By Robert J. Burrowes, New Age Islam
9 November 2020
In his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World
Carl Sagan lamented as follows:
I have a foreboding of [a] time when...
awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one
representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people
have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those
in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our
horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between
what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into
superstition and darkness.
The dumbing down... is most evident in the
slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media... but
especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.... The plain lesson is that
study and learning – not just of science, but of anything – are avoidable, even
undesirable.
We’ve arranged a global civilization in
which most crucial elements... profoundly depend on science and technology. We
have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and
technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for
a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is
going to blow up in our faces. See The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle
in the Dark.
While it is 25 years since these words of
Sagan’s were published a year before his death, one can only lament the ongoing
decline of what might simply be labeled the capacity for critical thinking,
whether in relation to society and politics, or the science and technology that
so concerned Sagan.
At a time in human history when so much is
at stake, why is it so difficult to engage most people in anything resembling a
thoughtful investigation, consideration and analysis of what is taking place?
Why is it that more people do not question what they are told, what they read
and what they are shown? In short, why is it that most people do not seek out
the evidence for themselves rather than simply believing what is presented to
them?
In one sense, the answer to this question
might seem simple. People are daily bombarded with ‘information’, in various
guises, and a lifetime of submissively accepting what they are told leaves few
with any inclination, or energy, to question anything. But let me offer a
fuller explanation given the critical importance of this issue if we are to
mobilize an effective response to the challenges confronting humanity.
So first: What is propaganda? A false flag
attack? Why do most people simply believe what they are told without
investigating, carefully, for themselves? And why are those who challenge the
elite-driven narrative often labeled ‘conspiracy theorists’ or, depending on
the issue, some other pejorative such as ‘peddling debunked science’,
‘anti-vaxxer’ or ‘anti-semitic’ for example?
What
is Propaganda?
Propaganda is the deliberate and systematic
effort, using a variety of means, to manipulate people into believing and
behaving in accordance with something that is not true. For one comprehensive
explanation of how this is done, see Trust Us, We’re Experts! How Industry
Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future, a book which Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. observes ‘shows how giant corporations employ sophisticated
psychiatric techniques, unscrupulous public figures, junk science, tainted
studies and clever PR mercenaries in a relentless effort to market products
that routinely kill, maim, deform and poison consumers and our environment’.
See ‘Trust Us, We’re Experts!: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles
with Your Future’.
While some people argue that propaganda can
be used for good, the fact is that something that is simply true should appeal
to people anyway, even if it is unpleasant. This is because the truth is the
only powerful place from which to start to address any circumstance, including
unpleasant and difficult ones.
Propaganda is delivered by a variety of
means. Aside from that issued, in various ways, by governments and
corporations, propaganda is delivered by education systems as ‘knowledge’, by
the corporate media as ‘news’ and by the entertainment industry as films,
television programs, video games, music, literature and in other forms. But all
propaganda is designed to instill and reinforce a limited set of fears,
approved beliefs and endorsed behaviours so that the ‘individual’ responds
submissively within the carefully managed system of elite political, social and
economic control.
For example, education is designed to teach
the individual a limited range of technical functions intended to help create,
maintain but essentially serve the emerging technocratic tyranny (as it
supersedes the existing version of industrial capitalism), make the individual
a passive consumer and politically submissive, while ensuring that an
intelligent mind capable of seeking out relevant evidence for themselves,
critiquing society and responding powerfully does not develop. See ‘Do We Want
School or Education?’
What
is a False Flag Attack?
A false flag attack occurs when a
government carries out a terror attack against its own population and then
falsely blames an enemy to justify a political course of action, such as going
to war against the country or countries it blames. While, again, those who
question false flag attacks are often denounced by elite propagandists as
‘conspiracy theorists’, in fact the documentation of false flag attacks that
have later been admitted is quite long. For one list, see ‘53 Admitted False
Flag Attacks’. Of course, plenty of false flag attacks have not been admitted,
even when the evidence is overwhelming, as in the case of 9/11 for example.
So
Why Do Most People Believe Propaganda?
In an early book on propaganda written in
1928 by Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, he opened with this paragraph:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation
of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an
important element in democratic society.
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible
government which is the true ruling power of our country. See Propaganda.
As Bernays makes clear from the outset, his
preoccupation is the manipulation of people to do the bidding of others:
clearly, a debased and cynical view of the human individual on which many of
humanity’s less morally committed characters have capitalized since Bernays
wrote the book.
For example, Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister
of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945 and an avid reader of Bernays’ work, observed
that ‘Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident
they are acting on their own free will.’
But to understand why the approach of
Bernays and his disciples such as Goebbels even works, we need to consider why
it is that most people are so gullible in the first place. Why don’t more
people ask deeper questions about what is taking place rather than simply accepting,
without serious question, whatever is presented to them (whether by parents,
teachers, religious figures, doctors, propagandists, marketing agents,
governments or the corporate media)?
