Topic: Fake News and Propaganda

The "Intelligence" Fraud (1). Arthur Silber, Power of Narrative. Dec. 2, 2017.

In a post earlier this week, I remarked that I'm working on a new article about the monumental fraud represented by "intelligence," a fraud that includes "intelligence" itself -- that is, the supposedly vital need for "secret information" about everything under the sun, to hear the so-called "intelligence" experts tell this fable -- to every aspect of the State's insatiable appetite for "intelligence," including all the operations of the "intelligence community." I've decided to start a series of posts documenting the endless "intelligence" failures of the State. Stories about these failures appear with stunning regularity, even in our gutless, monochrome, propagandistic news media. 

I included links to earlier essays that explore this issue in detail. The second half of this article offers a good summary of the argument I've developed over a number of years. Two other articles I mentioned were this one and this one. (There are many, many more posts about this issue in the archives.) I can state my theme very briefly. Insofar as "intelligence" is concerned, such "secret information" is almost always wrong; on the rare occasions when it is correct, it is likely to be disregarded, especially if it goes against a policy that has already been decided. "Intelligence" is most commonly used as propaganda, to justify policy decisions that have already been made to an alarmingly gullible public.

When Fake News Kill. Mata Hari, the Spy Who Never Was. Cassandra's Legacy. July 24, 2017.

Why Ridiculous Official Propaganda Still Works. CJ Hopkins, Counterpunch. Jan. 13, 2017.

Chief among the common misconceptions about the way official propaganda works is the notion that its goal is to deceive the public into believing things that are not “the truth” (that Trump is a Russian agent, for example, or that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, or that the terrorists hate us for our freedom, et cetera). However, while official propagandists are definitely pleased if anyone actually believes whatever lies they are selling, deception is not their primary aim. 

The primary aim of official propaganda is to generate an “official narrative” that can be mindlessly repeated by the ruling classes and those who support and identify with them. This official narrative does not have to make sense, or to stand up to any sort of serious scrutiny. Its factualness is not the point. The point is to draw a Maginot line, a defensive ideological boundary, between “the truth” as defined by the ruling classes and any other “truth” that contradicts their narrative.

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The ruling classes are not exactly making it easy for their followers this time. Their new official narrative (let’s go ahead and call it “The Putinist Putsch to Destroy Democracy”) is so completely fatuous that it’s beyond embarrassing. The plot is more or less what you’d expect from a mediocre young adult novel or a Game of Thrones-type fantasy series. And if that wasn’t already humiliating enough for the liberals being asked to pretend to believe it, the PR folks in charge couldn’t even be bothered to assemble a new collection of liars to market their childish fairy tale for them. Not only are they insisting that liberals take the word of the “Intelligence Community” and the mainstream media that sold the world the “Saddam Has Secret WMDs” hoax, they actually dispatched James R. Clapper to sit there, in more or less the same spot he sat in the last time he lied to Congress, and do his dog and pony show again. 

Meanwhile, the ruling classes’ papers of record, which cosmopolitan liberals rely on to provide a simulation of “serious journalism,” highbrow “arts and culture,” and so on, have descended to the level of the National Enquirer.

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The point of all this propaganda is to delegitimize Donald Trump, and to prophylactically reassert the neoliberal ruling classes’ monopoly on power, “reality,” and “truth.” In case this wasn’t already abundantly clear, the neoliberal ruling classes have no intention of giving up control of the global capitalist pseudo-empire they’ve been working to establish these last sixty years. They’re going to delegitimize and stigmatize Trump (and any other symbol of nationalist backlash or resistance to transnational Capitalism), bide their time for the next four years, and then install another of their loyal servants … after which life will go back to “normal,” and liberals will do their best to forget this unfortunate period where they pretended to believe this insipid neo-McCarthyite nonsense.

Russia-gate bullshit: perfect example of media lying (suppressing truth, distorting facts, misrepresenting evidence, reporting claims without evidence) to support a political agenda

Tell the HuffPost to Restore My Censored Article. Joe Lauria. Change.org.

On the Origins of Russia-gate. Joe Lauria. Nov. 4, 2017. PDF of Lauria's article before it was taken down at PuffHo, via raymcgovern.

How We Can Be Certain That Mueller Won’t Prove Trump-Russia Collusion. Caitlin Johnstone, medium. Nov. 12, 2017.

