How Digital Technology Has Helped Unleash a Devastating New Era of Propaganda

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What is modern propaganda? For many, it is the lies of a totalitarian state. In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl and asked her about her epic films that glorified the Nazis. Using revolutionary camera and lighting techniques, she produced a documentary form that mesmerised Germans; her Triumph of the Will cast Hitler’s spell.

She told me that the “messages” of her films were dependent not on “orders from above”, but on the “submissive void” of the German public. Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? “Everyone,” she said.

Today, we prefer to believe that there is no submissive void. “Choice” is ubiquitous. Phones are “platforms” that launch every half-thought. There is Google from outer space if you need it. Caressed like rosary beads, the precious devices are borne headsdown, relentlessly monitored and prioritised. Their dominant theme is the self. Me. My needs. Riefenstahl’s submissive void is today’s digital slavery.

Edward Said described this wired state in Culture and Imperialism as taking imperialism where navies could never reach. It is the ultimate means of social control because it is voluntary, addictive and shrouded in illusions of personal freedom.

Today’s “message” of grotesque inequality, social injustice and war is the propaganda of liberal democracies. By any measure of human behaviour, this is extremism. When Hugo Chávez challenged it, he was abused in bad faith; and his successor will be subverted by the same zealots of the American Enterprise Institute, Harvard’s Kennedy School and the “human rights” organisations that have appropriated American liberalism and underpin its propaganda. The historian Norman Pollack calls this “liberal fascism”. “All is normality on display,” he wrote. “For [Nazi] goose-steppers, substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarisation of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manqué, blithely at work [in the White House], planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while.”

Whereas a generation ago, dissent and biting satire were allowed in the “mainstream”, today their counterfeits are acceptable and a fake moral zeitgeist rules. “Identity” is all, mutating feminism and declaring class obsolete. Just as collateral damage covers for mass murder, “austerity” has become an acceptable lie. Beneath the veneer of consumerism, a quarter of Greater Manchester in England is reported to be living in “extreme poverty”.

The militarist violence perpetrated against hundreds of thousands of nameless men, women and children by “our” governments is never a crime against humanity. Interviewing Tony Blair ten years on from his criminal invasion of Iraq, the BBC’s Kirsty Wark gifted him a moment he could only dream of. She allowed Blair to agonise over his “difficult decision rather than call him to account for the monumental lies and bloodbath he launched. One is reminded of Albert Speer.

Hollywood has returned to its cold war role, led by liberals. Ben Affleck’s Oscar-winning Argo is the first feature film so integrated into the propaganda system that its subliminal warning of Iran’s “threat” is offered as Obama is preparing, yet again, to attack Iran. That Affleck’s “true story” of good-guys-v-bad-Muslims is as much a fabrication as Obama’s justification for his war plans is lost in PR-managed plaudits. As the independent critic Andrew O’Hehir points out, Argo is “a propaganda movie in the truest sense, one that claims to be innocent of all ideology”. That is, it debases the art of film-making to reflect an image of the power it serves.

The true story is that, for 34 years, the US foreign policy elite have seethed with revenge for the loss of the shah of Iran, their beloved tyrant, and his CIA-designed state of torture. When Iranian students occupied the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, they found a trove of incriminating documents, which revealed that an Israeli spy network was operating inside the US, stealing top scientific and military secrets. Today, the duplicitous Zionist ally – not Iran – is the one and only nuclear threat in the Middle East.

In 1977, Carl Bernstein, famed for his Watergate reporting, disclosed that more than 400 journalists and executives of mostly liberal US media organisations had worked for the CIA in the past 25 years. They included journalists from the New York Times, Time and the big TV broadcasters. These days, such a formal nefarious workforce is quite unnecessary. In 2010, the New York Times made no secret of its collusion with the White House in censoring the WikiLeaks war logs. The CIA has an “entertainment industry liaison office” that helps producers and directors remake its image from that of a lawless gang that assassinates, overthrows governments and runs drugs. As Obama’s CIA commits multiple murder by drone, Affleck lauds the “clandestine service . . . that is making sacrifices on behalf of Americans every day . . . I want to thank them very much.” The 2010 Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, a torture-apology, was all but licensed by the Pentagon.