The fundamental problem is simply this:
parents, teachers, religious figures and other significant adults in the
child’s life require obedience. And obedience means that the child not only
behaves as directed by the adult but also that the child believes what the
adult believes. This latter point is easily overlooked but is actually the key
issue. Why? Because a child who does not believe what the adult believes might
think and behave in a way that scares the adult. And demanding obedience is
essentially about eliminating beliefs (and their consequent behaviours) that would
frighten the parent, teacher or other adult.
Parents require obedience virtually from
the moment of birth, doing everything from comforting a child to stop them
crying – see ‘Comforting a Baby is Violent’ – to punishing them for acting
contrary to parental will once they start moving independently. Of course, once
the child starts to think or believe differently, especially if this
‘difference’ is too far from a belief of the child’s parents, teachers or
religious leaders (or a widely-accepted belief within their society), the child
is quickly pulled back into line with some combination of inducements and/or
violence. See ‘Punishment is Violent and Counterproductive’.
Despite legal conventions meaninglessly
affirming versions of it – such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 18 declaring ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of thought…’ – the
freedom to think for oneself is not a human right in any meaningful sense of
the term and, even if it were, it would really only mean the freedom to think
for oneself within certain clearly defined and narrow parameters. And only if
you are an adult.
This is why, for example, a child who
decides not to go to school does not emerge. Such a possibility would be
frightening to virtually every parent, so no child is given that option, let
alone allowed the opportunity to come up with, consider and act on that option
for themself. Why? Because attendance at school, wherever it exists, is legally
compulsory (meaning punishment will be inflicted for failure to comply), and
only the rarest parent has the vaguest concept of freedom themselves, let alone
the courage to defend their child’s freedom, including the freedom to choose
how they spend the bulk of their time for the 8-13 years of ‘school age’.
Consequently, the freedom to think for
oneself and act accordingly is strangled at a very young age and certainly by
the time a child is compelled to attend a prison for children, also known as
‘school’. As a result the child’s concept of freedom, should they ever come
across the notion, can only be a parody of the real thing. And the adult who
emerges from this childhood is simply incapable of comprehending what freedom
might mean for the obvious reason that to be meaningfully understood, freedom
must be experienced.
Of course, is it not just parental
authority and school that denies any child the experience of liberty. As
Jean-Jacques Rousseau noted in his treatise The Social Contract in 1762, ‘Man
is born free; and everywhere he is in chains’. Every institution in society is
designed to circumscribe freedom, one way or another. It is just that a
childhood spent living under the control of their parents and then teachers and
religious figures leaves all children devoid of the experience of freedom and
so any subsequent limits are not even noticed. In fact, they are expected and
‘taken for granted’.
So with parents, teachers and religious
figures endlessly inflicting ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’
violence on the child in the name of ‘socialization’ (which includes requiring
obedience under threat of violence for non-compliance), the child progressively
and rapidly loses several innate capacities, notably including a sense of their
own Self-will, the capacities to think and feel for themselves, as well as conscience.
See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles
and Practice’. Anything that is too far from the dominant narrative simply
becomes ‘unthinkable’ because the child’s innate capacity to perceive the truth
is suppressed along with other mental capacities.
But soon it is not just parents, teachers
and religious leaders that are the accepted ‘authority figures’ in the child’s
life. No longer able to seriously question the imperatives of parents, teachers
and religious figures because they have been terrorized out of doing so, the
child has also unconsciously ‘learned’ that virtually any information with
which they are presented must be true, even when the source is simply a
government or corporate media outlet presenting elite propaganda. For the vast
bulk of adult humans, the idea of questioning a dominant narrative does not
even occur to them and it is certainly not something they can do with any
intelligence, persistent research effort or courage.
So just as Hitler, ably supported by his
Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, was able to direct most Germans prior to
and into World War II, it is quite straightforward for the global elite to be
able to direct the bulk of the human population to believe, for example, that President
John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the ‘lone gunman’ Lee Harvey Oswald, that
the ‘Gulf of Tonkin incident’ justified the United States war on Vietnam, that
a ‘virus’ labeled HIV caused a ‘disease’ labeled AIDS, that the three buildings
1,2 and 7 of the World Trade Center were destroyed by two aircraft flown by
novice pilots into the top stories of the Twin Towers and justified the
subsequently launched US ‘War on Terror’, that a ‘virus’ labeled SARS-Cov-2
exists and causes a ‘disease’ labeled Covid-19 that has justified the
destruction of everything from a range of human rights to the global economy
while accelerating four distinct paths to human extinction, that we live in a
democracy in which each adult has a say in how they are governed, or even that
ongoing effort is being made to bring a greater degree of shared prosperity to
the people of the world.
For just a taste of the extensive evidence
to debunk each of these propaganda-driven delusions, see these respective
analyses of what the evidence actually demonstrates: On the Trail of the
Assassins: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Murder of President Kennedy, the
Pentagon Papers, AIDS Inc.: Scandal of the Century, Architects & Engineers
for 9/11 Truth, ‘Unmasking the Lies Around COVID-19: Facts vs Fiction of the
Coronavirus Pandemic’, ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup to Destroy Humanity that is
also Fast-Tracking Four Paths to Human Extinction’, ‘America After the
Election: A Few Hard Truths About the Things That Won’t Change’ and ‘The
Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families’.
