Propaganda in Democratic Societies

The Role of Media in Society (part 1)

The role of media in contemporary Politics and society asks us to think what kind of world we want to live in. There are two concepts of Democracy. One where the public have a meaningful say how they are governed, this is the dictionary definition.

The other more gruesome and realistic definition is that the public must be barred from the public arena, and information must be narrowly defined and rigidly controlled and the mainstream media is the one i.e. the state propaganda system, which equals = Media and disinformation.

History of propaganda is a very sad and bloody one. In the US 1916 Woodrow Wilson was elected on the platform of peace without victory. At that time the American people were pacifistic. They saw no reason to get involved in a nasty European war. So Wilson set up the Creel commission to persuade the population to support a war against the Germans.

The technique is the same to scare the population, the Red Scare when the USSR was the evil enemy. The same technique used by the British about Belgian babies being used by the Germans as bayonet practice. In the first Iraq war stories about baby incubators being turned off in hospitals by Iraqi troops.Gadaffi and is evil dictator along with Assad etc.

'State propaganda when supported by the educated classes, and when no deviation is permitted from it can have a big effect, it was learned by Hitler and many others, and it has been pursued to this day" (Noam Chomsky p13 Media Control 2nd edition seven stories press)

In the US where modern propaganda emerged Walter Lippmann wrote "The common interest elude public opinion "and can only be managed by a "specialized class" of "Responsible" men (1)

This view is very common, as a consequence a small number of people make decisions in a country for the rest of us. Lenin in Russia used the same argument, and dictators in other countries have used the same argument.

When you elect a candidate remember he or she services state power = Real people with power +Big business. This is known as progressive democracy". For Lippmann democracy consists of (1) the specialized class involved in running the country (2) the general population the other 99% of the population who to be marginalized. In modern Western democracies the voter is a spectator not participant. He is a person at a football match, supports his team, waves the flag, has no say in the outcome of the game, does not set the rules or participate in the rule making process, and cannot elect the coach or players.

Every so often the voter is asked who can be your leader; this is known as an election, a meaningless process that is largely a joke in the West. In the US 50% population does not vote, as far as they concerned the whole system is rigged and both parties are two side of the same coin, representing money interests not the peoples interests.

The logic behind this principle if you allow the public to participate they are just going to cause trouble, and it is humane they not get themselves into trouble..... See part 2Propaganda part In order to control the population, the "The Art of Democracy "is used in manufacturing consent. In order to get in to positions of importance you have to serve the people already in positions with real power, the people who own and run society. The intellectual "specialized service" class serves this power system of the dominant class.

You internalize the values and beliefs of the dominant class. This means indoctrination from an early Age, the values and interests of private power In The US their capitalist free market system has indoctrinated from birth the population. No alternatives are taught to this system. So the US is a state-corporate military industrial complex.

The rest of the population must be detracted with programs like big brother and stars in your eyes. The general assumption is that most people are guided by emotion than rational. So "necessary illusions are created to detract the public from power and truth. In non-democratic societies force is used, in democratic societies we use propaganda. In the democratic West we have what is called the Public Relations Industry, to lie, deceive and detract the public from the truth. The job of the public relations industry is to "control the public mind".

When people organize and demonstrate that is not democracy in action, but seen by the power system as a “crisis of democracy”, because the population is getting out of control.

One way to prevent people organizing is to emasculate the unions.

Whenever in theUK, union's strike they are bitterly criticized in the media for disrupting public services, very rarely is the full Union's point of view given.

So what is presented by the propaganda system is one thing, the truth another.

Union power has been declining in the Western world since World War two.

The big business community have been spending huge amounts of money through the public relations industry to align their interests with the publics and the unions as attack on both people and the business community, with their activities.

An example of the propaganda system at work I will give a factual example. I am a small shop keeper, get my milk from the same supplier, who also supplies a very large well-known supermarket.

This supermarket has been advertising on Television to the public that they get their milk from local farmers. This is true except they forgot to tell you when the supermarket gets milk deliveries only one of the 20 trolleys of milk are from the local farmer, the rest of the milk is imported.

This is lying by omission, but excellent propaganda, but the public will not know the truth.

When Unions' strike in the UK, the mainstream Media i.e. the state propaganda system convinces the public, that the public interests are the common interests, of business, government and the people.

In the propaganda system, you will be asked if you support the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, not what they are doing out there and why they have been sent out there. Any one raising the political issue will be branded as unpatriotic.

Power, democracy and class struggle is never mentioned in the mainstream news media. The population has to be detracted and marginalized and you have to frighten them. So the UK is a Big business run society.....not a serious well-functioning democracy and government is the servant not the master. Kind R

Propaganda part 3

In order to get people to support wars in distant lands, in killing and torture you have to frighten them. Remember when Tony Blair the UK prime minister sent tanks to Heathrow because according to him there was an imminent terrorist threat.

The British people saw as an overreaction and dismissed the antic, although it made good headlines in the newspapers.

What not many will tell you that Ronald Reagan former US president used the same tactic when he told US citizens that Guatemala was three days away from invading Washington.

The intelligent members of the British public have always been skeptical the population is not always passive, obedient, apathetic.l was listening to BBC radio radio show called five live,there was a discussion and a respondent rang in and said he could not say what he wanted,the radio presenter pushed him on the subject and asked who is telling him not to say things.

I fully understood the man’s predicament he was self-censoring himself, knowing if he said something even if true would leave him open to criticism. The BBC radio propagandist knew full well the acceptable bounds of debate on the show, you can have heated discussion within a very narrow band of acceptable liberal agenda and no more.

