7 ms·

I spent 6 years outside the USA from 2008-2013. I highly recommend everyone do this. Spend several years in Europe or South America (the places I went.) You

by MCRed 12y ago

I spent 6 years outside the USA from 2008-2013. I highly recommend everyone do this. Spend several years in Europe or South America (the places I went.) You will quickly come to see-- I expect-- just how much of the media inside the USA is propaganda. Everything from Law & Order to the nightly news is mostly pro-government propaganda. (Supporting our politburo type government, not a dictatorship, but in the past 100 years the one party has won every single election.) But you gotta get outside the bubble to really see it.

mark_l_watson 12y ago
I like to read international news sources (news.google.com can be a good jumping off point) and, yes, I agree with you that our news in the USA is engineered to tell a story that keeps people in line.
- throwaway48303 12y ago
  International news sources, especially state-funded ones like Al Jazeera and RT, are just as biased, just in the other direction (US and Europe are teh suxx, Russia and OPEC are your friends!). If you can handle the cognitive load of filtering out the biases from all sources and have the perspective and knowledge to synthesize them into some objective truth, then my hat is off to you because I can't do that.
  - nothrabannosir 12y ago
    There is only one list that RT and Al Jazeera belong in together; the "what two news organizations are polar opposites of each other?" list. Anyway, the point is diversity, not supremacy. Don't watch BBC or Al Jazeera because it's supposedly "better" than US media; watch because its bias is in different areas. All it does is help you in evaluate a different point of view. Worst case, you hear the same thing twice. Except RT. That's just trash.
    - timepiece 12y ago
      RT and AJ are both pro status-quo for their Establishment. So for me, they're in the same league but I always love to check the perspectives for the big players on the world stage from time to time to see what they're up to.
    - mark_l_watson 12y ago
      Thanks - that was what I should have said more clearly: more diversity is better.
jerf 12y ago
"But you gotta get outside the bubble to really see it." Actually, it's sufficient just to not be liberal, and to a lesser extent, be neither liberal nor conservative. (But the liberal machine is much better oiled and more generally competent, moaning about Fox News notwithstanding.) It's hard to see propaganda that you currently agree with. (I do not exclude myself from that general statement, it's just that what I find harder to see is quite different than what the general US news is currently propagating.) But I'd also observe that even standing outside the mainstream of US political propaganda, I'm not convinced there's necessarily a cabal of insiders sitting around in their smoke filled rooms figuring out how to "keep the masses in line". I think instead you've got people figuring out how to push their agendas, often in groups, and through a process of natural selection on the agendas in question you end up with agendas that tend to satisfy people to some extent and "keep them in line". You need not "conspire" to push fairly popular ideologies on people, you need only let the adherents of those ideologies do the things they naturally will do anyhow. Edit: Look, downvoters, you might not like to hear it, but the US propaganda machine is liberal, or at least, Democratic (if you are more liberal than the Democrats and consider them "conservative"). Look at the political affiliations of the media, Hollywood, the bureaucratic apparatus, the University and academic system, and to believe that the propaganda system isn't Democratic is to believe that all of these things are peopled by 90%+ Democrats yet somehow transcend their political orientation to push... what, exactly? It's not even close... it's not like it's 60-40, it's 90%+ plus on every survey ever taken of those groups in recent times. Note my claim here is an objectively verifiable fact, not merely an abstract partisan snipe job. Ask yourself, what else would they be pushing? If you don't see this, well... it's probably because you're not seeing the Democratic propaganda as propaganda, leaving you seeing only what gets through that isn't. Further edit: Would someone care to post and explain the social mechanisms whereby the media et al is populated by Democrats yet is pushing some other form of propaganda on us all the time? Evidence would suggest it will get you highly upvoted. (Personally I'd suggest the fact that people just downvote but aren't posting suggests that this is either not possible, or very hard. This probably means something.)
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logfromblammo 12y ago
There are significant numbers of people who have seen it without physically leaving the bubble. But in this, the Internet is critical, as is a healthy reservoir of skepticism, paranoia, and introspection. From an engineering perspective, the media bubble is beautiful. The control over the message is elegant and masterfully done. Generally speaking, it is like equal parts stage magic and martial arts. Any attack against the power structure is simply deflected away from the center line and bounces off. When necessary, a burst of flame from some unsleeved flash paper distracts the attention of the audience just long enough for the real targets to be lost. As someone who has seen it, living inside it feels almost oppressive. Almost. You have to continually remind yourself that it's there, and it's there to control your behavior.
cryoshon 12y ago
Agreed entirely on the necessity of travel for mind expansion, but I would say that an inattentive person probably wouldn't spot the difference between foreign and the US media. Propaganda is the subtle knife of social control, and it is ubiquitous in the world. A way of seeing through the propaganda is what I would call realism-based-education. By that I mean reading "Public Opinion" by Walter Lippmann, "Manufacturing Consent" by Chomsky, and "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays, to start. Reading "The Prince" by Machiavelli would also be a good companion to these, though its focus is quite different. Reading these quick and easy to understand books has done more for my worldly education than going to college when it comes to building critical thinking. People need to understand that mass media is for placing ideas into your head for the purposes of influencing future actions-- no more, and no less.
- taivare 12y ago
  add to the list Chris Hedges and his articles about Inverted Totalitarianism.
  - cryoshon 12y ago
    Ah yes, I'm aware of those articles as well-- they are fascinating. I didn't think to add them to the list in my comment but they'd be a good addition for sure. I'm of the opinion that a lot of these propaganda/political realism topics belong in the same general category, and I'd like to make a syllabus of sorts eventually.
xnull6guest 12y ago
For those with the time and interest to browse I had previously compiled an incomplete list of domestic propaganda activities by the United States. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856218 There is also some compilation done for international propaganda, although mostly the programs, anecdotes and news links are scattered and still need compiling. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8709976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8709976 Some things almost sound like science fiction, like the DoD program to predict successful overseas propaganda by observing brain scans of test subjects: http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf

by MCRed 12y ago

mark_l_watson 12y ago

I like to read international news sources (news.google.com can be a good jumping off point) and, yes, I agree with you that our news in the USA is engineered to tell a story that keeps people in line.

