Mass Manipulation & Propaganda in the Kali Yuga
March 17, 2011 the UK Guardian published a report warning that social media is being manipulated.
* Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media
Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread
pro-American propaganda
The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate
social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet
conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.
A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central
Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and
Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management
service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate
identities based all over the world.
…each
fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting
details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false
identities from their workstations "without fear of being discovered by
sophisticated adversaries".
full report:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
Frequency Prisons
Be aware, on the Internet these days there are many locations in consciousness
that may be described as Frequency Prisons.
The consciousness of the readers is kept in a certain specific limited
range of frequency by the dolling out of a slow low-grade level of constant
addictive apprehension. The people behind these websites may have once held the
best of intentions; they may not even now know what they are doing and what they
are involved in. But nevertheless they have created walls that entrap
consciousness in fear — and enlightenment eludes the fearful. We cannot go Home
in Fear.
In forums there is a technique to this that may have begun innocently to attract
subscribers, but has since become a business. There are ‘regulars’, meaning
posters who have built specific identities. And just as actors can take on any
role, these regulars reflect an assigned state of mind, a character that
perceives the world through a specific spectrum. One may pose as the
warning-of-doom do-gooder, another as the chronic hopelessly depressed, or maybe
the knows-it-all science-guy, or the new age housewife psychic, or a flamboyant
pistol-packing ex-military dude.
Mechanics of the Crowd
Fear is a mechanism of control.
Controlling our minds with Propaganda
The idea of manipulating public opinion, beliefs, and habitual consumption is
very old. Using the fear of death, religions have been duping us for centuries.
The Jesuits were experts. We should not be surprised that more recent and
intrusive ways have been found to influence and herd the masses.
In 1928,
Edward L. Bernays (nephew of Sigmund Freud), wrote a small book entitled,
'PROPAGANDA', in which he delineates how to organize mass chaos, how propaganda
can be used by an elite few to start wars and influence business, politics,
literally every aspect of our lives. The book is available online free as a PDF.
The final chapter is entitled: The Mechanics of Propaganda. For example:
Chapter I: ORGANIZING CHAOS
"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.
"...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas
suggested, largely by men we have never heard of."
Free PDF here:
And from an introduction to the published edition:
"That propaganda easily seduces even those whom it most horrifies is a paradox
that Bernays grasped completely; and it is one that we must try at last to
understand, if we want to change the world that Edward Bernays, among others,
made for us."
- Mark Crispin Miller, NYC 2004; Ig Publishing edition.
The Age of Confusion
An important book on propaganda was published in 1997, entitled,
Taking the Risk out of Democracy:
Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty
by Alex Carey,
1997; University of Illinois Press
While this might not seem exactly metaphysical, my usual area of study, I
believe it is very important for us all to understand the mechanics of
propaganda and manipulation. Alex Carey’s book is key to learning how Americans
have been lied to and manipulated — and thus fits into the predictions from the
ancient Sanskrit text the Linga Purana concerning our current Age of Confusion,
the Kali Yuga:
*People will prefer to choose false ideas.
*Base [low minded] men who have gained a certain amount of learning (without
having the virtues necessary for its use) will be esteemed as sages.
*Thieves will become kings, and kings will be the thieves.
*Rulers will confiscate property and use it badly. They will cease to protect
the people.
'Taking the Risk out of Democracy, Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and
Liberty' by Alex Carey, sheds some light on the demons in the closet of the
United States of America.
As Mr. Carey informs us, "The common man…has never been so confused, mystified
and baffled; his most intimate conceptions of himself, of his needs, and indeed
the very nature of human nature, have been subject to skilled manipulation and
construction in the interests of corporate efficiency and profit."
This book tells us that we the American people have been subjected to a 75-year
long multi-billion dollar intentional assault on our freedom to think and to
choose.
"... propaganda techniques have been developed and deployed (in the United
States)... to control and deflect the purposes of the domestic electorate in a
democratic country in the interests of the privileged segments of that society."
What is propaganda?
"Propaganda is the management of collective attitudes by the manipulation of
significant symbols... Collective attitudes are amenable to many modes of
alteration… intimidation... economic coercion... drill. But their arrangement
and rearrangement occurs principally under the impetus of significant symbols;
and the technique of using significant symbols for this purpose is propaganda."
(Laswell, Bradson, and Janowitz 1953:776-80).
These significant symbols are the catch phrases by which we human beings can be
aroused to anger, to go to war, or merely to consume. Phrases like the American
Way, the Free Enterprise System, the American Dream, and the global economy are
meant to empower our faith — as opposed to creeping socialism, the red menace,
and a national threat.
Significant symbols are "symbols with real power over emotional reactions,
ideally symbols of the Sacred and the Satanic."
