“The Battle for Men’s Minds”: Subliminal Message as Conspiracy Theory in Seventh-Day Adventist Discourse
This article describes the presence of a subliminal thesis—with conspiratorial and apocalyptic content—in the discourse of the Seventh-day Adventist tradition based on a documentary analysis of Adventist publications from the 1900s to the 1990s. The history of the development of this thesis is class...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2024
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| In: |
Religions
Year: 2024, Volume: 15, Issue: 10 |
| Further subjects: | B
subliminal messages
B Conspiracy Theory B Seventh-day Adventist B Moral Panic |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | This article describes the presence of a subliminal thesis—with conspiratorial and apocalyptic content—in the discourse of the Seventh-day Adventist tradition based on a documentary analysis of Adventist publications from the 1900s to the 1990s. The history of the development of this thesis is classified into three periods: (1) Proto-Adventist Subliminal Thesis, from 1900s to 1940s, with a discourse of anti-spiritualist emphasis; (2) Adventist Subliminal Thesis’ First Wave, from 1950s to 1960s, with a discourse of anti-media emphasis in the context of James Vicary’s experiments in the 1950s; and (3) Adventist Subliminal Thesis’ Second Wave, from 1970s to 1990s, with a discourse of conspiratorial emphasis in the context of the satanic panic of the 1980s and 1990s. The Adventist subliminal thesis is configured in a way of thinking that considers (1) the human being as a “mass-man” and culture as “mass culture”; (2) the media as having the power of manipulation and mental control; (3) adherence to moral panic phenomena as reactions to media threats to traditional values; and (4) the cosmic narrative of the Great Controversy as a worldview for understanding media messages and products as part of a satanic conspiracy. |
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| ISSN: | 2077-1444 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.3390/rel15101276 |
