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The Russell Brunson Show
The Propaganda Playbook: Holy War (How the Pentagon Is Selling a Crusade to American Troops) - #Marketing - Ep. 123
00:17:03
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Do you have a funnel? But it's not converting. The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com podcast. That's sellingonline.com podcast. This is the Russell Brunson show. A U.S. military commander told his troops this week President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth. That is not from a church. That's from a combat readiness briefing at an American military base. And over 200 service members have now filed complaints about commanders across every single branch of the military saying the exact same thing. The propaganda technique they're using is over 130 years old, and it might be the most powerful one ever created. Because once you understand how it works, you'll see it everywhere. Not just in wards, but in every movement, every brand, and every business has ever turned customers into true believers. This is the propaganda playbook where I take the biggest stories in the news and decode the propaganda techniques hidden inside of them. And then I'm going to show you how to use the ethical version of those same techniques to grow your business. So that said, let's get right into it. If you watched the last few episodes, you know that the US And Israel launched strikes on Iran just a couple of weeks ago. We broke down how the consent for that war was manufactured step by step before the first bomb ever dropped. If you haven't had a chance to watch that video yet, go and watch after this one. I'll put the link down in the description below, but here's what's happened since then. The war is now in its second week. Eight U.S. servicemen are dead. Over 1200 Iranian civilians are dead. Oil has passed $110 a barrel. And the White House still hasn't given a clear strategic reason for why we're in this war. And into that vacuum, something really wild is happening. Military commanders across every branch are filling gaps with religious language. They're telling troops that this isn't just a war, it's a holy war, and that it's been ordained by God and that it's going to bring about the Armageddon and the return of Jesus Christ. Now, this isn't just some kind of rumor, okay? The Military Religious Freedom foundation has received over 200 complaints from over 50 military installations, every branch from Army Navy, Air Force, Marines, Space Force, all of them. And it goes all the way to the top. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been hosting monthly Christian prayer services inside the Pentagon auditorium, broadcasting them on the Pentagon's internal TV network. He's invited a pastor who has publicly said that women's rights to vote should be repealed and that America should become a Christian theocracy. And Hegseth himself has a Jerusalem cross tattooed on his chest. That's a crusade symbol from the actual medieval Crusades. Okay, now, actually, before I show you that, I want you to see something first, because describing this just doesn't do it justice. The Defense Secretary, the guy who's in charge of the most powerful military on the face of the Earth, just made a video where he's reciting the Lord's Prayer. And they cut it together with some footage of fighter jets launching missiles flying paratroopers jumping out of planes, and an American flag waving. And I'm not speaking this up. Just watch this real quick.
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Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. As we forgive those who trespass against us, deliver us from evil. Amen.
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Okay, so as a propaganda expert, that video is masterful. And I mean that technically, not morally. Forget whether you agree with it or you disagree with it for just a second. Just look at the technique. What they're doing is fusing two identities into one. A soldier and a believer. And once those two identities merge in your mind, then questioning the war becomes the same thing as questioning God. And that is incredibly powerful. And I want to know, did that video move you even a little bit, even if you know exactly what they're doing? And I want you to be honest in the comments, because I think that most people are not going to be willing to admit it, but that clip hits completely differently than a press briefing. And there's a very specific reason for that. So what you just watched has a name in the world of propaganda. It's called sacred propaganda, or what I call the moral crusade. Okay, here's what that means. When a leader wraps a cause in religious language, something fundamental changes. It's no longer a policy debate. It's no longer about strategy or cost benefit analysis or whether this is the right call. It becomes a test of faith. And you cannot argue with someone's faith. That's what makes this the most powerful propaganda technique ever created. Now, in the first episode, I taught you about Edward Bernays, the man who invented public relations, and a lot of people think that Bernays came up with all this stuff from scratch. But he didn't. He had a teacher and his teacher's name was Gustave Le Bon. Le Bon was a French social psychologist who wrote a book in 1895 called the A Study of Popular Mind. And this book I actually have right here is a first edition copy of one of his books. And this book changed everything because Le Bon figured out something that nobody else has put into words before. He said that when an individual forms a crowd, they lose their individual rationality. They become susceptible to three things. Images, symbols and sacred words. Not arguments, not logic, not evidence. Images, symbols and sacred words. And here's the quote from the Bond that I really want you to sit with. The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with the illusions is easily their master. Whoever attempts to destroy their illusion is always their victim. He wrote that in 1895, 130 years ago. And then he said this, and this is the key part. The most powerful propaganda technique in the world is to give a cause the character of a religion. Because religious beliefs operate below logic, they operate at the level of identity. And once something becomes part of someone's identity, no amount of facts or arguments will change their mind. You're not arguing with their brain anymore, you're arguing with their soul. Now Bernays read this book before he ever read Freud. Le Bon was the foundation that everything else was built on. Hitler studied Le Bon, Mussolini studied Le Bon. Every mass movement leader in the 20th century studied this man. And right now in 2026 the same playbook is being run out of the Pentagon. So let me show you how has worked before because this isn't new, this is ancient. In the year 1095, Pope Urban II needed to do something that should have been almost impossible. He needed thousands of Europeans, men, farmers, blacksmiths, normal people to leave their homes, march thousands of miles across the continent and