Seventeen Useful Techniques for Suppressing the Truth, Online
Do you ever get the feeling that the mainstream news you receive online is filtered? That the whole story is not coming through? That the narrative is biased and propagandized? That the inconvenient truths are suppressed?
How do you feel when entire news stories are concocted to manipulate you politically? Reuters is usually behind the most egregious lies written at geopolitical levels. For example, on April 28, 2015 it was reported that a US cargo ship was by seized by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz and the ship was fired upon by Iran. Every aspect of that headline was a context-free lie. But within minutes it was on all the US news channels and raging across the hate-radio nation, embellished by even more lies.
(For context, the US Navy and Coast Guard stop and board an average of 50 ships per month in the Strait of Hormuz; Iran about 30. It's a non-story about a routine daily event. Furthermore, the ship involved was not a US cargo ship or connected to the US in any way. The issue was a legal one related to past-due payments for passage. However, most Americans currently believe that Iran attacked a US ship. Who benefits from reinforcing the paranoid notion that Iran is a terrorist nation and blocking any movement toward peaceful diplomacy and normalcy? Which military/industry profit-pumps and congressional corporate-poodles want Americans to believe such dangerous lies? Is the new congressional budget sitting on the President's desk right now, complete with a massive demand for increased war spending? What timing! This your Neocon-infested pseudo-government at work.)
Every government has a propaganda hose that they use on their people to a greater or lesser extent. Educated and informed citizens anywhere can find alternative news sources and incorporate the information into their critical analysis of world events. The blast of corporate-generated news Americans endure every day reflects deliberate and sanctioned government propaganda. During critical national issues, enabling propaganda is endlessly spewed in the US by such CIA mouthpieces as the New York Times. (Waves to war-crimes enabler, Judith Miller.) The media monopolies follow suit with so-called analysis, using false equivalence and spoken lies to manipulate the audience. They unleash a firehose of blatant suppression in the US, where it is actually legal to lie to citizens about matters of national security over public-owned airwaves. As a result, Americans grow dumber month over month, year over year.
And then, they vote.
Voting out of ignorance once worried me, but no more. I now fully embrace the fake democracy of the US at the Federal level, where candidates are pre-selected for you by the Oligarchs. Everything is predictable: The poor will get deeper into debt, the people will grow increasingly clueless, the wars will get bigger, the country will continue on toward lockdown and full surveillance, the Supreme Court will always rule in a way that enriches corporations, including the upcoming favorable PPACA ruling. The election issues are mostly lies. Certainly, you'll now be able to buy a gay wedding cake, but you will still pay to continue slaughtering innocents throughout the world to increase US corporate riches. The Parties, both Democratic and Republican, are kabuki machines. They act as consorts and fluffers for the rogue Defense / Banking / Drug-and-Gun-Running cartels that currently own and operate the for-profit United States.
It's not enough to control the news, anymore. The conversations people have online must be controlled, as well. The recent and massive uptick in US propaganda since the toppling of Ukraine's democratically-elected government, has become hot and heavy now that the US is a recognized terrorist threat to the world. The new cold war is being fought by governments on Internet forums. Billions are being spent on armies of propagandists tasked with crushing conversations. How many conversations are you not allowed to have online? How many truths and ideas are you forbidden to discuss?
The events surrounding 9/11; the downing of flight MH17; the Gaddafi, Bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein assassinations; the predatory government-supported crimes of Wall Street; the CIA destabilizing of nations, including Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen; overt NSA criminal activities around the world; or even Hillary's gun-running and terrorist enabling activities, from Benghazi to Syria — none of these can be discussed in a reasonable fact-based way at all in public. Discussions of these events and the war crimes that created them are supressed in the defense-contractor-owned US media — and by both Vichy Democrats and Republicans, who are so exceedingly compromised they cannot represent the people who elected them.
Online forums, especially those brought to you by the self-appointed handmaidens of the faux democracy machines, react to inconvenient truths like a mob of running, sweaty boys from Lord of the Flies. Forum owners are on their knees praying that some of the corrupt election dollars will fall in their laps if they help maintain the spew of official Party propaganda and bullying indoctrination. To control the online conversations, these Vichy partisans employ an array of the the "Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression."
