The Ukraine-Russia-USA Conflict, Part 11: Western Propaganda — Its Main Purpose, Sources, Intended Effects and Manipulative Means
13.1 The General Purpose of Propaganda: Manufacturing Consent
The main or general purpose of propaganda, just like that of its negative counterpart of censorship, is to manufacture consent for the parasitic or predatory 1% and their agendas. One could also speak of thought (and action) control or “social control”, as noted by a not too bright Mika Brzezinski (the daughter of the (in)famous US national security advisor “Zbig”) who indeed did say the “quiet part out loud” in 2017 on the Democrat establishment stronghold MSNBC and when arguing against US President Trump:
Brzezinski (0:33–0:42): “He could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control, ah, exactly what people think. And that is […] our job.”
And this is nothing new, no one-time affair, but a long-standing and rather successful attempt:
1. Operation Mockingbird
Let’s start with maybe the best-known example. In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled “The CIA and the Media” reporting that the CIA had covertly infiltrated America’s most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters who it considered assets in a program known as Operation Mockingbird.
It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media are meant to report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the agendas of spooks and warmongers.
But it only got worse from there.
2. Intelligence operatives now just openly working in the media
Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and people are too propagandized to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like The New York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news pundits. The Washington Post has consistently refused to disclose the fact that its sole owner has been a CIA contractor when reporting on US intelligence agencies as per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper, Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash, Susan Hennessey, Ned Price, Rick Francona, Michael Morell, John McLaughlin, John Sipher, Thomas Bossert, Clint Watts, James Baker, Mike Baker, Daniel Hoffman, David Preiss, Evelyn Farkas, Mike Rogers and Malcolm Nance, as are known CIA assets like NBC’s Ken Dilanian, as are CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like Tucker Carlson.
Operation Mockingbird was the CIA doing something to the media. What we are seeing now is the CIA openly acting as the media. Any meaningful separation between the CIA and the news media, indeed even any pretence of separation, has been dropped.
Then there are of course also oligarchs manufacturing consent for them and their sick agendas with totally corrupt and supposedly ‘qualitative’ mainstream media (MSM) which they own (Herman and Chomsky refer to this as the “filter of ownership”):
Also never mind the unintentional irony and satire of oligarchs (Bezos and Bloomberg) that control MSM warning about oligarchs (Musk) controlling social media:
A similar absurdity from the Business Insider:
This in turn explains why trust in such MSM is dropping massively. One of the most recent and most embarrassing examples for this is CNN+ which was shut down after only 22 days(!) and despite massive funding:
Independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone confirms and adds some additional information about how the 99% are herded to pro-1% MSM:
A more recent Pew Research poll also shows a interesting clash between self-perception and public perception of mainstream media and respective journalists:
13.2 The Sources of Propaganda
13.2.1 Politicians and Political Parties or Institutions
The most obvious and well-known sources of (political) propaganda are of course politicians. Two of the most infamous examples for that are Adolf Hitler and his back then officially so-called propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. This source of propaganda is so obvious that it does not require further elaboration.
But one must not forget that it is not just individuals but also institutions or systems that are the sources of propaganda, such as, in this context, political parties or institutions — something that should also be fairly obvious.
13.2.2 Mainstream Media
The main source of propaganda are mainstream media (MSM) which oftentimes function as stenographers for the 1% by producing US “empire fanfiction.” Hence the aforementioned trust issues:
The respective distinction between public and private MSM is oftentimes superfluous since both fullfill the fundamentally same function of manufacturing consent for the 1% and since there is oftentimes a tight connection or revolving door between state and corporate media. Thus the term “corporate state media” which is also an indication that corporations or the oligarchs behind them own the state and that they fundamentally function like state media in classic authoritarion dictatorships:
Biden spokesperson Jen Psaki’s reported switch to the fiercely pro-Democratic corporate manufacturer of consent MSNBC(IA) was accordingly commented on as follows:
Wikispooks has an interesting infographics about some of the respective interconnections:
It also needs to pointed out that, as with politics, it is not just the system but once again individual MSM manufacturers of consent that are catastrophes unto themselves, such as Bret Stephens among many, many others:
The following short video lists about a dozen examples of Nicole ‘Typhoid Mary’ Wallace, who was given the worst possible “(liar, liar) pants on fire” rating by Politifact, spouting thoroughly discredited mis- or disinformation on liberal MSM:
Max Boot is another one of those figures and known for warmongering (see part 12, section 14.5):
Here is a pretty accurate top ten/eleven list of some of the very worst and overall more neocon US imperialist manufacturers of consent in US MSM:
Again, there are many more such as MSNBC’s neoliberal Rachel ‘Russiagate’ Maddow or a Jennifer Rubin
or a Natasha Bertrand that would need to be added to a more complete list of thoroughly discredited and untrustworthy mis- and disinformation agents for the US empire and national security state.
Speaking of (meta-)mis- and disinformation: It should hopefully also be relatively clear that the parasitic 1% and their useful idiots are typically offering more mis- and disinformation when they speak about or pretend to be combating or countering mis- and disinformation:
13.2.3 Think Tanks/Lobbying Groups and Foundations, Institutes, etc.
The Wikispooks infographics brings us to a third source of propaganda in the form of ‘think tanks’ — generally a euphemism for lobbying groups of, by and for the 1%.
More from Caitlin Johnstone’s article on the Hudson Institute which is such a think tank:
Pompeo’s speech is one long rimjob for the military-industrial complex which indirectly employs him. He repeatedly sings the praises of the weapons that are being poured into Ukraine, two of them by name: the Patriot missile built by Raytheon and the Javelin missile built jointly by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, both of whom happen to be major funders of the Hudson Institute.
To that we can also add councils, foundations or regular meetings of the 1%, such as the abovementioned annual Bilderberg meetings (1954-), the Council on Foreign Relations (1921-) or the Rockefeller-related and likewise arch-capitalist and pro-1% Trilateral Commission (1974-).
Some reporting and commentary on the recent June 2–5, 2022, 68th Bilderberg meeting in Washington DC:
I find it useful to keep track which people — especially from your own country — attend these meetings since these people will not represent the interests of the 99% but those of the 1%. From my own country Austria, it was the shitlib politician Beate Meinl Reisinger, the well-known banker Andreas Treichl, and the current president of Warner Bros. Discovery International, Gerhard Zeiler — overall a fairly representative mix of those in attendance.