fight and die in the desert for a city most of them had never actually seen against an enemy most of them had never met. Now think about that for a second. How do you get someone to do that? You can't pay them enough, you can't threaten them enough. There's no logical argument that works. Hey, I want you to leave your family, walk for months and probably die in a foreign country. Nobody is going to sign up for that. So what did the Pope do? He didn't make a strategic argument. He stood up at the council of Clement and he told the crowd that God wills it. Deus vult. God wills it. And the crowd started chanting it back. Deus vault. Deus vault. Thousands of men signed up on the spot. They sewed crosses onto their clothing. They literally became crusaders. The identity shift was instant. You weren't a farmer going to war. You were a soldier of God on a sacred mission. And dying wasn't a risk, it was a reward. You go straight to heaven. That was Le Bon's playbook. Give it the character of religion and logic becomes irrelevant. And here's the thing. The Defense Secretary of the United States has that exact symbol tattooed on his chest. A Crusade's Cross in 2026 while commanding a war in the Middle East. Now I'm not tell telling you what to think about that. I'm just asking you to see the technique. And it doesn't stop with the Crusades in World War I. And this is where Bernays comes in. Both sides claimed that God was on their side. German soldiers had got mit uns on their belt buckles which means God with us. Allied propaganda portrayed the war as a Christian crusade against barbarism. Bernays used this make the world safe for democracy. That's not policy, that's a sermon. It's a moral absolute. You're either for it or you're against it. And Le Bon predicted all of this. He wrote that in times of crisis, leaders who spe in absolute moral terms will always defeat leaders who speak in nuance. And that's exactly what's happening right now. Okay, so you might be thinking, okay Russell, the Crusades were thousands of years ago. World War I was 100 years ago. And that's completely fair. So let me show you something from this week.
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This is a religious war. Who wins it? At the end of the day this is a big deal. So what we're facing right now is a moment of decision that will set the course of the future of the Mideast for a thousand years.
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A thousand years. Think about that framing. He didn't say that this will make us safer. He didn't say this protects American interests. He said a thousand years. That's not policy, that's prophecy. That's Le Bon's playbook running in real time on Cable News Network. And I gotta know when you heard him say a thousand years what was your gut reaction? Just type in the comments down below. One word. I want to know what you think about that inside of your gut. Now look, I know that this is heavy. We just went from the Crusades to a sitting U.S. senator calling this a religious war on live television. You might be sitting there wondering what if any of this has to do with growing your business. But here's the thing. The psychology that turns a policy into a crusade, the psychology that fuses someone's identity with the cause so deeply they'll fight and die for it. That's the exact same psychology behind every movement based business that's ever been built. I don't just study this stuff. I'm obsessed with it and I use it every single day. So let me show you what this looks like when the intent is to help people instead of sending them to war. Okay, so when we launched clickfunnels, we weren't the only marketing automation software on the market. There's a bunch of competitors, and most of these software companies then and now, they compete on features. My software does this, their software does that. Mine's got more integrations, theirs has got better analytics, blah, blah, blah. That's a policy, It's a debate. That is logic. And the bond told us 130 years ago that logic loses to identity every single time. So instead of selling software, I built a movement I created on an identity called the first funnel hacker. And everything we did, everything, was designed to make people feel that they weren't just buying a tool. They were joining a tribe. They were becoming something. And when I look at what the Pentagon is doing right now with this holy war language and I compare it to what I built with clickfunnels, the parallels are honestly kind of scary. So let me walk you through them. Okay, number one, the sacred text. Every religion has a sacred text, right? The Bible, the Torah, the Quran, the book of Mormon. It's the foundational document that the entire belief system is built on. Well, for me, I wrote three dotcom secrets, expert secrets, and traffic secrets. And our community doesn't just read these books. They study them, they highlight them. They bring them to their events, they stack them on their desks, and these books became our bible. Number two, the rallying cry. Every crusade has a battle cry. For the crusaders, it was deus vault. God wills it. For us it was. You're just one funnel away. I can tell you right now that if you say that to any of my funnel hackers on the planet, watch as their eyes light up. It means something special to them. It's not just a marketing slogan. It's an identity statement. It's saying, I believe in this and I am part of this. Number three, the gathering. Every religion has a pilgrimage, a place where you travel to where you gather with other believers and you have a shared experience that bonds you together. Ours is funnel hacking live. And I'M telling you that when people show up to that event, they're not coming into a software conference, they're coming into a revival. They fly in from all over the world. They wear their T shirts, they bring their books, they stand in line to get photos. And when somebody walks across that stage and gets their 2 comma club award, meaning they just crossed a million dollars through a funnel, people are crying, the recipients are crying, the audience is crying. I'm usually crying. Okay, Number four, the visible commitment. The crusaders sewed crosses onto their tunics. That's how you showed the world that you were part of this movement. Well, for our people, they put their I build funnel stickers on their laptops. They wear T shirts to the gym. They put the two comma complaques on their office walls. And that's not just branding. That's identity. That's someone telling the world, this is who I am. Number five, the enemy. And this is a big one. Every movement needs something to fight against. For the Crusaders, it was the infidels. For the funnel hackers, it was the traditional website, the old way, the broken mo. I didn't position clickfunnels against leadpages or Infusionsoft. Whatever the competitor of the week was. I positioned them against a category. I said that websites are dead. Funnels are the future. That's not a feature comparison, that's a crusade. And people don't join feature comparisons. They join crusades. I want you to see what this actually looks like in practice.
