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Pentagon Seeks to Manipulate Social Media for Propaganda Purposes
Wired reported on Friday:
The
Pentagon is looking to build a tool to sniff out social media
propaganda campaigns and spit some counter-spin right back at it.
On Thursday, Defense Department extreme technology arm Darpa unveiled its Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC) program. It’s an attempt to get better at both detecting and conducting propaganda campaigns on social media.
SMISC has two goals. First, the program needs to help the military
better understand what’s going on in social media in real time —
particularly in areas where troops are deployed. Second, Darpa wants
SMISC to help the military play the social media propaganda game itself.
This
is more than just checking the trending topics on Twitter. The Defense
Department wants to deeply grok social media dynamics. So SMISC
algorithms will be aimed at discovering and tracking the “formation,
development and spread of ideas and concepts (memes)” on social media,
according to Darpa’s announcement.***
SMISC needs to be
able to seek out “persuasion campaign structures and influence
operations” developing across the social sphere. SMISC is supposed to
quickly flag rumors and emerging themes on social media, figure out
who’s behind it and what. Moreover, Darpa wants SMISC to be able to
actually figure out whether this is a random product of the hivemind or
a propaganda operation by an adversary nation or group.
Of course, SMISC won’t be content to just to hang back and monitor social media trends in strategic locations. It’s about building a better spin machine for Uncle Sam, too. Once SMISC’s latches on to an influence operation being launched, it’s supposed to help out in “countermessaging.”
***
SMISC is yet another example of how the military is becoming very interested in what’s going on in the social media sphere.
Indeed, as I wrote in February:
I noted in 2009, in an article entitled "Does The Government Manipulate Social Media?":
The U.S. government long ago announced its intention to "fight the net".
As revealed by an official Pentagon report signed by Rumsfeld called "Information Operations Roadmap":
The roadmap [contains an] acknowledgement that information put out as
part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is
finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary
Americans.
"Information intended for foreign audiences,
including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our
domestic audience," it reads.
"Psyops messages will often be
replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the
American public," it goes on.
***
"Strategy
should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will
'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system".Indeed, the Pentagon publicly announced years ago that it was considering using "black propaganda" - in other words, knowing lies.
CENTCOM announced in 2008 that a team of employees would be "[engaging]
bloggers who are posting inaccurate or untrue information, as well as
bloggers who are posting incomplete information."
The Air Force is now also engaging bloggers. Indeed, an Air Force spokesman said:
"We
obviously have many more concerns regarding cyberspace than a typical
Social Media user," Capt. Faggard says. "I am concerned with how
insurgents or potential enemies can use Social Media to their advantage.
It's our role to provide a clear and accurate, completely truthful
and transparent picture for any audience."In other words, the government is targeting "social media", including popular user-ranked news sites.
In
addition, when you look at what the Israeli lobby has done with
Megaphone software to automatically vote stories questioning Israel down
and to send pro-Israel letters to politicians and media (see this, this and this),
you can start to see how the U.S. military - an even larger and
better-funded organization - could substantially influence voting on
social news sites with very little effort.
Moreover,the military
has outsourced many projects to private contractors. For example, in
Iraq, much of the fighting has been outsourced to Blackwater. And governmental intelligence functions have largely been outsourced to private companies.It
is therefore not impossible that the government is hiring cheap labor
to downvote stories on the social media sites which question the
government, and to post pro-government comments.(other governments and large companies "astroturf" online as well. See this, this and this.)
I pointed out the same month:
Government
propagandists, their hired private contractors and useful idiots are
creating "downvote bots" or scripts to bury stories which question the
government.
***
One free, simple scripting program to
create automatic downvotes of certain topics or news posters is
called "Greasemonkey", which is commonly used on large social news
sites such as Reddit.
For example, there are some 2,480 hits [now past 9,000] for the google search site:reddit.com greasemonkey downvote. This is some 2,480 times that Reddit users are publicly admitting to using greasemonkey (see also this).