throwaway48303 12y ago
International news sources, especially state-funded ones like Al Jazeera and RT, are just as biased, just in the other direction (US and Europe are teh suxx, Russia and OPEC are your friends!). If you can handle the cognitive load of filtering out the biases from all sources and have the perspective and knowledge to synthesize them into some objective truth, then my hat is off to you because I can't do that.
- nothrabannosir 12y ago
  There is only one list that RT and Al Jazeera belong in together; the "what two news organizations are polar opposites of each other?" list. Anyway, the point is diversity, not supremacy. Don't watch BBC or Al Jazeera because it's supposedly "better" than US media; watch because its bias is in different areas. All it does is help you in evaluate a different point of view. Worst case, you hear the same thing twice. Except RT. That's just trash.
  - timepiece 12y ago
    RT and AJ are both pro status-quo for their Establishment. So for me, they're in the same league but I always love to check the perspectives for the big players on the world stage from time to time to see what they're up to.
  - mark_l_watson 12y ago
    Thanks - that was what I should have said more clearly: more diversity is better.

jerf 12y ago

"But you gotta get outside the bubble to really see it." Actually, it's sufficient just to not be liberal, and to a lesser extent, be neither liberal nor conservative. (But the liberal machine is much better oiled and more generally competent, moaning about Fox News notwithstanding.) It's hard to see propaganda that you currently agree with. (I do not exclude myself from that general statement, it's just that what I find harder to see is quite different than what the general US news is currently propagating.) But I'd also observe that even standing outside the mainstream of US political propaganda, I'm not convinced there's necessarily a cabal of insiders sitting around in their smoke filled rooms figuring out how to "keep the masses in line". I think instead you've got people figuring out how to push their agendas, often in groups, and through a process of natural selection on the agendas in question you end up with agendas that tend to satisfy people to some extent and "keep them in line". You need not "conspire" to push fairly popular ideologies on people, you need only let the adherents of those ideologies do the things they naturally will do anyhow. Edit: Look, downvoters, you might not like to hear it, but the US propaganda machine is liberal, or at least, Democratic (if you are more liberal than the Democrats and consider them "conservative"). Look at the political affiliations of the media, Hollywood, the bureaucratic apparatus, the University and academic system, and to believe that the propaganda system isn't Democratic is to believe that all of these things are peopled by 90%+ Democrats yet somehow transcend their political orientation to push... what, exactly? It's not even close... it's not like it's 60-40, it's 90%+ plus on every survey ever taken of those groups in recent times. Note my claim here is an objectively verifiable fact, not merely an abstract partisan snipe job. Ask yourself, what else would they be pushing? If you don't see this, well... it's probably because you're not seeing the Democratic propaganda as propaganda, leaving you seeing only what gets through that isn't. Further edit: Would someone care to post and explain the social mechanisms whereby the media et al is populated by Democrats yet is pushing some other form of propaganda on us all the time? Evidence would suggest it will get you highly upvoted. (Personally I'd suggest the fact that people just downvote but aren't posting suggests that this is either not possible, or very hard. This probably means something.)

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
deleted 12y ago

logfromblammo 12y ago

There are significant numbers of people who have seen it without physically leaving the bubble. But in this, the Internet is critical, as is a healthy reservoir of skepticism, paranoia, and introspection. From an engineering perspective, the media bubble is beautiful. The control over the message is elegant and masterfully done. Generally speaking, it is like equal parts stage magic and martial arts. Any attack against the power structure is simply deflected away from the center line and bounces off. When necessary, a burst of flame from some unsleeved flash paper distracts the attention of the audience just long enough for the real targets to be lost. As someone who has seen it, living inside it feels almost oppressive. Almost. You have to continually remind yourself that it's there, and it's there to control your behavior.

cryoshon 12y ago

Agreed entirely on the necessity of travel for mind expansion, but I would say that an inattentive person probably wouldn't spot the difference between foreign and the US media. Propaganda is the subtle knife of social control, and it is ubiquitous in the world. A way of seeing through the propaganda is what I would call realism-based-education. By that I mean reading "Public Opinion" by Walter Lippmann, "Manufacturing Consent" by Chomsky, and "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays, to start. Reading "The Prince" by Machiavelli would also be a good companion to these, though its focus is quite different. Reading these quick and easy to understand books has done more for my worldly education than going to college when it comes to building critical thinking. People need to understand that mass media is for placing ideas into your head for the purposes of influencing future actions-- no more, and no less.

taivare 12y ago
add to the list Chris Hedges and his articles about Inverted Totalitarianism.
- cryoshon 12y ago
  Ah yes, I'm aware of those articles as well-- they are fascinating. I didn't think to add them to the list in my comment but they'd be a good addition for sure. I'm of the opinion that a lot of these propaganda/political realism topics belong in the same general category, and I'd like to make a syllabus of sorts eventually.

xnull6guest 12y ago

For those with the time and interest to browse I had previously compiled an incomplete list of domestic propaganda activities by the United States. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856218 There is also some compilation done for international propaganda, although mostly the programs, anecdotes and news links are scattered and still need compiling. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8709976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8709976 Some things almost sound like science fiction, like the DoD program to predict successful overseas propaganda by observing brain scans of test subjects: http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf