Thread: Propaganda......weapon of mass influence...

can break down in detail on both....

a) specific examples of how denial plays out when a person is confronted with indisputable facts...

b) specific examples of a disinformation agent trying to spin and twist facts to promote their propaganda.

Propaganda is real and has been around in every war, detention camp, and now even in mainstream media where the average person will not catch on unless provided with specific examples......

Someone ban this asshole for spamming already...

Originally Posted by Victor Grey

Someone ban this asshole for spamming already...

Hey so called victor........something tells me you are roll playing and haven't been victorious in a fucking thing in your life.......

INTRODUCTION



1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster
for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of
those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have
destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected
human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological
suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have
inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued
development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly
subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage
on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social
disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased
physical suffering even in "advanced" countries.

2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break
down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of
physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a
long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of
permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to
engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore,
if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is
no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from
depriving people of dignity and autonomy.

3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very
painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the
results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had
best break down sooner rather than later.

4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system.
This revolution may or may not make use of violence: it may be sudden
or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We
can't predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the
measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in
order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of
society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be
to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis
of the present society.

5. In this article we give attention to only some of the negative
developments that have grown out of the industrial-technological
system. Other such developments we mention only briefly or ignore
altogether. This does not mean that we regard these other developments
as unimportant. For practical reasons we have to confine our
discussion to areas that have received insufficient public attention
or in which we have something new to say. For example, since there are
well-developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have written
very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of wild
nature, even though we consider these to be highly important.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM



6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled
society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of
our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can
serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern
society in general.

7. But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th century
leftism could have been practically identified with socialism. Today
the movement is fragmented and it is not clear who can properly be
called a leftist. When we speak of leftists in this article we have in
mind mainly socialists, collectivists, "politically correct" types,
feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and
the like. But not everyone who is associated with one of these
movements is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discussing
leftism is not so much a movement or an ideology as a psychological
type, or rather a collection of related types. Thus, what we mean by
"leftism" will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of
leftist psychology (Also, see paragraphs 227-230.)

8. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good deal less
clear than we would wish, but there doesn't seem to be any remedy for
this. All we are trying to do is indicate in a rough and approximate
way the two psychological tendencies that we believe are the main
driving force of modern leftism. We by no means claim to be telling
the WHOLE truth about leftist psychology. Also, our discussion is
meant to apply to modern leftism only. We leave open the question of
the extent to which our discussion could be applied to the leftists of
the 19th and early 20th century.

9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we
call "feelings of inferiority" and "oversocialization." Feelings of
inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while
oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of
modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential.

FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY



10. By "feelings of inferiority" we mean not only inferiority feelings
in the strictest sense but a whole spectrum of related traits: low
self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies,
defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend
to have such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these
feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism.

11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said
about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that
he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is
pronounced among minority rights advocates, whether or not they belong
to the minority groups whose rights they defend. They are
hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities. The terms
"negro," "oriental," "handicapped" or "chick" for an African, an
Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory
connotation. "Broad" and "chick" were merely the feminine equivalents
of "guy," "dude" or "fellow." The negative connotations have been
attached to these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal
rights advocates have gone so far as to reject the word "pet" and
insist on its replacement by "animal companion." Leftist
anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying anything about
primitive peoples that could conceivably be interpreted as negative.
They want to replace the word "primitive" by "nonliterate." They seem
almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive
culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply that
primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely point out the
hypersensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)

12. Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect"
terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant,
abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of
whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from
privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold
among university professors, who have secure employment with
comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual, white
males from middle-class families.

13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of
groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American
Indians), repellent (homosexuals), or otherwise inferior. The leftists
themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit
it to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely
because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with
their problems. (We do not suggest that women, Indians, etc., ARE
inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology).

14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as
strong as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women
may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.

15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong,
good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western
civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The
reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not
correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West
because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so
forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in
primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he
GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points
out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in
Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the
leftist's real motive for hating America and the West. He hates
America and the West because they are strong and successful.

16. Words like "self-confidence," "self-reliance," "initiative",
"enterprise," "optimism," etc. play little role in the liberal and
leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic,
pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone's needs for them,
take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense
of confidence in his own ability to solve his own problems and satisfy
his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of
competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.

17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftist intellectuals tend to
focus on sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an
orgiastic tone, throwing off rational control as if there were no hope
of accomplishing anything through rational calculation and all that
was left was to immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment.

