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What surprises me is that when these propaganda programs become more well known, people are still hesitant to believe that in some form they are still happening

What surprises me is that when these propaganda programs become more well known, people are still hesitant to believe that in some form they are still happening, we just only might find out in another 30 years. This article even mentions pressuring the New York Times, a newspaper most people would say is very authoritative and trustworthy (whether it is or not). What is being published now that was coerced?

toyg 6y ago
They don't even need to coerce anything, these days. The likes of Judith Miller will gladly sell themselves for the promise of favours from the elite.
- bamboozled 6y ago
  I see the word "elite" used a lot in 2020 to define a certain type of person, what defines an "elite"?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - toyg 6y ago
    I can't answer for others, but I personally use it like Pareto did [0], i.e. the class currently owning or controlling the bulk of resources and wealth in a given population. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilfredo_Pareto#Fascism_and_power_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilfredo_Pareto#Fascism_and_po...
    - lucian1900 6y ago
      "Ruling class" is a better term. Currently that class is the bourgeoisie (owners of capital).
      - Amezarak 6y ago
        Considering only the ownership of capital is too restrictive. Control of capital (and therefore power) has shifted from its owners to a managerial elite over the past century.
        lucian1900 6y ago
        Is that true? Have the Koch/Walton/Rockefeller families ceded control to their management employees? Seems unlikely to me, and unsupported by evidence.
        Amezarak 6y ago
        Capitalists in the old style (more-or-less) certainly still exist, they just aren't the majority anymore. This is a sociological phenomenon first noticed in the 1940s. The bourgeoisie capitalist class largely turned over the reins to managers and set themselves on other pursuits. Even in large organizations where the owners still do play a semi-active role, most of the day-to-day decision making is (necessarily) is made by the managers. And frequently, even when there is an active disagreement between management and ownership, management wins out. As a suggestive example, who benefits from mergers? Upper management usually becomes much wealthier, but 50-80% of mergers fail to add value to the company. [1] That is, capitalists lose out 50-80% of the time, but they still happen anyway. Consider the increasing complaints about skyrocketing executive management pay divorced from company performance, golden parachutes, or companies being almost seemingly deliberately run into the ground while the people responsible walk off richer and with a new job. The power of the managerial class does not just extend to the corporate world either - government has been largely infiltrated by managerialists. Conservatives talk about the Deep State, liberals talk about the revolving door. Both are talking about the same phenomenon. [1] https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/why-do-so-many-mergers-fail/ https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/why-do-so-many-m...
        lucian1900 6y ago
        You’re describing a superficial side-effect of the monopoly stage of capitalism, otherwise known as imperialism. The bourgeoisie make the bulk of their money from exporting capital at extortionate interest rates to poor countries, not so much from actual production. The fact that they let their managers take a cut doesn’t change the power dynamic. Lenin throughly described this phenomenon a century ago, it’s in no way new https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ Nothing is changed by the bourgeoisie holding state power despite the veneer of democracy, that’s also part of how capitalism works. Just because the haute bourgeoisie don’t risk personal involvement doesn’t mean they aren’t in control. Lenin’s slightly less scientific work talks about that too https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/
  - 1propionyl 6y ago
    This is tangential, but it mildly irks me how commonly "elite" is now used by most people to refer to a single person. "Elite" is a collective noun and refers to a group, not an individual. An elite is a group of people who are distinguished from their peers in some way. In common parlance "some way" usually means influence, power, seniority, respect from peers, performance, or wealth.
JacKTrocinskI 6y ago