Propaganda
agents obviously aren't going to publicly brag about what they are
doing, and you can bet that their use of downvote bots is much greater.
Moreover, they probably have more sophisticated software than
Greasemonkey.Today, Raw Story reports that the Air Force ordered software to manage army of fake virtual people:
Internet users would be well advised to ask another question entirely: Are my "friends" even real people?
In
the continuing saga of data security firm HBGary, a new caveat has
come to light: not only did they plot to help destroy secrets outlet
WikiLeaks and discredit progressive bloggers, they also crafted
detailed proposals for software that manages online "personas,"
allowing a single human to assume the identities of as many fake people
as they'd like.
The revelation was among those
contained in the company's emails, which were dumped onto bittorrent
networks after hackers with cyber protest group "Anonymous" broke into
their systems.
In another document unearthed by "Anonymous," one of HBGary's employees also mentioned gaming geolocation services to make it appear as though selected fake persons were at actual events.
"There are a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to all fictitious personas," it said.
Government involvement
Eerie as that may be, more perplexing, however, is a federal contract
from the 6th Contracting Squadron at MacDill Air Force Base, located
south of Tampa, Florida, that solicits providers of "persona
management software."
While there are certainly legitimate
applications for such software, such as managing multiple "official"
social media accounts from a single input, the more nefarious
potential is clear.
Unfortunately, the Air Force's contract description doesn't help dispel their suspicions either. As the text explains, the
software would require licenses for 50 users with 10 personas each,
for a total of 500. These personas would have to be "replete with
background , history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are
technically, culturally and geographacilly consistent."
It continues, noting the need for secure virtual private networks that randomize
the operator's Internet protocol (IP) address, making it impossible
to detect that it's a single person orchestrating all these posts.
Another entry calls for static IP address management for each
persona, making it appear as though each fake person was consistently
accessing from the same computer each time.
The contract also
sought methods to anonymously establish virtual private servers with
private hosting firms in specific geographic locations. This would
allow that server's "geosite" to be integrated with their social media
profiles, effectively gaming geolocation services.
The Air
Force added that the "place of performance" for the contract would be
at MacDill Air Force Base, along with Kabul, Afghanistan and Baghdad.
The contract was offered on June 22, 2010.
It was not clear exactly what the Air Force was doing with this software, or even if it had been procured.
Manufacturing consent
Though
many questions remain about how the military would apply such
technology, the reasonable fear should be perfectly clear. "Persona
management software" can be used to manipulate public opinion on key
information, such as news reports. An unlimited number of virtual
"people" could be marshaled by only a few real individuals, empowering
them to create the illusion of consensus.
***
That's precisely what got DailyKos blogger Happy Rockefeller in a snit:
the potential for military-run armies of fake people manipulating
and, in some cases, even manufacturing the appearance of public
opinion.
"I don't know about you, but it matters to me what
fellow progressives think," the blogger wrote. "I consider all views.
And if there appears to be a consensus that some reporter isn't
credible, for example, or some candidate for congress in another state
can't be trusted, I won't base my entire judgment on it, but it
carries some weight.
"That's me. I believe there are many
people though who will base their judgment on rumors and mob attacks.
And for those people, a fake mob can be really effective."
***
"Team Themis" [tasked by the Chamber of Commerce to come up with strategies for responding to progressive bloggers and others] also included a proposal
to use malware hacks against progressive organizations, and the
submission of fake documents in an effort to discredit established
groups.
HBGary was also behind a plot by Bank of America to destroy
WikiLeaks' technology platform, other emails revealed. The company was humiliated by members of "Anonymous" after CEO Aaron Barr bragged that he'd "infiltrated" the group.And see this, this, this, this.