Another such body is the Center for a New American Security (2007-), a sort of continuation of the Bush neocon war-criminal era Project for a New American Century (1997–2006) that had fallen into disrepute and that was dissolved only a year earlier. These are all pro-war lobbying groups:
And there is a clear cooperation between these sources of propaganda and mass or mainstream media:
Imagine a country where there’s no separation between the government, the military, and the media. A lot of Americans would think of China, Russia or North Korea, but it’s a perfect description of the United States today. And here in Washington, the think tank inside this nondescript building — Center For A New American Security (CNAS) — is the clearest example of just that.
CNAS is a premier militarist think tank in the nation’s capital, especially for Democratic Party administrations. It is funded by the State Department and Pentagon and has taken more money from weapons companies over the last several years than any other think tank. On top of that, it’s funded by oil companies, big banks, and right wing governments — basically the most destructive forces on the planet.
For President Joe Biden, CNAS serves as a farm, from which key positions in his administration are cultivated. In fact, at least 16 CNAS alumni are now in key positions in the Biden Pentagon and State Department.
But what’s most shocking is that several national security and foreign policy reporters from elite U.S. media outlets are affiliated with CNAS — and therefore indirectly affiliated with, and likely paid by, the U.S. government and corporations — the very forces that they should be holding accountable.
For more than twenty years, New York Times Washington correspondent David Sanger has relentlessly pushed deceptions to con the public into supporting U.S. aggression and war.
From the George W. Bush administration’s lies about WMDs in Iraq to lies about Iran attempting to create nuclear weapons and evidence-free claims from intelligence agencies about Russian cyberattacks — these incendiary allegations were taken at face value with a clear goal to pressure then-President Donald Trump to ramp up aggression against Moscow while conveniently filling the pockets of Sanger’s weapons-industry benefactors.
Sanger’s neocon cyberwar fantasy was even turned into a movie by HBO. Today, David Sanger is onto the COVID-19 lab leak theory. He’s been at the forefront of every propaganda campaign that not only provides justification for aggression and war but also helps generate huge profits for CNAS funders.
Sanger is just one of several New York Times, Washington Post and Foreign Policy reporters who have residencies at CNAS. Presumably, that comes with a sizable financial component. I emailed CNAS to ask whether it pays these reporters but they didn’t respond.
Sanger’s colleague Eric Schmitt, senior correspondent covering national security for The New York Times, is also in residence at CNAS.
Back in 2020, Schmitt was promoting the obviously false Russian bounties story, which was later retracted after it had served its political purpose to force Trump to take a harder anti-Russia stance.
Of course, Schmitt was a reliable promoter of intelligence claims about Russian hacking — never displaying a scintilla of skepticism.
And he dutifully portrayed the Trump administration’s aggression against Iran as defensive.
It works the same way with on the surface ‘non-profit’ foundations such as the Clinton Foundation (1997-), the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change or the Obama Foundation (2014-): The 1% pour money into these lobbying institutions and the hands of these well-connected parasitic elites and Western war criminals for some pay-to-play, and these lobbying institutions and parasitic elites give others of their kind the desired output such as the following Orwellian reversal about “disinformation”:
Also note the insane double standards: On the one hand, there was all this complaining about alleged Russian election interference since Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. On the other hand, the US openly interferes in Russian and Ukrainian affairs, expecting the Russians or Putin not to make a countermove on the global chessboard:
“January 16, 2012, the American ambassador Michael McFaul received his position and began work in Russia. And on the next day, he met with leaders of the opposition.”
13.2.4 Education and Academia
Another source of propaganda and the 1%’s ideology is education, including vast swathes of academia. From Caitlin Johnstone’s highly relevant 2021 article “If The Rich Were Propagandizing Us, We’d Have Heard About It In The News”:
But obviously, an education system that was set up by the 1% will not teach you or the 99% how that education system is used to propagandize you or the 99%. Respective key literature is mostly omitted:
To a certain extent, education thus also serves the propagandistic purpose of rewriting/falsifying history in a way that benefits the 1%:
And this goes back a long way. In Edward Bernay’s classic short book Propaganda of 1928 in which propaganda was still treated as a good thing, for instance, there is an entire chapter (8) dedicated to “propaganda for education” with noteworthy takeaways such as the following:
The normal school should provide for the training of the educator to make him realize that his is a twofold job: education as a teacher and education as a
propagandist. (Bernays 1928, ch. VIII, 122)
And Bernays was neither an exception nor the first to suggest that propaganda — later rebranded as “public relations” after Hitler & Goebbels had ruined the brand of “propaganda” — should be used in education. From Edward A. Ross’s 1901 book Social Control with commentary from Jason Stanley’s own 2015 book How Propaganda Works (see part 4 for my altercation with Stanley over his own propaganda about Zelenskiy and Ukraine):
The Stanford sociology professor Edward Alsworth Ross’s book Social Control, published in 1901, is an extended argument for the use of the educational system as the ideal mechanism of elite social control. Ross argues that “[t]he Elite, or those distinguished by ideas and talent, are the natural leaders of society,” and when “populations thicken, interests clash, and the difficult problems of mutual adjustment become pressing, it is foolish and dangerous not to follow the lead of superior men.” Ross stresses throughout the importance of an elite to “spread its desires, tastes, and moral opinions.”
Ross’s book contains a series of chapters on different mechanisms by which the elite can attain social control over the masses in a democracy. In chapter 14, Ross settles on education, noting “the time- honored policy of founding social order on a system of education.” Ross writes of fixing “in the plastic child mind principles upon which, later, may be built a huge structure of practical consequence.” Education, for Ross, is a means of “ ‘breaking in’ the colt to the harness.” Ross argues that the most effective method of social control is a “school education that is provided gratuitously for all children by some great social organ.”
The theme of Ross’s book is elite domination by control of societal norms, with education as the main mechanism of social control. These have been persisting themes in [so-called] liberal democratic states [see esp. ch. 0.6.10 for my critique] throughout the twentieth century. (Stanley 2015, ch. 7 “The Ideology of Elites”, 277, additions myself)
The results of such indoctrination via education, including higher education, is ridiculous Western propaganda such as the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy Publications “Disinformation and Russia-Ukrainian War on Canadian Social Media” June 2022 report which lists Michael “Hitler didn’t kill ethnic Germans” McFaul (see part 12, section 14.4), the Kyiv ‘Not So’ Independent (see this article, section 13.2.5), a senile President Biden of the US empire of lies and, out of Canadian nationalistic sentiment and since the main author Jean Christophe Boucher works for the , the Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau as credible sources.