What follows is not an original piece, but it is a well-known and well-used protocol in intelligence circles. It is reprinted here to provoke recognition of the kinds of things you endure and suffer when you try to have a reality-based conversation. According to the discipline's methodolgy: "Strong, credible allegations of high-level criminal activity can bring down a government. When the government lacks an effective, fact-based defense, other techniques must be employed. The success of these techniques depends heavily upon a cooperative, compliant press and a mere token opposition party."
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression
1. Dummy up. If it's not reported, if it's not news, it didn't happen.
2. Wax indignant. This is also known as the "How dare you?" gambit.
3. Characterize the charges as "rumors" or, better yet, "wild rumors." If, in spite of the news blackout, the public is still able to learn about the suspicious facts, it can only be through "rumors." (If they tend to believe the "rumors" it must be because they are simply "paranoid" or "hysterical.")
4. Knock down straw men. Deal only with the weakest aspects of the weakest charges. Even better, create your own straw men. Make up wild rumors (or plant false stories) and give them lead play when you appear to debunk all the charges, real and fanciful alike.
5. Call the skeptics names like "conspiracy theorist," "nutcase," "ranter," "kook," "crackpot," and, of course, "rumor monger." Be sure, too, to use heavily loaded verbs and adjectives when characterizing their charges and defending the "more reasonable" government and its defenders. You must then carefully avoid fair and open debate with any of the people you have thus maligned. For insurance, set up your own "skeptics" to shoot down.
6. Impugn motives. Attempt to marginalize the critics by suggesting strongly that they are not really interested in the truth but are simply pursuing a partisan political agenda or are out to make money (compared to over-compensated adherents to the government line who, presumably, are not).
7. Invoke authority. Here the controlled press and the sham opposition can be very useful.
8. Dismiss the charges as "old news."
9. Come half-clean. This is also known as "confession and avoidance" or "taking the limited hangout route." This way, you create the impression of candor and honesty while you admit only to relatively harmless, less-than-criminal "mistakes." This stratagem often requires the embrace of a fall-back position quite different from the one originally taken. With effective damage control, the fall-back position need only be peddled by stooge skeptics to carefully limited markets.
10. Characterize the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as ultimately unknowable.
11. Reason backward, using the deductive method with a vengeance. With thoroughly rigorous deduction, troublesome evidence is irrelevant. E.g. We have a completely free press. If evidence exists that the Vince Foster "suicide" note was forged, they would have reported it. They haven't reported it so there is no such evidence. Another variation on this theme involves the likelihood of a conspiracy leaker and a press who would report the leak.
12. Require the skeptics to solve the crime completely. E.g. If Foster was murdered, who did it and why?
13. Change the subject. This technique includes creating and/or publicizing distractions.
14. Lightly report incriminating facts, and then make nothing of them. This is sometimes referred to as "bump and run" reporting.
15. Baldly and brazenly lie. A favorite way of doing this is to attribute the "facts" furnished the public to a plausible-sounding, but anonymous, source.
16. Expanding further on numbers 4 and 5, have your own stooges "expose" scandals and champion popular causes. Their job is to pre-empt real opponents and to play 99-yard football. A variation is to pay rich people for the job who will pretend to spend their own money.
17. Flood the Internet with agents. This is the answer to the question, "What could possibly motivate a person to spend hour upon hour on Internet news groups defending the government and/or the press and harassing genuine critics?" Don t the authorities have defenders enough in all the newspapers, magazines, radio, and television? One would think refusing to print critical letters and screening out serious callers or dumping them from radio talk shows would be control enough, but, obviously, it is not.
Which of these techniques of truth suppression do you most commonly see in online forums?
What do you make of the people who enable socially-engineered stupidity? Have they become so partisan that they are clueless to the social harm they are doing?
Have you given up on fact-based conversations?
How do you maintain your faith in the US political process?
Most of the world sees this US social-engineering efforts for what they actually are — and this has resulted in a profound loss of US influence throughout the world.
Has the deliberate suppression of truth had the opposite effect intended on you?
Do tell.
[If you want to check out the techniques your defense industry has developed to suppress your social and conscious growth, look here.]
_______________________
The Author hereby grants you permission to post any or all of this essay at your own blog or anywhere else you wish to on the Internet. There is no need to link back. Just add this notice and enjoy.