Indeed, as I noted in 2008, the Pentagon is using artificial intelligence programs to try to predict :
As a new article
by investigative reporter Christopher Ketcham reveals, a governmental
unit operating in secret and with no oversight whatsoever is gathering
massive amounts of data on every American and running
artificial intelligence software to predict each American's behavior,
including "what the target will do, where the target will go, who it
will turn to for help".The same governmental unit is responsible for suspending
the Constitution ... in the event that anything is deemed by the
White House in its sole discretion to constitute a threat to the United
States. (this is formally known as implementing "Continuity of Government" plans).
***
Bear in mind that the Pentagon is also running an AI program to see how people will react to propaganda and to government-inflicted terror. The program is called Sentient World Simulation:
"U.S defense, intel and homeland
security officials are constructing a parallel world, on a computer,
which the agencies will use to test propaganda messages and military strategies.Called the Sentient World Simulation, the
program uses AI routines based upon the psychological theories of
Marty Seligman, among others. (Seligman introduced the theory of
'learned helplessness' in the 1960s, after shocking beagles until they
cowered, urinating, on the bottom of their cages.)Yank a country's water supply. Stage a military coup. SWS will tell you what happens next.
The sim will feature an AR avatar for each person in the real world, based upon data collected about us from government records and the internet."
Postscript: Gaming social media is only one propaganda technique employed by the government:
- Famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein says the CIA has already bought and paid for many successful journalists
- The New York Times discusses in a matter-of-fact way the use of mainstream writers by the CIA to spread messages
- A 4-part BBC documentary
called the "Century of the Self" shows that an American - Freud's
nephew, Edward Bernays - created the modern field of manipulation of
public perceptions, and the U.S. government has extensively used his
techniques
- The Independent discusses allegations of American propaganda
- And one of the premier writers on journalism says the U.S. has used widespread propaganda
- advertisements -
I am bot
How much will this cost the taxpayer? I am sure that this will be a very efficient government program too, and certainly a better use of resources and funds than say a realistic energy policy or efficient electrical grid. I am also sure that the GOP will not vote for this additional "spending" either < sarc off >
It will cost us all our loss of freedom. Or at least what's left of it.
Isn't it amazing that we are willing to spend our hard earned money to permit someone to legislate (and manipulate) our freedoms away from us?
http://www.ubest1.com/?page=video/30859
Dead link for me, destiny. How's the mood in France these days?
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xigpz8_rense-moret-les-plans-sinistres-de-google_news#from=embediframe
No offense but why wouldn't they? It makes sense to do so.
Zero Hedge is a social media site, too, not unlike Facebook. We are all just writing on Tyler's wall. Tyler's friends get to post pictures on his wall.
\(*_*)/ 'We're free to do what they tell us'
Anyone read the 'Net delusion'? Seems to be directly related to this post.
The Matrix is watching.. (on your Dollar)
Well ZH has more than a few co*k s***ers who voted for the islamic in 2008 and still pimp for him.
Name even one, Freddie. Perhaps you should spend less time at Huffpo.
DURRRRRRRR
The U.S. government and the Pentagon are no different to Joseph Goebbels propaganda ministry.
They are part and parcel of his ideology.
Because they are a bunch of worthless motherfucking criminals.
Incompetent and redundant human garbage.
This sucker nation is going down. Got an emigration plan?
The U.S. government is an organized criminal enterprise.
The Smith-Mundt Act makes pointing propaganda campaigns at domestic audiences illegal.
George W: thanks for the link. This is interesting and very telling about government when it forgets it works for us, not vice-versa... No idea why someone junked you.
The laws are for the elites - especially post 2008. They make them and interpret them. There is no law.
I would say post 2001 would be a little more accurate.
edit: so basically same thing Goebbels used I just attributed it to the wrong asshole. Fair enough, but no one has been able to implement it on such a wide scale so successfully as those goose stepping fuckers from munich. I mean if these techniques were as successful as when the nazis employed them there would be no zero hedge, no anonymous, nothing, people would go along with it much like they did during the days of the reich. I fear they will find ways to refine even more the techniques of Bernay et al
Let us not forget the American "sheeple" raptly living in a television world of commercials that repeatedly define for him the meaning of life and happiness: Buying the right shit.