18. Modern leftist philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science,
objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally
relative. It is true that one can ask serious questions about the
foundations of scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the
concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious that
modern leftist philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians
systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply
involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack
these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one
thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent
that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More
importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they
classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and
other beliefs as false (i.e. failed, inferior). The leftist's feelings
of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification
of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or
inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the
concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are
antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior
because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or
inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or
blame for an individual's ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is
"inferior" it is not his fault, but society's, because he has not been
brought up properly.

19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of
inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter,
a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith
in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but
he can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong,
and his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant
behavior. [1] But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings
of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as
individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the
leftist. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization
or a mass movement with which he identifies himself.

20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists
protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke
police or racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be
effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but
because they PREFER masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist
trait.

21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion
or by moral principle, and moral principle does play a role for the
leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle
cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too
prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power.
Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of
benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help.
For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black
people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or
dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a
diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal
and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative
action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take
such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs.
Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems
serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and
frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black
people, because the activists' hostile attitude toward the white
majority tends to intensify race hatred.

22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would
have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse
for making a fuss.

23. We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate
description of everyone who might be considered a leftist. It is only
a rough indication of a general tendency of leftism.

OVERSOCIALIZATION



24. Psychologists use the term "socialization" to designate the
process by which children are trained to think and act as society
demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and
obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning
part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists
are over-socialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel.
Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such
rebels as they seem.

25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can
think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not
supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some
time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are
so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally
imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt,
they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives
and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality
have a non-moral origin. We use the term "oversocialized" to describe
such people. [2]

26. Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of
powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the most important means
by which our society socializes children is by making them feel
ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to society's
expectations. If this is overdone, or if a particular child is
especially susceptible to such feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed of
HIMSELF. Moreover the thought and the behavior of the oversocialized
person are more restricted by society's expectations than are those of
the lightly socialized person. The majority of people engage in a
significant amount of naughty behavior. They lie, they commit petty
thefts, they break traffic laws, they goof off at work, they hate
someone, they say spiteful things or they use some underhanded trick
to get ahead of the other guy. The oversocialized person cannot do
these things, or if he does do them he generates in himself a sense of
shame and self-hatred. The oversocialized person cannot even
experience, without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are contrary to
the accepted morality; he cannot think "unclean" thoughts. And
socialization is not just a matter of morality; we are socialized to
confirm to many norms of behavior that do not fall under the heading
of morality. Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological
leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down
for him. In many oversocialized people this results in a sense of
constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe hardship. We suggest
that oversocialization is among the more serious cruelties that human
beings inflict on one another.

27. We argue that a very important and influential segment of the
modern left is oversocialized and that their oversocialization is of
great importance in determining the direction of modern leftism.
Leftists of the oversocialized type tend to be intellectuals or
members of the upper-middle class. Notice that university
intellectuals (3) constitute the most highly socialized segment of our
society and also the most left-wing segment.

28. The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off his
psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually
he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of
society. Generally speaking, the goals of today's leftists are NOT in
conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes
an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses
mainstream society of violating that principle. Examples: racial
equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, peace as opposed
to war, nonviolence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to
animals. More fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve
society and the duty of society to take care of the individual. All
these have been deeply rooted values of our society (or at least of
its middle and upper classes (4) for a long time. These values are
explicitly or implicitly expressed or presupposed in most of the
material presented to us by the mainstream communications media and
the educational system. Leftists, especially those of the
oversocialized type, usually do not rebel against these principles but
justify their hostility to society by claiming (with some degree of
truth) that society is not living up to these principles.

29. Here is an illustration of the way in which the oversocialized
leftist shows his real attachment to the conventional attitudes of our
society while pretending to be in rebellion against it. Many leftists
push for affirmative action, for moving black people into
high-prestige jobs, for improved education in black schools and more
money for such schools; the way of life of the black "underclass" they
regard as a social disgrace. They want to integrate the black man into
the system, make him a business executive, a lawyer, a scientist just
like upper-middle-class white people. The leftists will reply that the
last thing they want is to make the black man into a copy of the white
man; instead, they want to preserve African American culture. But in
what does this preservation of African American culture consist? It
can hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food,
listening to black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going
to a black-style church or mosque. In other words, it can express
itself only in superficial matters. In all ESSENTIAL respects more
leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform
to white, middle-class ideals. They want to make him study technical
subjects, become an executive or a scientist, spend his life climbing
the status ladder to prove that black people are as good as white.
They want to make black fathers "responsible." they want black gangs
to become nonviolent, etc. But these are exactly the values of the
industrial-technological system. The system couldn't care less what
kind of music a man listens to, what kind of clothes he wears or what
religion he believes in as long as he studies in school, holds a
respectable job, climbs the status ladder, is a "responsible" parent,
is nonviolent and so forth. In effect, however much he may deny it,
the oversocialized leftist wants to integrate the black man into the
system and make him adopt its values.

