This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
The Power Of Fear & The Gullibility Of The Masses
Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,
“We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence men went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs … In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. It was near the end of October. Business was better. The war scare was over. More men were back at work. Sales were picking up.” – Opening monologue of War of the Worlds broadcast – October 30,1938
It was 77 years ago this week that Orson Welles struck terror into the hearts of Americans with his live radio broadcast of the HG Wells classic War of the Worlds. The broadcast began at 8:00 pm on Mischief Night 1938. As I was searching for anything of interest to watch the other night on the 600 cable stations available 24/7, I stumbled across a PBS program about Welles’ famous broadcast.
As I watched the program, I was struck by how this episode during the last Fourth Turning and how people react to events is so similar to how people are reacting during the current Fourth Turning. History may not repeat exactly, but it certainly rhymes.
It was the ninth year of the Fourth Turning. The Great Depression was still in progress. After a few years of a faux recovery (stock market up 400% from the 1932 low to its 1937 high) for the few, with the majority still suffering, another violent leg down struck in 1938. GDP collapsed, unemployment spiked back towards 20%, and the stock market crashed by 50%. The hodgepodge of New Deal make work programs and Federal Reserve machinations failed miserably to lift the country out of its doldrums. Sound familiar? The average American household had not seen their lives improve and now the foreboding threat of war hung over their heads.
The national hysteria over a play about the ridiculously impossible plot of Martians attacking Grover’s Mill, New Jersey seems crazy without the benefit of context. The nation was already on edge. They had just suffered another economic blow to their solar plexus, and now the drumbeats of war in Europe were growing louder. Welles’ biographer Frank Brady described the mindset of the nation:
“For the entire month prior to ‘The War of the Worlds’, radio had kept the American public alert to the ominous happenings throughout the world. The Munich crisis was at its height. … For the first time in history, the public could tune into their radios every night and hear, boot by boot, accusation by accusation, threat by threat, the rumblings that seemed inevitably leading to a world war.”
Studies discovered that fewer than one-third of frightened listeners understood the invaders to be aliens; most thought they were listening to reports of a German invasion or a natural catastrophe. The public allowed their emotions to overcome their rational mind. Playing upon people’s fears becomes easier when they are emotionally susceptible and beaten down from years of bad news. Even though it was specifically stated the show was a work of fiction, the mental state of the country was so panicked, people believed something bad was on the verge of happening and allowed themselves to believe.
Much of the credit for the realism of the broadcast goes to Welles, a brilliant showman, who went on to create one of the greatest movies ever made just three years later – Citizen Kane. Welles thought the script was dull, just a day or two before the broadcast. He stressed the importance of inserting news flashes and eyewitness accounts into the script to create a sense of urgency and excitement. The nation had gotten used to breaking news bulletins during the Munich Crisis.
Another important issue was the fact the Mercury Theater on the Air was a radio show without commercial interruptions, adding to the program’s realism. The entire episode lasted 90 minutes and at the end of the play Welles assumed his role as host and told listeners the broadcast was a Halloween concoction: the equivalent, he said, “of dressing up in a sheet, jumping out of a bush and saying, ‘Boo!'” Despite the announcements before and after the show, the outrage and calls for Orson Welles’ head were deafening.
What struck me while watching the PBS retrospective were the similarities between then and now. The gullibility of the masses, the power of fear, the overreaction by the media, busy bodies calling for the government to do something, and the effectiveness of propaganda are all commonalities between that Fourth Turning and today’s Fourth Turning.
Evidently some listeners heard only a portion of the broadcast because they had been tuned into the Edgar Bergen Show and switched to CBS radio after the play had begun. Some of these people were overcome with fear as the tension and anxiety prior to World War II led them to mistake it for a genuine news broadcast. Thousands of those people rushed to share the false reports with others, or called CBS, newspapers, or the police to ask if the broadcast was real. The telephone switchboards were overcome with volume and policeman overstepped their authority and entered the CBS studios to try and stop the show mid-broadcast. Evidently, the authorities weren’t big fans of the First Amendment or Fourth Amendment in 1938 either.
Retrospective analysis has found the hysteria was not as widespread as purported by the mainstream media. The fact the play was performed in NYC, the media capital of the world, and the fictional attack was occurring in New Jersey provided much more publicity to the event. In reality, most of the dupes who were gullible enough to believe that Martians were actually attacking were old people and women. The timeline of the show should have revealed its falsehood to any critical thinking person, as the military somehow was mobilized and defeated within a 30 minute window.