Dear America. Stop trying to make Russiagate happen. It’s not going to happen. Deus ex Mueller isn’t coming. You’re going to have to solve your country’s problems yourselves, America. He may dig up evidence of corruption, but Robert Mueller’s investigation will never – ever – find proof that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election using hackers and propaganda.

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The most significant and most underappreciated facet of our existence is how much of our interface with the world consists not of our direct experience of it, but of our mental stories about it. Combine that fact with the century of research and development that has gone into refining propaganda tactics and the US plutocracy’s stranglehold on mainstream media, and you get a nation lost in establishment narratives. People forming their worldviews based on phantasms of the mind instead of concrete facts.

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when I converse with Russiagaters, that’s generally what this boils down to. “Impeach Trump” is a punishment in search of a crime. They’ve been whipped into a frenzied state of fear by establishment psyops, and they want Mueller to pull a deus ex machina and save them from the evil orange monster. They believe Mueller will get Trump impeached for Russian collusion because they badly want to. 

It’s not going to happen, though. Deus ex Mueller isn’t coming. You’re going to have to solve your country’s problems yourselves, America. 

And this is actually a good thing, because Trump is not the source of your country’s problems. Believing that a Trump impeachment will fix any of America’s major ills is like believing cough suppressants cure pneumonia.

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The problem is not Trump.

The problem is that America is ruled by an unelected power establishment which maintains its rule by sabotaging democracy, exacerbating economic injustice and expanding the US war machine. 

Stop listening to the lies that they pipe into your echo chambers and turn to face your real demons.

Who gets to push the nuclear button? Paul Craig Roberts. Nov. 17, 2017.

William Binney is the former National Security Agency (NSA) official who created NSA’s mass surveillance program for digital information. He says that if the Russian government had conspired with Trump, hacked the Democratic National Committee’s computer, or in any way influenced the outcome of the last US presidential election, the National Security Agency would have the digital evidence. The fact that we have been listening to the unsubstantiated charges that comprise “Russiagate” for more than one year without being presented with a scrap of evidence is complete proof that Russiagate is entirely fake news.

The fake news originated with CIA director John Brennan and FBI director Comey conspiring with the DNC in an effort to discredit and unseat President Trump and at a minimum prevent him from damaging the vast power and profit of the military/security complex by normalizing relations with Russia.

Consider what this means. The directors of the CIA and FBI made up a totally false story about a newly elected President and fed the lies to the presstitutes and Congress. The presstitutes never asked for a drop of evidence and enlarged the Brennan/Comey lie with a claim that all 17 US intelligence agencies had concluded that Russia had interfered. In actual fact, a handful of carefully selected people in three of the agencies had prepared, perhaps under duress, a conditional report that had no evidence behind it.

That it was fake news created to control President Trump was completely obvious, but corrupt security officials, corrupt senators and representatives, a corrupt DNC, and corrupt media used constant repetition to turn a lie into truth.

Long Night Ahead. John Robb, Global Guerillas. Sep 22, 2017.

Facebook just declared war against "disruptive" information. In addition to hundreds of new human censors, they are training AI censors capable of identifying and deleting 'unacceptable' information found in the discussions of all two billion members in real time. This development highlights what the real danger posed by a socially networked world actually is. 

The REAL danger facing a world interconnected by social networking isn't disruption. As we have seen on numerous occasions, the danger posed by disruptive information and events is fleeting. Disruption, although potentially painful in the short term, doesn't last, nor is it truly damaging over the long term. In fact, the true danger posed by an internetworked world is just the opposite of disruption.

This danger is an all encompassing online orthodoxy. A sameness of thought and approach enforced by hundreds of millions of socially internetworked adherents. A global orthodoxy that ruthlessly narrows public thought down to a single, barren, ideological framework. A ruling network that prevents dissent and locks us into stagnation and inevitable failure as it runs afoul of reality and human nature.

This ruling network already exists. It already has millions of online members and it is growing and deepening with each passing day -- extending its tendrils into the media, the civil service, tech companies, and academia. There's little doubt that over time it will eventually exert decisive influence over the entire government as well.

However, in order to exert authoritarian control over our decision making, it needs control over the flow of information in our society. Merely controlling the online debate is insufficient. For real power, the ruling network needs to control the information flows on our information infrastructure -- Facebook, Google, and Amazon -- and that's exactly the power it is now getting.

Fortunately, as large and powerful as this network already is, I still believe this dark future is avoidable. We still have a short time before a long night descends across the world.