By contrast, Wikileaks or great independent journalists, analysts or commentators such as Glenn Greenwald, Arnaud Bertrand or many other anti-imperialists are supposed to be sources of disinformation according to representatives of the US empire:
Others also noticed in particular the “centrist extremist” McFaul credibility problem:
An apt summary:
It is worth pointing out how this insane university report downplays facts, some of which were confirmed or even predicted by a host of US experts such as the evident connection between NATO expansionism and a hostile Russian reaction, as mere propaganda “narratives”:
Pro-Russian narratives promoted in Canadian social media can be divided into two large sub-communities: 1) accounts influenced by sources from the United States and 2) those largely influenced by sources from Russia. Both communities have been spreading five primary narratives:
1. Implying NATO expansionism legitimizes the Russian invasion
2. Portraying NATO as an aggressive alliance using Ukraine as a proxy against Russia
3. Promoting a general mistrust in institutions and elites
4. Suggesting that Ukraine is a fascist state or has extensive fascist influences
5. Promoting a specific mistrust of Canada’s Liberal government, and especially of Prime Minister Trudeau
Point 3 in greater detail:
The third narrative expresses a mistrust in institutions and elites. It suggests that mainstream media outlets and international observers or institutions are mouthpieces for NATO and its goals. The institutions cannot be believed as they are largely funded by western governments. Additionally, it is suggested that the media cannot be trusted as it has lied to justify conflicts like the Iraq War that benefited the West or focuses strongly on Russian actions while ignoring those taken by NATO.
But all of this is true or appropriate, including massive distrust towards political leaders and especially towards liberals who are good at giving imperialism a human face (Malcolm X’s warning about white liberals is still true today).
13.2.5 Social Media and Big Tech: Twitter and TikTok
By contrast, a more recent source of propaganda is social media and big tech in general which uses programs and algorithms to funnel the 1%’s propaganda into the 99%’s minds (on the other hand, social media can and is also used as b) a very useful workaround to that propaganda as well as c) a source of alternative/more right-wing propaganda or disinformation).
Let us have a look at how Twitter, a US state affiliated medium, attempts to disseminate official US-Ukrainian propaganda in the Ukraine-Russia-USA conflict. Some time in early April 2022, the following appears on my Twitter interface:
I tremble in anticipation of the amazing ‘news’/propaganda that is going to hit me, click “get started”, and find uncritical ‘hail Ukraine/Zelenskiy’ garbage such as the following:
The immensely valuable independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone also did an examination into this more recent Twitter propaganda phenomenon and came up with the following, including about The Kyiv ‘not so’ Independent which also appeared on my Twitter propaganda feed:
A longer passage from that article on the NED and its EED “spinoff” and the Kyiv not so Independent:
The publication has a growing subscriber base today, but according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, it was created with an “emergency grant from the European Endowment for Democracy,” a spinoff of the National Endowment for Democracy. What is the NED? On the surface, it’s an NGO that promotes civil society worldwide by, among other things, sponsoring and providing training for journalists and activists directly or indirectly. The reality, however, is different.
Here’s ProPublica’s characterization: “The National Endowment for Democracy was established by Congress, in effect, to take over the CIA’s covert propaganda efforts. But, unlike the CIA, the NED promotes U.S. policy and interests openly.” The NED’s co-founder, Allen Weinstein, admitted as much. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” he said in an interview with the Washington Post entitled, “Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups.”
“The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential [i.e., embarrass or embroil the CIA in controversy] is close to zero,” Weinstein said. Recall that in 1967, Ramparts magazine humiliated the agency by exposing that it had turned the National Student Association’s international activities into “an arm of United States foreign policy” through undercover financing and secret collaboration. Now, “Openness is its own protection,” as Weinstein put it.
Put simply, the NED uses democracy movements to bring foreign governments into harmony with Washington’s interests. How that looks in practice takes different forms, including regime change. But a constant is formulating and managing narratives, which is why the NED has long funded media and activist groups. A recent report published by Declassified UK noted that the NED paid out more than $3 million between 2016 and 2021 to outlets like Bellingcat and the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Echoing Weinstein, a former CIA officer told Declassified that the NED is a “vehicle” for U.S. government “propaganda.”
The EED’s Facebook page refers to the Independent as a “partner,” and shows a close relationship with the NED.
In September 2021, a profile of the Independent’s chief editor, Olga Rudenko, appeared in ProMarket, a publication of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Rudenko was visiting the school for a journalism development program. According to ProMarket, she is also a board member at the Media Development Foundation, an NGO that has received at least $225,140 from the NED. You won’t find that without a digital archive because the NED’s records of funding projects in Ukraine was either moved or deleted recently. The archived page shows that from 2014 to the present, the NED has granted $22,394,281 through 334 awards to Ukraine. However, since the change, the NED only allows users to search back to 2017.
So the main reason for why the Kyiv not so Independent and its reporters enjoy this crazy surge of ‘popularity’ is that Twitter propaganda algorithms are ramming that US-Ukrainian propaganda outlet down its users minds:
Something similar could be observed on TikTok when the White House ‘briefed’ 30 popular but with regard to the Ukraine Russia USA conflict clueless Tiktokers who dutifully regurgitated the official US-Ukrainian propaganda:
Journalist Richard Midhurst did an analysis of this affair. Key takeaway for the Tiktokers: “They are fucking using you, you dummy.”
The TikTok propaganda episode was so ridiculous that it was soon followed by a respective Saturday Night Life (SNL) sketch — with some more genuine propaganda towards the end of it:
Actress playing Jen Psaki: “I suggested it as a joke and then it actually happened.”
13.3 The More Specific Intended Effects of Propaganda: Creating an Orwellian Upside-Down World
While the general purpose of propaganda (as well as of censorship) is “manufacturing consent” by and for the 1%, the somewhat more specific intended effect of propaganda is turning the world and people’s understanding of it on its head. George Orwell’s “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” still perfectly captures that intended effect of the 1%’s propaganda.
