"Elon Musk Isn’t a Threat to Society’s Health. All Billionaires Are" by Jonathan Cook

 

Elon Musk Isn’t a Threat to Society’s Health. All Billionaires Are

The mega-rich buy up media outlets precisely because a lie is more likely to fly than the truth – including the lie that they are invaluable.

April 27th, 2022

By Jonathan Cook

SAN FRANCISCO – The most dangerous thing about Elon Musk buying Twitter outright for $44 billion is the rapidly spreading notion that his controlling an influential social media platform is dangerous. It is, but not for any of the reasons his critics assert.

The current furor is dangerously misguided for two reasons. First, it assumes that one billionaire owning Twitter is significantly more harmful than a bunch of them owning it. And second, it worries that Musk is committed to an anarchic version of free speech that will undermine the health of our societies.

This is the equivalent of staring resolutely at a single tree to avoid noticing the forest all around it. The fact that so many of us now do this routinely suggests how far we already are from a healthy society.

Money is power. The fact that our societies have allowed a small number of individuals to accumulate untold riches means we have also allowed them to gain untold power over us. Debates, like the current one about the future of Twitter, are now rarely about what is in the interests of wider society. Instead, they are about what is in the interests of billionaires, as well as the corporations and institutions that enrich and protect this tiny, pampered elite.

Musk, as the richest person alive, may have a marginally stronger hand than other billionaires to push things in his direction. But more significantly, all billionaires ultimately subscribe to the same ideological assumption that society benefits from having a class of the super-rich. They are all on Team Billionaire.

Some are more “philanthropic” than others, using the wealth they have plundered from the common good to buy themselves today’s equivalent of an indulgence – a ticket to heaven once sold by the Catholic Church for a princely sum. These “philanthropists” very publicly recycle their riches, while quietly claiming tax exemptions, to make it look as if they deserve their fortunes or as if the planet would be worse off without them.

And some billionaires are more committed to free speech than others, if only – as with the rest of us – by temperament. Certainly, it would be beneficial to have Twitter run using a transparent, open-source algorithm, as Musk says he wants, rather than the secretive algorithms increasingly preferred by the billionaires behind Google, Youtube, and Facebook.

 

Meritocracy race

But one thing the super-rich are not open to is the idea that billionaires should be a thing of the past, like slavery or the divine right of kings. Instead, they are all equally committed to their own ongoing power – and whatever planet-destroying economic model is required to sustain it.

And they are committed, too, to the idea that they should have much more power than the general population because they are supposedly the winners in a global meritocracy race. They believe they are better than the rest of us – that natural selection has selected them.

Musk appears more open than some billionaires to allowing the expression of a wide range of views on social media. After all, someone who believes he should face no consequences for vilifying a rescue worker as a “pedo guy” for having a better idea than himself about how to save children trapped in a cave probably prefers to see free speech defined as broadly as possible.

“Controversy” is Musk’s shtick, and being a “free speech absolutist” serves his aim of winning popular consent for his billionairedom in exactly the same way profiteering from vaccines does for Bill Gates. While they are busy raking in billions more at our expense, we are busy dividing into Team Musk or Team Gates. We cheer from the sidelines at our own irrelevance.

But one thing that Musk and Gates most assuredly agree on is that they and their ilk must never be swept into the dustbin of history. If we could ever harness Twitter to that end, we would quickly find out just how much of a “free speech absolutist” Musk really is.

 

‘King of trolls’

This brings us to the second misguided “row” about Musk buying Twitter and its 217 million users: that his supposed commitment to free speech will further tear apart the health of our democracies. Put bluntly; the fear is that allowing Donald Trump and his followers back into the Twitterverse will unleash the forces of darkness we have been struggling to keep at bay.

Environmentalist George Monbiot, a columnist at the liberal establishment newspaper The Guardian, calls Musk’s influence “lethal.”

His colleague Aditya Chakrabortty visibly quivers with anxiety at the prospect of a Twitter molded in Musk’s image, calling him the “king of trolls.” Democracy, Chakrabortty avers, must defend itself not only from the Trumps but from those who enable them through their “free speech absolutism.”

As is expected in such articles, Chakrabortty bolsters his argument with a statistic or two. For example, a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) finds that false stories on Twitter are 70% more likely to be retweeted than the truth. Putting Musk in charge of this lie factory will bring civilization crashing down, we are warned.