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How many people ready to get your first click from the world? Somebody said, that's me.
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It's like an Oscar show or something.
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You say it from your dog on heart. I can, I will, I must. Cuz they counting on me.
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All right, Nobody actually cries about software, right? Think about that. Not a single person in that room is crying because of a drag and drop page editor. They're crying because they became something. They found their tribe. They proved to themselves and to the world that they could do it. That is identity. That is Laban's crowd psychology in action. And here's the most beautiful part. It works for good. That person just crossed a million dollars. Their life was actually changed. So let me ask you this, and I really want to hear it. If you're building a business right now, are you selling a product or are you building a movement? What's your deus vault? What's your rallying cry that could turn your customers into a community? Tell me down in the comments below because I want to hear what you guys Come up with. Alright, so here is the framework. And if you'll take nothing else from this episode, take this. I call it the identity stack. And there are five elements that turn a business into a movement. Element number one, the sacred text. What is your foundational teaching? Not a sales page, a manifesto. Something people study, not just read. For me, it was three books. For you, it might be just one. Or maybe it might be a video series or a framework or a challenge. But it has to be the thing that your entire belief system is built on. Element number two, the rallying cry. What's your one sentence that makes your believers light up? You're just one funnel away. Just do it. Think different. It has to be short enough to chant and deep enough to mean something. So what's yours? Element number three, the gathering. Where do your people come together? Could it be a live event? Could it be a Facebook group? Could it be a weekly zoom call? But it has to feel like more than just business meetings. It has to feel like church. People have to walk out of that room differently than when they walked in. Element number four, the visible commitment. How do your people show the world that they belong? A sticker, a shirt, a badge, a hashtag. When someone puts your logo on their laptop, they're doing the same thing the crusaders did when they sewed a cross onto their tunic. They're telling the world, I believe. Element number five, the enemy. What's your movement fighting against? Not a competitor, a broken system, an old way of thinking. People don't get fired up about being slightly better than the alternative. They get fired up about replacing a broken paradigm with something new. If you have all five of those, you don't have a business. You have a movement. And movements don't compete on price because price is logic and identity is religion. Okay, so here's the question I keep circling back to with this one. It's probably the hardest question I've asked in any of these videos so far. Le Bon said 130 years ago that the masses have never thirsted after truth. They thirst after illusions. And whoever supplies those illusions becomes easily their master. So when I build a movement around click funnels and people are crying at my events and they're wearing the shirts and they're putting plaques on their walls. I've had people literally tattoo our logo onto their bodies. Am I giving them the truth or am I giving them a really compelling illusion? When those military commanders tell the troops that this war is God's divine plan to bring about the end times, is that really any different, or is the same psychology pointed in a different direction? I honestly don't have a clean answer for that one, and I've been thinking a lot about this since we started making these episodes. The line between a movement that changes lives and a crusade that destroys them might be thinner than any of us are willing to admit. If you think about that kind of stuff too, I would love to hear where you stand in the comments down below. Now, what I just showed with you is literally just one technique from a playbook that's been built over 130 years. It started with Gustave Le Bon figuring out the crowds aren't driven by reason, they're driven by images, symbols, and sacred words. Then Sigmund Freud mapped out the unconscious mind underneath all of it. Then Edward Bernays took both of their ideas and weaponized them to sell wars, overthrow governments, and rewire what entire countries desire and fear. And then a man, my mentor named Dan Kennedy figured out how entrepreneurs could use those same dark arts ethically. And I spent the last 20 years taking all of it and turning into a system that bootstrapped clickfunnels past a billion dollars in sales without any venture capital. And I actually made a video that tells the entire story from Freud to Bernays and how to use the exact same techniques today to sell anything online. And if what you just saw in this video fascinates you, then that video is going to blow your mind. So go to secretsofpropaganda.com or hit the link in the descriptions and go watch it right now while this is fresh. And if you haven't already subscribed yet, please do. Because this is the propaganda playbook. Every episode I take a big story from the news. I decode the propaganda behind it. I show you how to use the exact same techniques to grow your business. Same science, same playbook, different story. The next episode is coming soon and I'll see you on the next one.