Applied to Ukraine: I already explained in parts 1 and 2, section 4, and by using clear testimonial evidence of US politicians that the Ukraine conflict is a US proxy war against Russia that was provoked by the USA and Ukraine. Orwellian manufactureres of consent, including those in Austria such as Florian Klenk of the liberal ragpiece Der Falter, will accordingly try to manufacture consent for the view that this US proxy war is instead supposedly a Russian war of aggression:
I have also outlined in parts 3, 4 and 9 that and how Ukraine does have a massive Banderite neonazi problem. An Orwellian reversal in this case means claiming that Ukraine does not have a massive neonazi problem:
And it is strange how propaganda that is so contradictory to the evidence and the facts can get such a hold of people’s minds, but it unfortunately does make people deny the evidence to a frightening amount and degree:
In line with Orwell’s “Ignorance is Strength,” it will also hardly occur to the propagandized that they could be the ignorant ones that ignore evidence or history. Instead, it is persons who present evidence, who learned their lessons from history or who are truthful that will get smeared as as a crazy conspiracy theorists by the propagandizers and the propagandized masses who could not even be bothered to study the evidence or historical trajectories (a term for this treatment is “epistemic violence”):
Here is another example:
So in other words: The somewhat more specific intended effects of propaganda are to make victims ignore/dismiss/downplay/badly misinterpret evidence and history or historical trajectories.
I already highlighted this in part 4, section 6.2.2, where I showed how even Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor who wrote a book about propaganda, was totally unable to deal with the clear evidence for a 2014 US backed coup in Ukraine:
But who is the “simply nuts” person in those situation? The one who follows where the evidence leads or points and who adapts their worldview accordingly, or the one who outright ignores the evidence that does not fit into their theory or worldview in a genuinely Orwellian “Ignorance is Strength” fashion?
And there are many more examples of people outright ignoring or wildly misinterpreting the evidence, such as one Travis Hepburn who suffers from basic reading incomprehension like Jason Stanley (see part 4, section 6.2.3):
Others, like the former British parliamentarian and current leader of the Workers Party of Britain George Galloway, also remarked on this insane treatment of evidence by the deeply propagandized:
And as noted by this Tweeter, it is indeed “frightening” how propaganda makes even academic ‘philosophy’ professors completely disregard the evidence that would dispell the false propaganda narrative and how these people just cannot detect for others fairly obvious propaganda:
It should also be noted that the presence of US propaganda in social media goes back at least more than a decade:
13.4 The Manipulative Means of Propaganda
After discussing the general purpose of propaganda (manufacturing consent), the sources of propaganda and the somewhat more specific intended effects of propaganda, I will finish part 11 with a discussion of the manipulative means of propaganda.
13.4.1 Making the Lie Big
One manipulative means that is used for manufacturing consent and achieving the intended effects of propaganda is the Nazi technique of “the big lie.” Hitler already elaborated on that technique in Mein Kampf and as follows:
[I]n the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corruptible in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily had, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they are readily fall victims to the big lie than to the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters, but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehood.
It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.
Even though the facts which prove this to be so are put clearly before them, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation, for the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down — a fact which all expert liars in this world and all who conspire together in the art of lying know only too well and exploit in the basest manner. (Hitler 1939 [1925–26], Vol. 1, ch. X, 259, Stalag Edition)
On top of that, propagandists also have to lie big to maintain consistency. This furthermore applies to all the sources of propaganda which need to utter the same type of propaganda, because it would be self-defeating if, for instance, only MSM disseminated propaganda and if the people’s education gave them the mental tools to detect and to refute that propaganda. Conversely, it would also be self-defeating if the people were only progagandized in their education, including in their history lessons, and if MSM were truthful. Hence the big lie as a fundamental manipulative means of the 1%’s propaganda.
Another advantage of making the lie big is that it becomes harder to undo it or find your way out of it after you have swallowed it, also due to the psychological discomfort of entertaining the notion that your entire political worldview and foundation is essentially a big lie and that you got fooled that badly and fundamentally:
If you’ve publicly challenged the official narratives of the western political/media class about any major issue, you’ve probably noticed that people can get pretty upset about it.
Like, actually upset. Not mildly annoyed like you might get at someone who is saying something that is obviously false and stupid, but burning hot emotional like you’d get if you heard someone insulting your loved one. Or like someone insulting you personally.
That’s the most surprising thing, when you first start speaking about this stuff. Not that people don’t believe you or don’t agree with you; that’s to be expected when every screen in their lives is telling them one thing and you’re telling them something else. But that people actually get deeply emotionally invested in it.
That’s your first clue that there’s something else going on beneath the surface apart from what you’re being presented with. You’re not just arguing about Ukraine or China or Syria or whatever, you’re touching on a psychological third rail that’s being ferociously protected.
Many of the people you’ll run into online or in person who defend imperial narratives from your criticisms aren’t doing so because they believe the US-centralized empire is awesome and great, they’re doing so because it’s much more comfortable than confronting the possibility that their entire worldview is made of lies.
There’s a great comic by The Oatmeal which explains the psychological defense mechanisms humans have in place to protect their worldview from information that could destabilize it. Because of our tendency to select for cognitive ease over cognitive challenge in order to conserve mental energy, we tend to be heavily biased against consciously helping new worldview-disrupting information get past those psychological defense mechanisms.
And it doesn’t get more worldview-disrupting than questioning mainstream consensus reality. Because on the other side of that investigation is the realization that pretty much everything you’ve been trained to believe about your society, your nation, your government and your world, is a lie.
This is further aggravated by what one might call a ‘culture of lying.’ From belle hook’s/Gloria Jean Watkins book all about love (2001):
IT IS NO accident that when we first learn about justice and fair play as children it is usually in a context where the issue is one of telling the truth. The heart of justice is truth telling, seeing ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want it to be. In recent years sociologists and psychologists have documented the fact that we live in a nation where people are lying more and more each day. Philosopher Sissela Bok’s book Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life was among the first works to call attention to the grave extent to which lying has become accepted and commonplace in our daily interactions. M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled includes an entire section on lying. In The Dance of Deception, Harriet Lerner, another widely read psychotherapist, calls attention to the way in which women are encouraged by sexist socialization to pretend and manipulate, to lie as a way to please. (ch. 3, p. 33)
[…]
Lies are told about the most insignificant aspects of daily life. When many of us are asked basic questions, like How are you today? a lie is substituted for the truth. Much of the lying people do in everyday life is done either
to avoid conflict or spare someone’s feelings. Hence, if to you are asked to come to dinner with someone whom you do not particularly like, you do not tell the truth or simply decline, you make up a story. You tell a lie. In such a
situation it should he appropriate to simply decline if stating one’s reasons for declining might unnecessarily hurt someone.Lots of people learn how to lie in childhood. Usually they begin to lie to avoid punishment or to avoid disappointing or hurting an adult. How many of us can vividly recall childhood moments where we courageously practiced the honesty we had been taught to value by our parents, only find that they did not really mean for us to tell the truth all the time. In far too many cases children are punished in circumstances where they respond with honesty to a question posed by an adult authority figure. It is impressed on their consciousness early on, then, that telling the truth will cause pain. And so they learn that lying is a way to avoid being hurt and hurting others.
