A very depressing example of how propaganda works on the American public
[NOTE: You may have noticed earlier today that the blog was down for a while. It was a server problem, supposedly fixed, but time will tell. My apologies.]
I write a lot about the large and continuing influence of the MSM on American public opinion, an effect accomplished through what the MSM chooses to cover, the manner in which it covers it, and what it purposely doesn’t cover (for example, see this post from yesterday).
I can think of no better illustration of the principal than the results of a recent poll reported on by Mollie Hemingway:
Evidence of that [MSM] power and how irresponsibly it is used is found in a recent Harvard-Harris poll for April 2020. A majority of Americans, 53 percent, believe the Christopher Steele dossier “was real in its findings of Trump colluding with the Russians.” Only 47 percent of Americans chose the factually correct option that it was Clinton-funded campaign oppo fueled by disinformation.
Please read the whole article.
You can quibble about the sample selection in the poll and about whether it’s valid, but in this case those details are hardly the point. The percentage of people saying the Steele dossier’s findings were “real” and that Trump “colluded with the Russians” should have been something in the nature of 10%. Clearly, it is not. Whether it’s an actual majority or just close to a majority is irrelevant. The point is that the MSM knows that it can create a false narrative that a lot of Americans – perhaps a majority – will believe.
This matters a great deal. And it is why they persist, even when they are proven to have been lying time and again. The lie gets halfway round the world before the truth has time to get its boots on, and those boots are made for walkin‘ – and running – a marathon.
A good example of how opinion can be formed through omission or minimization and/or framing can be found here:
Yesterday, a massive story broke about FBI malfeasance at the dawn of @realDonaldTrump’s administration.
How many times did the mainstream media mention it during their morning shows?
CNN: 0
CBS: 0
ABC: 0
NBC: 0
MSNBC: 0Unreal.
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) April 30, 2020
Ronna McDaniel may be the GOP Chair, but her voice is small compared to that of the networks she is critiquing. And they know it.
According to the MSM, the setting up of a few fake Twitter accounts and the purchase of a few ads on Facebook by Boris and Natasha constitute a national crisis (despite the fact that we have meddled in the elections of other countries, including Ukraine, for decades, and many other countries have meddled in ours), while any discussion of the undeniable fact of China’s having unleashed a pandemic upon the world, while having lied about it with the collusion of the WHO, is unacceptably bigoted and xenophobic.
Yes, yes and yes, those on the watch CNN all day left have no idea at all what they do not know. I gave up trying to discuss current events with good friends on the left years ago when Lois Lerner was doing her malfeasance with the IRS and my friends were certain that information was false information and media lies. I just threw my hands in the air and shut my mouth and observed them being dumbfounded that Hillary lost to Trump which could not have happened in the world of information they were living in. We live in two different worlds and the media who should want to report actual news are dedicated to keeping positive conservative information out of the news.
Informational reports of actual factual events have been replaced by editorial opinions backed up by supposed experts that are so slanted they are slipping down a slippery slope gaining speed all the way to some sort of a reckoning.
Unfortunately, a majority of people (anywhere, anytime) are easily swayed by propaganda. People tend to believe whatever reinforces their ideology. As you well know a mindset is stubborn thing.
The weakness of propaganda, though, is that it not only crumbles when exposed to the truth but it actually confounds the minds of those creating the propaganda. Liars eventually start believing their lies because it’s easier than keeping track of the truth.
I’m not saying it’s not a problem but consider the next President and Congress are going to be facing some massive challenges. Recovering from the pandemic and its economic devastation. Disentangling our supply chains and vital industries from China. Continuing to deal with the burdens of American empire. Looming deficit, debt, and entitlement issues that can’t be ignored forever. An immigration system that STILL needs comprehensive reform.
Not only do Joe Biden and the Democratic establishment have no answers for those problems, I think they legitimately don’t understand some of them.
Mike
MBunge:
Yes, at some point reality hits and overwhelms propaganda. But that point can come very late in the game. Sometimes it comes when it’s too late to change anything.
See this.
Picky comment: I think in your third paragraph you mean “principle,” not “principal.”
“Propaganda” is the right word to describe the outlets Ronna McDaniel lists.
I submit no one has answers for what is coming. COVID19 and the global panic attack will bring things to ahead within a year. It will not be pretty and it will be long lasting. We’ll see.
