Tag: propaganda

Unpacking Propaganda: What Is It? What Can You Do About It?

America is awash with harmful and dangerous propaganda, but few people understand what it is, how it works and what can be done to overcome it. This article examines the nature, structure and intent of propaganda so readers can increase awareness and discernment.

Propaganda Defined

According to The Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University, “Since propaganda and public relations both share the goal of using mass communication to influence public perception, it can be easy to conflate the two. Propaganda, however, traffics in lies, misinformation, inflammatory language, and other negative communication to achieve an objective related to a cause, goal or political agenda.”

Britannica affirms this thought by defining propaganda as “dissemination of information – facts, arguments, rumors, half-truths or lies – to influence public opinion.”

The Oxford English Dictionary states that it is “the systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a political cause or point of view.”

Modern propaganda was defined by Edward Bernays (1891-1995) in the early 1920s. Bernays is credited as being the “father of public relations”, but many of his ideas came from his uncle, psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. Neither were friends of society.

According to Bernays,

“Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society (propaganda) constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

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New Owner of Politico Accepted Millions From the CIA to Print State Propaganda

The new owner of Politico, a mainstream media news outlet, has a lengthy track record of collusion with the Central Intelligence Agency to print stories considered favorable to the agency’s policy preferences.

Axel Springer SE is a German media conglomerate set to acquire Politico for a billion dollars by the end of October. The company, founded by and named after a German journalist who started his career writing for an antisemitic newspaper affiliated with the Nazi Party, accepted millions of dollars during the Cold War era to print editorial content at the behest of the CIA. Journalist Murray Waas has cited sources within the intelligence community who indicate Springer had accepted more than seven million dollars in the 1950’s to print CIA propaganda. Axel Springer’s relationship with the American CIA seems to have continued for several decades, with the corporation going so far as to train Afghan mujahideen armed and equipped by the CIA to film their encounters with Soviet forces.

An editor of Axel Springer’s flagship magazine Bild- fired this week for sexual misconduct with subordinate employees of the publication in the workplace- had accused journalist Glenn Greenwald and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden of enabling terrorism and cooperation with Al Qaeda.

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Refreshingly Honest Billionaire Says Media Purchase Will Be Used For Propaganda

The billionaire CEO of the multibillion-dollar corporation that recently purchased the news media outlet Politico has said that its newly acquired employees will be required to support Israel and the capitalist world order.

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mathias Döpfner, CEO of the German publisher Axel Springer, said that Politico staffers will be required to adhere to a set of principles which include “support for a united Europe, Israel’s right to exist and a free-market economy, among others.”

“These values are like a constitution, they apply to every employee of our company,” Mr. Döpfner told WSJ. People with a fundamental problem with any of these principles “should not work for Axel Springer, very clearly,” he said.

I mean, how refreshing is that? How often does a billionaire corporation buy up a media property and just straightforwardly tell you they’re going to be using it to push propaganda? They even say what the propaganda will be. It makes you feel like your intelligence is being respected.

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It Takes A Lot Of Education To Keep Us This Stupid

The oligarchic empire is working harder and harder to bolt down our minds in service of its agendas.

Silicon Valley is working more and more openly in conjunction with the US government, and its algorithms elevate empire-authorized narratives while hiding unapproved ones with increasing brazenness.

The mass media have become so blatantly propagandistic that US intelligence operatives are now openly employed by news outlets they used to have to infiltrate covertly.

NATO and military institutions are studying and testing new forms of mass-scale psychological manipulation to advance the still developing science of propaganda.

A transparently fake “whistleblower” is being promoted by the US political/media class to manufacture support for more internet censorship and shore up monopolistic control for institutions like Facebook who are willing to enforce it.

Wikipedia is an imperial narrative control operation.

They’ve imprisoned a journalist for exposing US war crimes after the CIA plotted to kidnap and assassinate him.

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Failing New York Times Caught Publishing More Fake News

When the New York Times audio documentary “Caliphate” won the Peabody Award, Times executive editor Dean Baquet took a victory lap, saying: “‘Caliphate’ was one of the best works of journalism of the year, created by a team of fearless journalists who shed new light on something as complex as ISIS and terrorism.” There was just one problem: “Caliphate” was largely based on the recollections of Shehroze Chaudhry, who admitted in Canadian court Friday that he made up the stories he told the Times’ “fearless journalists” about having been an Islamic State executioner. Rather than being “one of the best works of journalism,” “Caliphate” is actually the newest in a long string of object lessons proving that the New York Times is not a reliable news source. The newspaper is really a far-Left propaganda organ that cannot be trusted even when it is not retailing Democratic party agitprop.

In exchange for his admission, prosecutors dropped charges of a terrorism hoax against Chaudhry, apparently accepting the assertion of the fake terrorist’s lawyer, Nader R. Hasan, who said the stories Chaudhry told that fooled the Times were “mistakes borne out of immaturity — not sinister intent and certainly not criminal intent.”