Comments
Honestly, I think this is essentially
…what drives people to seek a site like this.
Just to write forbidden questions and the obvious truths is such a frickin' relief.
Searching for and acknowledging fact-based truth is the only way to break down nationalistically-imposed cages of propaganda. Denial is sure sign of a pointless existence. Thinking with a moral compass when you still have brain plasticity is the only way to enter a state of conscious human evolution.
Trust your instincts.
Excellent diary. Great questions.
But it's late so I'll answer one for now.
I think they're stupid. Either willfully ignorant or simply not intelligent enough to figure it out. Being partisan is part of it, but being so partisan in the face of overwhelming evidence of farce is symptomatic of simply being ignorant. For whatever reason.
Recently I took to calling those in our path as the establishment based on sixties hippies vernacular. I label the partisans and others who support the establishment as establishment "enablers". That's exactly what they're doing, enabling the establishment, supporting and perpetuating it's systems and methods. But ya, it appears most are clueless as to the harm they're doing. They honestly believe they're being pragmatic and progressive by working within the system. They're the realists and idealism is for the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees.
Vichy Progressives!
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -
Excellent Diary, I hope it will be featured for a long time,
thank you so much for this. To answer your questions:
1. Which of these techniques of truth suppression do you most commonly see in online forums?
2. What do you make of the people who enable socially-engineered stupidity? Have they become so partisan that they are clueless to the social harm they are doing?
3. Have you given up on fact-based conversations?
4. How do you maintain your faith in the US political process?
5. Most of the world sees this US social-engineering efforts for what they actually are — and this has resulted in a profound loss of US influence throughout the world. Has the deliberate suppression of truth had the opposite effect intended on you?
And yes, I always listen to my guts' feelings and trust my instincts. God gave them to me for a reason.
This diary should be posted on dailykos. It's a diary that needed to be written. You did it perfectly. Thanks.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Believe it or not
…I was not really thinking of private forums like DK when I was writing this. (I been there only twice since I left after following links from here. In fact, there are astonishing few links to the place from the Internet at large.) One expects misinformation to be pushed there, as has always been the case. I put it in the same category as The People's View.
What I had in mind was forums from newspapers and magazines, which I scan as part of my job, especially foreign ones. It's amazing how many "US Users" participate in foreign news forums
I realize that many folks here are reacting to truth suppression at DK, but it is merely a partisan microcosm of the global propaganda war. As for deliberate suppression there, the term "useful idiots" comes to mind. Same thing at The People's View.
Nonetheless, the feeling is the same when you know permitted facts are censored and you are walking between the raindrops. Thanks so much for the feedback, mimi.
Which foreign sites (links)
do you find most truthful and informative?
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
I know one thing—I can't recommend any mainstream German sites
If any nationality self-censors its reporting so as to be as inoffensive as possible, it would be Germans. In particular, no one wants to risk being called anti-American or anti-Semitic.
I'm not looking for news.
I am scanning comments for the way people are thinking, reacting, and the attitudes they are sharing. I read both Der Spiegel and DE. The comments are astonishingly telling. Comments out of newspapers in India (the brown world) are also remarkably revealing. Australia, Russia, and South Africa, too.
I already know the real facts and the obvious lies being pushed by the corporate media. I look at whether or not the people of different nations in the world are buying the US propaganda.
What publication or website is "DE"?
Was that a typo for "DW" (Deutsche Welle)?
Yes
Typo. DW
http://www.dw.de
Thanks for the catch. More for the editorial view than comments.
Do you know "Angry Arab News Service" (Asad AbuKhalil's blog)?
Very worthwhile because he and his correspondents provide what adds up to a comprehensive ongoing scan of Arabic language media, and (what is all too rare in the West) then raise issues and comment in clear, concise, non-rarified colloquial English.
http://angryarab.blogspot.de/
One succinct but right-on-target observation today:
Asad AbuKhalil showed me one huge problem Arab societies have.
From reading Asad AbuKhalil's blog I learned that one huge problem Arab societies have is: a vast royal plutocrat-controlled desert of mass media, but hardly any oases of independent truth-tellers.
Arabic language mass communications across North Africa and the Middle East are, with a few underfunded and valiant exceptions, exclusively controlled by billionaire despots, i.e., the various royal clans — North African, Saudi, Gulf — and their cronies.
