Tag: propaganda

The Fight Over Truth

The modern world of American politics brought us this wonderful propaganda ecosystem which even the most gifted sophist would admire, bringing in such glorious words as disinformation, misinformation, and even malinformation to the forefront of our political discourse here in America. Let’s flesh out these words and their meanings a little more, disinformation is defined as, “false information which is intended to mislead, especially propaganda issued by a government organization to a rival power or the media.”[1]

    The next term in this political game of getting around the truth or labeling the truth as fake truth like some spurious religious prophet, is misinformation which can be defined as, “false or inaccurate information, especially that which is deliberately intended to deceive.” And finally we have the newest term in our game of political charades, malinformation which has several different definitions from the highly deceptive, “is fake information to make a scheme sound more believable.”[2] To the following more malicious meaning, “is genuine information that is shared to cause harm.”[3]

This can all be rather simplified to politicians lie for a living, and politicians compete against other lying politicians for the political spoils that elected office brings in this purported representative democracy, and any available tools to help obfuscate the truth will be used when and if needed. And as it turns out, in today’s world of unbalanced budgets, forever wars, runaway inflation, and poor legislative policies, lying is the holy grail of American politics.

Ironically, with the news media being largely bombastic banal mouthpieces for the two political parties these days, CNN representing the Democratic Party, and Fox News representing the Republican Party, the news media as an industry have become the biggest purveyors of disinformation in this country. If you watch liberal news outlets, they will make you feel all warm and fuzzy with liberal biased political spin, and if you devote your time to conservative news media platforms, they will sing your favorite political song with all the conservative propaganda that your sanctimonious heart desires.

However, if you just want the important news of the day, free of political spin, you are fresh out of luck in our modern world of partisan journalism. You see journalism today doesn’t have a very high regard for the facts, or even the truth for that matter, but instead, how information itself can be shaped towards their activist goals and overall political world view.

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Now Russia accuses Ukraine of using Black Magic: State media says ‘Satanic seal of the dark forces’ was found at deserted military HQ in propaganda claim

Russian state media have claimed there are signs that Ukrainian troops were practising black magic at a military headquarters in Ukraine.

A ‘satanic seal’ – a symbol believed to hold connections to a greater supernatural power – was apparently found on the wall of a deserted Ukrainian military base on the outskirts of the village of Trekhizbenka in the Luhansk region.

The Russian news agency RIA Novosti claimed the symbol, as well as other markings apparently made with blood, showed there were signs Ukrainian soldiers were ‘practicing black magic’.

The news agency claims ‘disciples of otherworldly forces tried to consecrate their weapons and made marks with blood’ so as to give their armoury extra energy to deal extra damage when it hits a target.

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Western Civilization Is Being Organized Around Winning US Infowars

The US-centralized empire’s use of propaganda, censorship and Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation is the single most urgent issue of our time, because it’s what prevents attention from being drawn to all other issues. And all signs indicate it’s set to get much, much worse.

I feel the need to reiterate once again that the censorship we’re seeing about Ukraine is of a whole new kind than anything we’ve seen before. There’s no pretense that it’s done to save lives or protect democracy this time around, it’s just “We need to control the thoughts that people think about this war.”

Once it was accepted that disinformation and misinformation must be curtailed from above, government and tech institutions took that as license to decide what’s true and false on our behalf. We know this because now they’re just openly propagandizing and censoring us about a war.

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71 years of RFE/RL: How the CIA-founded American state run media outlet survived the Soviet collapse to fight Cold War 2.0

The first of May marks the 51st anniversary of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (hereinafter “RFE/RL”, although this didn’t become the official name until 1976) – radio stations which broadcast into Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, respectively. As detailed in an internal CIA document from 1951 titled “Radio Aims and Objectives,” RFE/RL was to be operated by refugees or exiles from the various Socialist Bloc countries to broadcast information intended to encourage “hatred against the regime(s)” and to increase the “will to resist the regime(s).” In other words, this project had an explicit function to remove governments unfavorable to Washington.

Undoubtedly, May 1 was chosen as the launch of this project as it coincided with International Workers’ Day, one of the most important holidays in the Socialist Bloc. 

From its inception until 1972, it was the CIA which funded RFE/RL, though it did so covertly without congressional knowledge or authorization. And it was CIA Director Allen Dulles – the mastermind behind the overthrow of democratic governments in countries such as Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) – who greenlit the secret financing of RFE/RL in the hope that it would contribute to the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

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Tulsi Gabbard Points Out What the US Now Has in Common with Dictatorships

Those on the right aren’t the only ones criticizing the Biden administration’s new Disinformation Governance Board. Former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard pointed out on Fox News’s “Hannity” that such an apparatus is a hallmark of dictatorships around the world.  

“This is the kind of thing that you see in dictatorships, this ministry of truth, this department of propaganda that the Biden administration has just stood up. And the reason why you see this in dictatorships is because they are afraid of us—they are afraid of the people,” she explained. “They are afraid that we might actually think for ourselves.”

