Tag: propaganda

Who Controls the Public Mind?

Some of the greatest political literature of the 20th century was written during years of violence, war, and upheaval between 1934 to 1946. During such times, the world of ideas leaves the parlor games and comes to affect the fate of millions. These are moments that divide the serious scholars from the pretenders.

During a crisis, from a career point of view, it is always better to stay silent. To speak out risks everything. It requires more than courage. It requires a willingness to put it all on the line to see one’s ideas realized in the real world. It’s also when intellectuals can have their greatest impact on the world. And yet, few do it. Few stand up when they are most needed.

One of my favorite thinkers from this entire period is F.A. Hayek, a monetary economist at the University of Vienna who left (as many did) to take residence in London at the London School of Economics. There he quickly established himself as the alternative to John Maynard Keynes, whose new theories contradicted the whole of classical economics.

Keynes was riding high as the guru of fascistic experiments the world over, even to the point of writing an introduction to the German edition of his book in 1936 when the Nazis were firmly in power. He celebrated the regime and its potential.

In contrast, Hayek represented old-world liberalism. Before his move to London, Hayek had been hard at work on theoretical problems involving capital structures, interest rate signaling issues, pricing as an information tool, the unworkability of socialism, and other such matters. His work in this area ultimately won him the Nobel Prize in 1974.

In the midst of the Second World War, Hayek was alarmed to see England take the direction of economic central planning, different in degree but not in kind to what was happening in Europe and the United States. The new system that had emerged from the Great Depression combined government and the largest corporate sectors into a single unit managed from the top.

His core critique was that no planners could possess the knowledge necessary to make these systems work in any way that would benefit the whole. The answer to social problems was not to assign the job of planning to intellectuals with resources and power, as was being done all over the world. Their plans would necessarily override the planning of individuals and families.

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‘Trojan Horse For Partisan Media’: Seattle Mayoral Frontrunner Wants To Force Taxpayers To Subsidize Biased News Outlets

With left-leaning news outlets in serious decline thanks to a decade of TDS-fueled propaganda, Seattle Mayoral frontrunner Katie Wilson wants to use taxpayer money to fund vouchers that can be used for “local news outlets” of choice. 

The plan to pass out the $100 vouchers would be funded through “a small property tax levy, a capital gains tax, or a digital ad tax,” journalist Jason Rantz reports.

In a recent interview on the Mostly Economics podcast, Wilson framed her proposal as a response to what she calls the “crisis in the journalism industry.” She lamented that “we do not have a sustainable financial model for supporting local news outlets” and suggested that taxpayers pick up the tab through “a small property tax levy, a capital gains tax, or a digital ad tax.” On The Jason Rantz Show on Seattle Red 770 AM, she admitted that it’s not necessarily a fully developed plan and that it’s intended to help smaller media outlets, like websites, and possibly radio.

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Leaked docs expose billionaire network funding pro-Israel ‘digital militias’

Leaked files published by The Grayzone on 6 October show that Israeli officials enlisted US billionaires to bankroll covert “digital militias” run by former intelligence operatives, tasked with undermining and monitoring pro-Palestinian activism across the US.

The Grayzone reported that the plan, code-named “12 Tribes,” was spearheaded by former Israeli army chief and defense minister Benny Gantz.

He was tasked with recruiting western financiers, among them technology magnate Larry Ellison and his son David, now owner of Paramount and CBS News.

The documents reveal a campaign designed to recruit “an exclusive group of the 12 most influential Jewish philanthropists, symbolizing the 12 Jewish tribes; Israel’s government shall act as a 13th, facilitating ‘tribe.’”

Internal planning papers from Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies described the 12 Tribes as “a non-hierarchical mothership, working for the people and the state” of Israel. 

Organizers stressed the need to conceal official involvement.

“Government money is also a political constraint,” one planner wrote, while another added, “In the jungle, we need more guerrillas and less IDF.”

The files also identify other billionaires solicited to fund the operation, including Oracle founder Larry Ellison, media mogul Haim Saban, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and Westfield Group co-founder Frank Lowy. 

Contributors were expected to donate $1 million each to a fund directed by the Israeli government to underwrite surveillance firms such as Black Cube, which planned to use “state-of-the-art cyber technology” against the BDS movement.