One can hope that a preference cascade occurs soon;
https://moneyrunner.blogspot.com/2011/04/american-preference-cascade.html
“What is a preference Cascade?
The “preference cascade” is not limited to despotic regimes in the Middle East. I can happen anywhere where people suddenly find out that they’re not alone. Once people can talk amongst themselves they find that the people who are in control of the news – the narrative – have been lying to them all their lives.”
“Sometimes it comes when it’s too late to change anything.”
Well, if you think the U.S. is roughly in the same place as Iran in the 1970s, you might be right. I don’t think we’re nearly that far gone, though, and an armed populace and genuinely decentralized power will hopefully keep it that way.
Iran is an interesting comparison. Not in the details but in the possibility of American Leftists summoning forth a Right Wing tyranny. Those Suburban Wine Moms being so ardently courted by the Democrats are, let’s be frank, exactly the sort of people who cheer wildly for the Man on The White Horse when he arrives during a crisis.
Mike
MBunge:
The government of Iran is not “right-wing” in the sense that relates to the American right. The Iranian government is statist as opposed to non-statist, which allies it on that axis (statis vs. nonstatist) with the American left. And in fact during the Iranian revolution, the left in Iran allied itself with the mullahs.
Absolutely propaganda and it has absolutely had the affect stated, but we have no one to blame but ourselves. These outlets, CNN the NYT are popular because people are choosing them.
America is still commendably free regarding journalism and opinions. Neo herself is an excellent example of this. The truth on every issue is out there, somewhere. Every opinion has an outlet and an audience. A great many Americans choose the narrative that DJT “colluded” with Russia. The outlets selling that narrative get eyeballs, clicks and ad dollars.
Rufus T. Firefly:
I disagree somewhat.
The MSM news outlets and networks – such as the NY Times – are (1) relying on previous reputations (2) are clever about some of their ruses, such as truncated quotes and/or events not covered (3) demonize right-wing sources, and (4) rely on the fact that most people are not news junkies and are unlikely to put in the time or effort to challenge the truth of what they say. And why would most people, especially in liberal areas, where everyone they know agrees with them?
To challenge yourself you have to hunger for the truth, have the humility to doubt yourself, the time and energy to read alternate sources, and the intelligence to evaluate them. And then you have to have the courage to face what you’ve seen and go against what most of the people you know deeply believe and risk becoming The Other, or keep your mouth shut.
“The government of Iran is not “right-wing” in the sense that relates to the American right. The Iranian government is statist as opposed to non-statist, which allies it on that axis (statis vs. nonstatist) with the American left.”
Where on that axis does the whole “forcing women to wear the hijab” and “executing women for adultery” fit? Let’s not revisit that Jonah Goldberg “Liberal Fascism” ahistorical nonsense Iran is a repressive right-wing regime just like Cuba is/was a repressive left-wing regime. That doesn’t mean Iran is completely in sync with American conservativism any more than Cuba is 100% in line with the Democratic Party.
Mike
Thursday morning, NPR had a surprisingly even-handed piece on the Flynn documents released Wednesday afternoon. The DS pitch was that this was business as usual, discussing how to proceed with an interrogation, but the quote about “get him to lie” was still pretty damning.
Thursday afternoon, a second tranche of doc was released. This included the information that the FBI investigation found “no derogatory information” concerning Flynn. I speculated at Conservative Treehouse that NPR would have a tough time spinning THAT!!
I was right, Today, not a peep at NPR!
neo, I agree with your comment, also, but, again, we get the media we deserve. Not enough people are willing (or interested, or both) to do the work necessary to learn the truth. “People” magazine sells a lot of copies.
Just as you write, regarding your friends, most do not have much interest in politics. A lot of our fellow citizens do not take personal responsibility to be well educated voters. It’s no surprise there are media outlets catering to them for fun and profit. It’s also very sad.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Yes.
But the greater responsibility is the press’s.
A theocratic (Shia), totalitarian, and corrupt government that oppresses the people of Iran and seeks to project power throughout the Middle East is a bit more useful in describing them than the term “Right Wing.”
I disagree somewhat with the percentage of people saying the Steele dossier’s findings were “real” and that Trump “colluded with the Russians” should have been something in the nature of 10%. It should be less than 1%, the number of people who color in the wrong circle on tests….
“most do not have much interest in politics.”