A situation that naturally suits their friends among the 1% in the U.S. and Europe just fine.
A situation you'll basically never see mentioned when the New York Times or Washington Post turn to sources prostituted to such royal money for some quote bolstering the pro-Saudi / pro-Israel / pro-U.S.-MIC narrative of the day.
What's wrong with this article?
There are many who criticize "Der Spiegel" for being neo-liberal and a mouthpiece for whatever.
I have a question: Is there anything in this article which you think is propaganda? Or too appeasing? I don't understand what the cirticism is.
America's Willing Helper: Intelligence Scandal Puts Merkel in Tight Place
Just asking. I rely on those articles for my news consumption from Germany. Why would that be bad? Do they lie? Not detailed enough?
https://www.euronews.com/live
I'm not sure you're directing your question to me
…mimi, but I consider Der Spiegel to be exactly the same as the New York Times and the Guardian.
They all serve credible and trustworthy domestic news.
I realize I have not drawn a strong distinction between domestic and international news, here. I am always speaking about international news related to geopolitics.
In the case of the three corporate news sources, above, they are all CIA mouthpieces that spew brainwashing propaganda for the masses when it comes to geopolitical news — for example, news about Ukraine or the Middle East. The corporate-owned CIA does not want taxpayers to resist the costs incurred when allies (such as the US, UK, and Occupied Germany) topple the governments of resource-rich non-anglo nations and crush the populations, so they create phony enemies or crises requiring "humanitarian intervention," ie. dropping cluster bombs on civilians and assassinating their leaders. (That's what makes them particularly useful to me, because I track those lies and propaganda since they reveal imperial motives.)
Otherwise, as I said, they provide interesting and trustworthy information about all other matters for their domestic readers.
thanks Pluto, yes I hoped you would chime in
here. I mean there is a close cooperation between the NYT, Spiegel and Guardian. I can detect some of the trends you are mentioning but would have thought the NYT being much worse with regards to being a mouthpiece for the CIA than the Guardian or Der Spiegel. But as it is your profession to follow such news and I am just a haphazard reader, I guess I miss a lot. I find Der Spiegel to have very different kind of writers. Usually I try to read other newspapers when it comes to Ukraine, Russia etc. With regards to Palestine and Israel Der Spiegel dropped the ball. I never read the NYT, other then when it is linked to by writers who I trust.
Well, who cares what I read and understand. It's not going to make a difference. I am tired of imperial motives.
https://www.euronews.com/live
well, you are right, I don't want to be called
anti-American and anti-Semitic and I don't think it's that bad as you make it sound. It's an accusation I have come to get accustomed to since a while. People just can't imagine what the opposite of self-censoring its own inherent offensiveness might do. Everything you say and stand up for or against is epidemically spread out through the whole world these days. And I kind of think that that deserves to be considered. It's not that clear to me what offensive "heroism" in words online or in print will result in, as so much of it is not genuine.
There is a cynicism in that judgment about Germans being too inoffensive as to be the "Good Germans" again and I am not buying into it that easily.
Sorry, I hope you don't mind me saying that.
https://www.euronews.com/live
No, no, German friends & I have been debating this for 40 years
No need to apologize at all.
From the very start when I moved to Germany, it's always been very noticeable — this sense that (outside of a small circle of friends, their Kaffeekranz or Stammtisch) people are afraid (or if that's too harsh, reluctant) to say what they really think.
Whereas in many ways I am a prototypically outspoken (big-mouthed? tactless?) American, so that bothers me.
Being one of those literal-minded Asperger's syndrome types who believes every idealistic thing they are told as a child, and then growing up in the Sixties and Seventies, I came away thinking it's a person's right and duty in a democracy to sound off and let the chips fall where they may.
Otherwise, if everyone's intimidated, how are any of these public participation policy processes supposed to work? The articulate, slick, polished and self-confident liar who knows how to close people down by pushing their fear, guilt, anger, and learned helplessness buttons will win every time.
(Cynical "charade / façade of democracy" type answer: perhaps the people with power who designed these processes never intended them to work in the first place.)
I guess even 70 years after the end of World War II, the idea still is:
either
(1) Germans must be psychologically conditioned to act as if their views and feelings are less "legitimate" than those of other backgrounds, because of historical guilt,
or
(2) Neo-Nazis will come crawling out of the woodwork right and left.