After his reported involvement with Israeli officials, David Ellison acquired Paramount Global and installed self-described “Zionist fanatic” Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News.

Larry Ellison’s Oracle, alongside Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz, is set to hold a controlling stake in TikTok’s new US entity under a deal backed by Donald Trump.

Oracle will manage user data from Texas, giving Ellison – already named in the 12 Tribes Israeli influence scheme – a powerful position over one of the most influential social platforms, further tightening the overlap between pro-Israel corporate power and US social media infrastructure.

Israel has also contracted US firms to shape online narratives in its favor, including a $6-million deal with Brad Parscale’s Clock Tower X LLC to “train ChatGPT” toward pro-Israel messaging and flood Gen Z social media feeds with state propaganda. 

The plan integrates content across TikTok, YouTube, and conservative Christian outlets while Google runs a separate $45-million campaign for Netanyahu’s office to deny famine in Gaza.

Despite these efforts, new US polls show record declines in public support for Israel, especially among young adults.

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Israel To Spend Up To $4.1 Million on Propaganda Campaign Targeting American Christians

The Israeli Foreign Ministry is planning to spend up to $4.1 million for a propaganda campaign that will target American evangelical Christians, a project that’s being sold as the “largest Christian Church Geofencing Campaign in US history.”

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on a federal filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act that shows the Israeli ministry has hired a newly formed US-based firm, Show Faith by Works LLC, which will target churchgoers with digital ads that are explicitly “pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian.”

The campaign will also involve creating a mobile “October 7 experience” that will visit Christian colleges, churches, and events. The document says the experience will involve a custom-built trailer designed by “Hollywood experts,” virtual reality headsets, set pieces, and full-length TVs for an “interactive experience.”

The filing lists hundreds of churches in California, Texas, Colorado, and Arizona that will be targeted by the information campaign. According to an invoice, Show Faith by Works expects to receive $3.25 million from the Israeli Foreign Ministry over a five-month period and includes a potential additional $835,000 for equipment and expansion of the campaign.

The document, which was filed on September 27, says one of the activities of the campaign will be to “combat low American Evangelical Christian approval of the Nation of Israel.”

One of the goals of the campaign is to use “a combination of personal and professional outreach to the Christian Community, combined with digital targeting and social media outreach to increase positive associations with the Nation of Israel while linking the Palestinian population with extremist factions.”

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Erasing Encephalitis — Why Vaccine Brain Injuries Became Autism

I’ve long believed that public relations (propaganda) is one of the most powerful but invisible forces in our society. Again and again, I’ve watched professional PR firms create narratives that most of the country believes, regardless of how much it goes against their self-interests.

What’s most remarkable is that despite the exact same tactics being used repeatedly on the public, most people simply can’t see it. When you try to point out exactly how they’re being bamboozled by yet another PR campaign, they often can’t recognize it — instead insisting you’re paranoid or delusional.

That’s why one of my major goals in this publication has been to expose this industry. Once you understand their playbook — having “independent” experts push sculpted language that media outlets then repeat — it becomes very easy to spot, and saves you from falling into the traps most people do. The COVID-19 vaccines, for instance, were facilitated by the largest PR campaign of our lifetime.

One of the least appreciated consequences of this industry is that many of our cultural beliefs ultimately originate from PR campaigns.1 This explains why so many widely believed things are “wrong” — if a belief were actually true, it wouldn’t require a massive PR investment to instill in society. Due to PR’s power, the viewpoints it instills tend to crowd out other cultural beliefs.

In this article, we’ll take a deeper look at what’s behind one of those implanted beliefs: “vaccines don’t cause autism.”

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MTG Demands Israel-Linked Influencers Register as Foreign Agents Amid $7,000 Per Post Scandal

The “Esther Project,” as detailed in Cleveland-Stout’s investigation, was coordinated through US-based PR firm Bridge Partners and managed in cooperation with Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It reportedly allocated more than half a million dollars for influencer payments between June and September 2025, all with the goal of quietly shaping American public opinion and policy using paid social content—without transparent disclosure of foreign sponsorship.

Cleveland-Stout reports:

“In a meeting dedicated to harnessing pro-Israel media energy on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alluded to a cohort of Israel’s influencers. ‘We have to fight back. How do we fight back? Our influencers. I think you should also talk to them if you have a chance, to that community, they are very important.’
Being paid by Israel to post on social media is also very lucrative. According to previously unreported recent documents, these influencers are likely being paid around $7,000 per post on social media such as TikTok and Instagram on behalf of Israel.”