Yeah, Rufus, that’s been true so far.
But, the deranged power grabs by Dem governors, has likely caused at least some rethinking of such matters, see Archdruid Greer, at e.g.
https://www.ecosophia.net/on-the-far-side-of-silence/ ,
on parents now drifting away from reliance on *public schools*, toward home-schooling.
If this power grab doesn’t the people to the extent of Leftist derangement, then, indeed, the people are likely lambs waiting to be slaughtered.
The truest danger to our country is the problem described in this article. We all know it is real, yet it is depressing to have it reiterated. Between the MSM and YouTube / Facebook, there are serious problems for us. We better vote.
This is one reason why it is very difficult to be optimistic. The “Deep State” and the education cabal are others. The message from the left drowns out all others. Some take heart that the “fair and balanced” FNC (Hannity and some others excepted) has consistently beaten the cable competition in ratings. Unfortunately, the disgusting messages from weak cable competitors, like CNN and MSNBC, are augmented and amplified by the legacy networks. In the aggregate their viewership swamps FNC.
Likewise, when I glance at the front page of the daily Press-Enterprise, which serves the Inland Empire of California (isn’t that sublimely pretentious?), nearly every story has a leftist slant, and carries the AP logo. In other words the same tripe is distributed to nearly every daily paper in the country, and is seen by a huge number of people. (It is often worse if they don’t read the stories but just take in the inflammatory headlines.) I know of no competing conservative, or even moderate, national news service.
It takes a toll.
Neo, on “why would most people, especially in liberal areas, where *everyone* they know agrees with them?”
Yeah, part of this owes to Lefty intimidation, but it hasn’t helped, that Conservatism Inc. cared for nothing else besides Buck Almighty, and discouraged thoughtful Righties from challenging key Lefty premises.
Had Conservatism Inc. not steered Righties to make asses of themselves, defending the pillaging of this country by the D.S. (esp. via the PATRIOT Act), and by Wall St., a “Chicago Way” brat like SparkleFarts would likely not have become President.
Had Conservatism Inc. not sucked up to Dubya, and tempted him to continue, to all-but wantonly cram guys like Mueller and Blankfein down our throats, and had they not defended what DJT has called that “monstrous war”, SparkleFarts wouldn’t have become a God to the Left, such that he hasn’t gotten “laughed out of town”, when he calls his Admin. a scandal-free one.
If Barr fails to clean house (incl. vs. Conservatism Inc. types like SSCI chair Burr), expect grass-roots soldiers, cops, etc. to give the system one last chance: stop the D.S. from installing a shill in the W.H., or face huge succession movements.
And, defending what DJT has called that “monstrous war”.
“To challenge yourself you have to hunger for the truth, have the humility to doubt yourself, the time and energy to read alternate sources, and the intelligence to evaluate them. And then you have to have the courage to face what you’ve seen and go against what most of the people you know deeply believe and risk becoming The Other, or keep your mouth shut.” Neo
A very powerful statement. Thinking is hard work and many people are lazy and happy to let others do their thinking for them. Peer acceptance has its draw as much among adults as it does children.
We need an army of Charlotte Cordays to clean the media house.
aNanyMouse said: “If Barr fails to clean house …or face huge succession movements”
Amen to that. There’s really no point to pretend we are a nation anymore.
I concur absolutely with what Neo is saying: the fight for information is the big issue of our times.
I have no illusion about the progressive press: they made a deliberate decision to pursue their objectives literally by any means; this happened in Europe a long time ago and, after a brief disorientation after the fall of the Soviet block,their resentment has only grown. Now even the Church has largely been swayed.
In my understanding, a crucial moment for the US has been the formation of the JournoList forum: at that point it was clear that a substantial portion of the mainstream and globally influential press had chosen a radical political agenda as their mission; the malevolence towards any conservative or even moderately liberal opposition has since been systematically and deliberately cultivated: they work hard, starting at school, to instill personal hatred for the opposition.
Witthaker Chambers, however, had already understood and warned about them; this attitude, which is a direct consequence of Lenin’s, Trotsky’s and Guevara’s “class hate” doctrine, had already culturally won in strategic places and institution in the ’50s.