Muss das sein? Does it have to be that way?
this is all so funny in a way, thanks lotlizard,
Strangely enough I find few Americans to be outspoken or tactless, most of them are overly polite. I guess I have that impression, because I met so few Americans in the US... what can I say... most outspoken Americans I have only experienced online... and that means nothing much, right?
But let me just say this:
I think my reactions are always personal and driven by what I experienced in my life. In that regard nothing what I say should be taken as if one could deduct a general "trend" or "some truthiness" from them.
Now, am I wrong in thinking you are Dutch and live in Germany for a long time and be "in the know" about the "Zeitgeist-thinking" of Germans these days?
In a way, you are lucky and the thing is, I am not "in the know". In fact from what I read everywhere I am already afraid to go home (which is supposedly Germany) only to discover that many things I am so afraid of are true and be proven to be right. But then, I just have to listen to the very few extended family members in Germany, and I understand that they and me don't see things the same way and I have no clue of how to make them see with my eyes and me to see things with theirs. I think denial is a strong tool of survival to make it through life. So, I am not sure anymore who is denying what, me things I can't see in myself, or them, who can't see their own lies or what they deny as well. I remember someone saying everybody lives with his/her life-lies and I guess one has to live with that fact and try to not think oneself is somehow better equipped to not fall for lies, we make up for ourselves to make life easier to bare.
This is true for all peoples who have engaged in huge murderous, criminal atrocities and genocidal activities. The Nazi are just "on top of the list" because their crimes were so much more humungeous, incomprehensible and undeniably evil. Historical guilt is something you carry with you no matter what It can be forgotten by the next generations, but as an educational tool, it will always been brought up again and talked and written about, because that's the only way people can imagine to try to prevent future generations to not repeat similar atrocities and fall for the same lies and making similar mistakes.
I have come to the belief that as much as I respect and support to learn from history, it doesn't seem to work as well as one would wish it would. "Never again" rarely happens, in fact much of the evils happen over and over again, never the same thing, but genocidal activities are surrounding us everywhere. And I wonder about the way nature deals with "evil things". Looks as if nature forgets and what happens the fastest is "composting activities and letting grass grow" over it to make the planet survive.
So, to answer your question, if it "Must be that way" I guess my hunch is that it's not us , who really can influence, if it must be that way or not. It looks as if it is "that way" and there is not much we can really influence even if we try hard. And yes, if you call it neo-nazis or something else, evil people crawl up left and right and the fear of those is driving most of human's activities and reactions. And the guilt is not leaving the perpetrators of evil and those who suffered, the victims and their descendants, carry their righteous anger with them from generation to generation and by that end up causing their own evil.
So, it is a never ending circle, repeating itself over and over.
https://www.euronews.com/live
"Op-ed calls on Israel to nuke Germany and Iran"
http://www.timesofisrael.com/op-ed-calls-on-israel-to-nuke-germany-iran/
Clearly, Germans are expected to live up to a higher (double) standard, while non-Germans can get away with the most outrageous rhetoric and behavior.
A case can be made that this relative lack of aggrieved, aggressive, or self-aggrandizing impulse is one of modern German society's great assets. People from other nations whose politics are full of resentment and paranoia must find it reassuring.
Great diary. And Chomsky
Thanks again for the article, Pluto.
Again, like Chomsky below, I can really understand why you were run off dailykos
And Ray Pensador wrote about ways to disrupt an on line conversation over and over again and he was finally run off dailykos.
Chomsky has been ignored, avoided, and put down when possible for 50 years. Even about 15 years ago a friend (my old room mate from Berkeley), when I was in SF, offered me a Chomsky book and I scanned it and thought that he was just saying things and they were not well founded. 50 years ago on the streets as a protester, and not until almost 40 years later after being involved in trying to change the world as a change agent in ATT and Lucent, did I get back into politics. My long friend, a historian, said a couple of days ago that Chomsky does not write about anything unless he is sure of it and his work has stood the test of time. So earlier in the week when I read the intro and got into the interview, I could see that Chomsky acts as an independent voice to think through the issues and expose the "secular priesthood" of the elite. Chris Hedges followed this in his book "The Death of The Liberal Class." In a word, I was stunned to see how Chomsky shows that anti communism was used then to organize support for wars and terrorism is being used in a similar manner to organize society to cover up what the power elite is doing.
