Keeping Our Minds Free

How to Recognize Manipulation and Propaganda — and Stay Human Inside Them

This week’s piece is a little different.

It’s personal, political, and historical — all braided together. Because if we truly want to keep tending our small gardens of joy and community, we need to talk about how our thinking gets shaped, narrowed, and sometimes quietly stolen.

The most dangerous kind of control isn’t physical.

It’s when you start thinking someone else’s thoughts.

When you’re so tired, afraid, or emotionally flooded that you stop asking questions.

So today, we’re going to slow down, breathe, and think together.

Because the world is loud, and fear is profitable. And the only antidote is awareness, clarity, and compassion.

“The most dangerous kind of control isn’t physical.

It’s when you start thinking someone else’s thoughts.”

Why Manipulation Works

Manipulation isn’t something that happens only to “other people.”

It happens to all of us — because we’re human.

We’re wired to belong.

Wired to scan for cues about what’s acceptable.

Wired to avoid rejection — because once, rejection meant death.

And in a modern world where we’re tired, overworked, overstimulated, and constantly scrolling? Manipulation works even better.

Fear short-circuits reflection.

It makes us cling to the loudest voice promising safety.

It nudges us away from nuance and deeper thinking.

So no — none of us are immune.

Especially in times of uncertainty.

How Quickly We Can Turn

When I taught Night — Elie Wiesel’s memoir of surviving Auschwitz — I didn’t just want my students to learn about history. I wanted them to see how it could happen again.

So we looked at two experiments.

Jane Elliott’s classroom.

After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, she told her third-grade students that blue-eyed children were superior to brown-eyed children. Within minutes, they turned on each other. The next day, she reversed the hierarchy. And the dynamic flipped again.

The Milgram experiment.

A man in a white lab coat instructed volunteers to administer electric shocks to a stranger in another room. Most people obeyed — even when the “shocks” caused screams. Even when the person begged them to stop.

All it took was a calm voice of authority saying, “Please continue.”

These weren’t evil people.

They were regular people.

They were us.

How Propaganda Works

Propaganda isn’t old news.

It isn’t limited to Nazi posters or Soviet films.

Propaganda is repetition.

Propaganda is emotion over logic.

Propaganda shapes what we even dare to think about.

Today, it shows up everywhere:

In ads whispering,

“You’re not quite enough — but buy this, and maybe you will be.”

In outrage media that profits from fear and scandal.

In political narratives that feed the powerful while teaching you to be grateful for crumbs.

Stacey Abrams said it plainly:

“Autocracy doesn’t begin with tanks. It begins with laws that silence voters. With narratives that tell you to fear your neighbour. With distraction.”

The danger is never just what propaganda makes us believe.

It’s what it teaches us not to question.

The Power — and Danger — of Language

Words matter.

Labels matter.

Because once you label someone, you no longer need to understand them.

Think of how easily we throw around:

• “Woke.”

• “Snowflake.”

• “MAGA.”

• “Commie.”

• “Illegal alien.”

That last one especially.

“Illegal,” as if a whole human being can be reduced to paperwork.

“Alien,” as if they’re some non-human threat.

Yet these so-called “illegal aliens” are often the people who pick your fruit, wash your dishes, build your home. They are workers. Parents. Dreamers.

Just like your ancestors once were.

A Personal Truth

My own lineage is a migration story: French, Lebanese, Syrian, Russian.

Unless you’re Indigenous — on whose land we stand — you likely have one too.

Canada is a country built on movement, risk, contradiction, and reinvention.

It offered second chances.

It also displaced nations.

It stole children.

It created hierarchies where some lives mattered more than others.

We need to hold both truths.

The beauty and the harm.

The compassion and the accountability.

And resist anything that tries to flatten the complexity.

A Widening Threat

We’re not immune to manipulation now.

There are places in this country where division is growing.

Where culture wars arrive prepackaged from elsewhere.

Where misinformation spreads faster than trust.

The more divided we become, the easier we are to control.

Fear pushes us into simple binaries:

us vs. them,

right vs. wrong,

good people vs. bad people.

When fear leads, we stop listening.

We stop asking hard questions.

We stop thinking for ourselves.

Mandela’s Lesson

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison.

When he walked out, he didn’t emerge bitter.

He emerged committed to healing — to community, to dialogue, to building a future rather than avenging the past.

He said:

“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew that if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”

Manipulation doesn’t just steal our minds.

It steals our compassion.

It makes us forget how deeply we belong to one another.

So What Do We Do?

We begin by paying attention.

By noticing patterns.

By slowing down.

By refusing to shut down or turn away.

We question the labels.

We examine the stories.

We hold space for nuance — and for each other.

And we remember:

We don’t have to agree on everything to care about one another.

In the day-to-day, this is where it starts:

• Limit the noise. Choose one or two trusted news sources and check them at set times.

• Pause before sharing. Ask: Do I know where this comes from? Could I be spreading harm?

• Cross-check stories. Look for the same event in at least two very different outlets.

• Schedule “slow news” days. Turn outward to the real world, not the feed.

• Talk in person. Especially with people who see things differently.

These are not dramatic gestures.

They are small anchors.

And small anchors keep us steady when the water gets rough.

A Personal Shift

Over the last months, I’ve gone inward.

I’ve been cutting through the noise in my own life — not by force, but by turning my attention toward what steadies me.

More yoga.

More writing.

More silence.

More walking with my dog.

More crafting with my hands — letting the slow rhythm of making things loosen something inside me.

More real conversations, spoken honestly and simply.

And in that slowing down, my own mind has shifted.

I’m less pulled by the currents of outrage.

Less interested in the constant drip of crisis.

Less willing to give my energy to things that feed on fear.

I’ve been turning toward the light — the light in me, and the light I want to offer the world.

And learning, slowly, how to protect it.

“We turn toward the light so we can become a light for someone else.”

Because that’s what all of this is really about.

Not perfection.

Not purity.

Not winning an argument.

But staying human.

Staying whole.

Staying awake without becoming consumed.

We protect our minds so we can protect our compassion.

We clear away the noise so we can hear our own inner voice.

We turn toward the light so we can become a light for someone else.

That, more than anything, is what keeps us free.