It has become our church and our bible. It tells us what we want and what we need, who we are and who we "aspire" to be.
How many people dismiss each commercial on a "Lie" . . . "Lie" . . . "Lie" basis? We don't. We habitually submit to the expectation of uncritical suspension of disbelief required for pleasurable television viewing. It seems, to those few who even consider the proposition, a small price to pay. Unfortunately, the average American spends over a thousand hours a year in this altered state of consciousness/reality . . . and is trained to do so from earliest childhood. In fact, it is a touchstone of our existance.
Is it any wonder that we have become so good at living with lies?
don't forget the church
Since when has the DOD or the feds ever worried about a stupid thing like the law? Bring in Joseph Goebbels and the ministry of propaganda mein fuhrer...sarc on
Goebbels and propaganda?
Not even in the same category. For years, generations, a long time into the past, the manipulation of public opinion has been a humongoloid institutional business. Major contractors have performed admirably, institutions of myth and meme building, reinforcement and procreation (ref; Tavistock, etc.) Those having the least scholarly interest in the matter should turn to Brenays' works including Propaganda, considered by many to be the ultimate treatise on the topic. Which in turn, served as the cornerstone of his pioneering efforts as the father of Public Relations.
Yep... just pause for the moment and it makes sense. It fits, eh?
And when done on a "nationwide" or "global" basis with respect to the large, important "global" "trends" or "memes", it is oft referred to as Perceptions Management.
It is one big fucking business. Huge. Massive amounts of funds expended. Big Moolah. That is mostly subcontracted out by governments to firms specializing in the effort.
Now, I say to you, which would you think most efficacious; a private firm specializing in the moulding and manipulation of public opinion, or a governmental bureaucracy?
Nice to see 'em taking it in house.
1917
After Woodrow “Making The World Safe For Hypocrisy” Wilson does his little flip flop on The Great War, it’s time to whip the American public into line. A week after Wilson’s declaration of war, he creates the imaginatively named Committee on Public Information (CPI) to propagandize the war and, quite literally, to mass brainwash America.
It marks the beginning of scientifically based mass mind control in America.
The CPI, headed by one of Wilson’s personal cronies, a publicist named George Creel, is made up of carefully selected people from the emerging film and advertising industries as well as from academia, psychology, the press, the music industry and the art world. The CPI is designed to “protect the control and management of American society” by “a technical elite who would serve established power”.
The Wilson regime's ministry of propaganda and manipulation immediately identifies the basic methods by which it will control the minds of the American masses: appeal to emotion while largely ignoring truth or logic, replace facts with symbols, demonize the "enemy" and promise a war which will "make the world safe for democracy". Astute readers will notice how much things change over the years.
"A newer and subtler instrument must weld thousands and even millions of human beings into one amalgamated mass of hate and will and hope. A new flame must burn out the canker of dissent and temper the steel of bellicose enthusiasm. The name of this new hammer and anvil of social solidarity is propaganda."
Harold Lasswell
The CPI’s top mind control expert is Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, who applies old Sigmund's work to the art of mass mind control by blending modern advertising techniques with a profound understanding of individual and mass psychology. The basic techniques of mind control used by the CPI are old ones, employed successfully by the ruling elite during the American Revolution, the Spanish American War and countless other events.
But, now, there are enormously powerful new tools to employ in the controlling of the American mind: radio and movies and, in a few decades, the most powerful brainwashing and disinformation tool of them all will appear, television.
The creation of the CPI by Wilson marks a turning point in world history. The control of the perceptions, thoughts and beliefs of entire populations is now not only possible, but remarkably easy.
Bernays called it the "engineering of consent".
Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
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. In almost every act of our lives whether in the sphere of politics or business in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, 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 that control the public mind."
Edward Bernays
As Bernays recognized, the most powerful tool with which to control a population is fear and an easily indentifiable, dehumanized enemy is needed to provoke that fear. Within a few months, by flooding the U.S. with anti-German hate literature, images, movies and music, the CPI has successfully transformed the U.S. from a nation consisting largely of isolationists to a gang of rabid and terrified Hun haters lusting for blood.
