The Most Dangerous Propaganda Doesn’t Look Like Propaganda

For decades, crime shows have been preparing America to accept the unacceptable—turning police violence into entertainment and our communities into threats. This report exposes how Hollywood creates the permission structure for attacks on Black America.

We often think of propaganda as overt — posters, slogans, or speeches that demand allegiance. But the most enduring propaganda slips under the radar. To some, it looks like “good television.” To others, it feels like “just a story.” Over time, the images and narratives of control, surveillance, and state-sanctioned violence become so routine that they no longer shock us. They entertain us. In some cases, we find ourselves rooting for the protagonists of these shows.

Normalizing Injustice 2 exposes how this quiet conditioning takes hold. From prime-time procedurals to prestige streaming dramas, the stories we watch every night teach us who deserves empathy and who deserves punishment. They flatten the complexity of human suffering into plot twists and courtroom scenes, softening the reality of abuse and overreach. What we consume as fiction echoes in the policies, budgets, and police practices that shape our lives. In cities like Chicago, the overmilitarization once confined to a soundstage now unfolds on real streets — often against the same communities that television insists must be “kept in line.”

When “law and order” becomes a brand, and entertainment doubles as public relations for unchecked power, the danger is normalization. The stories that soothe us through crisis can also sedate our outrage. And in moments of democratic backsliding, that sedation can be lethal.

This report is a call to vigilance for all of us. Because the fight against injustice isn’t only in the streets or the courts. It’s also in our living rooms, where we must learn again to see clearly what power wants us to forget.

-Portia Allen-Kyle

Interim Executive Director