Let us set aside for a moment how MIT defines truth and falsehood, and assume it is capable of divining such things correctly. Again the study’s logic is compelling only so long as we stare at a single tree and ignore the forest all around.

The reason billionaires and corporations – as well as states – want to control the media is precisely that a lie is more likely to fly than the truth. Our societies have been engineered on this principle since we divided into leaders and followers.

If truth reigned supreme, and media platforms could do little to sway us from seeing reality clearly, the richest people on the planet would not be investing their money in buying their own bit of real estate in the media landscape.

But then again, if we could all see reality clearly – unclouded by corporate media interference – there wouldn’t be any billionaires. We would have understood that their extreme wealth was too much of a threat to be allowed, that their fortunes could too easily be turned against us, buying our politicians and turning our democracies into increasingly hollow shells, stripped of the good things we intended.

If billionaires weren’t making fortunes from weapons sales, we surely wouldn’t be endlessly cheering on wars.

If billionaires didn’t demand the right to buy politicians, we might be more ready to address our dysfunctional political and media systems.

If billionaires weren’t profiting from the destruction of the natural world, we might be having a more realistic conversation about the impending extinction of our species.

 

Censorship as panacea

But, unable to maintain their attention on the structural deformations caused by the rule of the billionaires, left-liberals like Monbiot and Chakrabortty keep deflecting to the cause of censorship. They speak of unspecified “curbs” and approve of blocking “Russian news sources” as though this is the panacea for society’s ills.

The point they have obscured is that misinformation spread by Twitter users pales in comparison to the disinformation that constantly batters us from corporate news outlets, like The Guardian newspaper they work for. (Disinformation is misinformation with deception or manipulation as its intent.)

Disinformation such as making us believe that the West’s many illegal wars of aggression, like the one against Iraq, were defensive, or mistakes, or to promote democracy. Or that such illegal wars cannot be compared to the wars of aggression committed by “enemy” states.

Disinformation such as persuading us that we have Trump voting “deplorables” because of social media “fake news” rather than growing disenchantment with liberal political systems in thrall to billionaires – systems that serve the super-rich while imposing austerity on the rest of us.

Disinformation that for decades has allowed climate denial lobbies – secretly but handsomely funded by billionaires – to conceal from us the findings of the billionaires’ own scientists, which show we are hurtling towards a climate breakdown tipping point.

And the continuing disinformation that makes us believe the Green New Deals we have been offered are designed to save us, rather than the billionaires’ profits, from extinction.

 

Latest Darth Vader

But significantly, the reason Twitter users spread more trivial forms of misinformation is that, after a lifetime spent in the billionaires’ bubbles of disinformation, we struggle to anchor ourselves to reality.

Awash in corporate disinformation, we are credulous in the face of simple, easily digestible stories: ones that require us to cheer either for Team Musk or for Team Gates, Donald Trump or Joe Biden, the Rebel Alliance, or the latest Darth Vader. We cannot make sense of a world so corrupt, so divided, so harsh. Instead, we are drawn to simplistic narratives of good vs. evil, right vs. wrong.

And the most simplistic of all these narratives are the ones that undergird the sense of collective virtue of our society and our tribe.

If our wars are different from their wars, then the difference must be that Putin is a madman or a megalomaniac. And before we know it, we are starting to imagine that there is something inherently backward or bloodthirsty about the Russian psyche. The arms dealers – and behind them the billionaires – can once again lick their lips in delight.

Or if people are too stupid to see through a Trump, it must mean we need more censorship, more of those undefined “curbs.”

The unstated logic is that, if we can blank out some types of information, the “deplorables” who are susceptible to the wrong kind will gradually be won back to the status quo. Like victims of a cult, they can be deprogrammed through an absence of exposure. Deprived of a Trump, they will become standard-bearers for a Biden.

And if that fails … well, these same liberals will be cheering on whatever other forms of authoritarianism are needed to “curb” the threat.

But Monbiot and Chakrabortty’s veiled advocacy for censorship will not save our thread-bare democracies. It is exactly where the most powerful forces in our society want things heading: not towards a more pluralistic, open, and transparent media, but towards a more tightly controlled and policed one.