The Silencing of Dissent. Chris Hedges, TruthDig. Sep 17, 2017.

The ruling elites, who grasp that the reigning ideology of global corporate capitalism and imperial expansion no longer has moral or intellectual credibility, have mounted a campaign to shut down the platforms given to their critics. The attacks within this campaign include blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of “fake news.” 

No dominant class can long retain control when the credibility of the ideas that justify its existence evaporates. It is forced, at that point, to resort to crude forms of coercion, intimidation and censorship. This ideological collapse in the United States has transformed those of us who attack the corporate state into a potent threat, not because we reach large numbers of people, and certainly not because we spread Russian propaganda, but because the elites no longer have a plausible counterargument. 

The elites face an unpleasant choice. They could impose harsh controls to protect the status quo or veer leftward toward socialism to ameliorate the mounting economic and political injustices endured by most of the population. But a move leftward, essentially reinstating and expanding the New Deal programs they have destroyed, would impede corporate power and corporate profits. So instead the elites, including the Democratic Party leadership, have decided to quash public debate.

People Ignore Facts That Contradict Their False Beliefs. Eric Zeusse, Strategic Culture Foundation. Sep. 23, 2017.

What social scientists call “confirmation bias” and have repeatedly found to be rampant, is causing the public to be easily manipulated, and has thus destroyed democracy by replacing news-reporting by[/with] propaganda - ‘news' that’s false - in a culture where lies which pump the agendas of the powerful (including lies pumped by the billionaire owners of top ‘news’media and of the media they own) are almost never punished (and are often not even denied to be true). Thus, lies by those powerful liars almost always succeed at enslaving the minds of the millions, to believe what the top economic-and-power class want those millions of people to believe — no matter how false it might happen actually to be.

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A well-established central finding of psychological research, concerning “confirmation bias” or “motivated reasoning” (which are two phrases referring to people’s tendency to believe whatever they want to believe, regardless of any contrary facts), is that individuals evaluate whatever they read or hear according to their pre-existing ideas about the given subject. Specifically, psychologists have found that people tend to pay attention to whatever confirms their existing ideas, and tend to ignore whatever contradicts those pre-established beliefs.

The CIA's 60-Year History of Fake News: How the Deep State Corrupted Many American Writers. Robert Scheer, TruthDig. Mar. 17, 2017.

How did the news go ‘fake’? When the media went social. Claire Wardle and Hossein Derakhshan, The Guardian. Nov. 10, 2017.

The Collins Dictionary word of the year for 2017 is, disappointingly, “fake news”. We say disappointingly, because the ubiquity of that phrase among journalists, academics and policymakers is partly why the debate around this issue is so simplistic. The phrase is grossly inadequate to explain the nature and scale of the problem. .. But what’s more troubling, and the reason that we simply cannot use the phrase any more, is that it is being used by politicians around the world as a weapon against the fourth estate and an excuse to censor free speech. 

Definitions matter. Take, for example, the question of why this type of content is created in the first place. There are four distinct motivations for why people do this: political, financial, psychological (for personal satisfaction) and social (to reinforce our belonging to communities or “tribes”). If we’re serious about tackling mis- and disinformation, we need to address these motivations separately. And we think it’s time to give much more serious consideration to the social element. 

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When we try to understand why people are sharing misleading, manipulated and fabricated information, we need to appreciate that those shares and retweets are playing an incredibly important function, which is less about their veracity or truth. The act of sharing is often about signalling to others that we agree with the sentiment of the message, or that even if we don’t agree, we recognise it as important and worth paying attention to. We want to feel connected to others, and these mini-performances allow us to do that. 

Understanding this is easier if we read the work of media scholar James Carey. He argued that the dominant lens through which we understand communication is a “transmission model”, with a focus simply on the mechanics through which a message is transmitted from Sender A to Receiver B. However, he said, we should actually view communication through the lens of ritual if we want to understand why people seek out, consume and make sense of information. From this vantage point, Carey argued: “News is not information, it is drama.” A ritual view of communication views “reading a newspaper less as sending or gaining information and more as attending a mass”, where “a particular view of the world is portrayed and confirmed”. 

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we’ve historically evolved from being informed to having information, and then to appearing informed.

How Facebook and Google threaten public health – and democracy. Roger McNamee, The Guardian. Nov. 11, 2017.