Another radio presenter George Galloway left a radio show he hosted, because he could not say all of what he wanted to say. This is the state propaganda system at work.

Goebbels, Hitler’s propagandist was asked how he was able to make the Germans into war mongering nation. He said you have to frighten the people.

In the propaganda system you also have to falsify history in controlling the public mind. So, the Vietnam war in the US is not presented as genocidal war against a rural peasant population, but for a fight against communism and for democracy and human rights.

In the US media Vietnam intervention was seen as defending the South from the Viet Cong.

This ridiculous propaganda can work when you have a concentrated media and a conformist supine intellectual class and conformist scholarship.

As an example of this British school children are taught about World War two and how bad Hitler was, and the six million Jews killed, what is not mentioned he killed six million non-Jews including gypsies and his own people who did not meet his high standards.

You will not be taught about the 7-30 million famine victims of British Colonial policies.

Americans were asked how many people killed by American military intervention in Vietnam, the average figure actual figure 4 million killed and injured. The US propaganda machine managed to keep the figures very low

But all is not lost the internet, alternative news media like Russia Today and Al Jazeera and citizen journalism,skepticism about politics,low trust in people in power,has given rise to social justice movements all over the world,live pictures,video is countering the state corporate propaganda machine

Propaganda part 4

Genocidal brutal terrorist’s attacks and wars are good at mobilizing public opinion around a cause even if it is sold on a pack of lies. The invasion of the Falklands Island by the Argentinians generated a lot of hatred and patriotism, over an insignificant Island, populated mostly by sheep. A relic of Britain’s Imperial past.

In the past Hitler whipped up hatred against Jews and gypsies.

ln the US the red scare about the Russians coming worked well. This cannot be used anymore, so it got replaced with narco-terrorists, trying to turn American children into drug addicts.

This has been replaced with Islamic Terrorists, with new Hitlers like Saddam Hussein or Bin Laden or Ghadaffi.(lts funny how the West supported these people in the past and they were doing the same thing,but you don't hear much about that in the Media these days there is no limit to Western hypocrisy

An MIT study asked people if the US should intervene with force to reverse illegal occupation or countries with bad human rights records, about 2 to 1 agreed that principle was applied we would bomb Turkey, Washington, Tel Aviv.

Why does not anybody know this, in a well-functioning propaganda system you concentrate on the crimes of others not your own. When

Israel invaded Lebanon which it does periodically.

The government of Lebanon asked the Israeli government to observe UN resolution 425, to withdraw unconditionally from Lebanon.lsrael ignored the resolution, because it has the backing of the world’s biggest terrorist state the US.

Israel has a franchisee licence from the US to be the middle terrorist state, the regional psychopath can do whatever it likes and is protected by the world’s leading terrorist state the US. Very little discussion of this gets in the Media discussion.

lf we look at the first Gulf war in the 1990's the Iraqi opposition asked for their country not to be destroyed.

Earlier that year Saddam was in the US and favoured trading partner. The Iraqi opposition called for Democracy then. They were ignored, not much in the mainstream media, or discussion.

The Iraqi opposition are not much different from other peace movements. They were against Saddam Hussein and against the war in Iraq.

Western hypocrisy has no limits or inhibitions.

One of the Reasons for intervention, are aggressors cannot be rewarded, and their aggression must be reversed by quick use of force.ln principle this is good practice.

The US did not uphold this principle, when South Africa occupied Namibia in 1969.The US did not impose sanctions or medicine embargo as with Cuba, it did not bomb Capetown,no it carried out "quite diplomacy".

Over 20 years around 1.5 million people killed in Namibia and surrounding region. Do you hear much about this. NO that is the spectacular success of propaganda

Propaganda Part 5

The UK is fast becoming a fascist state, an elected dictatorship. Mi 5 the state security apparatus is paying Muslims to spy on fellow Muslims in Mosques and other public places, namely to combat terrorism.

No one is looking at British Foreign policy, every time some does mention its ignored or some unkind things are said about the person. So the UK Media has selective amnesia like its US counterpart…the demonization of Saddam Hussein was a pre-text for invasion. How he was an evil Dictator ready to take over the world, a threat to Western way of life, to democracy.

We must stop him before he conquers the wordplay at that time was devastated after fighting ran, has no industrial base, with poorly armed conscript peasant army.

huge amount of dis-information in the Western media was needed to convince the public to support intervention, chemical weapons of mass destruction ready to be used within the hour.

As Tony Blair the UK prime minister said in the house of commons when he gave the biggest pantomime performance of his life. (total fabrication and lies)

The gruesome results have been one million+ dead and injured (first invasion, (including half a million children under the oil for food and medicine program, another half a million dead plus injured since we liberated Iraq (second invasion). the total must be close two million, dead and injured

All i can say the imposition of democracy and human rights in the wrong hands is a killing machine. Our state supported propaganda system brainwashes us into supporting wars without end, meddling in the affairs of other countries in the name of democracy and human rights is putting the citizens of this country in danger, of possible harm as has been made clear by many security experts.

We the public in democracies, are complicit by our absence and silence, supporting a propaganda system, the world of the US as mercenary enforcer with the EU in an expanding NATO to the East towards Russia and China and now starting an arms race, two formidable nuclear armed countries, and we pay for this with our taxes

We must develop a defence against the propaganda system by looking at alternative media and be able to analyse and evaluate what we are being told. No one is going to pour the truth in to your brain, you have to do a lot of studying and research yourself, it’s hard, time consuming but rewarding.

Start today go to YouTube you can find lectures, and documentaries, discussions on many subjects. Protect yourself with intellectual self

Kind Regards Tiger Moto