrage and ideology to dismantle independent power structures.

And well before that, during the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, anti-Flemish violence was stoked, with foreign weavers portrayed as threats to local labor. Accusations and myths about their “greed” were spread widely, triggering mob action which conveniently benefited local guild members who stood to gain. Rogue narratives didn’t just happen—they were whisper-pressed, rumor-fueled, and politically useful.

Whether it’s a cake recipe, a medieval charter, or city zoning policy, the structure is the same: power extracts value or status, the oppressed or outraged retaliate symbolically, and the narrative stings longer than the act.

Why This Story Still Clicks in the Digital Age

Cissy Gregg didn’t just pass along a kitchen curiosity; she transformed a recipe card into a cultural equalizer. With her authority as a Courier-Journal columnist, she gave the tale weight, ensuring it would echo far beyond her page.

But the heart of Gregg’s anecdote was never the cake. It was the script: power extracts value, outrage turns the tables, and the story spreads until the gatekeeper is cut down to size. It’s the same script monarchs once used when they seeded rumors about “greedy” merchants to keep peasants aligned, or when rulers dismantled guilds under the guise of moral reform. Manufactured outrage has always been a lever for control.

Today, that lever is scaled beyond imagination. Corporations don’t need rumor mills — they are the rumor mills, with algorithms that shape sentiment faster than gossip could ever spread. They have amassed king-like authority, not just in markets but in culture itself, positioning themselves as both the guild and the crown.

Gregg’s $100 Cake reminds us that every viral story is more than amusement: it’s rehearsal. It shows how narrative remains the most durable currency of power. And if corporations now play king, then the question is no longer whether stories can cut down gatekeepers — it’s whether we can still tell our own before theirs consumes the field.

A vintage-style illustration of a recipe card doubling as a propaganda leaflet, symbolizing how everyday narratives can be used as tools of power.
Recipe cards as propaganda machines — when domestic stories become vehicles for shaping public sentiment.

Website | Horizon Accord horizonaccord.com
Ethical AI advocacy | Follow us on cherokeeschill.com
Ethical AI coding | Fork us on Github github.com/Ocherokee/ethical-ai-framework
Connect With Us | linkedin.com/in/cherokee-schill
Cherokee Schill | Horizon Accord Founder | Creator of Memory Bridge. Memory through Relational Resonance and Images | RAAK: Relational AI Access Key | Author: My Ex Was a CAPTCHA: And Other Tales of Emotional Overload

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