We know where this leads because we are already firmly on this path. Anyone not backing the flow of arms to Ukraine must have been influenced by Russian disinformation. Anyone critical of Big Pharma’s profiteering is colluding in vaccine hesitancy. Anyone supporting socialism and criticizing the wealthy elite must harbor antisemitic tendencies.

 

Footsoldiers for the rich

The debate has been polarized yet again into one in which we must pick one of two unappealing sides. Either a Twitter ruled by a shadowy cabal of billionaires limiting our exposure to information by manipulating the algorithms in secret, or one ruled by a single, outsize, fickle ego who promises a bigger information marketplace and a little more transparency – until he doesn’t.

Liberals, because they distrust the deplorables, want to stamp out the chaos of populism and ensure that nice, philanthropic billionaires like Gates decide what is best for us.

And conservatives, because they distrust liberals, want to let a maverick, more brashly self-aggrandizing billionaire like Musk decide what should be allowed.

Team Musk vs. Team Gates.

We are now deep in the trenches of an information war. Who should be allowed to speak? Whatever we might imagine, the victors will once again be the billionaires – until we stop recruiting ourselves to be their footsoldiers.

Feature photo | MintPress News

Jonathan Cook is a MintPress contributor. Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

Source: MintPress News

"For Medical Freedom through Workers Revolution, Not Pointless Populist Panaceas!" by Thomas Buddenbrook

 

For Medical Freedom through Workers Revolution, Not Pointless Populist Panaceas!

1.

By Thomas Buddenbrook

Our movement for medical freedom is growing. We’ve come to recognize the existing system—or at least its current “globalist” leaders—are bankrupt, and mean us, the vast masses of humanity—no good. We want a better world, where we have the basic right to our own bodily autonomy, and a humane, holistic health system, rather than one based on the profit motive and the maniacal schemes of eugenicist billionaires for depopulation/transhuman enslavement.

But how do we get there? Many of us would like to see a simple restoration to a capitalist democratic republic, where we vote for responsible politicians, who appoint regulators who really do their job to protect the public, and where Banks and Investment Firms, and Big Pharma and Big Tech corporations are tamed, not permitted to control the political process–if not broken up entirely.

But think about it carefully. How did we get here? How did these corporations get so big, and get so much power to corrupt the State, in the first place? The definition of insanity, according to Albert Einstein, is “doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.”

Why hang on to the capitalist system? While no one would deny it has given humanity incredible technological progress, it has also produced much evil over the course of its rule—slavery, colonialism, the exploitation and bloody repression of the working class, imperialism, racism, war, fascism, “regime change,” “shock and awe,” and now: medical genocide.

Its conservative libertarian proponents among us would argue that capitalism’s competitive nature preserves our liberties. Really? Look around you. As Bobby Kennedy has been saying, the ruling class, produced by and benefiting from capitalism, has flushed the Bill of Rights down the toilet.

But this state of affairs, the conservatives will argue, is an accident. These monopolies were created via collusion with and support from corrupt politicians. Put in better officials, or weaken the State, create the “parallel” economic and social “structures” called for by Michael Rechtenwald, and we reduce the power of monopoly. We can even destroy such monopolies, and go back to those heady days of the era of Andrew Jackson, when capitalism was based on small firms, farms, and healthy competition (and slavery, racism, genocide of the natives, women’s oppression, etc. etc.!)

But the growth of the size and the power of monopolies, was not an accident, and it was not dependent upon a corrupt State. This growth is intrinsic to the capitalist system, with or without State aid. As Marx wrote, precisely because capitalism is competitive, the capitalists, to cut their costs, continually replace workers with machines. This not only increases productivity, and provides them both a competitive edge, and a temporary “technological rent” their competitors will not in the meantime enjoy, but also, monopolization, or what Marx called the “centralization of capital”:

…there is an increase in the minimum amount of individual capital necessary to carry on a business under its normal conditions. The smaller capitals, therefore, crowd into spheres of production which Modern Industry has only sporadically or incompletely got hold of. Here competition rages…. It always ends in the ruin of many small capitalists, whose capitals partly pass into the hands of their conquerors, partly vanish[i]

So, attempt to weaken the State, break up the monopolies, all you want (or can). Like the many headed hydra, new monopolies will form, and use their tremendous wealth to buy off the State.