The sad truth is that Facebook and Alphabet have behaved irresponsibly in the pursuit of massive profits. They have consciously combined persuasive techniques developed by propagandists and the gambling industry with technology in ways that threaten public health and democracy. The issue, however, is not social networking or search. It is advertising business models. Let me explain. 

From the earliest days of tabloid newspapers, publishers realized the power of exploiting human emotions. To win a battle for attention, publishers must give users “what they want,” content that appeals to emotions, rather than intellect. Substance cannot compete with sensation, which must be amplified constantly, lest consumers get distracted and move on. 

“If it bleeds, it leads” has guided editorial choices for more than 150 years, but has only become a threat to society in the past decade, since the introduction of smartphones.

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By making every experience free and easy, Facebook and Alphabet became gatekeepers on the internet, giving them levels of control and profitability previously unknown in media. They exploit data to customize each user’s experience and siphon profits from content creators. ... 

Facebook and Alphabet monetize content through advertising that is targeted more precisely than has ever been possible before. The platforms create “filter bubbles” around each user, confirming pre-existing beliefs and often creating the illusion that everyone shares the same views. Platforms do this because it is profitable. The downside of filter bubbles is that beliefs become more rigid and extreme. Users are less open to new ideas and even to facts.

Sean Parker unloads on Facebook "exploiting" human psychology. Mike Allen, Axios. Nov. 9, 2017.

... "God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.” [Sean Parker, founding president of Facebook]

“The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?'” “And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you … more likes and comments.” 

“It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.” “The inventors, creators — it’s me, it’s Mark [Zuckerberg], it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’s all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.”

Early Facebook investor compares the social network to Nazi propaganda, likens its workers to Goebbels and claims it is creating a climate of 'fear and anger'. Katie French, Daily Mail. Nov. 11 2017.

Facebook officials have been compared to the Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels by a former investor. Roger McNamee also likened the company’s methods to those of Edward Bernays, the ‘father of public’ relations who promoted smoking for women. Mr McNamee, who made a fortune backing the social network in its infancy, has spoken out about his concern about the techniques the tech giants use to engage users and advertisers. [..] the former investor said everyone was now ‘in one degree or another addicted’ to the site while he feared the platform was causing people to swap real relationships for phoney ones.

And he likened the techniques of the company to Mr Bernays and Hitler’s public relations minister. ‘In order to maintain your attention they have taken all the techniques of Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebbels, and all of the other people from the world of persuasion, and all the big ad agencies, and they’ve mapped it onto an all day product with highly personalised information in order to addict you,’ Mr McNamee told The Telegraph.

RT America Torched in Witch Hunt ’17. Chris Hedges, Truthdig. Nov. 12, 2017. 

In one of the most horrendous blows to press freedom since the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s, the U.S. Department of Justice has forced the news broadcaster RT America to file under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). 

The assault on RT America, on which I host the show “On Contact,” has nothing to do with the dissemination of Russian propaganda. It is driven by RT America’s decision to provide a platform to critics of American capitalism and imperialism, critics who lambast a system of government that can no longer be called democratic. And it is accompanied by the installation of algorithms by Google, Facebook and Twitter that divert readers away from left-wing, progressive and anti-war websites, including Truthdig. The World Socialist Web Site has seen its search traffic from Google fall by 74 percent since April. 

Google, in a further blow, this month removed RT from its list of “preferred” channels on YouTube. Twitter has blocked all advertising by the channel. 

Put the censorship campaigns together and the message is clear: Left-wing critics, already marginalized by the state, must be silenced. 

It would seem, given how we are locked out of the corporate media and public broadcasting, that the assault is overkill. But the ideology that sustains the corporate state, the “free market” and neoliberalism has lost all credibility. The corporate state has no counterargument to its critics. The nakedness of corporate greed, exploitation and repression is transparent across the political spectrum. The ideological fortress erected by corporate power and sustained by its courtiers in the press and academia has collapsed. 

All it has left is a crude censorship. 

Complicit in this censorship is a bankrupt liberal class. The institutions tasked with defending press freedom—including the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists and PEN—along with major news outlets such as The New York Times, have served as the corporate state’s useful idiots. Only a handful of journalists, including Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer, grasp and decry the very real danger before us.

The charge that RT and these left-wing sites disseminate “foreign propaganda” is the beginning, not the end, of a broad campaign against press freedom. Once this precedent of state censorship is normalized, far more tepid and compliant media outlets will be targeted. Max Blumenthal wrote two good pieces on AlterNet about the puppet masters behind the censorship campaign. [Click here and here.] 