Unfortunately the U.S. has done a really good job at convincing it’s citizens that there is freedom of the press in their country even though time and time again we’ve seen the mass media in the U.S. severely comprised by corporate interests and/or politics. When is the last time you’ve turned on the news and seen a balanced view given on Russia-U.S. relations? In the last three years the New York Times hasn’t reported a single positive story on Russia or written an unbiased one that would present a counterviewpoint. If we jump back two decades ago the American people were lead to believe that weapons of mass destruction were present in Afghanistan and Iraq and it was the cornerstone of the war initiative there. The U.S. ended up violating not only international law and the sovereignty of the nations of Iraq and Afghanistan but killing thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people there on a baseless claim. Today we see the same propaganda being used against countries like Iran, Russia and China. Countries in attempt to defend themselves from U.S. aggression are building nuclear arsenals and the world has become a much more dangerous place to live in as a result. In my opinion this all goes back to freedom of the press, or lack of it.
- enaaem 6y ago
  Freedom of press is not the same as unbiased press. For example, US citizens can watch Chinese news media in the US, but Chinese people cannot watch US news in China.
  - yorwba 6y ago
    > US citizens can watch Chinese news media in the US They could, but they don't, because they wouldn't understand a thing. So in practice, I think the situation is reversed: there are more people in China who watch US news than people in the US who watch Chinese news.
    - labster 6y ago
      I know quite a few people in the U.S. who watch RT, a Russian state-controlled media operation. The pivot from backing the left fringe to the Trumpist right has been quite interesting. Not affiliated with the bug tracker RT, in case you were wondering.
somesortofsystm 6y ago
Unfortunately, the CIA has its tendrils deeply planted within the American publics' minds .. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/a-long-forgotten-cia-document-from https://greenwald.substack.com/p/a-long-forgotten-cia-docume... Obama was used to sell war to the American public - and Western Europe. That is going to take a lot of work to undo.
- u801e 6y ago
  That may explain the way the media is framing the trip withdrawals from Afghanistan but not asking why we still have trips stationed there after nearly 20 years.
scoot_718 6y ago
Because they've got more oversight - the 60s and 70s were a fucked time in general, my worry is that every other country has the same shit. You seriously think anything like this survived a Trump presidency?
- modo_mario 6y ago
  Of course. Why wouldn't it happen under his either?
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
> What surprises me is that when these propaganda programs become more well known, people are still hesitant to believe that in some form they are still happening, the single most important thing that defines good propaganda is that it's invisible to those under its influence.. It used to be a lot "worse" back in the pre-Internet days when people generally watched a couple of channels and more or less got their info from news-papers. In a sense all these information bubbles are illustrating how much we are being targeted because we realize that we're not actually agreeing on anything - but again we only see how the targeting works on "the other camp" rarely on us. the rift going across (Western) society can largely be attributed to how propaganda has changed (forced to be more targeted and aggressive) and how the old forms of white/black info-ops which had massive reach no longer do their job. companies can now play too - no need to be a nation state to get disrupted by a guy in a Max Headroom mask. everyone can be both actor and spectator It's so strange to me as a non-American when I see a flag wielding citizen somewhere in the news, or normal people display their pride for their home country by talking about "taking a knee", or when they say "he/she is un-American" etc ... or somebody on LinkedIn who considers themselves "patriot" and mentions this in their profile. This "pride" is unheard of where I come from and if such a person would be transported into my home country suddenly speaking my language but with that behavior they would look very out of place. various names of great thinkers on propaganda float around but Jacques Ellul is by far the most articulate. He also has a section on Propaganda in his other (earlier) "The Technological Society"[2] which is his magnun opus IMO. Both the most underrated books I've had the pleasure to read in this past decade. (I think it was reading Ellul what ultimately radicalized Ted Kaczinsky e.g. helped him come to the conclusion that society is borked beyond repair). [1] Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512 https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512 [2] https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSociety https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSoci...
avs733 6y ago
The reason is because the techniques noted have transcended 'propaganda' and just become 'argumentation'. c.f.: socialism as a blanket assertion of something being bad without evidence. edit because I forgot this story...not long ago I ended up in an online argument with someone that I really shouldn't have been about what communism is and isn't (yeah...). Their literal claim was that 'communism is a form of socialism' and they claimed that was evidence that communism is bad, because socialism is inherently bad.
jlengf 6y ago
My experience with The New York Times was abysmal, I have never encountered a more unscrupulous journalist than the one they sent to me.

