Showing posts with label propaganda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label propaganda. Show all posts

Friday, July 12, 2024

Socialists become Communists or Fascists, F.A. Hayek, 1944

"No less significant is the intellectual history of many of the Nazi and Fascist leaders. Everyone who has watched the growth of these movements in Italy or in Germany has been struck by the number of leading men, from Mussolini downward (and not excluding Laval and Quisling), who began as socialists and ended as Fascists or Nazis. And what is true of the leaders is even more true of the rank and file of the movement. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was generally known in Germany, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. Many a university teacher during the 1930s has seen English and American students return from the Continent uncertain whether they were communists or Nazis and certain only that they hated Western liberal civilization."

 "The Road to Serfdom; text and documents, The definitive edition," ed. by Bruce Caldwell, (The collected works of F.A. Hayek, vol 2) University of Chicago Press, c1944, c2007. pp. 80-81

Thursday, June 04, 2020

It’s not fake, but it is false

There is so much propaganda using statistics about men who commit crimes--black and white. It's not exactly "fake," but it is meant to mislead. A man (or occasionally a woman) committing a crime is more likely to be shot or restrained by police than one who is out at a ball game not committing a crime. That's their job. Blacks commit crimes at a higher rate than whites or Hispanics or Asians, but for their numbers are less likely to be shot or restrained. It's something like 8x the rate of crime of whites, and blacks have a victim rate 6x that of whites. They are not being victimized by police--they call the police and report the crime. They want police protection. The police come, it's their job, and the assailant is black 93% of the time.

So how do the anti-police researchers figure this? By percentage of total population, not by percentage of criminal acts that put them in harm's way. The number of blacks killed by police has dropped dramatically since 2015 (although it was very small even then). Why? We may never know since the media won't investigate, but it is probably that the economy improved and they had hope with Trump as president instead of that slippery, feel-good guy who never lived in the 'hood, but preached hope and change because he had brown skin.

Here's the irony. When Obama was president that awful Dylan Roof shot a number of black people in a church, and the president blamed the Republicans for their deaths and demanded more gun control. When Chauvin killed Floyd in Minneapolis with an all Democrat controlled government top to bottom, governor to mayor to attorney general to senators (one a former prosecutor who should have put him away), the Republican president Donald Trump is blamed, and people rise up all over the nation demanding reform, when police killings are so much lower under Trump than Obama.
Republicans are so lame in defending themselves. Some even kneel and squeal. I used to be a Democrat and the spineless wimps in the GOP was quite a pill to swallow.

Saturday, January 12, 2019

Home grown dezinformatsiya/дезинформация

“Russian internet trolls worked overtime in 2016 to inject disinformation into American elections. A year later, as news reports now reveal, Democratic operatives, some funded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, tried out these same tactics to boost Senator Doug Jones in Alabama. Russia’s online dezinformatsiya has gone native, and it will get worse.”  Wall Street Journal, Jan. 12, 2019

Disinformation, fake news, false narratives, conspiracy theories,  obfuscation, propaganda, yellow journalism, and flat out lies have always been a part of the American political process.  Disinformation is more a government embedded plan, but how are we to know our own government doesn’t do the same.  It was the Clinton campaign in 2008 which launched the “Obama birth certificate” story, which then made numerous evolutions through the right wing.  Her campaign also funded the fake dossier about Trump in Russia. None was done without the help of the deep state.

Not sure why WSJ is giving all the credit for our own home grown mischief and tactics to the Russians or even social media and the internet.  After all, we’ve got George Soros and all his many sticky fingers into U.S. non-profits and churches.

Review: Social Media, Weaponized 

“The Kremlin’s “dezinformatsiya” campaign—whether carried out against Ukraine, Estonia, Germany or the U.S.—involves “a bewildering array of narratives designed to distort truth and confuse its enemies,” Mr. Patrikarakos writes. And of course it isn’t just the Kremlin that operates in such a way. “Obfuscation has found its perfect platforms” in the realm of social media, he notes, reaching “audiences to a degree unprecedented in modern history.” The conditions are ripe: “In the postmodern Western world, where academics decry the notion of an ‘objective truth,’ where the lack of trust in institutions is lower than at any other time in living memory, this type of information finds a receptive audience.”” (War in 140 Characters)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/11/26/before-fake-news-there-was-soviet-disinformation/?

Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism by [Rychlak, Ronald J., Pacepa, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai] 

(WND books, 2013)

Go to the Amazon site and “look inside” for an overview of this book.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Why does PBS offer apologetics for Islam?

“One can start by concentrating on just two items: a film entitled Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet, currently available on DVD; and a website of the same name based around it. Both the documentary and the materials on the PBS website are more or less pure apologetics about Muhammad and certain aspects of Islam.  . . .  inadequate monitoring of textual content, interviewee selection, and association with external agencies. . . . religious propaganda in place of balanced educational, instructional, and public information material. . .

The film Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet premiered on December 18, 2002, to wide praise across America. . . . The documentary has since been rebroadcast on more than 600 individual PBS stations. The U.S. viewership is estimated at more than 10 million. . . The film is used in thousands of communities, schools, universities, religious congregations, and civic organizations throughout the United States to increase Americans' "understanding" of Muslims and Islam. . . .

There is much to be gained from better knowledge and superior information as a route to community integration within America's melting pot. Such a project is exactly the sort of thing PBS should be broadcasting. But with Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet, PBS lost its way and created not a balanced and educationally sound approach to that purpose, but an explicit piece of Islamic propaganda that presses all the buttons of Muslim missionizing (da'wa) and apologetics.”