The venom of the state toward its critics was displayed in a report by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections,” issued Jan. 6. In the report, seven pages were specifically directed at RT America, much of the language focused on the journalist Abby Martin. Martin became one of the best-known critics of the corporate state during the Occupy movement. Her show on RT, “Breaking the Set,” which had been off the air for nearly two years when the report was published—a glaring error for an intelligence community awash in budgets of tens of billions of dollars—was denounced as a disseminator of “radical discontent.” The report complained that RT gave airtime to third-party candidate debates.  

The document attacked RT hosts for asserting that the two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a sham. It excoriated the network for covering Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street and fracking. 

The report charged: 

RT’s reports often characterize the United States as a “surveillance state” and allege widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use. 

RT has also focused on criticism of the US economic system, US currency policy, alleged Wall Street greed, and the US national debt. Some of RT’s hosts have compared the United States to Imperial Rome and have predicted that government corruption and “corporate greed” will lead to US financial collapse.

The “Alice in Wonderland” quality of the report would be laughable if it was not so ominous. The United States, in fact, is a surveillance state. Civil liberties have been eviscerated. Police brutality is endemic. Our drone wars have made us state terrorists. The economic structure serves the wealthiest corporations and oligarchs. Wall Street is run by a criminal class. Our debt is unsustainable, especially once the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, and like all decaying empires we are headed for collapse. The DNI report clarifies what the ruling elites fear—not fake news but the truth. And the truth is that the elites have destroyed the country and are traitors to democracy. 

The DNI report was followed by a congressional hearing on “Extremist Content and Russian Disinformation Online,” held Oct. 31. Executives of Facebook, Twitter and Google were grilled about their roles in distributing fake news and extremist content that in the words of Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley included “spread[ing] stories about abuse of black Americans by law enforcement.” The executives promised to double down on their censorship, and they did so. 

The ruling elites are desperately trying to shift the focus away from the cause of the political insurgencies on the left and the right: extreme social inequality. It is for this reason that critics who highlight and explore the roots and causes of social inequality must be discredited or silenced. If social inequality is accepted as the driving force behind the decay of the American state and the mounting rage of much of the population, then the structures that profit from this inequality will come under assault. All the elites have left is to paint their critics as “agents of a foreign power.” 

The United States increasingly resembles a totalitarian state. Our anemic democracy is on life support. A reasoned debate about social inequality or the crimes and misjudgments of empire is becoming impossible. This presages a frightening future. There will be many “good” Americans who, when the history of this moment is recorded, will be responsible. And one day, to their surprise, they too will be victims.

Propaganda

Issues, Problems, (Social) Media, and the Manipulation Thereof. Cognitive Dissonance. Nov. 27, 2017.

So (hypothetically speaking because this would NEVER happen in America, land of the free lunch and home of the benevolent government) how does a government beholden to a special interest billionaire corpocracy and a military industrial banking pharmaceutical complex convince its consumers…err…sorry, citizens there is a (never ending) clear and present danger which must be confronted with military force abroad and consumer…err…citizen surveillance at home? 

Well, they lie of course. And we aren’t speaking about an innocent little white lie, but a huge shameless multi institutional deeply involved and ever changing whopper of a lie. The core kernel of this lie is the skillful application of artificially induced fear which converts intellectual and aloof understanding into something closer to physical and personal feeling. 

Manufactured FEAR as in False Evidence Appearing Real. As opposed to real fear, the kind that runs up your spine as the tractor trailer in the oncoming lane begins to jackknife towards you. 

Propaganda is the most commonly used tool in their arsenal, though by no means the only tool. But understand that propaganda is most effective when skillfully blended with existing social memes, common knowledge and accepted/promoted (as opposed to true) history and national identity. 

For example, we are endlessly informed be media that America is a democracy when in fact it was originally a representative republic and now is at best an oligarchy…and at worst a totalitarian state.

Don’t believe me? Look up “Civil Forfeiture” or “Civil Asset Forfeiture” and then explain to me how, in the land of the free and home of the brave, law enforcement officers can seize your cash, your car, even your home or business simply because they SUSPECT those assets were purchased with, came from or were involved in an illegal activity.