Yes, of course. He likely became a fake terrorist because he knew that the Times, and particularly its star counterterror “journalist,” Rukmini Callimachi, would eat up the stories he would tell and publish them uncritically. After all, it wasn’t as if he was pretending to have been someone the Times really hates and fears, such as a right-wing Trump supporter. Nonetheless, Chaudhry’s lies caused a furor. According to the Times, “the release of that series in 2018, and other reports based on Mr. Chaudhry’s tales, created a political firestorm in Canada’s Parliament among opposition parties that repeatedly attacked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government for seeming to allow a terrorist killer to freely roam the streets of suburban Toronto.”

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The Science Of Propaganda Is Still Being Developed And Advanced

We live in a far less free society than most of us think.

It looks like we’re free. We don’t get thrown in prison for criticizing our government officials. We can vote for whoever we want. We can log onto the internet and look up information on any subject we’re interested in. If we want to buy a product we have many brands we are free to choose from.

But we’re not free. Our political systems are set up to herd people into a two-party system that is controlled on both sides by plutocrats. The news media that people rely on to form ideas about what’s going on and how they should vote are controlled by the plutocratic class and heavily influenced by secretive government agencies. Internet algorithms are aggressively manipulated to show people information which favors the status quo. Even our entertainment is rife with Pentagon and CIA influence.

How free is that? How free is your speech if there are myriad institutional safeguards in place to prevent speech from ever effecting political change?

It doesn’t matter what you’re allowed to say if it doesn’t matter what you say. It doesn’t matter if you’re allowed to call the oligarchic puppet put in office by the last fake election a dickhead. It doesn’t matter if you’re allowed to Google any information you want only to find whatever information Google wants you to find.

What is the functional difference between a regime which directly censors the internet to prevent dissent and a regime which works with Silicon Valley plutocrats to control information via algorithms and has a system in place which prevents dissent from having any meaningful impact?

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Pro-Vax ‘Messaging’, Including ‘Societal Guilt’ Was Being Tested 6 Months BEFORE Vaccine Approval

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Propaganda is the more or less systematic effort to manipulate other people’s beliefs, attitudes, or actions by means of symbols (words, gestures, banners, monuments, music, clothing, insignia, hairstyles, designs on coins and postage stamps, and so forth). Deliberateness and a relatively heavy emphasis on manipulation distinguish propaganda from casual conversation or the free and easy exchange of ideas.

Those who have been paying attention to the last 19 months, have seen the brazen propaganda pushed by media and government alike. The serf class is propagandized to comply with one set of rules while the elite openly flaunt their ability to abide by an entirely different set.

The means by which society is being influenced are not something that the establishment has been making up as they go along either. In fact, according to a study published on the US National Library of Medicine website, ClinicalTrials.gov, the “experts” were planning their propaganda months before they needed it.

Despite a consensus in the field back in June and July of 2020, claiming that rushing a COVID-19 vaccine is dangerous and that one wouldn’t be available for years, some folks, particularly those at Yale University, were already planning their propaganda messaging once it was approved.

Despite the previously fastest vaccine approval in history taking four years, the “messaging” experts at Yale were getting their messages ready for when the COVID-19 vaccine would roll out in just six months. When we read their study, everything the media and government has been saying for the last 10 months begins to make sense.

In their study, titled COVID-19 Vaccine Messaging, Part 1, researchers tested “different messages about vaccinating against COVID-19 once the vaccine becomes available.”

Participants were recruited online and fed varying messages to test which ones worked the best to convince them to get the vaccine. Spoiler alert: if a vaccine works like it is supposed to, it doesn’t need propaganda to convince people to take it. Yet somehow, the experts at Yale predicted that this messaging would be needed — and they were right as the establishment has fully adopted it.

In the study, the control group was given messaging about random bird feeding benefits and costs. The baseline participants were given messaging about the effectiveness and safety of vaccines, and this is where the plot begins to thicken.

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Wikipedia Co-Founder Criticizes Site, Says It Has Slid Into ‘Leftist Propaganda’

Wikipedia has in recent years drifted away from neutrality and slid into “leftist propaganda,” according to its co-founder Larry Sanger.

Sanger, who parted ways with Wikipedia almost two decades ago over the project’s direction, told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” that the online encyclopedia, which turned 20 years old earlier this year, has gradually shifted to follow the narrative of “the news media.”

“Wikipedia made a real effort at neutrality for, I would say, its first five years or so,” said Sanger. “And then … it began a long, slow slide into what I would call leftist propaganda.”

Wikipedia has around 125,000 active volunteer editors who work on crowdsourced articles, and more than 1,000 “administrators” who can take actions such as blocking accounts or restricting edits on certain pages.

Sanger told EpochTV that particularly in the past five years, any individual who is “on the right,” or “even contrarian,” often finds themselves with an article on Wikipedia that “grossly misrepresents their achievements, often just leaves out important bits of their work, and misrepresents their motives.”

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