30. We certainly do not claim that leftists, even of the
oversocialized type, NEVER rebel against the fundamental values of our
society. Clearly they sometimes do. Some oversocialized leftists have
gone so far as to rebel against one of modern society's most important
principles by engaging in physical violence. By their own account,
violence is for them a form of "liberation." In other words, by
committing violence they break through the psychological restraints
that have been trained into them. Because they are oversocialized
these restraints have been more confining for them than for others;
hence their need to break free of them. But they usually justify their
rebellion in terms of mainstream values. If they engage in violence
they claim to be fighting against racism or the like.

31. We realize that many objections could be raised to the foregoing
thumb-nail sketch of leftist psychology. The real situation is
complex, and anything like a complete description of it would take
several volumes even if the necessary data were available. We claim
only to have indicated very roughly the two most important tendencies
in the psychology of modern leftism.

32. The problems of the leftist are indicative of the problems of our
society as a whole. Low self-esteem, depressive tendencies and
defeatism are not restricted to the left. Though they are especially
noticeable in the left, they are widespread in our society. And
today's society tries to socialize us to a greater extent than any
previous society. We are even told by experts how to eat, how to
exercise, how to make love, how to raise our kids and so forth.

THE POWER PROCESS



33. Human beings have a need (probably based in biology) for something
that we will call the "power process." This is closely related to the
need for power (which is widely recognized) but is not quite the same
thing. The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut
of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs
to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed
in attaining at least some of his goals.) The fourth element is more
difficult to define and may not be necessary for everyone. We call it
autonomy and will discuss it later (paragraphs 42-44).

34. Consider the hypothetical case of a man who can have anything he
wants just by wishing for it. Such a man has power, but he will
develop serious psychological problems. At first he will have a lot of
fun, but by and by he will become acutely bored and demoralized.
Eventually he may become clinically depressed. History shows that
leisured aristocracies tend to become decadent. This is not true of
fighting aristocracies that have to struggle to maintain their power.
But leisured, secure aristocracies that have no need to exert
themselves usually become bored, hedonistic and demoralized, even
though they have power. This shows that power is not enough. One must
have goals toward which to exercise one's power.

35. Everyone has goals; if nothing else, to obtain the physical
necessities of life: food, water and whatever clothing and shelter are
made necessary by the climate. But the leisured aristocrat obtains
these things without effort. Hence his boredom and demoralization.

36. Nonattainment of important goals results in death if the goals are
physical necessities, and in frustration if nonattainment of the goals
is compatible with survival. Consistent failure to attain goals
throughout life results in defeatism, low self-esteem or depression.

37. Thus, in order to avoid serious psychological problems, a human
being needs goals whose attainment requires effort, and he must have a
reasonable rate of success in attaining his goals.

SURROGATE ACTIVITIES



38. But not every leisured aristocrat becomes bored and demoralized.
For example, the emperor Hirohito, instead of sinking into decadent
hedonism, devoted himself to marine biology, a field in which he
became distinguished. When people do not have to exert themselves to
satisfy their physical needs they often set up artificial goals for
themselves. In many cases they then pursue these goals with the same
energy and emotional involvement that they otherwise would have put
into the search for physical necessities. Thus the aristocrats of the
Roman Empire had their literary pretentions; many European aristocrats
a few centuries ago invested tremendous time and energy in hunting,
though they certainly didn't need the meat; other aristocracies have
competed for status through elaborate displays of wealth; and a few
aristocrats, like Hirohito, have turned to science.