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5211/pbs-islam

http://www.pbs.org/muhammad/muhammadand.shtml

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Barack Obama--News source

Based on the art work of the site, this collection of news articles with little or no editorial comment puzzles me. It's definitely Soviet style realism familiar to anyone exposed to 20th century art propaganda; you could paste in Lenin with St. Petersburg in the background with no effort and get the subliminal message. But we have many admirers of Marxist state communism and state socialism among us under the banner of Progressive. So are the creators of this website for Obama or against him? Do news stories, which always have an editorial slant, really tell a story without explanation or have they been selected to reveal a bigger story with headline creation? I think after reviewing the headlines, it's a pro-Obama site. Use of "anti-abortion" instead of "pro-life," for instance. "Repeal health care" instead of "repeal health care bill." It's the little things in love and politics that matter.

The tags appear to be created by robots, not people. That's untidy. Really can put a librarian's teeth on edge. I think a conservative website would be more careful.

Barack Obama

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Edward Bernays and Wallpaper

Glenn Beck did a program tonight on the original spin doctor, Edward Bernays, a double nephew of Sigmund Freud. He's the guy who decided the word propaganda needed to be changed to "public relations." He's the guy who invented a healthy breakfast for a company that wanted to sell more bacon and got us eating bacon for breakfast (which is odd since he was a Jew). He helped President Woodrow Wilson gin up the public sentiment for WWI (after being against war in his campaign).

So I think his followers must be working for HGTV, one of my favorite cable channels. Virtually every home buyer or apartment hunter on their "reality" shows 1) hates wall paper, 2) hates formica counter tops, 3) hates wall to wall carpeting, and 4) wants to have hard wood floors and granite counters. And the comments are suspiciously consistent in every show. If there are nice hard wood floors they rave; if there is carpet, they talk about the cost of replacement with wood. If there is wallpaper in the kitchen or bath, it's "Oh yuk, this is so dated."

Today I stopped at Lowes which used to have a fabulous wall paper department with a huge selection of books, and at least some in stock, particularly borders. No longer. The section is now tiny--I had to ask how to find it--maybe 20 books. I happen to like wallpaper, and carpeting. I think tile and hardwood floors are cold and difficult to keep clean with a pet (carpets get dirty too, but you just don't see the dust bunnies).

Think of all the self-employed guys who used to lay carpet or clean carpets or hang wallpaper, now out of business.

The American public didn't decide on their own that they preferred wood floors to carpeting--it came about through decorating and women's magazines, and TV shows like we see on HGTV. Someone has already picked out the popular colors for 2015--we just don't know it yet. Dark woods are coming back for kitchen cabinets after about 20 years of popularity of white and blonde. Afterall, how else would they convince people to remodel and replace perfectly good cabinetry?

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

What is Glee's agenda?

Bruce and John are a gay couple (Republicans) who enjoy watching Glee, but lately Bruce has become disturbed by the anti-America agenda (including slamming small towns like Lima, Ohio) of the show.
    "This week, I noticed something else about Glee I hadn’t before. The McKinley high school students are not complex and interesting as characters at all. In fact, there is a surprising amount of stereotyping given that the writers are all supposedly liberal and open-minded. There is the overweight black girl with a large voice who is picked on by the dumb blonde cheerleaders. The only “good girl” is a great singer, socially inept, and appears to be the only Jewish girl in Ohio – convenient for the cheap Jewish jokes that have popped up from time to time. The most ridiculous stereotype is, ironically, Kurt the gay Glee club member. Despite what Murphy said at the GLAAD awards, Kurt puts his full gay victimhood on display. Kurt demonstrates his complete lack of self-esteem and stereotypically effeminate ways in the episode called “Home” aired on April 27. Watching that episode made me cringe and wonder how liberal gays are not livid about this over-the-top caricature of a gay teen. Here’s a thought – why not make the gay guy a football player? Kurt makes Richard Simmons look like John Wayne. Oh yeah, did I mention the gym teacher is a manly woman? Sue Sylvester, the meanie of the show, is played by Jane Lynch who has become a poster child for the Gay Left’s push for marriage. Come on, how stupid do the producers of Glee think we are that we can’t see through this crap? For the sake of humanity and to shine the light on the Glee agenda, I’m going to force myself to continue watching each week. So for now, there is a temporary household truce on Tuesday nights.
‘Glee’ Is Leftist Propaganda Aimed Squarely At Your Kids

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Another epidemic for school children

Big Hollywood has posted more Obama propagandizing. Most of the eleven videos of the indoctrination of children with song, dance and rap lauding our current president have been removed from Big Hollywood. This one was still up when I checked. The transcripts have been included, so even if the videos are removed you can see that children who should be learning to read, write, spell and communicate so they can get good jobs or go to college when the Obama stranglehold over the economy ends, are wasting their time learning propaganda songs like good little members of the Komsomol (Комсомол, short for Коммунисти́ческий сою́з молодёжи, youth wing of the communist party).



Transcript:

We believe in Barack Obama
He loves you and he loves your mama
We believe in Barack Obama, yeah
With all the change he’s building
Gonna bring hope to the children

We believe in Barack Obama, yeah
Change
That we can believe in
Change
That we can believe in
Change
That we can believe in

We believe in Barack Obama
He loves you and he loves your mama
We believe in Barack Obama, yeah
With all the change he’s building
Gonna bring hope to the children

We believe in Barack Obama, yeah
Change
That we can believe in
Change
That we can believe in
Change
That we can believe in
Yeah, haha, haha.

Alright, come on now, here we go;
You know we gotta get Barack and all of his crew
In the White House so they can prove that
In their hearts they know what to do
And that includes Michelle and the kiddies too

[kids chanting]
“There is not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.”

We believe in Barack Obama
He loves you and he loves your mama
We believe in Barack Obama, yeah
With all the change he’s building
Gonna bring hope to the children
We believe in Barack Obama, yeah
[Chant at end of song – unintelligible]