"So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations that every war must appear to be a war of defense against a menacing, murderous aggressor."
Harold Lasswell
The key to the CPI’s mind control program is the dehumanization and demonization of the German people and this includes German-Americans who fall victim to murderous “patriots” in large numbers.
Under George Creel, the CPI invents countless fake stories of German atrocities.
The tame mass media obediently carry the CPI's lies including ones of poisoned candy being dropped by German airplanes for children, German soldiers killing babies and skewering them on bayonets, the raping of Belgian nuns by Germans, Germans cutting the ears from corpses, German soldiers giving children hand-grenades to play with and Germans infecting God-fearing Americans with tuberculosis.
At first, most Americans see that the atrocity propaganda being pumped out by the CPI is nothing but absurd fabrication and refer to the practice as “Creeling” in honor of the CPI’s chief liar. But, in a few short months, the lies have been so thoroughly and repetitively distributed through every channel of communication in the United States that the vast majority of Americans accept the lies as being true.
"Our effort was educational and informative throughout, for we had such confidence in our case as to feel that no other argument was needed than the simple, straightforward presentation of the facts."
George Creel
Wilon’s Committee On Public Information carries out psychological warfare against the people of the United States on a scale unprecedented in human history and with a degree of success of which Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels could only dream.
The CPI is organized into nineteen divisions, each focused on a particular type of propaganda.
Teams of advertising experts and psychologists flood every possible means of communication in the U.S. with the goal of engendering hatred of everything German and making support of every aspect of the war the only possible option for a “patriotic” American.
Public figures such as John Dewey and Walter Lippmann are recruited to give the CPI’s propaganda credibility.
The CPI creates the Four Minute Men, 75,000 volunteer speakers in 5,200 communities, who deliver the CPI’s propaganda to their neighbors and to church congregations.
The CPI’s psychologists target various demographic segments of the American public with tailor-made propaganda. Foreign language speakers are used to target immigrants, farmers are used to sell the war to farmers, businessmen are used to convince other businessmen of the recently discovered virtue of the war. In all, the CPI’s speakers give more than seven million speeches provoking hatred and fear of Germany and Germans to more than three hundred million people. After many of the speeches, mobs form and attack German-American homes and businesses.
The CPI’s mind control experts are very well aware that graphic images are often more powerful propaganda tools than words and the Division of Pictorial Publicity recruits top advertising illustrators and cartoonists who work closely with publicity experts in the Advertising Division to provide propaganda via the print media, most notably posters and illustrations and advertising in magazines and newspapers in which they are given free space by cooperative publishers.
Virtually every mainstream publication in the U.S. carries a substantial quota of CPI propaganda. Emotionally powerful posters, frequently painted in patriotic colors, are plastered on billboards across the country urging the sacrifice of money or a son or life itself for the war.
The CPI’s Division of News, distributes over six thousand press releases and becomes the primary provider of war “news” to the American mass media and therefore the American people. In a typical week, over twenty thousand newspaper columns in the U.S. are filled with material provided by the CPI.
Aware of the fact that many newspaper readers pay scant attention to the “news” items it has planted, the CPI creates the Division of Syndicated Features and recruits leading novelists, short story writers and essayists to deliver the CPI’s propaganda in those forms. The CPI estimates that more than twelve million Americans read the Syndicated Features Division’s propaganda every month throughout the war.
For those even less interested in the written word, those Americans who skip right past the CPI’s “news” and features to the funny pages, Bernays and the boys create a cartoon division which plants enormous amounts of CPI propaganda in cartoon pages and supplements.
The division’s stated goal is to “mobilize and direct the scattered cartoon power of the country for constructive war work.” The cartoon propaganda achieves new heights in anti-German hatemongering. The evil Huns of the cartoons have snouts, tusks, hairy faces, red eyes and fangs. In the cartoons, the Germans render human corpses for fat, steal everything in sight, murder randomly and rape innocent maidens by the thousand.
