This chapter focuses on the concept of the "frontier" in terms of American westward expansion, and the way that the general settler population was able to justify westward expansion due to the myth of the "vanishing Indian". It was more convenient for them to ignore the violent displacement of Indigenous nations when the common narrative being toted by the government AND by popular media of the time was that they were just fading away. Fading away is one way to put genocide, and the narrative of them disappearing also went hand in hand with it being their fault for not assimilating.

It also discussed the framing of massacres as battles in a war as opposed to... You know... massacres, and it just makes me think of how so many atrocities in our history are framed similarly, as well as so many present day atrocities.

The way American settlers treated westward expansion as a mission to "civilize", and massacres as hard-won battles is a direct reflection of what settlers are and have been doing in Palestine for ages. I couldn't help but think of all of the propaganda about "Israel" "making the desert bloom"... By killing off native plants and planting invasive species, as well as the passive voice that US media looooves using about how people are dying and starving, without actually acknowledging the fact that they are undergoing a genocide and a man-made famine.

I remember there being a discussion in the club forum a while back about conservative ideologies and bigotry being snuck into sci-fi/fantasy books, and there's a portion of this first chapter that reminded me of that! Newitz discusses a link between intelligence agents/propagandists and science fiction and brings up a few notable people who also had secret pennames that they wrote under. It's interesting how many people were using sci-fi as a tool to spread anti-comminist propaganda, but it was also interesting how many intelligence agents used their works to write about the role of/process of creating psyops. One part that really stuck out to me was:

"Alice Shelden, a CIA analyst in the 1950s, wrote secretly under the name James Tiptree Jr.; one of her most famous stories, "The Girl Who Was Plugged In," is about a future where corporations build remote controlled cyborg influencers to become pop-stars and shill products."

It makes me think of the role of influencers on propaganda and psyops today. The tradwife trend comes to mind here.

would tolkien have died if he hadn't put a song on every page of this book ? the movies could've been musicals