It seems our society will always have a large swath of people who will believe anything they are told by the media or the government. Our government run public education system now matriculates millions of functionally illiterate zombie like creatures into society, who can be easily manipulated and controlled through the use of mass media and false propaganda. Those who constitute the invisible government behind the Deep State duly noted the psychological power of fear during this episode in history.
The master of propaganda during that age even noted the impact on the American public. Adolf Hitler referenced the broadcast in a speech in Munich on November 8, 1938. Welles later remarked that Hitler cited the effect of the broadcast on the American public as evidence of “the corrupt condition and decadent state of affairs in democracy”. It likely confirmed his belief the democratic countries of the world would not have the guts to stand up to a man willing to wage all out war. He invaded Poland less than one year later, initiating the bloodiest war in history.
Fear is a potent emotion to manipulate by the ruling class among a populace incapable or unwilling to think for themselves. The men behind the curtain, after decades of perfecting the psychological methods of molding the opinions, tastes, and ideas of the masses, believe they can control society through the use of fear. In 1938 Americans feared Germans, economic hardship, war, and evidently Martian invasions. Today they are taught to fear phantom Muslim terrorists, Russians, Chinese, Iranians, gun owners, anyone who questions government overreach, and anyone who disagrees with the social justice warrior agenda. The father of Propaganda, Edward Bernays, portrayed it succinctly in 1928:
“In almost every act of our daily 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 which control the public mind.”
As I watched the despicable display of yellow journalism by the pathetic excuses for journalists during the CNBC presidential debate the other night, I was reminded of the PBS show and how the press completely blew the War of the Worlds broadcast out of proportion to its actual impact. Within three weeks, newspapers had published at least 12,500 articles about the broadcast and its impact, although the story dropped off the front pages after a few days. It was essentially a tempest in a teapot that has lived on for decades because the press created the outrage and fear.
This is no different than what happens on a daily and weekly basis today. The mainstream media attempts to work the masses into a frenzy over a meaningless debt ceiling “showdown”, the latest hurricane or snowstorm, the latest fake terrorist warning, the collapse of Greece, the imminent acquisition of a nuclear bomb by Iran, the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia, or whatever sensationalist storyline that will get them ratings and strike the necessary fear into the hearts of the masses.
Every looming threat is relegated to the back pages of the legacy media rags a few days later. The degraded faux journalists prefer to distract the willfully ignorant masses with the latest Kardashian/Lamar Odom/Caitlyn Jenner reality TV episode, Oscar fashion shows, professional sports, how to get rich in the stock market infomercials, and how you can have the perfect body segments on one of the dozens of faux news shows.
What I found fascinating in the PBS episode is the never ending calls from busy bodies, control freaks, and lovers of government coercion to do something about everything they don’t like. In the days following the broadcast, there was widespread outrage in the media. The program’s news-bulletin format was described as deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast and calls for regulation by the Federal Communications Commission. How dare Orson Welles broadcast a play, described beforehand as a work of fiction, in a creative, exciting, and realistic manner. Do you see any similarities to calls for the FCC to control the internet, where anti-establishment websites dare to speak the truth?
There will always be a sociopathic segment of the population who want control over everything and everyone. They want bigger government, more laws, more regulations, more restrictions, more taxes and more control over your life. The 1930’s marked a huge turning point for this country, with the majority supporting the New Deal and government intervening deeply into our everyday lives. Today, the government, in the control of bankers, crony corporate interests, billionaires, and captured political hacks, has smothered our freedoms, liberties, entrepreneurial spirit, intellectual debate, and ability to change the system from within.
Shortly after the Welles broadcast, the nation came together and endured seven years of shared sacrifice, with the young men of the country fighting and dying on continents and islands far from our shores in a struggle against aggression. Today, I feel the aggression is coming from within. It’s our own government and the men who control it who are the real enemy. The coming struggle during this Fourth Turning is more likely to be American versus American. A prominent figure from the last Fourth Turning saw into the future decades ago, and he was right.
“I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any treat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.” ? Douglas MacArthur
»
- 12583 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
It was 14 years ago that ZioNazis struck terror into the hearts of Americans with their live TV broadcast of the "New Pearl Harbor".
It seems SmokeyJim Quinn, and a large swath of moronic ameriKlan people, will believe anything they are told by the mainstream media and the treasonous government cabal about 9/11.
https://www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspiracy-theory/
He works for a public education system (Wharton) which matriculates functionally illiterate zombie like 'busyness' creatures into society, who can be easily manipulated and controlled through the use of mass media and false propaganda.