Lots of children are confused by the insistence that they simultaneously be honest and yet also learn how to practice convenient duplicity.(p. 34–35)
That’s how children are conditioned to engage in Orwellian doublethink.
In today’s world we are taught to fear the truth, to believe it always hurts. We are encouraged to see honest people as naive, as potential losers. Bombarded with cultural propaganda ready to instill in all of us the notion that lies are more important, that truth does not matter, we are all potential victims. Consumer culture in particular encourages lies. Advertising is one of the cultural mediums that has most sanctioned lying. […] And lies strengthen the world of predatory advertising. Our passive acceptance of lies in public life, particularly via the mass media, upholds and perpetuates lying in our private lives. (p. 47)
13.4.2 Getting Them While They Are Still Young
Just as with religious indoctrination or propanda, the more political or secular indoctrination or propaganda is likewise typically started and implanted at a very early age when people do not yet have the means to defend against that nonsense. That’s how you own individuals and ruin their minds for life.
Orwell elaborated on that in his 1984 (ch. 2, 29–30) via the following scene where the main protagonist Winston meets the propaganda-crazed children of his neighbor:
Up with your hands!’ yelled a savage voice.
A handsome, tough-looking boy of nine had popped up from behind the table and was menacing him with a toy automatic pistol, while his small sister, about two years younger, made the same gesture with a fragment of wood. Both of them were dressed in the blue shorts, grey shirts, and red neckerchiefs which were the uniform of the Spies. Winston raised his hands above his head, but with an uneasy feeling, so vicious was the boy’s demeanour, that it was not altogether a game.
‘You’re a traitor!’ yelled the boy. ‘You’re a thought-criminal! You’re a Eurasian spy! I’ll shoot you, I’ll vaporize you, I’ll send you to the salt mines!’
Suddenly they were both leaping round him, shouting ‘Traitor!’ and ‘Thought- criminal!’ the little girl imitating her brother in every movement. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters. There was a sort of calculating ferocity in the boy’s eye, a quite evident desire to hit or kick Winston and a consciousness of being very nearly big enough to do so. It was a good job it was not a real pistol he was holding, Winston thought. (1984, ch. 2, 29–30)
Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother — it was all a sort of glorious game to them. All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. (ibid., 31)
In part 4 , I already presented evidence of how precisely that also Orwellian “getting them while they are young” is being implemented in Ukraine:
Other examples of propaganda that target even younger children are plushy Javelins (i.e. surface-to-air missiles) as children’s toys:
That’s one of the ways of how you get youths who will throw away their lives for the US-Ukrainian 1% on the battlefields…
…or who will help with firebombing a union building on May 2 during the ‘peaceful’ 2014 revolution, an event that became known as the “Odessa massacre”:
A ‘peaceful’ Ukrainian protestor shooting people trying to escape the flames inside the Odessa union building:
May 2, 2014, is remembered for that Odessa massacre by Banderites:
13.4.3 Appealing to Emotions/Emotional Manipulation
John Foster Dulles — the former US Secretary of State (1953–59) who, together with his younger brother and longtime CIA director Allen Welsh Dulles, formed the perhaps most fearsome pair of siblings in US politics—outlined and connected other essential manipulative means of propaganda in his 1939 book War, Peace and Change. As a quasi follow-up to the 18th century philosopher David Hume’s slavery of reason (to the passions/emotions) thesis, the perhaps first of these means is appeal to emotions or emotional manipulation:
Totalitarian wars are made possible by a series of circumstances of which the most significant is the essentially emotional quality of human beings. We like to think of ourselves as rational beings. We like to feel that reasoning and logical argument are the most persuasive means of inducing human action. Actually this is far from being the case. In only a small segment of our lives are our acts dictated by reason. In the main we act unthinkingly, under the impulse of emo- tional and physical desires or in accordance with tradition or the custom of the social group of which we happen to form a part. (Dulles 1939, ch. VI, 55–56)
13.4.4 Harnessing Mass Psychology, Groupthink, Group Pressure, etc. Against Critical Individual Thought
Dulles deftly connects emotional manipulation with mass psychology, group pressure or “groupthink”,
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness, or the desire for cohesiveness, in a group may produce a tendency among its members to agree at all costs.[1] This causes the group to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation.
a context in which emotional manipulation becomes much more effective:
If this is true of individual action, it is much more true of group action. Mob psychology is a well recognized phenomenon. It manifests itself not merely in lynchings and fire panics, but in the waves of optimism and pessimism which successively sweep through our business and financial world, and under the dictation of which we all act alike in doing what, in retrospect, appears incredibly stupid. Few phases of life are immune from the moulding influence of mass psy- chology. (Dulles 1939, ch. VI, 56)
[…]
There are also those who are not duped by the nation-hero, nation-villain, personifications. […]
During times of tranquillity it is possible for a substantial minority to indulge in such detached and philosophical judgments. But it is different when excitement runs high and when there is a real need for impartiality and for judgment which is penetrating and calm. Then the individual judgment is usually overpowered by the almost irresistible influence of mass emotion — an irresistibility which may not be readily explicable but which cannot be denied as a fact. (Dulles 1939, ch. VI, 61)
This hypothesis was also scientifically confirmed, for instance by the famous Solomon Asch conformity experiments whose findings were published in the 1951 paper “Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments”, among others. This article explains the experimental procedure and the outcome or findings:
Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, whereby 50 male students from Swarthmore College in the USA participated in a ‘vision test.’
Using a line judgment task, Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates/stooges. The confederates had agreed in advance what their responses would be when presented with the line task.
The real participant did not know this and was led to believe that the other seven confederates/stooges were also real participants like themselves.
Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was most like the target line. The answer was always obvious. The real participant sat at the end of the row and gave his or her answer last.
The outcomes of those experiments show how immensely effective group pressure can be in terms of making individuals reject the clear evidence or facts in front of their very eyes:
Findings
Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, about one third (32%) of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials.
Over the 12 critical trials, about 75% of participants conformed at least once, and 25% of participants never conformed.
In the control group, with no pressure to conform to confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer.