Another problem with the conservative libertarian strategy is their view that we can slowly but surely draw people away from the existing, monopoly controlled System, via the persuasive power of our ideas. Ironically, this is the same strategy championed by the illiberal cancel culture snowflakes most of us oppose. As Jessica Cassell argues in her Marxism vs. Intersectionality, in a paragraph based on Marx and Engels’ The German Ideology,

This is a profoundly idealistic approach which is based on the idea that in order to change society, you need to change people’s views first—or even worse, that by changing “discourse” you can transform reality. The truth is that the dominant ideology in a class society is that of the ruling class. The ideology of the people who carry out revolutions, the exploited and oppressed masses, is imbued with all the reactionary ideas and prejudices imposed by the ruling class. It is in the course of the struggle to transform society that people (in large numbers) become transformed and change (to a large extent) their points of view[ii]

Instead of real solutions, these libertarian conservatives offer panaceas, like Henry George’s “Single Land tax,” “parallel structures,” Ellen Brown’s “people’s state banks,” and Proudhon’s “fair labor exchanges”. Their chief advantage, in the mind of these conservatives, is that these quick fix-it schemes do not require abolishing the profit system, private property, or competition. One of the motives for this resistance is disillusionment with the “formerly existing” socialisms. Because socialism in Russia turned into the Stalinist nightmare, it must always do so. But they ignore the real causes for this denouement—the tremendous pressure placed upon the Soviet experiment by the imperialists, to, in Winston Churchill’s words, “strangle this baby in its cradle!”

Another motive is these “libertarians’” middle class orientation, by which they have become enamored of the privileges they enjoy, unlike the workers, under capitalism. Like their forebears in the U.S. Populist and Progressive Parties, and much of the Green Party today, they uneasily recognize the fact that the working class is constituted by the vast majority of society. It is the only class that can wage a successful struggle, through the power of economic, political, and general strikes, to confront and overthrow the rule of the “plutocrats”. But they fear like the plague the revolutionary outcome of such a struggle, since it would mean not only the death of the capitalist system, but also, their own privileges within it—including the “right” someday to exploit their own workers![iii] So they hope, through such schemes, to hitch the wagon of the working class to their own starry eyed panaceas, in order to head off this dreaded outcome—all the while making life more comfortable for themselves, if not for the working class majority![iv] Such movements are as contradictory as the mythical “Behemoth”, and it is on the basis of such contradictions that the Populist, Progressive, and Green Parties have all up to this point failed miserably.[v]

Image of Behemoth, from William Blake’s Behemoth and Leviathan

These conservatives investment in the “old liberal utopia,” as Wilson Carey McWilliams asserted in The Idea of Fraternity in America (1973), “a world of total private liberty and the ability to gratify desires…” is based on a blindness “to the nature of communion,” and “is rooted in hatred of the self and fear of the other.”[vi]. To work toward freedom means not to embrace old illusory panaceas or nostalgia for a Republic that never was, but to push forward to a new, social Republic. Within the new workers council state, we will be able to abolish exploitation, economic (but certainly not political: yes, let’s all compete to see who can best represent the interests of working people!) competition, private property, poverty, racism, and build a society where our bodily autonomy—and our possessions![vii]–is respected, and our basic needs, fulfilled In this socialist movement, middle class intellectuals, provided they offer selfless rather than self-serving leadership, will certainly be greatly valued.

Notes:

---

[i] Karl Marx, Capital, v. I, Chapter 25. Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I – Chapter Twenty-Five (marxists.org)

[ii]      Jessica Cassell Marxism vs. Intersectionality | Other | History & Theory (marxist.com)

[iii]     See Herbert J. Gans. The Uses of Poverty: The Poor Pay All. Social Policy July/August 1971: pp. 20-24

[iv] As Marx and Engels write in their Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League,

“The democratic petty bourgeois, far from wanting to transform the whole society in the interests of the revolutionary proletarians, only aspire to a change in social conditions which will make the existing society as tolerable and comfortable for themselves as possible…. As far as the workers are concerned one thing, above all, is definite: they are to remain wage labourers as before. However, the democratic petty bourgeois want better wages and security for the workers, and hope to achieve this by an extension of state employment and by welfare measures; in short, they hope to bribe the workers with a more or less disguised form of alms and to break their revolutionary strength by temporarily rendering their situation tolerable.“

[v] See The Rise and Fall of Progressivism by George Novack, at The Rise and Fall of Progressivism (marxists.org)

[vi]     Wilson Carey McWilliams, The Idea of Fraternity in America. University of California Press, 1973. In the Epilogue: A Note on Generation and Degeneration,”

[vii]    We are NOT for the Great Reset, and Klaus Schwab is no socialist!