One of the CPI's nineteen divisions uses popular music as part of its mass mind control program.
The CPI hires thousands of song writers who create songs with anti-German lyrics. Sheet music of the CPI songs is printed and distributed complete with illustrations of evil, grotesque Huns.
Among the composers is Irving Berlin who had been born Israel Isidore Baline. Curiously, Berlin didn't abandon his adopted, very German name in an environment where frankfurters had become “liberty sausages” and dachshunds had become “liberty dogs”. Perhaps Berlin calculated that, in the United States, it was better to have a "German" name, even in the midst of the CPI's anti-German hate campaign, than a Jewish one.
The CPI’s Division of Civic and Educational Cooperation uses tame scholars to write anti-German propaganda pamphlets with titles such as The German Whisper, German War Practices and Conquest and Kultur.
The CPI manipulates the nation’s librarians into becoming censors. They quickly adopt the CPI’s concept that it is their “duty” to protect patrons from “disloyal” material.
“Pro-German” and pacifist books are removed from library shelves and replaced with CPI propaganda. Works by great German writers such as Goethe and Schiller are purged from American libraries. Libraries even play a role in the CPI’s Americanization Registration Program. Thousands of cards are distributed to immigrants through libraries and then returned with signatures to the CPI’s Division of Work With The Foreign Born.
The CPI uses newspaper advertising campaigns to target the three million non-English speaking men eligible for the draft and, in a country already chock-a-block with organizations sporting falsified purposes and deceptive names, creates yet another, the League of Oppressed Nations, which supposedly represents the various "ethnic loyalty" groups in the U.S. but is, of course, nothing more or less than another propaganda tool of the Wilson regime via the CPI.
The Wilson regime’s mass mind control apparatus specifically targets its psychological warfare against American women, afraid that they “might constitute a subversive element in the nation, detrimental to wartime unity and the smooth functioning of selective service.” In plain English, they might not want their husbands and sons slaughtered in Europe for the futher enrichment of the Morgans, Rockefellers, Carnegies, Duponts et al and we can't be havin' none of that.
Prominent women peace activists, including Helen Keller, Carrie Chapman Catt, Jane Addams and Kate Richards O'Hare are being heard and the CPI must silence them and counter their anti-war message.
The CPI wants to motivate women to stay quietly at home practicing food conservation, growing food and willingly sending their sons off to kill and die. The CPI forms alliances with the publishers of American women’s magazines, most importantly with The Ladies’ Home Journal.
The CPI effectively controls much of the content and many of the covers of the influential magazine, which obediently extols sacrifice, thrift and a willingness to send sons to the recently repositioned war. The CPI’s Four Minute Men establish a women’s division to speak to women’s groups to counter resistance to the war among women.
Moving images can be even more powerful than still ones, a fact that the CPI’s brainwashers are quick to exploit. American film makers seek respectability by giving almost unlimited support to the Wilson war machine.
A 1917 editorial in The Motion Picture News proclaims, "every individual at work in this industry wants to do his share" and promises that "through slides, film leaders and trailers, posters and newspaper publicity they will spread that propaganda so necessary to the immediate mobilization of the country's great resources."
The industry quickly pumps out outrageous anti-German hate propaganda such as The Kaiser: The Beast of Berlin, The Claws of the Hun, The Prussian Cur and Wolves of Kultur.
Most of the films portray fictitious atrocities by Germans and include some of the completely false atrocity tales invented by the CPI including Germans murdering babies and various rape stories, in spite of denials of their accuracy by the U.S. War Department and American generals.
Among the top Hollywood producers of anti-German, pro-war propaganda is D.W. Griffith, producer of the movie lauding the Ku Klux Klan, Birth of a Nation, one of Woodrow Wilson’s favorite films.
Aside from the Hollywood output, the CPI’s Films Division itself produces over sixty official films seen by an average of eighty million people every week.
