Not the sort of book to be consumed in the hubbub of one’s favourite tapas bar, Endless Propaganda is a challenging analysis of the links between government, media, advertising, and the democratic process.

An Ontario academic known for his media-related research, Rutherford explores how advocacy advertising over the last three decades has “colonized the political, social, and moral realms of the public sphere in affluent democracies.” Drawing on the theories of scholars such as Antonio Gramsci, Jurgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, Paul Ricoeur, and Jean Baudrillard, Rutherford’s analysis focuses heavily on developments in the United States, with lesser attention to Canada, Britain, and Western Europe. He analyzes numerous advertising campaigns devoted to marketing everything from Bill Clinton and Margaret Thatcher to safe sex and fitness, showing how the idea of a public good has been hijacked by a variety of partisan bodies.

According to Rutherford, “the propaganda of the past decades has had two long-term, if contradictory, effects on the public: it has worked to manufacture both militancy and indifference.” He maintains that the public advocacy phenomenon, which began in the U.S. in the 1960s and spread rapidly via the proliferation of television, causes those dedicated to a position to become more righteous. That inflexibility undermines research and rational debate. As many TV network specials demonstrate, what passes for public debate has become a stultifying series of for-or-against arguments posited by smug talking heads. Such debates exclude most citizens and solve nothing, while giving the impression that something is being done. The result is increased apathy and disengagement.

Whether or not the reader agrees with Rutherford, this excellent, thought-provoking work is to be read, pondered, reread, and argued over.