toyg 6y ago

They don't even need to coerce anything, these days. The likes of Judith Miller will gladly sell themselves for the promise of favours from the elite.

bamboozled 6y ago
I see the word "elite" used a lot in 2020 to define a certain type of person, what defines an "elite"?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- toyg 6y ago
  I can't answer for others, but I personally use it like Pareto did [0], i.e. the class currently owning or controlling the bulk of resources and wealth in a given population. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilfredo_Pareto#Fascism_and_power_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilfredo_Pareto#Fascism_and_po...
  - lucian1900 6y ago
    "Ruling class" is a better term. Currently that class is the bourgeoisie (owners of capital).
    - Amezarak 6y ago
      Considering only the ownership of capital is too restrictive. Control of capital (and therefore power) has shifted from its owners to a managerial elite over the past century.
      - lucian1900 6y ago
        Is that true? Have the Koch/Walton/Rockefeller families ceded control to their management employees? Seems unlikely to me, and unsupported by evidence.
        Amezarak 6y ago
        Capitalists in the old style (more-or-less) certainly still exist, they just aren't the majority anymore. This is a sociological phenomenon first noticed in the 1940s. The bourgeoisie capitalist class largely turned over the reins to managers and set themselves on other pursuits. Even in large organizations where the owners still do play a semi-active role, most of the day-to-day decision making is (necessarily) is made by the managers. And frequently, even when there is an active disagreement between management and ownership, management wins out. As a suggestive example, who benefits from mergers? Upper management usually becomes much wealthier, but 50-80% of mergers fail to add value to the company. [1] That is, capitalists lose out 50-80% of the time, but they still happen anyway. Consider the increasing complaints about skyrocketing executive management pay divorced from company performance, golden parachutes, or companies being almost seemingly deliberately run into the ground while the people responsible walk off richer and with a new job. The power of the managerial class does not just extend to the corporate world either - government has been largely infiltrated by managerialists. Conservatives talk about the Deep State, liberals talk about the revolving door. Both are talking about the same phenomenon. [1] https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/why-do-so-many-mergers-fail/ https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/why-do-so-many-m...
        lucian1900 6y ago
        You’re describing a superficial side-effect of the monopoly stage of capitalism, otherwise known as imperialism. The bourgeoisie make the bulk of their money from exporting capital at extortionate interest rates to poor countries, not so much from actual production. The fact that they let their managers take a cut doesn’t change the power dynamic. Lenin throughly described this phenomenon a century ago, it’s in no way new https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ Nothing is changed by the bourgeoisie holding state power despite the veneer of democracy, that’s also part of how capitalism works. Just because the haute bourgeoisie don’t risk personal involvement doesn’t mean they aren’t in control. Lenin’s slightly less scientific work talks about that too https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/
- 1propionyl 6y ago
  This is tangential, but it mildly irks me how commonly "elite" is now used by most people to refer to a single person. "Elite" is a collective noun and refers to a group, not an individual. An elite is a group of people who are distinguished from their peers in some way. In common parlance "some way" usually means influence, power, seniority, respect from peers, performance, or wealth.

JacKTrocinskI 6y ago

Unfortunately the U.S. has done a really good job at convincing it’s citizens that there is freedom of the press in their country even though time and time again we’ve seen the mass media in the U.S. severely comprised by corporate interests and/or politics. When is the last time you’ve turned on the news and seen a balanced view given on Russia-U.S. relations? In the last three years the New York Times hasn’t reported a single positive story on Russia or written an unbiased one that would present a counterviewpoint. If we jump back two decades ago the American people were lead to believe that weapons of mass destruction were present in Afghanistan and Iraq and it was the cornerstone of the war initiative there. The U.S. ended up violating not only international law and the sovereignty of the nations of Iraq and Afghanistan but killing thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people there on a baseless claim. Today we see the same propaganda being used against countries like Iran, Russia and China. Countries in attempt to defend themselves from U.S. aggression are building nuclear arsenals and the world has become a much more dangerous place to live in as a result. In my opinion this all goes back to freedom of the press, or lack of it.