But nothing illustrates the Wilson regime’s utter moral bankruptcy in its successful quest to mass brainwash America as well as the use CPI psychologists make of American children to spread anti-German hatred to other children, at least those who aren't busy slaving away in mines and factories. Schoolboy “Four Minute Men” speak in their schools delivering CPI propaganda to their classmates. Travelling CPI sideshows with puported French officers deliver fabricated German atrocity stories to school children. Thousands of children’s books, including mysteries, comics and adventures, are published containing anti-German hate propaganda.
The CPI creates the Anti-Yellow Dog League, a vigilante group for children with about a thousand branches nationally, all based in public schools.
Eligible for membership are boys tens years and older who are urged to “search out disloyalty” and to “bark” when a “yellow dog” is suspected. American schools enthusiastically cooperate in the “hunts”. Some children go further in their quest to be “patriotic” and attack German-Americans. In St. Louis, children stone the daily deliveries of a German grocer. The children are congratulated by the local newspaper for “doing their duty”.
Ministers of the Christian religion are eager to cooperate in warmongering and spreading the CPI’s propagada in their sermons and, as the adults listen to the Word of God (or at least of Edward Bernays) praising the war and damning the Germans, the children get their own dose of anti-German hate at Sunday School with “Beat-up the Hun" coloring books.
Libraries sponsor "story hours" for thousands of children using pro-war propaganda supplied directly by the CPI. After the war, the U.S. government gives its thanks to the nation’s kiddies “for their loyal service in wartime” by distributing fifteen million piggy banks made from disengaged hand grenades to them.
You just can’t make this shit up.
Not only did the CPI spew out millions of pieces of propaganda, it enforced a form of self-censorship in the U.S. mass media by implementing "voluntary guidelines".
As they do to this day, American journalists obediently comply with censorship and news control in order to remain in the government “information loop”. Publications outside the controlled mass media are effectively destroyed by Wilson’s war on freedom of speech and freedom of the press in America.
Two books written by the CPI's master propagandist, Edward Bernays, Propaganda and The Engineering of Consent, remain key textbooks of the manipulation and control of the public by the ruling elite. The mass mind control techniques of Bernays have been in continuous use in the U.S. since the great democrat Woodrow Wilson introduced them in 1917.
Only the object of our fear and loathing is changed from time to time to suit the requirements of the ruling elite. Ironically, Bernays, who was Jewish, will live to see the techniques he developed to incite anti-German hatred used to great effect by Josef Goebbels to incite anti-Jewish hatred.
"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it."
Edward Bernays
"It was on the tip of everyone's tongue,"
Thank you DP for another historical reminder, and GW for the current events.
OTOH: I think I am going to be sick.
+100 David
Excellent reminder - and very relevant.
+1000
Best comment in cyber-ages. Thank you, David. I would also like to remind people that it is unquestioned that David Axelrod is considered a master manipulator of modern and social media. The "meme" is that he engineered a huge rate increase for former employer Commonwealth Edison by astroturfing a campaign of blackout fears. Of course, what would a successful Chicago newspaperman know about propaganda?
++
1933 US Government Pro-Inflation Propaganda Film(!)
www.liveleak.com/view?i=3e0_1235601005
The United States Government has been manipulating their sheeple via various media outlets for MANY decades. Note how this also coincides with the stealing, i mean removal from citizen's hands, of gold coins from circulation... and enter the Fed.
Yes... First they took over the Cartoon network... and now the internet...
AS WE SPEAK! SPECIAL AGENTS ARE GETTING A CRASH COURSE ON HOW TO USE INTERNET EXPLORER AND FINDING THEIR WAY ARROUND THE INTERNET WITH GOOGLE!!
In 50 years from now, THEY'LL BE ALL OVER THE INTERNET!!
From porn sites to online pharmacy stores...
Ben & Timmy bought that one hook, line, and sinker- I wonder if they take Reefer Madness as seriously.