39. We use the term "surrogate activity" to designate an activity that
is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for
themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward, or let us
say, merely for the sake of the "fulfillment" that they get from
pursuing the goal. Here is a rule of thumb for the identification of
surrogate activities. Given a person who devotes much time and energy
to the pursuit of goal X, ask yourself this: If he had to devote most
of his time and energy to satisfying his biological needs, and if that
effort required him to use his physical and mental facilities in a
varied and interesting way, would he feel seriously deprived because
he did not attain goal X? If the answer is no, then the person's
pursuit of a goal X is a surrogate activity. Hirohito's studies in
marine biology clearly constituted a surrogate activity, since it is
pretty certain that if Hirohito had had to spend his time working at
interesting non-scientific tasks in order to obtain the necessities of
life, he would not have felt deprived because he didn't know all about
the anatomy and life-cycles of marine animals. On the other hand the
pursuit of sex and love (for example) is not a surrogate activity,
because most people, even if their existence were otherwise
satisfactory, would feel deprived if they passed their lives without
ever having a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. (But
pursuit of an excessive amount of sex, more than one really needs, can
be a surrogate activity.)

40. In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to
satisfy one's physical needs. It is enough to go through a training
program to acquire some petty technical skill, then come to work on
time and exert very modest effort needed to hold a job. The only
requirements are a moderate amount of intelligence, and most of all,
simple OBEDIENCE. If one has those, society takes care of one from
cradle to grave. (Yes, there is an underclass that cannot take
physical necessities for granted, but we are speaking here of
mainstream society.) Thus it is not surprising that modern society is
full of surrogate activities. These include scientific work, athletic
achievement, humanitarian work, artistic and literary creation,
climbing the corporate ladder, acquisition of money and material goods
far beyond the point at which they cease to give any additional
physical satisfaction, and social activism when it addresses issues
that are not important for the activist personally, as in the case of
white activists who work for the rights of nonwhite minorities. These
are not always pure surrogate activities, since for many people they
may be motivated in part by needs other than the need to have some
goal to pursue. Scientific work may be motivated in part by a drive
for prestige, artistic creation by a need to express feelings,
militant social activism by hostility. But for most people who pursue
them, these activities are in large part surrogate activities. For
example, the majority of scientists will probably agree that the
"fulfillment" they get from their work is more important than the
money and prestige they earn.

41. For many if not most people, surrogate activities are less
satisfying than the pursuit of real goals ( that is, goals that people
would want to attain even if their need for the power process were
already fulfilled). One indication of this is the fact that, in many
or most cases, people who are deeply involved in surrogate activities
are never satisfied, never at rest. Thus the money-maker constantly
strives for more and more wealth. The scientist no sooner solves one
problem than he moves on to the next. The long-distance runner drives
himself to run always farther and faster. Many people who pursue
surrogate activities will say that they get far more fulfillment from
these activities than they do from the "mundane" business of
satisfying their biological needs, but that it is because in our
society the effort needed to satisfy the biological needs has been
reduced to triviality. More importantly, in our society people do not
satisfy their biological needs AUTONOMOUSLY but by functioning as
parts of an immense social machine. In contrast, people generally have
a great deal of autonomy in pursuing their surrogate activities. have
a great deal of autonomy in pursuing their surrogate activities.

AUTONOMY



42. Autonomy as a part of the power process may not be necessary for
every individual. But most people need a greater or lesser degree of
autonomy in working toward their goals. Their efforts must be
undertaken on their own initiative and must be under their own
direction and control. Yet most people do not have to exert this
initiative, direction and control as single individuals. It is usually
enough to act as a member of a SMALL group. Thus if half a dozen
people discuss a goal among themselves and make a successful joint
effort to attain that goal, their need for the power process will be
served. But if they work under rigid orders handed down from above
that leave them no room for autonomous decision and initiative, then
their need for the power process will not be served. The same is true
when decisions are made on a collective bases if the group making the
collective decision is so large that the role of each individual is
insignificant [5]

43. It is true that some individuals seem to have little need for
autonomy. Either their drive for power is weak or they satisfy it by
identifying themselves with some powerful organization to which they
belong. And then there are unthinking, animal types who seem to be
satisfied with a purely physical sense of power(the good combat
soldier, who gets his sense of power by developing fighting skills
that he is quite content to use in blind obedience to his superiors).

44. But for most people it is through the power process-having a goal,
making an AUTONOMOUS effort and attaining t the goal-that self-esteem,
self-confidence and a sense of power are acquired. When one does not
have adequate opportunity to go throughout the power process the
consequences are (depending on the individual and on the way the power
process is disrupted) boredom, demoralization, low self-esteem,
inferiority feelings, defeatism, depression, anxiety, guilt,
frustration, hostility, spouse or child abuse, insatiable hedonism,
abnormal sexual behavior, sleep disorders, eating disorders, etc. [6]