And only a few years ago Glenn Greenwald made the point, the point well understood by the founders, that when there is a war, all bets are off. And rulers use rules to control society. That is why the founders put war making power in the hands of the legislature, but we have violated that over and over and over.
I posted this on Evening Blues last night, so if you saw it then, you can go right past it. The bold is the comment title with spelling corrected.
Read something from a 23 year old book - Noam Chomsky (15+ / 0-)
Was at my son's house and he had a book on the shelf. I picked it up and saw that Noam was writing about stuff then which is relevant now. The people in power and their liberal supporters had a "secular priesthood."
Noam was an outsider pointing out the internal corruption that was invisible to those living in the system. Here is a little bit from the introduction by the editor of the edition.
“The Chomsky Reader”, Edited by James Peck. Pantheon, 1987
The text below is approximately directly from the intro and a little from the interview. This was during the last war, the Cold War, and the enemy was Communism.
Cold war – Cold war – system of global management in which each superpower invokes the danger of the other to justify terror, violence, subversion and aggression it its own domains. Essay “objectivity and liberal scholarship” argued that the shared elitism of Bolshevism and liberalism --- their similar attacks on any decentralized, self-organizing process of radical social change.
Anti-communism – not just blind faith. Mobilizes population for vast war expenditures. It justifies covert and overt interventionist policy. Practically sorts out friend and foe in maintained an integrated global economy in which American capital can operate with relative freedom. Any nation’s attempt to extricate from global market place is an anathema and labeled communist. No fate worse for anti-communism than a nation opt out of such a “free world” market. Attack. Not much left after a conflict to build a better society. No shred of a radical democratic alternative can be tolerated.
If we had the honesty and moral courage, we would not let a day pass without hearing the cries of the victims – but radios don’t report this. This is a way to understand the world without illusion.
Later an interview, Noam says that he was almost always out of tune with what was going on around him.
I always value your comments so much and links, thanks /nt
https://www.euronews.com/live
Terrific diary!
There is so much food for thought here. I am not sure I can answer your questions, but I will give it a shot. Most of my online experiences have been with dkos and to a lesser extent, Facebook so my answers are reflective of my experiences with those two sites.
Most commonly:
3. Characterize the charges as "rumors" or, better yet, "wild rumors."
4. Knock down straw men.
6. Impugn motives.
8. Dismiss the charges as "old news."
12. Require the skeptics to solve the crime completely.
13. Change the subject. (thread jacking)
Those who know what they are doing, are doing it for selfish reasons. Other than exposing them, there is not a whole lot we can do about them. There is also a group of people who are so emotionally invested in tribalism that they try to promote the same for the rest of us. They are dupes.
Absolutely not. I still will give it my best shot. The thing is I refuse to be drawn into a back and forth argument on line. I operated under a philosophy in my work for local government that went something like this and I still apply that philosophy on line. I cannot keep our elected officials from making stupid decisions, but I want them to do so in the face of the facts.
I really do not have much faith in the political process itself. But I still have faith in the innate goodness of most people. I honestly believe most people are not bad, but are grossly misinformed. That is what keeps me going with the Peace vigil, in particular.
I am pretty much a babe in the woods in this regard. I have known things were not right for a long time, but was not knowledgeable enough to figure out just why or how. I am sure that was partially due to my life being so filled with other time consuming things that I never really tried to figure out what was really the problem. But in the last five years, I have learned so much about how the national system of suppression has worked and the kabuki that is our Congress. I wish I had known a long time ago what I know now and am still learning about. I have become radicalized as a result. Although my mother told me recently that I always marched to a very different drummer, I never saw that in myself. Knowledge is empowering for me and I would hope it would be the same for most people.
This has been an interesting exercise and a very informative diary.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
At some blogs, attributing ulterior motive(s) is a
bannable offense.
Of course, disputing the fact(s)/statement(s) is not.
As Nancy points out, this is a relatively common technique employed by bloggers at DKos.
I've never really studied their 'rules' closely. I just try to avoid pie fights and/or highly contentious threads, hoping that I don't need to know what they are.