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My original point is simple. We are fed propaganda that reinforces social memes and we are fed social memes that reinforce the propaganda. And the vast majority of this feeding is accomplished via (social) media. Seen from the outside, this feedback loop is obvious but normally not too alarming since there is (theoretically) an independent media hungry to expose the official hypocrisy, corruption and self dealing. 

That’s the myth anyway. In truth the Fourth Estate, aka the mainstream media (MSM), has always protected and enabled the rich and powerful to some extent or another. A careful and critical examination of major historical events shows that what the MSM says happened and what actually happened often diverge dramatically. 

It no longer is (and never really was) the Fourth Estate, but rather the fourth branch of government. We have the Executive, the Judicial, the Legislative and the Communication (Propaganda) branches. 

It is very important to distinguish between the main stream media (including the corporate owners of social media) and your local newspaper or television station where your real trust lay. You know…the place where you get your mostly reliable local news, traffic and weather reports. 

While local ‘reporting’ is at times somewhat misinformed and there is a striking similarity between stations on major news events (simply because they are fed the info from central MSM sources) I sense no real malice or hidden motive from local media, just pure greed to profit off your eyeballs and actions. 

Before the major newspapers and radio/television networks were gobbled up by corporate entities, to the point now where the national ‘media’ is entirely owned by 6 or 7 major corporations, on occasion you would find a major media outlet marching to a different drum and actually speaking truth to power. 

Such is not the case today despite what you or I (want to) believe. The MSM is serving the interest of the obscenely wealthy and powerful elite as well as the ‘national security state’. You may believe otherwise because you sometimes hear divergent ‘views’ among the MSM on unimportant-to-the-powerful subjects. 

But when the corpocracy and the ‘intelligence’ service(s) want you and me to ‘believe’ something (meaning swallow with little to no questioning) it is amazing how quickly they all fall into line on the critical points of the messaging. Without applying critical thinking or a healthy dose of skepticism, we tend to accept what we are told simply because everyone (in authority) is saying it. 

Speaking of intelligence services, it has been (and continues to be) thoroughly documented that the CIA employs (and has employed in the past) a surprisingly large number of mainstream media reporters to conduct their propaganda dissemination. Conduct your own research…I think you will be amazed by the number of significant and publicly admired reporters who were (and are) captured by the CIA. 

Even when there appears to be disagreement among those with the media bullhorn, notice how the (faux) disagreement is nearly always divided into two distinct camps who both agree on the fundamentals (i.e. Osama bin Laden did it) but quibble over the details (he directed it all from a cave...no, he was in a Taliban stronghold). 

This is done to project a false sense of media discernment and investigation, of true ‘reporting’. The vast majority of MSM reporters are little more than repeaters, handed corporate press releases and news ‘copy’ they read on air or modify with their own words before publishing like a 6th grade test cheater. 

Either you believe this or that. But to consider any other point of view is unacceptable, therefore you must either be a ‘fake’ news perpetrator or a conspiracy theorist. It really doesn’t matter which of the two points of view you adopt, just as long as you are marching to the manipulated drum beat. 

Manufactured consent and total capitulation to the prevailing meme is all they ask of you. Accept your programming and you are welcomed with open arms into the mainstream mind to reap the benefits of conformity. Object, push back, question, discern or think for yourself and you are spat out and spit upon, an outcast from the herd. 

No gruel for you. 

The intent is to corral, not to control, for it is impossible for 0.1% of the population to physically control the other 99.9%. But the 0.1% can erect thought barriers and social memes designed to encourage the 99.9% to self regulate and gather into easily manipulated self identifying herds that can quickly be corralled, then moved. 

Ouch…my ego doesn’t like that idea. 

In war, the best way to defeat your enemy is to convince them to lay down their arms and not even fight. To accomplish this, ‘psychological operations’ (psyops) are employed by both sides upon both sides. The US has a huge advantage creating any conflict because the myth of superior firepower is so universally ingrained into the global mindset. You can’t fight city hall or the Empire. 

But this implanted global/domestic mindset is slowly dissipating as more and more people/corporations/institutions/nations recognize the advanced signs of a declining empire and begin to challenge the prevailing dogma. 

Unfortunately for us, you and I are laying down our weapons. Though for now, at least, the weapons we fail to use are critical thinking and a skeptical approach to MSM ‘news’. As long as we swallow whole or in part the MSM swill without seriously challenging it, we will continue to get more (or worse) of the same.

Frank Capra - Why We Fight. Wikipedia