The Nature of Propaganda

I'm posting in reverse order a few comments from Today in Iraq.

This discussion about propaganda is critically important for us, the sane
people of the world, to understand the depth and scope of what we are dealing with.

As a sidenote, I bought Alex Carey's book titled "Taking the Risk Out of
Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty" several years
ago to track down how people's minds were being manipulated. I tried to
get the Mankato Green Party folks to think strategically about this and to
work on ways to take back the terms of the debate, but to no avail. They
were too well brainwashed to be "victims" and "protestors" and were
incapable of thinking otherwise. Unfortunately, I'm a nobody in the middle
of nowhere with no money and no connections, so George Lakoff gets all the
credit for coming up with something I had already thought about 4 years
before he brought it up.

On to the comments.

"But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success
unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with
unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat
them over and over." -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 184

"The purpose of propaganda is not to provide interesting distraction for
blasé young gentlemen, but to convince the masses. But the masses are slow
moving, and they always require a certain time before they are ready even
to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are repeated
thousands of times will the masses finally remember them." -- Adolf Hitler,
Mein Kampf, p. 185

Remember - propaganda can be destructive or constructive.

Malooga | Email | Homepage | 02.21.05 - 5:23 pm | #


[...] For those who want to truly understand the truth of what dialectic is
stating - the truly massive all-encompassing nature of the propaganda mill
that we call "the media", here is audio lesson two:

TUC Radio: Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda

Summary: The people of the US have been subjected to the most costly,
unparallelled, 3/4 century propaganda effort by corporations in order to
expand corporate rights, limit democracy and destroy the unions. This is
the history From WWI to Reagan.

This 1988 program from TUC radio is a classic and Maria Gilardin's most
requested program to this day. Send her a few $ if you feel so moved.

Also check out the host site as the web's foremost repository of radical
radio programming.

The Harris poll results are certainly disheartening, but remember polls
often exist so that the elites can use the results to "reinforce what we
should be thinking and feeling". Also, public opinion can change rapidly
and dramatically with a few external precipitating events - especially
among a populace that is so ignorant. [...]

Malooga | Email | Homepage | 02.21.05 - 2:05 pm | #


DJ wrote :

"Latest Harris Poll shows how ignorant many Americans are."

"Obviously, the "mainstream" news is NOT doing their job."

My comment :

Well, DJ, your statement simply is not factually correct. Your evaluation
is just about exactly 180 deg. off.

In fact the "mainstream" news is doing its job perfectly. The additional
information you posted proves it.

The "mainstream" news is the voice of corporate control and domination.
Keeping the masses ignorant is their primary function, a job they perform
brilliantly and effectively. Subserviant to their corporate masters in the
sector of finance capital - the people Chomsky referred to as "The
(self-imagined) Masters of Mankind" - the press makes certain to denigrate
truth and human compassion. The evidence suggests, overwhelmingly, that
for more than twenty years they have not once faltered in that task.

You seem to believe that the press has some sort of obligation to expose
corruption, or "speak truth to power."

Huh? Where did you get such misguided notions?

dialectic | Email | Homepage | 02.21.05 - 1:03 pm | #



Latest Harris Poll shows how ignorant many Americans are

Obviously, the "mainstream" news is NOT doing their job. What are
we going to do with all of the ingorant masses? No wonder support
for the war in Iraq (and Mr. Bush) is STILL so high... its being
padded by ignoramuses who think they found WMD in Iraq, that Saddam
had ties to Osama, and that Saddam's Iraq somehow posed a threat to
the USA.

DJ

---

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/latest.asp

Highlights:

64 percent believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al Qaeda
(up slightly from 62% in November).

61 percent believe that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was a serious
threat to U.S. security (down slightly from 63% in November).

...More surprising perhaps are the large numbers (albeit not
majorities) who believe the following claims not made by the
president and which virtually no experts believe to be true:

47 percent believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the
hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001 (up six
percentage points from November).

44 percent actually believe that several of the hijackers who
attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis (up significantly from
37% in November).

36 percent believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when
the U.S. invaded (down slightly from 38% in November).

DJ | Email | Homepage | 02.21.05 - 5:42 am | #

Money is NOT the measure of all things

I was just reading about Health Canada taking an ADHD med off the market at Bellaciao. I had just read last night in E.F. Schumacher’s "Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered" that we have GOT to get a grip on the economic "matrix" where growers can’t afford to GROW organically but they are happy if they can BUY organic. What’s up with that?