Quinn feels the aggression is coming from within. "It’s our own government and the men who control it who are the real enemy"... and yet by his continuing writing about the useless 4TH TURDING by Stress&How, he refuses to confront the 'in your face' 9/11Liars.
Again... QUINN FAILS !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6O4LE0eTYc
Just y'all wait for the truth to come out about the Reptilian Agenda .... When they run out of everything else, aka, Krugman's Anal-ian Invasion
Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four views Jews as the victims of the government and makes a Jew the hero of those opposing the government. It therefore presents a very inaccurate view of what we see today. Maurice Bardèche's Nuremberg or the Promised Land presents a much more accurate view:
In 1949, one year after the publication of Nuremberg or the Promised Land, another prophetic book was published, George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In it Orwell describes a scary future in which there is a single party dictatorship, living conditions are drab, food is scarce, people’s thoughts are openly controlled by Big Brother, their words and actions are monitored through “telescreens” which they cannot turn off, they are given no choice over what they view on these screens, there is only one channel on the “telescreens” and one film (always a war film) in the theatres, in one such film refugees trying to escape are shot to the delight of the audience, some of these refugees are Jewish, “the Enemy of the People” is a Jew, Emmanuel Goldstein, who is condemned for “advocating freedom of speech, freedom of the Press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought,” people are openly taught to hate him and his followers during “Two Minutes Hate” and “Hate Week,” sex is discouraged through a “Junior Anti-Sex League,” the Inner Party is called the “Inner Party,” thoughtcrime is called “thoughtcrime,” Thought Police are called “Thought Police,” the media propagate obvious, self-contradictory lies such as: “War Is Peace,” “Freedom Is Slavery,” “Ignorance Is Strength,” people are told that democracy is “impossible” (although the Party is said to be its “guardian”), capitalism is viewed as a barbarity that has “vanished.”
The world described in 1984 little resembles that in the Occident today. We live in multi-party democracies. Our mainstream media tell us not only that democracy is possible and a very good thing, but that its triumph everywhere is virtually inevitable, an inevitability which we should make every effort to encourage. Living conditions are generally good, food is abundant. Capitalism is alive and well and is promoted as an economic panacea. Our politicians advocate the same things as does Emmanuel Goldstein. Our media propagate obvious lies such as: “Diversity is our strength,” but they at least avoid flagrant self-contradictions (some kinds of diversity may indeed be a source of strength, although certainly not the radical ethnic diversity that our media promote). Refugees do not flee our societies, but rather risk their lives trying to get into them. We are not taught to hate, but to tolerate. Sex is not generally discouraged, even among the young. With our multi-channel televisions and the internet we are free to see, hear, read, and discuss almost anything, if not everywhere. Freedom reigns. Yet to some that freedom seems, if not illusory, useless. It is useless because people’s thoughts and actions are monitored and controlled not by anything outside themselves but by their own warped consciences, consciences deliberately warped by our mainstream media, consciences closely resembling Bardèche’s “universal conscience.”
Orwell’s and Bardèche’s books have had quite different careers in the Occident. Orwell’s, although formerly banned in the Soviet Union, has been widely read and praised; Bardèche’s is still banned in France and is generally unknown elsewhere. 1984 has served to warn us against the dangers of Communism, and for that deserves acclaim. But one cannot help but wonder if its general acclaim today is not also an index to its irrelevance. We have escaped the dreadful future envisioned by Orwell in 1984. We have not escaped the dreadful future envisioned by Bardèche in 1948.
Bardèche’s book is a classic. It is of interest today primarily because of what it says about the future. Throughout the first three quarters of the book the discussion of the trial is interlaced with somber warnings and ominous admonitions to the reader: “One is proposing a future to us, one does so by condemning the past. It is into this future also that we want to see clearly. It is these principles that we would like to look at directly. For we already foresee that these new ethics refer to a strange universe, a universe with something sick about it, an elastic universe where our eyes no longer recognize things.”
Bardèche has examined the transcript of the Nuremberg Trial and now, like an ancient prophet after examining the entrails of a sacrifice, he has bad news to deliver and knows that others will not want to hear him. Indeed, very few have been willing to hear him. The last quarter of the book is devoted entirely to an exposition of what the future will bring. That anyone in 1948 could have foreseen so accurately our modern world is to me astounding. Bardèche recognized that the judicial travesty at Nuremberg was not simply an act of vengeance by victors against the vanquished and that what was on trial there was not just the particular German defendants, nor the German nation, nor even National Socialism, but rather nationalism itself: the idea that a people own the land that they have long lived in and have the right to live in it as they wish and to exclude others from living in it if they so wish. It is nationalism in any form which was condemned at Nuremberg.