Given that we can hardly expect any “conversion of hearth” from the progressive press, we can understand the reason of their insane, freakish hatred for Trump. He is a guy who’s able to bypass their control on the information system: he sends clear, easily understandable “in-your-face” messages which can’t be ignored or misinterpreted; he’s very matter of fact and sensible on economical issues, so it’s difficult to prove him wrong and not surprisingly he drove the country to spectacular success following the most solid principles; he’s fearless, if uncouth, the latter being the crux of so many bien-pensant conservative intellectuals, while it’s one of his most effective weapons faced with a systematic attempt to frame him. Incredibly, many conservatives are more offended by Trump coarseness than by attempts to undo an election criminally abusing of state institutions.
Of course, Trump’s strategy is limited, if the GOP and the conservative intellectual world don’t support, explain, integrate and expand his positions. Instead we often see that he’s left alone: many in the conservative camp, especially intellectuals, are not so uncomfortable in a liberal world, and there’s much to lose in a serious confrontation with the dominant culture.
One thing is sure: we must resist any attempt at censorship and restriction of free-speech, denounce it and let our politicians feel the heat about that. What the MSM resents more is the existence of information exchange out of their control.
MBunge, I agree that Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” is mainly wrong – mainly but not completely.
My point is that the axis – as you call it – left/right is not always a proper or clarifying classification.
Framing every single issue as left vs. right has been the most genial strategical intuition of Communism after WWII: on one side the left, on the other one, together with Hitler, the rest. This has been, and it’s been used at large, in my own country; it’s most effective in Germany and Italy, where you are taught since elementary school that there is an unforgivable sin, to be atoned for, in your past; this sin is inherited, almost genetic, and you have to refer to their heroic opponents in order to be saved from shame.
I’ve lived in Iran for 2 years and a half, in the early 70’s; my father, who was a helicopter engineer for Agusta, stayed there for 4 years – at that time Italy had an intense economical relationship with Iran, and my father was at the head of the technical staff there, supporting the Shah’s private and military helicopter fleet.
Was Reza Pahlavi right or left? At that time, very few women wore a hijab, and our house was managed by a very dynamic woman, Parì, who had arranged for our arrival, for the the furniture, for the education and assistance of me, my brother and my sister while our parents were at work, and so on. However, for my mother – who already at that time had become a combative leftist revolutionary – the Shah’s regime was the epitome of Fascism, colluded with the evil American empire, source of oppression all over the world. For her, as for the progressive intelligentsia in Europe, Khomeini was a brave resister against American occupation; since Israel had recently changed its alliance, from the Soviet sphere of influence to the American one, the love story between progressives and Islam was already all the rage, and still remains as an attitude. When corps began to be hung all along the main avenues of Tehran, the progressive media and intellectuals ceased to be interested in the facts, and everything disappeared from our knowledge – exactly like it’s happening for Venezuela now.
So, what’s left and what’s right? Labels are necessary in order to communicate, but they very often hides the reality, sometimes on purpose. The actual values and truths at play have to be spelled out and clarified. Using the same term “right” for the Iran regime and western conservatism has the same defects, perhaps worse, as Goldberg’s equivalence thesis.
Maybe we are setting ourselves for a dramatic learning experience. This is a time of great change. Who in December thought that decoupling from China would come in this decade, or ever?
It seems like the observation in Psalm 146 is playing out with much greater frequency: “the way of the wicked he turneth upside down”.
Universal Basic Income has been promoted for years by Libertarians like Charles Murray and Milton Freedman. Yang brought a description of how it could work into the public debate, and we may discover it is the only practical way to prevent widespread immiseration.
The Black Swans described by Taleb are fledging, many more will soon be in flight.
Hillary is getting some attention https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/495371-as-biden-struggles-hillary-waits-for-the-call
Could there be any better way to highlight the propaganda induced delusions than letting the cash rich Trump Campaign take on Hillary?
It is going to be an interesting year, and decade.
Have to include some Biden humor: Biden: How many pancakes does it take to fill a doghouse? None, cause ice cream doesn’t have bones. I know that was made up but the fact that is funny and not ridiculous is a sign of the times. God has a sense of humor.
I’m not saying it’s not a problem but consider the next President and Congress are going to be facing some massive challenges. Recovering from the pandemic and its economic devastation. Disentangling our supply chains and vital industries from China. Continuing to deal with the burdens of American empire. Looming deficit, debt, and entitlement issues that can’t be ignored forever. An immigration system that STILL needs comprehensive reform.