Citing the legal backbone behind her demand, MTG quoted the Foreign Agents Registration Act:

“Foreign governments routinely engage in efforts to influence our domestic and foreign policies, legislation, democratic processes, and public opinion. These governments sometimes exert this influence by employing lobbyists, public relations professionals, prominent businesspeople, or former U.S. government officials on their behalf. Such efforts are legal—if they are transparent. Originally enacted in 1938, the Foreign Agents Registration Act—known as FARA—helps the American people and their elected officials understand who is really behind such influence activity. The statute requires persons working on behalf of foreign governments or other foreign principals (including Americans) to disclose their relationships to foreign principals and information about their activities. Agents who fail to register are violating federal law, and they can be prosecuted if their failure is deliberate.”

Greene emphasized that her position is not directed at any particular group, but is strictly about legal compliance and transparency for foreign-influenced political messaging in the United States.

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Israel Paying US Social Media Influencers $7,000 Per Post As Right-Wing Support Craters

Following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting in New York on Friday with a group of pro-Israel influencers, we learn that Israel is likely paying them a whopping $7,000 per pro-Israel social-media post in a desperate drive to bolster plummeting support of Israel among America’s young conservatives. 

That’s the conclusion of Responsible Statecraft’s Nick Cleveland-Stout, based on analysis of a disclosure filed with the US Department of Justice as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). While pro-Israel lobbying heavyweight AIPAC is notoriously exempt from FARA registration, the social media operation comes under the transparency law’s provisions because Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is paying for it. 

The influence campaign is being facilitated by Bridge Partners, a DC-based firm owned by founders Yair Levi and Uri Steinberg. “[Bridge Partners] has also enlisted the help of a former major in the IDF spokesperson unit, Nadav Shtrauchler,” writes Cleveland-Stout. “For legal counsel, Levi and Steinberg have turned to Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, a firm that previously worked for controversial Israeli spyware company NSO Group.”

The current phase of the campaign runs from June to November, with a $900,000 budget for a stable of 14 to 17 influencers turning out pro-Israel content. Taking into account disclosed administrative costs and the campaign’s expectation that the group will produce 75-90 posts, Responsible Statecraft estimates each post will earn the influencers somewhere between $6,143 and $7,373. The individual influencers are not identified in the filings. However, given they are being paid by a foreign government to engage in political activity, the influencers seemingly have a duty to register as individual agents of the State of Israel. 

Netanyahu candid public statements to influencers last week raised eyebrows, as they laid bare Israel’s drive to control social media discourse in the United States in a bid to shore up American support. “We’re going to have to use the tools of battle,” said Netanyahu. “Weapons change over time…the most important ones are in social media. And the most important purchase that is going on right now is…TikTok.”

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Netanyahu hails TikTok takeover as Israel’s new ‘weapon’ in information war

Benjamin Netanyahu described the expected purchase of the social media platform TikTok by allies of Israel as the acquisition of a “weapon” that is “most important” to “fight the fight.” And he believes this development “could be extremely consequential.”

The Israeli prime minister was speaking to a group of “pro-Israel influencers” in a meeting after his address at the United Nations General Assembly last Friday were an overwhelming majority of national delegations walked out in apparent protest to what is widely considered a genocidal war he and his nation are inflicting against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

A media release from Netanyahu’s office reported the prime minister spoke with this group of “pro-Israel American influencers” about “challenges in the new era, as well as the public diplomacy efforts and the influence of the social networks on the discourse for and against Israel.”

Asked about how to combat dangers to the Zionist cause due to a potential loss of Evangelical support in the United States, which is also impacted by popular Israel-critics Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, Netanyahu directed his listeners to considering social media as “tools for battle” and then emphasized the expected purchase of TikTok to be “most important” in serving Israel’s interests in this regard.

“What we have to do is we have to secure that part of the base of our support in the United States, that is being challenged systematically… How do we fight back? Our influencers, I think you should also talk to them if you have a chance,” the prime minister said. “And secondly, we’re going to have to use the tools of battle. The weapons change over time… we have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefields within which we’re engaged. And the most important ones are on social media.”