[I have no idea what the intended use is for this smiley--just thought I'd use it for the heck of it.]
However, considering the warnings that some folks get for practically nothing, it's a wonder that Admin doesn't take this hateful technique more seriously.
Go figure . . .
Mollie
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
And let's never forget,
"they did it too" and the infamous "love it or leave it".
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Democratic Socialist group on dailykos
laying awake in the middle of the night had good thoughts about DK
namely, place where I have been able to write a lot of stuff
not all my comments get REC and some just ignored, and some HR, but I can respond to events and mostly post links
and it is a large community
and it is interesting to see it try to hang onto the ideology of the dem party
on the down side, most of us here have been attacked at various times for being Obama haters, or calling for a third party, or other aversions to the power structure
but, there continue to be independent people
and there is a new group
Democratic Socialists
the main moderator is selecting who can be admitted to keep out the trolls as members
and the membership is going way up now that Bernie has announced his candidacy
some of the people here have already joined
I ♥ Democratic Socialism
http://www.dailykos.com/user/I%20Heart%20Democratic%20Socialism
a further comment about being attacked on DK
Jeremy Scahill has been asked why he is so brave or why he is not already dead from where he has gone to seek the truth
he always responds about the brave journalists that have already been murdered. He lists 13 he has known so far
so, we may have been bruised, but none of us have taken the risks like Jeremy
as my daddy said "don't let the bastards get you down"
That's great. As I run into conservadems at DKos, I'm
trying to debunk the 'socialist' label for Senator Sanders.
(I prefer not to 'name names,' but two of them run together--and one's an attorney.)
Anyhoo, I'm a C-Span junkie, and I'm pretty sure that I could find video of Senator Sanders explaining his ideology.
As I explained to the attorney, Sanders is very explicit in many of his interviews--he supports a democratic socialist agenda.
That is not the same as being a member of the socialist party.
Some of these folks are already trying to counter any possible left-leaning agenda that Senator Sanders might propose--by declaring that Americans would never elect 'a socialist.'
(And he's not even formally kicked off his campaign.)
I hope that some of your folks will help straighten them out, on this point.
Hey, good luck with your project!
Mollie
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
I made a big pile of pooh on gos (all my fault)
with regards to DSA and a "rebranding" effort. Didn't realize I read a right-wing file, because I read only the first three paragraphs. So ashamed of myself.
I just can't read anymore calmly. (it was in response to Don Mikulecky). Sigh.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Is that you Lanny Davis? ;-) Seriously,
I'd bet that Lanny's used at least 2/3's of the techniques that you've discussed, during his last two Sunday talk show appearances defending FSC.
Anyhoo, thank you for the diary. I recall seeing the piece with the techniques--perhaps at NC (not sure). But I thoroughly enjoyed your discussion.
I'm not sure that DKos employs that many of these techniques. Generally speaking, fact is simply ignored there if it reflects poorly on the Democratic Party.
And the propagandizing at DKos appears to be made easier by 'the lack of inquiring minds.' I'm constantly amazed at how accepting some Kossacks are of anything, and everything, that the staffers put out. It's truly mind-boggling.
Your writing is exceptional, Pluto--glad that you're here!
Mollie
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Pluto, my dear, how fabulous to see you~
Of course we've seen most of these in action, all with the aid of (pardon the expression) "useful idiots."
As to what I make of those that enable? Clueless, craven, power-hungry, greedy, it doesn't matter why, I think very little of them.
I haven't yet given of on fact based conversations, but I do give up earlier in conversations. Years of experience and you're tipped pretty fast as to when you're beating your head against a brick wall.
Faith in the US political process? Is that a trick question? No? Well, I don't, I'm completely cynical. Yet I vote. Which also makes me a cock-eyed pessimist--I don't really think anything will change, but I kinda hope it will anyway.
The suppression of the truth, well if it wasn't meant to radicalize me then, yes, yes it has.
I shave my legs with Occam's Razor~
hey triv
great to see you here
Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.-Lucy Parsons
hello JayRaye!
so nice to see you again.
I shave my legs with Occam's Razor~
Hi triv! ditto...
Good to see you and hope you are well.
yes, I'm doing fairly well, thanks...
and you? Good to see you again.