So only 1 out of 4 individuals could not be swayed to adopt a total bullshit position even when the evidence was in front of their eyes. When the evidence is not in front of their eyes — such as in war reporting — , then that ratio or percentage is most likely even lower and, respectively, higher still, and that is what propagandists exploit. Like Nazis, they try to pervert and drown critical individual voices in the masses of the propagandized.
13.4.5 Technology
A secondary manipulative means that overlaps with the sources of propaganda but that nevertheless qualifies as a manipulative means of propaganda is technology. Dulles already understood it back then:
Modem invention and scientific technique have tended to enlarge very greatly the ability to generate mass emotional waves. It has become possible to subject an entire people simultaneously to the impact of emotional appeal. Much has been learned as to the use of sound, color and form in arousing emotional reactions. Much has been learned as to the cumulative emotional intensities obtainable from the massing of human beings together. (Dulles 1939, ch. VI, 56)
[…]
Scientific developments have created the radio, talking movies and loud-speakers. They have made it possible to have a widespread, simultaneous distribution of emotion-exciting pictures. Those who can avail of such devices and means of communication may effectively utilize purely emotional appeal.
Thus the same scientific progress which has converted war from expeditionary ventures into totalitarian conflicts, has also served to provide the new techniques necessary to excite the mass emotions which alone make possible this type of warfare. (ibid., 57)
These days, with algoriths being used to funnel propaganda into people’s minds on social media such as Twitter (see section 13.2.5) on top of mainstream television propaganda, that is all the more obvious.
13.4.6 Repetition
Another manipulative means of propaganda is repetition which is used for psychological conditioning (think Pawlowian dogs or stimulus-response model). There is also the “repetition effect” or bias due to which people judge something to be more truthful the more often they hear it. This is one of the reasons for why propagandizing mainstream media repeat the same false message over and over:
13.4.7 Using Manipulative Words and (Other) Symbols
As already explained by Orwell in his 1984, it is not only sentences but already individual words or terms (or other symbols such as the German Nazi cross) that are manipulative means of propaganda. “Freedom”, “democracy,” “rules-based international order” and many other such ‘catch-terms’ are precisely such propagandistic terms: They are the “cues” or the “stimulus” to which successfully conditioned/propagandized inviduals display a certain uncritical or non-reflected “response” in exactly the same manner that Pawlowian dogs begin to salivate (= conditioned response) when a bell is rung (= stimulus or cue).
From the Counterpunch article “Decolonizing Knowledge Production: a Practical Guide by Louis Yako:
[A]lmost all the components of the colonial matrix of power start controlling our minds and bodies through language. For example, the colonized people have “regimes” and “dictators”, whereas the West has “democracies”; the people in the “first world” “tolerate” cancer chemotherapy and “tolerate” refugees or other religions and beliefs; if you go to work and settle in the West, you are an “immigrant”, but when Westerners come to plunder your country and get overpaid jobs (often despite mediocre qualifications), they are “expats”; and on goes the list of how we devalue ourselves and glorify our killers and plunderers without even realizing it simply through the language we use daily. As Mignolo writes, which fits perfectly with my focus here: “The first world has knowledge, the third world has culture; Native Americans have wisdom, Anglo Americans have science.” The list can simply go on forever.
To make the list more complete, here is some of the Orwellian Newspeak vocabulary that the apartheid regime of Israel uses in its attempt to falsify history and to manufacture consent:
Another one of those propagandistic terms that still colonizes people’s minds is “conspiracy theory” or “conspiracy theorist” — a stimulus to which the propagandized masses display the conditioned response of derision or dismissal, and never mind where the evidence actually points:
Here is one concrete example of a well-conditioned/propagandized normie not just unreflectedly responding but even bringing up the label of “conspiracy theory/theorists” in what can be described as a “Semmelweis reflex” which is defined as “the reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs, or paradigms”:
Once again though, it is funny how this supposedly crazy conspiracy theory is confirmed by the evidence such as the testimony of former NATO commander Philip Breedlove:
Overall, this confirms that “conspiracy theory/theorist” are very much weaponized terms which are used to exert epistemic violence against those who deviate from the 1%-sanctioned propaganda narrative. To once again quote from the earlier and truly excellent Counterpunch article:
[W]hen the mainstream media wishes to shut down some serious conversations, debates, or discredit platforms, they simply taint them with the effective label of “conspiracy theory”. This, of course, is not to say that there are no vain individuals or conspiracy theorists spreading lies and propaganda out there. Those do exist and they must be evaluated accordingly. But this does not negate the fact that the label of “conspiracy theory” is also being increasingly weaponized to silence very legitimate voices and debates. Indeed, if not careful, it is easy to lose some important voices, insights, and possibility for change because of such dismissals. We, therefore, need to pay attention to the very language coloniality uses to describe knowledge that challenges its hegemonic goals, and not to take the ways they describe anyone or anything at face value.
In certain cases, I learned that the biggest reason to read and engage with writers, activists, and artists is precisely because they are being dismissed, silenced, or ignored by the Western mainstream media.
Note that even the Pope got targetted with this “conspiracy theory” smear and propaganda attack due to not adhering to the Western propaganda narrative about Ukraine:
13.4.8 Diversitywashing
Diversitywashing (see the conclusion of part 4 for earlier mention) is a more recent but now widely used manipulative propaganda technique of especially liberals which uses symbols of intersectionality — primarily versions of non-whiteness, non-maleness, non-heterosexuality — to cloak or veil classic imperialist and capitalist agendas by, traditionally, white, male and heterosexual parasitic elites. The result has been dubbed “intersectional imperialism.”
From a biological perspective, one could also regard the diversitywashing as “parasitary” or “predatory” “mimicry” (from ancient Greek mimetos, “to imitate”), as in “human elite parasites or predators imitating their prey or hosts” in order to get the latters’ defenses down.
Examples of such diversitywashing/parasitory mimicry and intersectional imperialism include the following:
This is far from the first time that hawks in Washington have fantasized about carving up foreign countries. During the first cold war, the US sponsored secessionist groups inside the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, the US-led NATO military cartel successfully dismantled Yugoslavia. And Washington has long backed separatists in the Chinese regions of Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
After the overthrow of the USSR, neoconservative operative and future Vice President Dick Cheney wanted to slice up Russia into several smaller countries. Former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski even published an article in elite Foreign Affairs magazine in 1997 proposing to create a “loosely confederated Russia — composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic.”
Yet this Congressional hearing was one of the most high-profile and provocative calls for balkanization yet, held in broad daylight.
