How to Help

How you can help in the effort to free Americans from the excessive influence of harmful propaganda and extreme partisanship.

Start with yourself:

1. Realize that you are a victim of propaganda. Remember political messages condition your mind on an unconscious level.
2. Learn the tools of propaganda to recognize if they are being used on you.
3. Take the questionnaire on this site “Are you a victim of Propaganda?”
4. Resist demonizing the Right or Left.
5. Stop assuming that one side is right and all good and the other is wrong and evil.
6. Educate yourself about how partisanship is damaging the capacity for our representatives to govern.

How you can help others:

1. Change the nature of political dialogue. When people bring up politics,talk about propaganda and how it is conveyed, the destructiveness of extreme partisanship, and how demonizing others is a sign one is a victim of propaganda.
2. Help others understand the pervasiveness of the influence of propaganda.
3. Encourage people to come to this website and take the questionnaire.
4. Repeat these ideas to people. It takes time to overcome years of being propagandized.
5. Remember that you are not trying to brainwash others with new propaganda, but you are trying to help them become more free in their thinking.
6. Support news sources, websites, and candidates who are not extremely partisan.

Help children grow up to be more immune to propaganda:

1. Talk to your children about the tools of propaganda and help them recognize these techniques. This could protect your child from being an extremist, joining a cult, or being a victim of other conditioning such as peer pressure or advertising.
2. Encourage your local school board to make sure there are modules in the social science curriculum that teach children the techniques of propaganda.
3. Support state laws that require this kind of curriculum.

How you can further the goals of Propaganda Free America:

1. Consider writing something for this website.
2. Network with others in your community about how to further these goals.
3. If you’re in college consider developing a campus organization that works toward the goals of helping other students recognize propaganda.
4. Encourage others to get involved in supporting eradicating destructive political propaganda “one mind at a time”.
5. Recommend this website and others like it. Help others become familiar with a way of talking about politics that is constructive and doesn’t lead to defense and extreme positions. Help create a third force in our political dialogue that has the goal of healing the divisiveness in American politics.
6. Make a personal effort to talk to people with views that differ from you. Don’t talk to them to try to change them, just share your views and listen closely to theirs. Try to understand what the other person values and how they feel these values may be threatened.
7. Write letters to your local paper about the destructiveness of extreme partisanship and distorting propaganda.

Future goals: There are many possibilities for the future as we receive a strong response to the ideas presented here. Here are some of these future possibilities:

1. We can move to the next step of establishing PFA as a non-profit.
2. We could find financial support through donations or grants to further this work.
3. A speakers bureau could be established for those who want to inspire others to explore this area.