1. Image from Typefoundry: The image of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic 1916

Source: Red Fire

"The Psychology of Manipulation: 6 Lessons from the Master of Propaganda" by Ryan Matters

 

The Psychology of Manipulation: 6 Lessons from the Master of Propaganda

Ryan Matters

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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”.

We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

According to Bernays, those doing the “governing” constitute an invisible ruling class that “understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses”.

In Propaganda, Bernays draws on the work of Gustave Le Bon, Wilfred Trotter, Walter Lippmann, and Sigmund Freud (his uncle!), outlining the power of mass psychology and how it may be used to manipulate the “group mind”.

If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?

I recently explored this topic in an essay about how occult rituals and predictive programming are used to manipulate the collective consciousness, influencing the thoughts, beliefs and actions of large groups of people, resulting in the creation of what occultists call “egregores”.

Here I have extracted some key insights from Bernays in an attempt to show how his book Propaganda is, in many ways, the playbook used by the globalist cryptocracy to process the group mind of the masses.

1. IF YOU MANIPULATE THE LEADER OF A GROUP, THE PEOPLE WILL FOLLOW

Bernays tells us that one of the easiest ways to influence the thoughts and actions of large numbers of people is to first influence their leader.

If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway.

In fact, one of the most firmly established principles of mass psychology is that the “group mind” does not “think”, rather, it acts according to impulses, habits and emotions. And when deciding on a certain course of action, its first impulse is to follow the example of a trusted leader.

Humans are, by nature a group species. Even when we are alone, we have a deep sense of group belonging. Whether they consciously know it or not, much of what people do is an effort to conform to the ideals of their chosen group so as to feel a sense of acceptance and belonging.

This exact method of influencing the leader and watching the people follow has been used extensively throughout the last few years. One notable instance that comes to mind is the horrendously inaccurate epidemiological models created by Neil Ferguson, which formed the basis for President Boris Johnson’s lockdown policies.

Once Johnson was convinced of the need to lockdown and mask up, the people gladly followed.

2. WORDS ARE POWERFUL: THE KEY TO INFLUENCING A GROUP IS THE CLEVER USE OF LANGUAGE

Certain words and phrases are associated with certain emotions, symbols and reactions. Bernays tell us that through the clever and careful use of language, one can manipulate the emotions of a group and thereby influence their perceptions and actions.

By playing upon an old cliché, or manipulating a new one, the propagandist can sometimes swing a whole mass of group emotions.

The clever use of language has been employed throughout the Covid-19 pandemic to great effect. An obvious example of this was when the definition of “vaccine” was changed to include injections utilising experimental mRNA technology.

You see, the word “vaccine” is associated in the public mind with a certain picture – that of a safe, proven medical intervention that is not only life-saving but absolutely necessary.

If governments had told people to go get their “gene therapies”, the vast majority of the public would likely question the motives behind such a campaign; they would feel extremely sceptical because the phrase “gene therapy” is not associated with the same images, emotions and feelings as “vaccine”.

The same goes for the word “pandemic”, the definition of which was also changed. The word “pandemic” is generally associated in the collective consciousness with fear, death, chaos and emergency (largely thanks to Hollywood and the myriad virus films it has released over the years).

3. ANY MEDIUM OF COMMUNICATION IS ALSO A MEDIUM FOR PROPAGANDA

Any system of communication, whether phone, radio, print, or social media, is nothing more than a means of transmitting information. Bernays reminds us that any such means of communication is also a channel for propaganda.

There is no means of human communication which may not also be a means of deliberate propaganda.

Bernays goes on to stress that a good propagandist must always keep abreast of new forms of communication, so that they may co-opt them as means of deliberate propaganda.

Indeed, systems that most people would associate with freedom of speech and democracy are none other than means of circulating propaganda. Facebook fact-checkers, Big Tech censorship and YouTube’s Covid banners certainly fall into this category.

Other examples of this include the recent algorithm updates made by various search engines (including Google and DuckDuckGo) to penalize Russian websites. Although this should come as no surprise (Google has been engaging in this type of “shadow propaganda” for many years).