Titled “Decolonizing Russia: A Moral and Strategic Imperative,” the June 23 briefing was organized by the US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), known more commonly as the Helsinki Commission.
This commission claims to be “independent,” but it is a US government agency created and overseen by Congress.
[…]
The most active speaker in the hearing was Casey Michel, a millennial neoconservative activist who has made a career out of advocating for regime change against the US government’s adversaries.
Michel got his start professionally working for the US Peace Corps on the Russia-Kazakhstan border, and later capitalized on the new cold war hysteria in Washington.
He is an adjunct fellow at the ironically named Kleptocracy Initiative of the Hudson Institute, a right-wing DC think tank that has been handsomely funded by the Koch oligarchs, WalMart’s Walton family, massive corporations like ExxonMobil, and the Pentagon.
In May, Michel published an article in Washington’s establishment magazine The Atlantic, titled “Decolonize Russia,” which appears to have been an inspiration for the Congressional briefing.
Oh look, how ‘inclusive’ and ‘progressive’! The Ukrainian neonazi regime also uses civilian women as cannon fodder and not just male conscripts:
From another well-known US propaganda outlet: Having your village destroyed by a female as opposed to a male drone operator is totally different, and if you don’t like it, you are a misogynist!
Someone also went as far as to co-opt a famous Black Lives Matter slogan for US imperialism and the US proxy war in Ukraine against Russia:
To continue with another example of blackwashing or brownwashing from Britain: Meet the selection of imperialist pro-1% anti-99% candidates for Tory party leadership, together with two respective critiques by black women:
Chantayyjayy/Chanté Joseph: “I just want to know, what do people think will happen if the next leader of the Conservative party is black or Asian. What do people actually think will happen. Because the deportations will keep happening, austerity will keep happening, homelessness will keep happening — absolutely nothing is gonna change with the material reality of most black and brown people who are working class. So why are you people so excited about this? Representation politics is actually frying our brains. Like this desire to be represented everywhere, even in the pits of hell, is driving me insane. Everybody engage your critical thinking skills, this is not progress. It’s not.
The original tweet by Yasmin Poole was so intensely dumb and she faced so much backlash over it that she deleted it a few days later.
An instance of LGBTQ-washing or “pinkwashing” empire and its crimes on the occasion of June being #PrideMonth:
By contrast and when actual LGBTQ people or legends such as Martina Navtratilova are no longer in line with the predominantly liberal mainstream propaganda, they get cancelled and censored, including by non-LGBTQ people who are mainly in it for superficial virtue signalling:
A question to ponder: Is it maybe as a result of Navratilova hiring a trans coach in 1983 and feeling the difference when hitting balls with them that she is opposed to male-to-female athletes competing in women’s sports? Hmmmmmm.
Note that diversitywashing also includes using disabled people for implementing an imperialist agenda. A black disabled woman who scores high on intersectionality explains:
The CIA of course also diversitywashes its imperialist agendas with women, including from ethnically diverse backgrounds:
The days of all American spies being white male graduates from Ivy League schools are long gone. The CIA director is a woman and women head all five of the agency’s branches, including the directorates of science and technology, operations and digital innovation.
[…]
Last year, the CIA designated its first executive for Hispanic engagement, Ilka Rodriguez-Diaz, a veteran of more than three decades with the agency. She first joined after attending a CIA job fair in New Jersey.
“The CIA had never been on my radar,” she wrote in an op-ed in The Miami Herald after getting the job in October. “I didn’t think I fit the ‘profile.’ After all, the spies I saw on TV were male Anglo-Saxon Ivy leaguers, not Latinas from New Jersey. Still, I went to my expert life coach, my mother, for advice. She said, ‘No pierdes nada con ir.’ (What have you got to lose in going?) So, I went to the job fair. The rest, as they say, is history.”
[…]
The largest minority or ethnic group at all the intelligence agencies, including the CIA, was Black or African American at 12% followed by Hispanic at 7% and Asian at 4%. Persons with disabilities represent 11.5% of the workforce at all the U.S. intelligence agencies — up a point from the year before.
How inclusive! It now no longer just white men who disinform you or who coup governments that are not subservient enough to the US empire, but people with higher intersectionality scores. What a great difference! How progressive! As also remarked by a commentator:
At the end of the day, you just end up being the “uncle Tom”-types who serve the imperialist white men at the top of the power pyramid in these diversitywashing schemes.
13.4.9 The Democracy, Freedom and Human Rights Smokescreen
A more traditional propagandistic manipulative means of imperialists pretending to be the good guys is the use of in their case Orwellian terms of “democracy,” “freedom,” “liberty,” “responsibility to protect/R2P,” “(international) rules-based order” and other such deeply propagandistic terms and alleged intentions which could not be farther from the truth:
The US empire is essentially always the oppressor and on the side of the oppressors (e.g. Israel or Saudi Arabia), and whenever its representatives such as Joe Biden or some other manufactuerers of consent talk about “freedom” and “democracy,” that essentially means that they intend to oppress, steal, kill and expand their empire and sphere of influence under that smokescreen.
This can also be illustrated by the semi-funny anecdote of me observing a gamer writing “democracy!” in the in-game chat years ago and when he was about to kill other human players.
Another example: Institutions and agents of the US empire pretending to care about human rights on the occasion of the alleged Tiananmen Square events in China on June 3–4, 1989:
But the NED tweet with a very negative like-to-quote tweets ratio of 75-to-156 amounts to little but an admission that they had been sowing strife and dissent in China since 1984 under the smokescreen of democracy and human rights. That can easily be inferred from the fact that the CIA and its more recent fronts such as the NED was toppling democracies, undermining human rights and supporting right-wing dictatorships in Latin America especially during the 1960s to 1980s. That can also be inferred from the fact that the pro-capitalist CIA has been working against and sabotaging the initially anti-capialitst China since the end of World War II, including in terms of helping the Chiang Kai-Shek led Kuomintang establish the state of Taiwan on the island of Formosa via genocide of the islanders (see William Blum’s Killing Hope, ch. 1 “China 1945 to 1960s”, for many respective details).
Hence comments such as the following:
Another US propagandist who used the human rights smokescreen and detraction on that occasion was Secretary of State Tony Blinken:
But that anti-democratic and human rights-trampling US empire has been in no position to talk about democracy and human rights for the longest time:
More importantly, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the Western propaganda story about the alleged Tiananmen Square massacre is false in various critical ways and, ultimately, yet another atrocity propaganda story that serves Western imperialist interests.