With amazing prescience Bardèche foresaw in its condemnation the coming of an international system which is first and foremost economic, not political or governmental. Its purpose is to protect an international economic élite, not ordinary persons, or peoples or nations. It offers the latter lots of rights but no guarantees that these rights will be respected. Its laws are unclear (unlike those of a prince) and broadly unenforceable, but the system does not attempt to enforce them broadly but only selectively. For selected victims punishments are severe. Victims are selected not so much because they have broken laws but because they have offended the “universal conscience,” the conscience created and fostered in us all by the media (Bardèche’s “radio”). Bardèche clearly foresaw the system which we today call “globalism,” although he nowhere uses that term. He also foresaw at least implicitly many other aspects of our world: Third World immigration, the irrational glorification of democracy, loss of sovereignty, humanitarian wars and interference, hate crimes, affirmative action, racial miscegenation and replacement, etc.: “At the bottom of the sanctuary there sits a Negro god. You have all the rights, except to speak evil of the god.” “And, from one end of the world to the other, in perfectly similar cities . . . there will live under similar laws a bastard population, a race of indefinable and gloomy slaves, without genius, without instinct, without voice. . . But this will be the promised land.”
http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=nuremberg+or+the+promised+land&type=
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2013/07/maurice-bardeches-vision-of-the-future-part-1/
Salzburg1756,
You wrote: The last quarter of the book is devoted entirely to an exposition of what the future will bring. That anyone in 1948 could have foreseen so accurately our modern world is to me astounding.
So then, what comes next?
And, can you tell us more about the "Negro god"?
Because I haven’t read these books.
Thanks.
I would'nt mind the gvt interviening in lives as long as they knew what the hell they were doing, a suicide trap for citizens and being on the wrong side of nature is NO way to run a country.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9gZG86nWezk
Sara....on cnbc now...without the dildo...I think
knukles:
the correct sequence has been provided by Werner von Brown (the German who developed US space program) who used to say:
American "Enemy's List" to Sustain War Mode and Pentagon Budgets is
· Soviet Union
· Terrorists
· Asteroids
· Extraterrestrials
None of them are hostile. It's all a lie.
Maybe Assteroid is not "hostile", but is making much discomfort when sit down. Do not neglect colonic health!
DP, I participate in a monthly gathering of intelligent, well-educated, well-meaning people, and as it was my turn last month, I selected this — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0Q5eZhCPuc — only to find that out of the ten of us, there was but one other person who would even agree that the government's story is patently absurd, much less that the government, or some faction of it, was behind it all.
Next month's selection?
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/thats-not-funny/3993...
Needless to say, I'm bailing out, as even our "best and brightest" can't confront the reality that is America today: a lost civilization.
David Pierre,
Large swath of moronic ameriKlan people, will believe anything they are told by the mainstream media: Check
a public education system (Wharton): Check
matriculates functionally illiterate zombie like 'busyness' creatures: Check
society controlled through the use of mass media and false propaganda: Check
our own government and the men who control it who are the real enemy: Check
useless 4TH TURDING by Stress&How: Check
9/11: I have to agree that the smoking guns are there, if the videos on the internet are not fake. However, where are the perpetrators? It would take a crew of quite few people to pull this treason. And, how about the security, after all, these buildings have already been target.
Americans have a big ego. Love attention. People involved would have said something by now for attention and fame.
And Mossad only gets involved if it involves Israel. And this has nothing to do with Israel.
It would be fascinating if I could check your 9/11. But I can’t. So I’ll take a rain check.
Just watch the video — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0Q5eZhCPuc — which is but one among many. If you don't have the time to watch it, then regardless of how much you obviously understand, you are irrelevant.
I have watched this video while riding my stationary bicycle. As I said before, the implosions are pretty disturbing. I just have a hard time to connect to who would benefit, under such risk.
And irrelevance is irrelevant.
If physics negates the possibility of the government's story being true — i.e., the buildings collapsed into dust and molten steel due to jumbo jet impacts that the buildings were designed to withstand and office fires that have never brought high-rise steel structures down — then you have to start from there, that's all, and see where it goes.
Does the fact that no real government investigation has been conducted not tell you something, the so-called "9/11 Commission" having been a complete farce?
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/03/911-commissioners-didnt-believe-g...
"Quinn feels the aggression is coming from within. "It’s our own government and the men who control it who are the real enemy"... and yet by his continuing writing about the useless 4TH TURDING by Stress&How, he refuses to confront the 'in your face' 9/11Liars"
Sorry David Pierre you lose, Quinn's job, as he and I see it, is not to tell you the things you know already but to encourage 'You' to tell the World! Encourage = give courage to you. You not speaking for yourself is a consequence of the very fourth turning you are attempting to deny.