enaaem 6y ago
Freedom of press is not the same as unbiased press. For example, US citizens can watch Chinese news media in the US, but Chinese people cannot watch US news in China.
- yorwba 6y ago
  > US citizens can watch Chinese news media in the US They could, but they don't, because they wouldn't understand a thing. So in practice, I think the situation is reversed: there are more people in China who watch US news than people in the US who watch Chinese news.
  - labster 6y ago
    I know quite a few people in the U.S. who watch RT, a Russian state-controlled media operation. The pivot from backing the left fringe to the Trumpist right has been quite interesting. Not affiliated with the bug tracker RT, in case you were wondering.

somesortofsystm 6y ago

Unfortunately, the CIA has its tendrils deeply planted within the American publics' minds .. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/a-long-forgotten-cia-document-from https://greenwald.substack.com/p/a-long-forgotten-cia-docume... Obama was used to sell war to the American public - and Western Europe. That is going to take a lot of work to undo.

u801e 6y ago
That may explain the way the media is framing the trip withdrawals from Afghanistan but not asking why we still have trips stationed there after nearly 20 years.

scoot_718 6y ago

Because they've got more oversight - the 60s and 70s were a fucked time in general, my worry is that every other country has the same shit. You seriously think anything like this survived a Trump presidency?

modo_mario 6y ago
Of course. Why wouldn't it happen under his either?

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago

> What surprises me is that when these propaganda programs become more well known, people are still hesitant to believe that in some form they are still happening, the single most important thing that defines good propaganda is that it's invisible to those under its influence.. It used to be a lot "worse" back in the pre-Internet days when people generally watched a couple of channels and more or less got their info from news-papers. In a sense all these information bubbles are illustrating how much we are being targeted because we realize that we're not actually agreeing on anything - but again we only see how the targeting works on "the other camp" rarely on us. the rift going across (Western) society can largely be attributed to how propaganda has changed (forced to be more targeted and aggressive) and how the old forms of white/black info-ops which had massive reach no longer do their job. companies can now play too - no need to be a nation state to get disrupted by a guy in a Max Headroom mask. everyone can be both actor and spectator It's so strange to me as a non-American when I see a flag wielding citizen somewhere in the news, or normal people display their pride for their home country by talking about "taking a knee", or when they say "he/she is un-American" etc ... or somebody on LinkedIn who considers themselves "patriot" and mentions this in their profile. This "pride" is unheard of where I come from and if such a person would be transported into my home country suddenly speaking my language but with that behavior they would look very out of place. various names of great thinkers on propaganda float around but Jacques Ellul is by far the most articulate. He also has a section on Propaganda in his other (earlier) "The Technological Society"[2] which is his magnun opus IMO. Both the most underrated books I've had the pleasure to read in this past decade. (I think it was reading Ellul what ultimately radicalized Ted Kaczinsky e.g. helped him come to the conclusion that society is borked beyond repair). [1] Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512 https://archive.org/details/Propaganda_201512 [2] https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSociety https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSoci...

avs733 6y ago

The reason is because the techniques noted have transcended 'propaganda' and just become 'argumentation'. c.f.: socialism as a blanket assertion of something being bad without evidence. edit because I forgot this story...not long ago I ended up in an online argument with someone that I really shouldn't have been about what communism is and isn't (yeah...). Their literal claim was that 'communism is a form of socialism' and they claimed that was evidence that communism is bad, because socialism is inherently bad.

jlengf 6y ago

My experience with The New York Times was abysmal, I have never encountered a more unscrupulous journalist than the one they sent to me.