Weak Narratives

 Weak narratives are a symptom of exhaustion.

Is It Art?

Russia’s Propaganda Trolls become a power in cyberspace:

With the exposure of the Internet Research Center, it also appears that Russia is drawing on disinformation techniques used during the Soviet Union. One Russian propaganda scholar has referred to it as less of an information war as much as a war on information (“A Russian TV Insider Describes a Modern Propaganda Machine“). 

Regardless of the view, such activities have been successful in helping to oust governments or influence public behavior. This should be very telling, especially considering ongoing efforts between the two governments to try to gain mutual understanding on cyber security issues. One area that highlights this challenge is how security should be addressed in cyberspace.

Yes, but is it art?  If it is not art, how really effective is it?

Also, is the above an example of how writing about propaganda is (always) itself propaganda?

Demagogue

For a demagogue, alienation equates to extremism.

This Godless Communism

This Godless Communism was a propaganda comic book.  It "was an American comics feature that appeared in Treasure Chest, a biweekly, subscription-only comic book distributed in parochial schools from 1946 to 1972."

Worth a chuckle at the least.  It is an example of propaganda aimed at children.

Link.
JPG Link
PDF Link
CBR Link (Comic Book RAR file--good for readers)

Propaganda Studies: Representing War

I just stumbled upon Representing War: propaganda, posters, pamphlets, publicity, music, artwork and memorials.  It appears to be a good effort at propaganda studies. I also like the propaganda posters.

Fiction and Myth as Propaganda

i. Except for the faithful, outright lies are not well received.  Truth may be abused, but not shattered.  Under the strain, the world may break.  Ground must be prepared.  Ignorance must be nurtured.  The big lies are best told to the desperate.  Even as the old lies are recycled, new concepts are required.  Subtlety is longer lasting and more efficient than harassment.

ii. For the liar, fiction and myth are superior tools.  Fiction is grand.  Myths are sublime.  The successful opportunist believes propaganda, and thereby becomes honest.  History has always been re-written by the slanted premises of the ruling elite.  In a wired age, they must actually believe.  Hence, the elite are doomed to wade with everyone else.

iii. Fiction is beyond morality.  Beliefs are suspended.  How could it be any other way?

iv. For a decadent, confusing fact from fiction is an essential quality of leadership.  Those believing otherwise wrongly believe they do not live in such a world.  Their projections make their reality unreachable.

New Song

A new song, titled You Deserve It! from my Drunk And Armed music project has been released.

Elite Support

1. Excepting Maoists*, contingent on their preservation, revolutions cannot succeed without elite** support.

2. After the celebration settles, fundamentally very little has changed. (As if.)

3. Thus the purge follows.***

4. The old way actually looks better.

5. Repeat.

* And who wants that?  (Peasants.)
** But not necessarily the same elite.
*** And who wants that? (Fanatics.)
**** And who wants that? (non-Fanatics.)

Lies

If a comforting lie seems better than harsh reality, it may seek to supplant reality.  It will fail.  The damage done as it seeks the bottom can often be more extreme than what it seeks to replace.  Addiction comes in many forms.

Propaganda Studies: "Terrorism"

Terrorism can mean just about anything as pointed out by Glenn Greenwald in Manipulative use of the term "Terrorism":

There's a great paradox in the American political landscape:  the word that is used most frequently to justify everything from invasions and bombings to torture, indefinite detention, and the sprawling Surveillance State -- Terrorism -- is also the most ill-defined and manipulated word.  It has no fixed meaning, and thus applies to virtually anything the user wishes to demonize, while excluding the user's own behavior and other acts one seeks to justify.  All of this would be an interesting though largely academic, semantic matter if not for the central political significance with which this term is vested:  both formally (in our law) and informally (in our political debates and rhetoric). 

Remi Brulin, who teaches graduate and undergraduate courses at NYU, has spent many years -- as part of his PhD dissertation at the Sorbonne in Paris -- examining the use of the word Terrorism in international relations, the law, and the media (particularly as used by The New York Times).  The history of this term -- how and why it came to be such a politically prominent and consequential label, the radically inconsistent meaning it has based on who is wielding it, the failure to create a universally or even widely recognized definition -- reveals how long it has been manipulated as a propagandistic tool. 

The word "terrorism" and "terrorist" is probably one of the longest applications of exploiting a word for Maximum Advantage in All Things.  indeed, it is far older than the Technical Morality, and as such will outlast it.  As a consequence, the label is very difficult to negate, but can become meaningless.  As it is presently overused, "terrorism" and "terrorist" are largely losing impact as overexposure tends to blunt impact.  Hence, as it becomes widely ignored, propagandists will need to start looking around for another phrase in the next few years.  What will it be?  I would bet that another fall back, namely "anarchist" or something more specific like "Islamo-anarchist" or right/left wing-anarchist labels will make a comeback.  The peasants need to be kept in line somehow and old bogeymen are an easy means to that end.

Atrocities Committed by Intellectuals

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard agrees with my pronouncements that economics is not a real science:

The 20th Century was a horrible litany of absurd experiments and atrocities committed by intellectuals, or by elite groupings that claimed a higher knowledge. Simple folk usually have enough common sense to avoid the worst errors. Sometimes they need to take very stern action to stop intellectuals leading us to ruin.

The root error of the modern academy is to pretend (and perhaps believe, which is even less forgiveable), that economics is a science and answers to Newtonian laws.

In any case, Newton was wrong. He neglected the fourth dimension of time, as Einstein called it, and that is exactly what the new classical school of economics has done by failing to take into account the intertemporal effects of debt – now 360pc of GDP across the OECD bloc, if properly counted.

There has been a cosy self-delusion that rising debt is largely benign because it is merely money that society owes to itself. This is a bad error of judgement, one that the intuitive man in the street can see through immediately.

Debt draws forward prosperity, which leads to powerful overhang effects that are not properly incorporated into Fed models. That is the key reason why Ben Bernanke’s Fed was caught flat-footed when the crisis hit, and kept misjudging it until the events started to spin out of control.

Economics should never be treated as a science. Its claims are not falsifiable, which is why economists can disagree so violently among themselves: a rarer spectacle in science, where disputes are usually resolved one way or another by hard data.

It is a branch of anthropology and psychology, a moral discipline if you like. Anybody who loses sight of this is a public nuisance, starting with [Fed member] Dr Athreya.

I frankly think he is being kind.  However, economics is an ideology, and lumping it with the so-called soft sciences is also insulting.  Lying with statistics is just another form of propaganda.  Otherwise, I agree with the author.  (Whereas the soft sciences are just tools of propaganda.)  Idiot intellectuals are a menace.  Their feedback loops, employed when attempting to prove their idiotic scientific pretensions, are among the most destructive.  Remember the dialectic?  It was inevitable, only it wasn't.  Western capitalist economic is the same.  Their commonality is manifest. The "people" and the "free market" are the same means to their ends.   Twentieth century ideologies need to die.

Happy 4th.

Is Life Necessary

Is life necessary for the perception of time?

Does entropy happen?

Is entropy experienced?

Will a rock know itself?

Can concrete be abstract?

Discovery may abound, but do you really want to know?

Did you really think it would not be exploited?

Are the depths really worth the price?

Do all great things have a hollow core?

Sometimes a revolution is not worth the price?

Then again, what is?

Unity?  Please.

(I'll be moving and without internet for a time.)

Question 2

What does agitprop seem to always influence everyone but oneself?

Down is Up

Constant repetition is a means to ensure down is up.

Institutional Corruption

1. Institutional corruption negates it own supposed ethics by defining its own failings as acceptable business practices.
2. Despite the accolades, which is the equivalent of celebrating arson, the end result is illegitimate governance and a broken economic system.
3. Only an idiot, a brainless whore (i.e. a member of congress), or a corporate journalist would believe otherwise.

If you never think for yourself, then you are probably a fanatic.

If you always truly think for yourself, then you are probably a sociopath.

Those claiming to think for themselves are usually the least likely to do so.  If true, they would not need to verbalize their supposed virtue.

Islamic Fundamentalist Propaganda

I had actually forgotten that I had collected the links on the Chumpfish Islamic Fundamentalist Propaganda.

Saying Nothing

At his news conference on Tuesday night, President Obama was asked directly about the tent cities and responded by saying that it was “not acceptable for children and families to be without a roof over their heads in a country as wealthy as ours.” - Link

Talk about saying nothing! Who is going to come out and say publicly that they favor homelessness? This is a familiar political ploy when what politicians really mean is that they are not going to do anything about the problem, because they can't.