Quinn feels the aggression is coming from within. "It’s our own government and the men who control it who are the real enemy". ...Again... QUINN FAILS !
What failure? You repeated what Quinn is saying. A gullible public is easy to control.
Presstittute media. Everything is PsyOp & Ponzi.
The government LIES, the worst and BIGGEST LIARS, with the worst results for traditional Americans is the MEDIA and the Tribe that owns and operates it.
If you want to know why the masses are like grazing herds of cows, well:
Jenji Kohan and the Jewish Hyper-Sexualization of Western Culture
Why Is There A Prolific Jewish Presence In The American Feminist Movement?
Jill Soloway and the "Transgender" Agenda, Part 1
Jill Soloway and the "Transgender" Agenda, Part 2
Why So Much Jewish Fear and Loathing of Donald Trump? Professor Kevin MacDonald October 29, 2015
https://www.darkmoon.me/2013/the-sexual-decadence-of-weimar-germany-by-l...
hitler was right...
That reminds me. I haven't seen AlfredENeuman post lately. Was he banned? Did he take a new name? Or both.
I get tired of this Jewish bashing. It's another scapegoat for mass stupidity. Quinn is right!
Oh, and don't forget to set your clocks back to the 7th century!
http://dlpoptics.com/Clock.png
For a great interview of a conservative...utube
Peter Owen meets Peter Hitchens
Full length
Is there a formula for the perfect butt? Of course not, too many variants but gee put almost anything in front of our Dupes of Hazard county of citizens and they suck it in.
Context is everything and it's the top video at the KillerAlgorithms page, which has other videos and a couple accredited to finding on this site, the videos about gold in particular.
Professsor Charlie Siefe does a good job with this and what's even more ironic is that he's giving this lecture at New York's Google headquarters, telling a lot of their employees "you get duped". He also wrote the book, "Proofiness, the Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception"...which I highly recommend as well.
http://www.ducknet.net/attack-of-the-killer-algorithms/
Fear is out there like crazy and again it comes back to the dupes of hazard again as we read one article after another telling us we are at risk for this, at risk for that, hell who wants to get out of bed anymore if life is that risky:)
We have what I call Excess Scoring of Consumers in the US, and that's where some mathematical model and software calculates all this risk and then scores you, so you can't do squat and are in this invisible cage, as all those algos said "NO". This is one way the 1% keeps all their money but keeping the average consumer scared to death of some new frigging risk that some idiot in the Silicon Valley probably wrote and is in some stupid startup with a few million raised to keep him going.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2015/09/excess-scoring-of-us-consumers-us.html
This web site has something for everyone. This is serious.
https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/10/27/ignoring-the-absolutely-in...
This is interesting views on cultural evolution.
https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/10/27/cultural-evolution-in-over...
This is interesting thoughts about the mechanisms driving human evolution. I deserve at least an IgNobel.
https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/10/31/african-advantage/
0000
Another home paged provided by ZeroHedge, thinkpatriot thanks the operators.
Everybody knows the world is full of stupid people -The Refreshments
It has been said..
People lose their minds en masse, but regain their senses one at a time....
what is the count now?
Google is <-paying 97$ per hour! Work for few hours and have longer with friends & family! On tuesday I got a great new Land Rover Range Rover from having earned $8752 this last four weeks. Its the most-financialy rewarding I've had. It sounds unbelievable but you wont forgive yourself if you don’t check it...
•••••••>>>> www.OnlineJobs100.Com.............Work at Home
And if "the masses" are not moved, are not fooled by the fear... then just print headlines saying that they are, and that they demand the action which you wanted to impose on them anyway. Print money, print fear.
This obviously impossible timeline in this fictional radio broadcast reminds me of the TV new reporter announcing building 7 collapsed on 911... with building 7 visible through a window behind her.
Humans really are amazing suckers.
If you assume that "People are stupid", you won't go broke.
It works real good for TPTB, and top dogs on Bay St., Fleet Street, K-Street and Wall St. And for unlicensed pharma reps on MLK St.
It's the job of Evangelists and MSM Talking Heads, to convince you otherwise, little Sheeple.
Did Orson Wells do this on his own or was he given permission to do this?
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD), the three pillars of manipulation and propaganda. Any one of the pillars can build the other, use uncertainty to create doubt or fear and so on. Edward Bernays was an evil genius.