There is no American Empire, and there never was apart from the Philippines and a few odds and ends. Military expenditure as a share of domestic product was elevated after 1939, but in that respect we are today well below the median ratio registered between 1939 and 1993. Current expenditure is at the trough of the last 80 years.
Universal Basic Income has been promoted for years by Libertarians like Charles Murray and Milton Freedman.
That’s a misrepresentation.
Paolo writes,
Outstanding! More on this please. Details. Background. Development, et cetera.
We have been struggling here to gain insight into the internal thought processes of leftists and their moral schema, with little success. Even Neo, who had a youth during which she was exposed to relatives with virtually Stalinist allegiances, has been unable to dissect the moral framework these people adopted, or to lay bare their fundamental metaphysical and anthropological assumptions in a way which she finds explanatory.
What light can you, as an fellow insider of a sort, shed on the development of a radical Marxist comittment?
For Art Deco: In Our Hands : A Plan To Replace The Welfare State
by Charles Murray. Basic Income pure and simple. New edition recently out.
https://smile.amazon.com/Our-Hands-Replace-Welfare-State/dp/0844742236/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
I used to buy Murray’s What It Means To Be A Libertarian by the case as part of membership development when I was a Libertarian Party County Chairman years ago.
Yang in his War On Normal People describes the attempts Nixon made to develop a minimal bureaucracy method of addressing poverty, Greenspan was a major proponent.
I am not sure what is being misrepresented.
Correction, to my post yesterday, at 10:40 PM:
“If this power grab doesn’t AROUSE the people, to the extent of Leftist derangement….”
I am not sure what is being misrepresented.
Friedman’s proposal was for a negative income tax, which is not a guaranteed income program. Murray came to public prominence by advocating that all income support for the non-elderly poor be discontinued apart from unemployment compensation. IIRC, he included disability benefits on the kill list. His cash grant program delineated in 2005 incorporated eliminating federal transfers stem-to-stern, including Social Security.
“The percentage of people saying the Steele dossier’s findings were “real”… should have been something in the nature of *10%*.”
Not really.
I’ll guess that (considering Pew etc. polling, showing the Postmodern Left to comprise 36% of the electorate), the “pro-Steele” percentage figures to be 30+%.
(Some of the Postmodern Left figures to hate the Dems and their MSM shills, while some of the Modern Left figures to lap up MSM propaganda.
Those two phenomena are likely more-or-less a wash.
See https://Quillette.com/2019/09/16/understanding-americas-cultural-and-political-Realignment/ .
I advise vs. putting much weight on any such polling.
I’ll quite bet, that increasing numbers of folks (esp. DJT backers) refuse to answer any strangers’ phone calls, and thus to participate in such polls, so that the composition of the samples falls far short of really representing public opinion.
Politics is downstream of culture.
US colleges “educate” — actually indoctrinate, the vast majority of elites and elite wannabees, to be leftist, anti-Christian (esp pro-abortion) & anti-capitalism, claiming to favor a better America.
The Dem media are an elite reflection of not-elite wannabees, who want to go to the elite parties.
As long as US colleges are allowed to discriminate and NOT hire Republican professors, as has been the case for decades now, this reaction to support Trump is just a finger in the dike.
To change the culture, colleges must not be gov’t supported to discriminate against Reps.
Cut off all federal $$ to these diploma mills.
Speaking of propaganda, there have been reports about how the Chinese have been conducting a world-wide propaganda campaign in an attempt to shift the blame for the origin of their Chinese Cornoavirus onto the US., to portray themselves as having successfully beaten the virus in China, and come to the rescue of a number of countries by donating protective equipment to them.
In the context of this Chinese propaganda campaign, what to make of the below article—from a news source, Asia Times, based in Hong Kong–about the NIH under Dr. Fauci, funding Coronavirus research in Wuhan—despite concerns about serious containment failures in dealing with such dangerous viruses that had resulted in a 2014 ban on such research in the U.S., and, according to this report, an aim of this Gain of Function “(GOF) research – altering natural pathogens to make them more deadly and infectious.” *
https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/why-us-outsourced-bat-virus-research-to-wuhan/
P.S.–If such a “gain of function”* was, indeed, the aim of this bat Coronavirus research, can someone explain to me why anyone doing legitimate research would want to enhance its ability to infect humans?
*Notice how this “GOF” research is given such an innocent sounding name.
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