The US market share of cinema box-office takings in Britain often reaches 80 per cent, and the small UK share is mainly for US coproductions. Films from Europe and the rest of the world account for a tiny fraction of those we are allowed to see. In my own filmmaking career, I have never known a time when dissenting voices in the visual arts are so few and silent.

For all the hand-wringing induced by the Leveson inquiry, the “Murdoch mould” remains intact. Phone-hacking was always a distraction, a misdemeanour compared to the media-wide drumbeat for criminal wars. According to Gallup, 99 per cent of Americans believe Iran is a threat to them, just as the majority believed Iraq was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. “Propaganda always wins,” said Leni Riefenstahl, “if you allow it.”

Tue, 04/02/2013 – 16:55

 
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How Digital Technology Has Helped Unleash a Devastating New Era of Propaganda

Sandy Hook Propaganda: Round Two

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Vice President Biden and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg met with some of the family members of the Sandy Hook School Shooting Thursday, in what some would say is a ploy kicking off round 2 of the establishments publicity campaign.

By Shepard Ambellas
Intellihub.com
March 21, 2013

MANHATTAN — Biden put on a rather emotional speech today at a press meeting with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as family members of Sandy Hook School shooting victims sat close by.

The basis of Biden’s presentation was to make Americans feel guilty that assault weapons bans were not passed nationwide (aside from New York) and that there is a continued need for them.

Biden was quoted by CBS saying, ”Three months ago, a deranged man walked into Sandy Hook Elementary with a weapon of war,” he said. “Let’s get this straight. This is not about anybody’s constitutional right to own a weapon. For all those who say we shouldn’t and can’t ban assault weapons – for all those who say the politics is too hard, how can they say that?… When you take a look at those 20 beautiful babies and what happened to them? And those six teachers and administrators?”

Biden at one point tried to flip the script by saying, ”What a heck of a way to make a living,” Biden said today, ruminating on the notion that politicians would be so beholden to special interests that they would be unable to support what he calls the “common sense” proposals he has put forth. Turning to a woman behind him, he said, “It’s time for the political establishment to show the courage your daughter showed.” according to CBS.

What else is interesting to note is the fact that CBS also got an interview on one of their TV morning shows with the Parker family before the press conference. The Parker family was reported by press early on to have lost their daughter Emily Parker in the tragic shooting. 

Norah O’Donnell with CBS went on to interview the Parkers Thursday morning revealing that they;

…recently met with the father of gunman Adam Lanza as part of their search for understanding and grieving process.

The meeting “was kind of my doing,” Alissa Parker explained. “I guess the reason why I felt strongly that I needed to tell [Peter Lanza] something. And I needed to get that out of my system. I felt very motivated to do it and … I felt really good about it, I prayed about it, and it was something that I needed to do.

Robbie added their family has experienced “a little bit of everything,” as they’ve dealt with the scope of the tragedy over the past three months.

“You know, you went from the absolute worst experience that you could ever imagine to have to go through as a parent … and being overwhelmed with that sense of grief and loss to, on the other end of the spectrum, you’re being completely overwhelmed with outpouring of love and support from so many people and everything that kinda falls in between,” he said.

Some You-Tuber’s and conspiracy theorists believe that the Parker’s are crisis actors.

Whatever the case may be one can clearly see the establishments intentions to further push firearm regulations on Americans.

 

Sources:

^http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57575594/biden-on-assault-weapons-ban-think-about-newtown/

^http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57575516/newtown-victims-parents-talk-about-meeting-killer-adam-lanzas-father/

*****

Read more articles by this author HERE.

Shepard Ambellas is the founder & director of Intellihub.com (a popular alternative news website), researcher, investigative journalist, radio talk show host, and filmmaker.

For media inquires, interview inquires, questions or suggestions for this author email: shepard@intellihub.com

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Sandy Hook Propaganda: Round Two

PBS Sells Out to Military Propaganda | Brainwash Update

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