I shave my legs with Occam's Razor~
yep...
doing okay thanks; happily a few of our old morning folks are showing here.
Hi Triv.
As always, I think of you. This essay has been in my drafts, but when I saw your name, I pulled the trigger.
These issues don't affect me directly. I'm hooked into real world international circles, now, where truth is a known known and political veneers fall away. Right now, for example, I'm researching an aspect of global small arms trafficking. People are solving problems, and it's pretty spectacular. (In one country, raising the handgun permit age to 29 dropped the gun violence rate more than 50 percent. Those are results.) Nobody is whining about gun rights — because nobody ever heard of handguns as a "right," rather than a special privilege. Now that Yemen has fallen, the US is the only nation left in the world where handguns and assault weapons are a "right." All other nations that once had such a stupid notion, like Yemen, have become failed states, a situation that the US is rapidly tumbling into. It's a 21st century reality, and it is so refreshing to work among realists who need only look at militarized police, brutal cop killings, and street riots in the US to see its obvious doomed future. (D'oh. This is not happening in any country that is not currently engaged in a civil war.) It's not rocket science. It's sociology. The truth is liberating, and empowering for individuals who wish to control their own futures.
But I digress. Thanks for the feedback. Folks here seem to be on the same wavelength re struggling with propaganda and truth suppression. But something tells me, this is pretty common in the US right now — not just here at The 99 — as the propaganda hose continues to blast while we look on with lying eyes.
I've mainly been
centered on trying to get anyone to care about their right to privacy. It's an uphill battle, ridiculous as that sounds. I think of the US as that chicken running around the barnyard without it's head...we don't know we're dead yet. There's interesting times ahead.
I shave my legs with Occam's Razor~
Rights that are not claimed are surrendered
…to the state.
This is a fact that is as old as human history.
Human rights, like the right to food and shelter, are how I got into this, via the UN. Indeed, we don't know we're dead yet.
But I see that as a little and necessary death. People need to fully experience the consequences of their beliefs and actions and votes in order to evolve.
Americans are getting what they deserve. They just don't know it yet. (They don't even know that they have no modern human rights. They are duped into thinking they do by the propaganda the US employs on them when it blames other nations for human rights violations. It's pathetic, but it works.)
Civilizations die and are reborn all the time with new and useful precautions and enlightenments. Such is the future of USAians. The important thing is to remember that life is precious and it is stupid to throw it away fighting for the vagaries of nationalism. (Although, it does cleanse the gene pool over time.)
E-mails U.S. citizens get from the State Dept. / the Consulate
Sports Event Terrorism
It's a genre, you know.
As long as the US and NATO (white people) continue to terrorize other cultures in the Eastern Hemisphere, I don't expect to ever again see the public gather safely for such events.
The world is done with this crappy empire.
The fear of that is useful...
so it will continue.
I shave my legs with Occam's Razor~
What this US "Security Message" ...
...says to me is:
1) Do not register with STEP.
2) Do no enroll directly with / at the US Embassy.
3) Be on the look out for False Flags and other diversionary tactics.
4) Remain calm and watch for the truth.
Which of these techniques of
Which of these techniques of truth suppression do you most commonly see in online forums?
*heh* All the above, pluto...?
Lenny Flank alone used 2, 4, 5, 7, 11, 12, 13, and maybe 15
I seem to recall that on That Other Forum a user named Lenny Flank alone employed 2, 4, 5, 7, 11, 12, 13, and 15 on me in just a single thread.
17a. Maintain a team of such agents to monitor & edit Wikipedia.
You want to see something interesting? Compare this Wikipedia article now to the version of March 2012.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_States_House_Select_Co...
Old first paragraph:
Current first paragraph:
Vast difference, eh?
Reading the 2012 version, one could reasonably come to the conclusion that there are reasons to doubt the official government line represented by the Warren Commission.
Reading the current version, the only reason for doubt seems to be this one piece of evidence (dictabelt recording) which has since been "discredited." Everything else corroborates the Warren Commission! So everything is fine!
Now, anyone who lived through the 1970s and followed the various congressional investigations in the news certainly ought to recognize this for the totally bogus and dishonest whitewash that it is.
Never trust Wikipedia on controversial topics. If Orwell were to see it, he would think, "Wow, they've made Winston Smith's job at MiniTrue really easy."