Let us perhaps begin with the iconic footage “tank man,” the Chinese civilian who briefly stopped Chinese tanks:
Contrary to what one might expect or have heard, he was not rolled over by the tank but pulled aside by what appear to be two other civilians and possibly protestors towards the end of the above footage:
The tanks supposedly did not roll towards Tiananmen Square on June 3 to dissolve the protest or to kill the protestors there since the above footage was supposedly taken on June 5:
But the testimony of Jeff Widener, the Western foto- and videographer who filmed tank man, does not contain such evidence and would rather suggest that the fotos were taken on June 3:
Nevertheless, it was interesting to hear of sometimes not so “peaceful” protestors of which some had no doubt received training by the CIA/NED and who were not only violent against the fotojournalist Widener but also against Chinese troops. According to Widener’s testimony, they even ended up killing some Chinese troops such as at least one soldier from a or possibly even the following armored vehicle which got stuck on a barrier:
Female interviewer: “When did things take a turn and start to become violent?”
Jeff Widener: “[…] I would say that was on the night of June 3rd. […] Things started getting heated when, um, a burning armored car came down the street and people were throwing rocks, and I was attacked. My cameras were pulled off me. […] And all of a sudden, I just got a bam in the face, and I looked down and my camera was smashed. […] I was bleeding everyone, and I was just knocked silly. […] Once I got my head together, I went back to the AP office, to bring the rolls of film. […]
Female interviewer: “And did you witness from where you were up there at that vantage point [i.e. in his hotel room], did you witness some of the worst violence?”
Jeff Widener: “[…] What I saw wasn’t pretty, ok? There was a dead soldier on the ground, um, where the burning armored car was. […] and another soldier came out to surrender, and the mob moved in on him and started beating on with clubs and sticks, and, uh, I don’t think he made it.”
So contrary to what you might have heard from Western mainstream media, the protesters used sometimes even lethal violence and just like the 2014 Maidan square protestors who in various ways also had the backing of the USA and the CIA.
There is furthermore evidence to suggest that the above was not an isolated incident but preceded by other such incidents:
Continuing with China, there is of course also the fake concern about Uyghur muslims which Western imperialists — who kill muslims elsewhere indiscriminately and partially due to racist, islamophobic and xenophobic prejudices— use as an excuse to move against their economic competitor China under yet another human rights smokescreen:
Meanwhile, forced labor in US prisons for paltry pay is perfectly fine according to the West’s and the US empire’s utterly hypocritical and morally insane double standards:
Incarcerated workers in the US produce at least $11bn in goods and services annually but receive just pennies an hour in wages for their prison jobs, according to a new report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). [“Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers”]
Nearly two-thirds of all prisoners in the US, which imprisons more of its population than any other country in the world, have jobs in state and federal prisons. That figure amounts to roughly 800,000 people, researchers estimated in the report, which is based on extensive public records requests, questionnaires and interviews with incarcerated workers.
ACLU researchers say the findings outlined in Wednesday’s report raise concerns about the systemic exploitation of prisoners, who are compelled to work sometimes difficult and dangerous jobs without basic labor protections and little or no training while making close to nothing.
Most incarcerated workers are tasked with general prison maintenance that is crucial to keep the facilities running, according to the ACLU researchers, who worked with the University of Chicago Law School’s Global Human Rights Clinic.
“State governments and the prison system are extracting tremendous value from a captive and exploited workforce all while claiming they can’t afford to pay them a liveable wage,” said Jennifer Turner, the principal author of the report.
More than 80% of incarcerated laborers do general prison maintenance, including cleaning, cooking, repair work, laundry and other essential services. For paid non-industry jobs, workers make an average of 13 cents to 52 cents an hour, according to the report. Seven states — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas — pay nothing for the vast majority of prison work.
A noteworthy backfiring of the Uyghur Forced LAbor Prevention Act appears to be a correlated rise in stock prices of one involved Chinese company:
A respective future prediction:
13.4.10 Lying by Omission or Semi-Admission
Propagandists also lie by simply not telling a known truth or by admitting only a (less important) part of it which is then used to detract from the (more imporant) omitted part. That is also a staple among the manipulative means of propaganda for which the following tweet by a mainstream media manufacturer of consent serves as an example:
13.4.11 Intentionally Delayed Reporting
Another propaganda technique that sometimes follows lying by omission or semi-admission is intentionally delayed reporting after the discourse happened or should have happened and after independent journalists already reported about it:
The Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, for instance, was murdered by Israel on May 11, 2022, and it was clear from day one that they murdered her as per the and their usual settler-colonialist “elimination” of the natives. CNN reported about it that way only 14 days later (see part 14b):
13.4.12 Different Evidentiary Standards
Another hallmark of Western propaganda is different evidentiary standards. Your own side gets credibility and favorable reporting on wild claims without any evidence behind them, whereas the opposing side’s claims are always disbelieved and doubted:
13.4.13 Orwellian 180-Degree Reversals
Contrary to these more subtle manipulative means of propaganda, there is also the blunt means of an Orwellian 180-degree reversal of the truth just like in the IngSoc party slogan “WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH” of Orwell’s 1984. Such an Orwellian reversal is not just the “intended effect” of propaganda (section 13.3), but also one of the means to create that effect.
A traditional application of Orwellian reversals consists in the reversal of perpetrators and victims, such as in the case of the short-lived US-backed Bolivian dictator Jeanine ‘The Bible wants it’ Añez and respective NYT propaganda. Independent journalist Benjamin Norton explains:
Another example: Accusing those who you bully and harrass of “bullying and harrassment” to have an excuse for censoring them (see part 13c, section 15.5.7, for fundamentally identical ‘logic’ behind my censorship by Twitter):
To give yet another example of an Orwellian reversal: Many aware-of people, including myself, want a revolution for obvious reasons such as trying to avoid impending disaster and securing a viable future for humankind. Because right now, we are heading straight into a parasitic elites-caused nuclear, climate or some other global catastrophe, apocalypse or “total societal collapse” that can essentially only be stopped by a big revolution or mass awakening from propagandistic slumber:
As such and despite the desperate need for such a revolution in the time that we have left, the omnicidal parasitic 1% and their Orwellian propaganda and propagandists will try to manufacture consent for people supposedly not wanting or needing a revolution:
Conclusion
So much for a discussion of the main purpose (manufacturing consent), the main sources, the somewhat more specific intended effects and the manipulative means of propaganda that should give readers an opportunity to see through and transcend the 1%’s propaganda.
[continue with part 12]