People are polarized by these symbols. They see life in terms of good and bad,
black and white, and thus are more easily manipulated. The 'enemy' out there may
indeed seem evil. But in the solitude of our own hearts, we know that we are all
a mix of both. None of us is so clearly saint or sinner. Instead of emotionally
polarizing we could have a dialogue, a discussion; and yet, it seems we can be
manipulated by propaganda into thinking almost anything.
Alex Carey suggests that we Americans might be the most brain washed country on
the planet! One professor in Carey's book, Professor Harwood Childs, states,
"Americans are the most propagandized people of any nation."
I know you are thinking, "Hey! Only the bad guys use propaganda. Only our
enemies use propaganda." And you are right, they do. But as we are now learning,
the 'bad' guys are sometimes right in our own back yard and we don't even see
them.
Who are these 'geniuses' that believe they have the right to manipulate our
thinking?
In the early days of World War I, we the America people - like any intelligent
group of human beings - didn't want to go to war. So we had to be convinced, or
coerced, and this was done very effectively by a campaign launched by President
Woodrow Wilson, Walter Lippman (an eminent journalist), and Edward Bernays (who
just happened to be the nephew of Sigmund Freud). I can always remember the
Bernays name because it sounds like that really fattening butter sauce.
Lippman and Bernays were brilliant at brainwashing.
Bernays is famous for saying, "If we understand the mechanisms and motives of
the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according
to our will without their knowing it." [from 'Toxic Sludge is Good for You!'
Common Courage Press]. Bernays called this 'engineering consent.'
I don't know about you, but I sure like to spend my weekends thinking about
controlling the group mind. What are these weirdos thinking? The reason none of
us have known that these things are going on is because none of us is capable of
thinking like this! We have better ways to occupy our time.
The World War I propaganda campaign of Mr. Lippman and Mr. Bernays "produced
within six months so intense an anti-German hysteria as to permanently impress
American business (and Adolph Hitler, among others) with the potential of large
scale propaganda to control public opinion."
Bernays found a very practical use for his Uncle Sigmund's science of
psychology. "When the war ended, Bernays later wrote, business realized that the
general public could now be harnessed to their cause as it had been harnessed to
the war, to the national cause." (Alex Carey).
This has been going on in the USA since before most of us were born, and
propaganda has been used since the beginning of written history. Before
metaphysics, I studied art and art history and I have concluded that much of
what we consider to be art is in fact propaganda, wonderful beauty designed to
intimidate and instruct. Think about those big statues of gods, rulers and
tyrants.
Propaganda has become a profession
Today we have far more efficient means of distributing propaganda than ever
before. The television, the Internet, and the media in general have made it easy
for the masters of ‘spin’ and the public relations firms with their armies of
lawyers, lobbyists, and paid-for-scientists to tell us what to think so that we
will all be good little consumers. The true religion of the West is consumerism,
and we are working night and day to spread that religion to our brothers and
sisters around the world.
Every man, woman and child on the planet now has a right to shop at a Mall and
eat burgers & fries, whether they want to or not. Was that in the Bill of
Rights? Oh, yes, of course "the pursuit of happiness" is
— having more things! Or as one journalist noted, "When the going gets
tough, the tough go shopping?"
Contempt for us...
In 1927, Harold Lasswell wrote "Propaganda Techniques in World War I" and
suggested that, "familiarity with the behavior of the ruling public (meaning
those who had so easily succumbed to the propaganda) has bred contempt... as a
consequence, despondent democrats turned elitist, no longer trusting intelligent
public opinion, and therefore should themselves determine how to make up the
public mind, how to bamboozle and seduce in the name of the public good..."
As Alex Carey points out, "propaganda has become a profession. The modern world
is busy developing a corps of men & women who do nothing but study the ways and
means of changing minds or binding minds to their convictions."
Independent thinking
There is nothing in our culture that encourages a person to think independently.
Tell your family and friends that you are going off to think, and they will
think you are crazy.
We in the West have had to access Eastern religions to realize that pursuits
like meditation and contemplation are actually fertile uses of our time. We are
encouraged to keep busy [deluded!] from the time we can walk until the day we
die. Parents now send their babies to pre-schools.
What would happen if the human species were free? What would happen if we were
not coerced, herded, and manipulated? What if each of us wanted to and had time
to think, to become who were are, to cultivate our uniqueness and commune with
our Source, the God that lives with-in each and every one of us? What might we
become?
Is that what ‘they’ are afraid of?
They must be afraid of something to have expended so much energy, money, and
time all these years to keep us in such a narrow frame of expression.
These bozos who specialize in controlling and brain-washing us can only despise
themselves — more than they so obviously despise and distrust us. Next time you
spend a few hours absorbing mindless entertainment-and-advertising (they are
never separate) designed to make you go out and consume more, more, more — stop
for just a minute and think who you might be.
The corporatist elite continues to get away with the lies and the contempt.
Isn't it time that we the people grew out of our adolescent denial and faced our
own demons? If we confront our responsibility for our freedom, we might not lose
it.
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