David Kupelian: The Marketing of Evil

How Radicals, Elitists and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom

WND Books, 2005     Amazon.com

Book Description:

Americans have come to tolerate, embrace and even champion many things that would have horrified their parents’ generation – from easy divorce and unrestricted abortion-on-demand to extreme body piercing and teaching homosexuality to grade-schoolers. Does that mean today’s Americans are inherently more morally confused and depraved than previous generations? Of course not, says veteran journalist David Kupelian. But they have fallen victim to some of the most stunningly brilliant and compelling marketing campaigns in modern history. The Marketing of Evil reveals how much of what Americans once almost universally abhorred has been packaged, perfumed, gift-wrapped and sold to them as though it had great value. Highly skilled marketers, playing on our deeply felt national values of fairness, generosity and tolerance, have persuaded us to embrace as enlightened and noble that which all previous generations since America’s founding regarded as grossly self-destructive – in a word, evil.

About the Author:

David Kupelian is the managing editor of WorldNetDaily.com, the world’s largest independent news Web site. He is also a widely read online columnist and the driving force behind the acclaimed monthly news magazine Whistleblower. Growing up in Washington, DC, Kupelian was heavily exposed to the issues of the day by his father, one of the nation’s top missile defense scientists. After spending years immersed in the fine arts as a noted young violinist, Kupelian’s fascination with the news world led him in a different direction. After serving as managing editor of the national news analysis magazine New Dimensions (where he met WorldNetDaily founder Joseph Farah), Kupelian became the co-founder and creative director of TriMedia Communications, an advertising-marketing firm established to help traditional values-oriented organizations present their messages effectively. He lives in the Northwest with his wife and children.

JOB’s Comment:

The publisher now advertises this as a modern classic, in its 11th printing; and there are currently 268 customer reviews on Amazon.com. As with many analyses of American culture and society of this kind, much of it is just as relevant in a Europe that was long systematically Americanized. Not quite all. There are, naturally, some elements in his vision of the America he defends against the marketed evil that are foreign to most Europeans. I also find the unqualified, derogatory use of “elitists” in the subtitle problematic. The author should have spoken not just of “pseudo-experts” but also of “pseudo-elitists”. There are true and false elites, good and evil. But on the whole, this is probably one of the most important recent critical works in this genre, for Americans and Europeans alike, and indeed for much of the rest of the world.