Netanyahu then celebrated “the most important purchase that is going on right now” that he identified as being TikTok. “And I hope it goes through because it can be consequential.”

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Look At NYT Coverage Of Comey, Trump Indictments To See How The Propaganda Machine Operates

On Thursday, disgraced former FBI Director James Comey was indicted by a grand jury on two counts: false statements within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. In other words, Comey allegedly broke the law — and the evidence appears to support the charges. But you wouldn’t necessarily glean that if you read The New York Times’ editorial board meltdown about the indictment.

“The Comey Indictment Plunges the Country Into a Grave New Period,” the piece is headlined. The esteemed “opinion journalists” at The Times warn that Trump “is undermining a core promise of the American justice system: the fair and equal enforcement of the law.”

It matters naught to the board that Comey allegedly provided false testimony to Congress in September of 2020 about his handling of the Russia collusion hoax. Comey previously testified in 2017 that “he did not authorize leaking information regarding the FBI’s investigations into President Donald Trump or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,” as described by NBC News. Comey later told Sen. Ted Cruz he stood by the testimony.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said Comey was made aware of the leak of information to the press and essentially gave it the stamp of approval after the fact, a 2018 Justice Department inspector general’s report found.

But no, according to The Times, Trump is apparently a “despot” who is “persecuting people he considers his enemies, with little justification other than raw political power.”

Although, however, the board even highlights that the grand jury that indicted Comey declined to bring a third false statement count.

“Grand juries typically file the indictments that federal prosecutors ask for,” the board writes, unwittingly undercutting its own hysteria. You see, by conceding that the grand jury — not Trump — declined to pursue the third charge (which according to The Times is atypical) it must mean the grand jury found credible evidence to indict Comey on the other two charges, but used their discretion and declined to bring the third charge. In other words, the charges stand on merits, not Trump’s alleged desire for retribution.

Nonetheless, according to the board, the “biggest law enforcement scandal of the past 50 years” is that Trump (according to the “experts”) ran on “promising to prosecute his enemies.” (Notably, the editorial board must have forgotten about New York Attorney General Letitia James’ campaign promise to nail Trump).

And yet here I was thinking the “biggest law enforcement scandal of the past 50 years” was the last administration trying to throw a former president in jail. But The Times disagrees with me there, you see.

In fact, the editorial board was quick to declare that “Donald Trump Is Not Above the Law,” in a 2022 piece that claimed the criminal investigation into the then-former president was “required.”

“Mr. Trump’s unprecedented assault on the integrity of American democracy requires a criminal investigation. The disturbing details of his postelection misfeasance, meticulously assembled by the Jan. 6 committee, leave little doubt that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the Constitution and overturn the will of the American people,” the board wrote.

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Denmark Accused of Spreading False Claims to Push EU’s Mass Surveillance Law

A growing confrontation over major digital surveillance powers is unfolding within the European Union, as Denmark’s Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard stands accused of using false claims to pressure hesitant governments into backing the European Commission’s proposed Chat Control 2.0 regulation.

In a press release, digital rights campaigner and former Member of the European Parliament Patrick Breyer has denounced what he describes as a manufactured crisis aimed at forcing through legislation that would subject all private communications in the EU to automated scanning.

Classified minutes obtained by Netzpolitik from a September 15 Council meeting reveal that Hummelgaard, currently presiding over the EU Council, told interior ministers that the European Parliament would block any renewal of the existing voluntary scanning framework unless governments agreed to adopt the new regulation.

Breyer immediately pushed back on this claim.

“This is a blatant lie designed to manufacture a crisis,” said Breyer.

“There is no such decision by the European Parliament…We are witnessing a shameless disinformation campaign to force an unprecedented mass scanning law upon 450 million Europeans. I call on EU governments, and particularly the German government, not to fall for this blatant manipulation. To sacrifice the fundamental right to digital privacy and secure encryption based on a fabrication would be a catastrophic failure of political and moral leadership.”

The regulation in question, officially called the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR), would compel messaging platforms, email providers, and cloud storage services to scan all user content for potential child abuse material.

This would apply even to services using end-to-end encryption, meaning private conversations on platforms like WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage would no longer be truly confidential.

Although supporters describe the system as targeted and limited, the legal framework allows broad application.

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