This whole business paradigm we’ve been forced to live under HAS GOT TO CHANGE! Money/profit is NOT the measure of all things and we’d better start taking LIFE seriously as IRREPLACEABLE and start treating it like the bona fide miracle it is.

Along with the lawyers, we need to shoot the Scrooges of the world who have lost their heart and believe only in ideology. These people are insane, because the final arbiter of moral truth is the human heart and our capacity for compassion, not on imposing a false god on people.

Right & Wrong: Politics and Fascism

I was reading an article about the far-right wingers in Germany trying to regain a foothold in politics.

An Infratest Dimap poll for WDR television on Sunday put support for far-right parties in North Rhine-Westphalia at three percent, up one percent from January, but still below the five percent threshold needed to enter parliament there. ...

Schroeder pledged to counter all attempts to distort history and hinted he would make a fresh attempt to ban the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) which helped organize the march.

The NPD provoked outrage last month by walking out of an event at Saxony state's Dresden-based parliament to mark the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp and calling the air raids a "bombing holocaust."

NPD leader Udo Voigt was quoted in an interview with Die Welt newspaper on Saturday expressing admiration for Adolf Hitler. "Only great leaders can commit great crimes," he was quoted as saying.

What I don't understand is how people can be so mixed up about what is truly right and truly wrong in life. While there is little that is clearly black and white, this is one of those things that doesn't bear much equivocation no matter how relativistic anyone wants to make this.

What is wrong with Christianity?

In the previous post I mentioned the Enlightenment of Europe.

To go off on a tangent, it is here that the power of Christianity lost most of its credibility as a source of moral authority, resting as it does on superstition and political authoritarianism which it could no longer hold in the face of actual knowledge debunking religious dogma. Unfortunately, the history of Christianity to prevent violence and bloodshed in the name of God is almost non-existent and therefore has little to offer what does not already exist. In fact, its history and its current functioning in America as the last bastion of ignorant and illiterate people to feel good about themselves renders it a failure as a reasoning and wise teaching to follow.

Those people who manage to understand and practice the wiser parts of Christianity are themselves wiser and more spiritually evolved people to begin with and so are capable of rising above their superstitious brethren. As far as I'm concerned, the more wise have a duty to further the wiser elements and expunge its own ignorance of universal truth and reality. But if this is not possible, then perhaps they should find a better teaching.

On the moral development end of things, Christianity is essentially on the lowest rung with it's emphasis on black & white thinking, submission to authority, and on the carrot & stick method of punishment & reward for inducing good behavior. Sound familiar? This what parenting of children is like. It also the doctrine of the Conservative Movement.

To stay stuck at this level is to have one's moral development arrested making any further growth into internalizing moral behavior for its own sake and then developing a true understanding of the basis of morality all but impossible. This is where America stands today, morally arrested, stuck in narcissistic childhood, incapable of delayed gratification and long-term thinking, and uncaring of anyone but itself. As such, it is a failed religion just as America is a failed democracy. Both of these either need to evolve into something more humane, reasonable, and wise, or be replace with something better.

What is wrong with America?

America, like the Assyrian, Greek, and Roman civilizations before it, is a failed experiment in the grand scheme of things. For those who study ancient history and cultural anthropology, it is clear, at least to me, that America is headed right off the cliff into catastrophic failure.

The indications of this collapse go all the way back to the initial conditions of what brought forth America in the first place. Since America is an extension of European and Western thought, there are certain doctrines and ideas that permeate American culture which have been whipped up into the worst kind of ideology.

The most prominent doctrines are:
• Absolute individualism morphed into a doctrine of narcissistic and infantile indulgence
• An atomistic view that fails to see the deep interconnections between all phenomena
• A dualistic view of the universe creating a battle between matter and spirit

Later came the notion that competition is the rule in nature and hence, is the rule in human relations. These combine to create the economic doctrine of Social Darwinism--that poverty is a genetic disorder not a spiritual disorder.

Out of the Enlightenment period of Europe also comes the machine model of life that removes the awe and mystery of a universe capable of bringing forth life within it.

All these factors have combined to create the most disintegrated society, the most dysfunctional human being, and the worst ignorance the human mind is capable of.

Too bad we don't a 5150 hold on psychotic tyrants and governments. The 5150 hold is a California law that enables law enforcement to take into custody psychotic individuals who pose an immenent danger to themselves or others. For what else could we call the current American and British government's hellbent homicidal/suicidal military and greedy economic misadventurism but psychotic?