Article: “The Battle for Men’s Minds”: Subliminal Message as Conspiracy Theory in Seventh-Day Adventist Discourse

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Article: “The Battle for Men’s Minds”: Subliminal Message as Conspiracy Theory in Seventh-Day Adventist Discourse

Date Published: 17 oktober 2024
Author(s): Allan Novaes
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Abstract

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: subliminal messages; Seventh-day Adventist; conspiracy theory; moral panic

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This project is funded by:

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
European Research Council
European Union