The Hawaii Democrat said the DGB will carry out two functions. 

“No. 1, they will use taxpayer dollars to work through the mainstream media and flood the airwaves with whatever their propaganda narrative is that they are pushing at any given time and try to drown out anyone with alternate views,” she said. “And No. 2, they will silence dissenting voices through intimidation.”

The tactics are not new, Gabbard explained. 

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How Ukraine’s ‘Ghost of Kyiv’ legendary pilot was born

Ukraine’s fighter pilots are vastly outnumbered by the Russians, and have become legendary – thanks in part to the story of an alleged flying ace called the “Ghost of Kyiv”.

This hero is said to have downed as many as 40 enemy planes – an incredible feat in an arena where Russia controls the skies.

But now the Ukraine Air Force Command has warned on Facebook that the “Ghost of Kyiv is a superhero-legend whose character was created by Ukrainians!”.

“We ask the Ukrainian community not to neglect the basic rules of information hygiene,” the message said, urging people to “check the sources of information, before spreading it”.

Earlier reports had named the ace as Major Stepan Tarabalka, 29. The authorities confirmed that he was killed in combat on 13 March and honoured with a Hero of Ukraine medal posthumously.

Now, the air force stresses that “Tarabalka is not ‘Ghost of Kiev’, and he did not hit 40 planes”.

It describes the “Ghost of Kyiv” as “a collective image of pilots of the Air Force’s 40th tactical aviation brigade, who defend the sky over the capital”, rather than a single man’s combat record.

For weeks, Ukrainians did not have a name to go with the “Ghost of Kyiv” – but that did not stop the story going viral on social media.

It was used as a marketing brand by a Ukrainian model aircraft manufacturer, while Ukrainian Iryna Kostyrenko showed off a military badge inspired by the legend.

And the defence ministry tweeted a video celebrating Tarabalka’s heroism.

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Everyone’s Anti-War Until The War Propaganda Starts

Everyone’s anti-war until the war propaganda starts. Nobody thinks of themselves as a warmonger, but then the spin machine gets going and before you know it they’re spouting the slogans they’ve been programmed to spout and waving the flags the flags they’ve been programmed to wave and consenting to whatever the imperial war machine wants in that moment.

Virtually everyone will tell you they love peace and hate war when asked; war is the very worst thing in the world, and no healthy person relishes the thought of it. But when the rubber meets the road and it’s time to oppose war and push for peace, those who’d previously proclaimed themselves “anti-war” are on the other side screaming for more weapons to be poured into a proxy war that their government deliberately provoked.

This is because the theory of being anti-war is very different from the practice. In theory people are just opposed to the idea of exploding other people for no good reason. In practice they’re always hit with a very intense barrage of media messaging giving them what look like very good reasons why those people need exploding.

Being truly anti-war isn’t easy. It doesn’t look like people picture in their imaginations. It looks like getting smashed with a deluge of information designed to manipulate and confuse and working through it while getting screamed at by those who’ve fallen for the brainwashing. It’s not cute. It’s not fun. It’s not the feel-good flower power time that people intuit it is when they look at the part of themselves that seeks peace. It’s standing up against the most sophisticated propaganda machine that has ever existed while being offered every reason not to.

When people think of themselves as “anti-war”, they’re usually imagining themselves as anti- another Iraq war, or anti- some theoretical Hitler-like president starting a war because he likes killing people. They’re not picturing the reality of what being anti-war actually is in practice.

Because selling the war to the public is a built-in component of all war strategy, the war will always look necessary from the mainstream perspective, and it won’t look like those other wars which we now know in retrospect were mistakes. It’s always designed to look appealing. There’s never not going to be atrocity propaganda. There’s never not going to be reasons fed to you selling this military intervention as special and completely necessary. That will be the case every single time, because that’s how modern wars are packaged and presented.

This is why you’ll always see a number of self-described leftists and anti-imperialists cheering for the latest US war project. They are ideologically opposed to the idea of war in theory, but the way it actually shows up in practice is always different from what they pictured.

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The Psychology of Manipulation: Lessons Learned From the Master of Propaganda

Edward L. Bernays was an American business consultant who is widely recognized as the father of public relations. Bernays was one of the men responsible for “selling” World War 1 to the American public by branding it as a war that was necessary to “make the world safe for democracy”. During the 1920s, Bernays consulted for a number of major corporations, helping to boost their business through expertly crafted marketing campaigns aimed at influencing public opinion.

In 1928, Edward Bernays published his famous book, Propaganda, in which he outlined the theories behind his successful “public relations” endeavours. The book provides insights into the phenomenon of crowd psychology and outlines effective methods for manipulating people’s habits and opinions.

For a book that’s almost 100 years old, Propaganda could not be more relevant today. In fact, its relevance is a testament to the unchanging nature of human psychology.

One of the key takeaways of the book is that mind control is an important aspect of any democratic society. Indeed, Bernays maintains that without the “conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses”, democracy simply would not “work”.

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