The power of mass media to shape minds is a power well proven. One only has to view presentations such as Media War—produced by a genuine seeker after truth, photojournalist Russel Gordon, revealing the powerfully deceitful media machine’s biased portraits of the Balkan wars resulting in the demonizing of the Serbs—to be appalled at the degree to which public opinion can be swayed by the mass media.

Joseph Goebbels was one who knew his trade well. During the Nazi era, Hitler’s minister for propaganda seized on the power of the new media technology of the day, radio, to peddle the Nazi message to the masses. Of the experience of living in a totalitarian state, subject to a continual barrage of state-controlled propaganda, journalist William Shirer observed, “[A] steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one’s mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda” (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich).

The European Union has at its disposal a power that Goebbels never dreamed of: the Worldwide Web.

The EU is currently on course to become the first united trading and political entity to achieve 100 percent broadband coverage throughout its 27-nation combine. Only 7 percent off this target at the moment, according to a recent survey by the European Commission, the EU plans to achieve 100 percent high-speed Internet coverage across Europe by 2010. To ensure that it reaches this goal, the Commission earmarked the €5 billion investment necessary for this purpose in its economic recovery plan put forward last November.

Despite liberal sentiments to the contrary, the most powerful ideological influence over the minds of Europeans remains its traditional religion, Roman Catholicism. It is thus no accident that the Vatican itself has thrust to the forefront in the use of high-tech means of mass communication.

The Vatican has long had a well-established wireless presence through Vatican Radio and its own print journals of record in numerous languages. In addition, Rome holds a strong presence in the television market through numerous avenues such as ewtn as well as having its own well-established, user-friendly website offering speedy updates on Pope Benedict’s homilies and regular treatises to the faithful.

A year ago, the Vatican launched its own Web-based television channel, H20, broadcasting in seven languages, and even more recently has established its presence on YouTube.

Add to all this media power currently controlled by Brussels/Berlin and Rome the highly interactive EuroparlTV website, offering four platforms targeted by the European Parliament to specific market segments in 20 languages, and it is easy to see which religious and political entities are best poised to take full advantage of the broadband communications era—the European Union and the Vatican. Together they have the potential to become the most dominant force in mass communications, globally!

In propaganda terms, already the EU has proven its ability to sway the minds of the masses. Witness the Irish vote where the EU has twice made it apparent that it will force its undemocratic agenda on the Irish electorate regardless of prevailing public opinion. As the Arabic newspaper Arab News muses, “When is a democratic vote not a democratic vote? Answer: When the outcome does not suit the powers that be.”

Pointing to the Irish vote against signing up to the Lisbon Treaty, Arab News notes, “Europe itself is not above … refusal to accept a public vote that does not suit its purposes. This June, Irish voters rejected the EU’s Lisbon Treaty in a referendum. The Irish vote placed massive doubt over the future of the pact designed to bring more European integration, for all 27 European member states have to ratify the treaty for it to come into force …. So the Irish are to be invited to vote again …” (Dec. 13, 2008).

But just as in the first instance when the Irish voted no to entering the European Monetary Union, the EU simply cranks up the propaganda machine and floods the presses and the airwaves with distortions geared to bending the minds of the electorate to its will. In all of this it has a compliant press and mass media machine eating out of its hand. Thus will the second Irish vote be destined to magically change from a resounding “no” to a whimpering “yes”!

As Shirer observed of the results that Goebbels’s propaganda enterprise had on the minds of the masses during the Nazi era, “[O]ne realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were” (op. cit.).

The machinery of EU propaganda is already well entrenched.

With the EU having the potential to supply broadband access to 100 percent of its 491 million population by the year 2010, as the market moves increasingly away from traditional radio, tv and print media to Web-based sources of information controlled by the user, both the European Union and the Vatican will soon be in prime positions to communicate their messages to the whole European continent, and beyond, via high-speed Internet connection.

When one really understands the import of Bible prophecies such as those revealed in Revelation 13:11-15, the implications of all this mass media power in the possession of the European Union become truly staggering!

Read our booklet Who or What Is the Prophetic Beast? for a real eye-opener on this subject!