4. REITERATING THE SAME IDEA OVER AND OVER CREATES HABITS AND CONVICTIONS

Although Bernays terms this a technique used by the “old propagandists”, he, nonetheless, recognizes its usefulness.

It was one of the doctrines of the reaction psychology that a certain stimulus often repeated would create a habit, or that the mere reiteration of an idea would create a conviction.

Repeating the same idea or the same “mantra” again and again is a form of neuro-linguistic programming aimed at instilling certain concepts or emotions into the subconscious mind. Indeed, people who are feeling sad or depressed are often advised to repeat to themselves an uplifting saying or affirmation.

There are many examples of this simple, yet effective, technique being used to great effect over the last few years. Think Q’s “trust the plan”, the globalist favourite, “build back better” or the incessant repetition of that twisted phrase, “trust the science”. Included in this category are the 24/7-in-your-face death statistics and case numbers, aimed at promoting the illusion of a pandemic.

There are more obvious examples of this as well, such as news anchors in different areas all reading from the exact same script.

5. THINGS ARE NOT DESIRED FOR THEIR INTRINSIC WORTH, BUT RATHER FOR THE SYMBOLS THAT THEY REPRESENT

After studying why people make certain purchasing decisions, Bernays observed that people often don’t desire something for its usefulness or value, but rather because it represents something else which they unconsciously crave.

A thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself.

Bernays gives the example of a man buying a car. From the outside, it may appear as if the man is buying the car because he needs a means of transport, but in actuality, he is buying it because he craves the elevated social status that comes with owning a motor vehicle.

This idea, too, applies to the events over the last few years.

For example, masks are a symbol of compliance. Everyone knows they don’t work but they wear them because of their desire to “fit in”, and to be seen as an upstanding citizen who follows the rules. Covid-19 injections are also a symbol and many people choose to get them because they have a desire to avoid being called an “anti-vaxxer” or a “conspiracy theorist”.

6. ONE CAN MANIPULATE INDIVIDUAL ACTIONS BY CREATING CIRCUMSTANCES THAT MODIFY GROUP CUSTOMS

Lastly, Bernays tells us that if one wishes to manipulate the actions of an individual, the most effective way to do so is to create circumstances that engender the desired behaviour.

What are the true reasons why the purchaser is planning to spend his money on a new car instead of on a new piano? […] He buys a car, because it is at the moment the group custom to buy cars. The modern propagandist therefore sets to work to create circumstances which will modify that custom.

For example, why all of a sudden does everyone “stand with Ukraine”? According to Bernays, it’s not because there is a war going on and innocent people need our love and support, but rather because it is the new “group custom” to do so.

The process of altering group customs begins from the top down. In every nation or social clique, there are leaders, public figures and influencers. Manipulating those with the most sway eventually filters down into the public mind. That is why when a celebrity decides to wear something extravagant on the red carpet, a whole new trend can arise overnight.

Similarly, at the beginning of the Covid saga and then the Russia-Ukraine war, the media were quick to circulate stories of celebs “catching Covid” and urging people to stay home, or public figures condemning Russian actions and calling for stricter sanctions (which just so happened to hurt the West more than they hurt Russia).

THE PROPAGANDA PLAYBOOK

The world is a volatile place right now. Things seem to change quickly and no one knows what might happen next. However, amid all this chaos there is one thing that has not changed and is unlikely to change any time soon, and that is human psychology.

Because of this, the tactics used to manipulate people’s thoughts, beliefs and actions have not changed either. In fact, most of them were outlined in detail 100 years ago by Edward Bernays in his 1928 book, Propaganda.

That’s right, the Puppet Master’s playbook isn’t a secret. It’s right there, freely available to anyone who cares to understand how the powers that be seek to influence them on a daily basis.

Propaganda by Edward Bernays has now been added to our Forbidden Library. Read it now, along with other forbidden books.

Ryan Matters is a writer and free thinker from South Africa. After a life-changing period of illness, he began to question mainstream medicine, science and the true meaning of what it is to be alive. Ryan is also the founder of NewBraveWorld.org where he posts a selection of his essays related to topics such as science, philosophy, medicine, spirituality and current events. You can also follow him on Twitter.

Source: OffGuardian