29. April 2015

The Limits of Propaganda - Dmitry Orlov


by Dmitry Orlov

As Paul Craig Roberts has recently reported
the US government is in the process of launching 
an all-out war on truth. Those who express views 
contrary to the party line out of Washington will 
be labeled a threat. Eventually they may find 
themselves carted to one of the concentration 
camps, which Halliburton (Dick Cheney's old 
company) has constructed for $385 million. 
But that may take a while.

In the meantime, we can expect lots of other, 
less dramatic developments. Indeed, some of 
these are already happening. Here they are, 
listed in order of severity.

1. Self-censorship. Those who have previously tried to 
get the truth out no matter what become more reticent 
and prone to equivocation when reporting on “hot” issues.
2. Topic-avoidance. They start avoiding certain “hot” issues 
that they feel are most likely to get them into trouble.
3. Response to harassment. A few incidents of mild official 
harassment cause certain blogs to start watering down their 
content, or pulling down content in response to harassment.
4. Blacklisting. The officials start censoring content on a 
case-by-case basis, blocking or shutting down certain 
internet sites that they consider seditious.
5. Blocking communications. The officials start dealing 
with the “hard cases” of uncooperative individuals who 
remain, shutting down their communications by disabling 
their cell phones, shutting down internet access, and by 
imposing travel restrictions so that the “hard cases” are 
forced to remain in places where they can be watched.
6. Detention. Those found to be truly uncooperative, 
who try to circumvent the restrictions, are rounded up 
and shipped off to the above-mentioned camps.

This may seem like a dire prognosis, but actually I just 
want to present a relatively complete list of public measures 
for your consideration. Yes, there will be a few “hard cases” 
who will insist on getting right in the face of Washington 
officialdom in futile hopes of somehow affecting the 
political process or winning over a few of their compatriots. 
But at some point such individuals become indistinguishable 
from people with mental problems. That is because if you live 
in the US, actually know how the political system there operates, 
and still think that the US is a democracy, then you DO have a 
mental problem. You can't have it both ways: either you buy 
into the official propaganda, or you don't.

Also, it bears pointing out that the vast majority of people 
in the US are quite happy listening to Washington's propaganda, 
be it from Fox or NPR, don't consider it propaganda, and have 
been conditioned to consider anyone who attempts to tell them
the truth to be tin hat-wearing conspiracy theorist nut case. 
And that means that tin hat-wearing conspiracy theorist nut 
cases have a role to play. They are important to have, in the 
same way that a village idiot is important to have, so that
children can learn what idiocy looks and sounds like. 
So, why bother sending them to a concentration camp?

And so it seems likely that the village idiots... ahem,
truth-tellers will remain free-range for the time being, 
unless they really lose it and start tilting at windmills. 
But then that becomes a bona fide mental health issue.

Unless, off course, full-on war hysteria breaks out. 
In that case, while the external goons are busy pretending 
to be “not winning, not losing” but somehow “keeping America 
safe” in yet another wretched part of the world, the internal 
goons have to be kept busy. Rounding up undesirables 
would give them something to do.

That's the state of affairs in the United States and its 
subservient territories: Canada, Europe, Australia and 
New Zealand and a few others. But Washington's propaganda 
isn't working at all well in the rest of the world, be it Russia 
or China or Latin America. In all of these places, Washington's 
message control has more or less failed. This is why the people 
in Washington are in a bit of a panic, and labeling internal 
dissidents as a “threat” is just them flailing in search of an 
answer. They can't stop lying, and they can't even pretend 
to rule the world if everyone knows that they are lying, so 
their only option is to try to squelch every voice except their
own. They may succeed at this within the US (some would 
say they already have) but as far as the rest of the world—
good luck!

* * *

An interesting development took place two days ago in 
my tiny patch of the world: an article I produced together with 
Club Orlov's special Kiev correspondent Yu Shan which I ran a
while ago, then translated into Russian, was published as an 
editorial by a major Russian online daily, VZGLYAD.ru
In itself this is not a surprise; my stuff does get published in 
Russian once in a while, and this is an excellent article, which 
is why I ran it and translated it. But what surprised me was 
the response it received. Below is a sampling from the over 
100 comments it received in just two days. It is here to 
afford you a peak behind the one-way mirror through 
which the world views the US. I hope that you enjoy it.

Source: 
http://cluborlov.blogspot.co.at/2015/04/the-limits-of-propaganda.html
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