In essence: my point is that is it is not
the power of the propaganda, increasingly sophisticated though it has become,
that makes people believe it, but a ‘socialization’ model designed to produce
submissively obedient ‘individuals’ who gullibly interpret what is happening,
and even their own ‘experience’, in terms of the information or scenario (that
is, propaganda) with which they are presented. And because of the deeply-seated
and unconscious fear of holding a divergent view, most people simply believe
the widely-promulgated propaganda narrative with which they become familiar
and, hence, comfortable. Moreover, those who challenge the elite-driven
narrative frighten them, particularly when elite agents in government and the
corporate media label them ‘conspiracy theorists’. For one explanation of why
the term ‘conspiracy theorist’ emerged to denigrate those who challenge elite
orthodoxy, see ‘In defence of conspiracy theories (and why the term is a
misnomer)’.
And so this combination of dysfunctional
parenting, education and religious exposure leaves the child devoid of their
intuitive ‘truth register’ as well as the other mental faculties that would
make them question explanations that obviously lack credibility while
investigating and analyzing the evidence for themself. In fact, the idea of
doing so never even occurs to them. Hence, a terrorized, gullible and easily
manipulated individual enters adulthood. And, as the elite intends, galvanizing
an effective response by such people to the truth hidden behind the propaganda
is very difficult.
Resisting
Propaganda
There is no point hoping that the global
elite will discontinue their use of propaganda to shape the course of human
events. This is largely because the global elite is insane. See ‘The Global
Elite is Insane Revisited’. Moreover, attempts to curb the use of propaganda
must inevitably run into the institutions and organizations that the elite
controls. And while we can strategically resist these if we choose, the most
powerful defence we have against elite propaganda is the human mind that can
perceive and critique it. Hence, as a priority, I would profoundly alter our
parenting model to achieve this outcome. See ‘My Promise to Children’.
If you are uncertain of your own capacity
to critique propaganda, you can expand your capacity to do so by feeling the
fear (to release it) that limits your mental faculties. See ‘Putting Feelings
First’.
If you are interested in planning or
participating in a strategy to achieve a peace, environmental or social justice
outcome (particularly in relation to those issues that threaten human
extinction), or to resist the elite coup currently taking place under cover of
Covid-19, you can read sets of strategic goals for doing so in Campaign Strategic
Aims or Coup Strategic Aims.
Moreover, if you wish to tackle the
environmental threats to human existence while also strengthening your
self-reliant capacity to resist the latest elite onslaught to take (much)
greater control of your life, consider participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project
to Save Life on Earth’. The greater your dependence on elite systems and
processes of any kind, the less power you will have to resist as the noose
tightens.
If you are interested in participating in
the worldwide effort to resist elite and other violence, you are also welcome
to sign the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent
World’.
More simply, if you like, you might
consider committing to:
The
Earth Pledge
Out of love for the Earth and all of its
creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:
1. I will listen deeply to children. See
‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.
2. I will not travel by plane
3. I will not travel by car
4. I will not eat meat and fish
5. I will only eat
organically/biodynamically grown food
6. I will minimize the amount of fresh
water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
7. I will not own or use a mobile (cell)
phone
8. I will not buy rainforest timber
9. I will not buy or use single-use
plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
10. I will not use banks, superannuation
(pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations
involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
11. I will not accept employment from,
or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the
exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction
of the biosphere
12. I will not get news from the corporate
media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
13. I will make the effort to learn a
skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
14. I will gently encourage my family
and friends to consider signing this pledge.
Conclusion
The world is complex: it is difficult to
understand and requires enormous effort.
Propaganda is designed to give people
information that is easy to understand (and sometimes frightening) while
distracting them from the truth and offering a simple ‘choice’ (or command)
designed to mobilize action in support of an elite-driven narrative.
For example, by telling people they are
threatened by a virus, most will be scared into focusing their attention on the
‘virus’. They will pay no attention to the many more complex and dangerous
things that are taking place under cover of the ‘virus’: a
technocratic/transhumanist coup that is utterly transforming the very essence
of human society, economy and even the human individual. See ‘Beware the
Transhumanists: How “Being Human” is being Re-engineered by the Elite’s
Covid-19 Coup’ and ‘Klaus Schwab and His Great Fascist Reset’.
Only a tiny proportion of the human
population has even the vaguest idea of how the world actually works. But not
even a tiny proportion of these people recognize that terrorizing children into
obedience is the fundamental explanation of why the world works in the way that
it does.
Unless we can mobilize greater recognition
of our responsibility for giving the global elite the control over us that it
has, and tackle this problem at its core – by fundamentally revising existing
parenting and education models so that we produce powerful individuals – it
will continue to be enormously difficult to mobilize sufficient strategic
response to the challenges that confront humanity.
And while we are now fast-tracking four
distinct paths to human extinction, there is an urgency about our predicament
that accelerates daily.
Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime
commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive
research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and
has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’
His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.
URL: https://newageislam.com/current-affairs/most-people-believe-propaganda-false/d/123419
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