Disinformation and confusion generated at ever higher levels. And that is the description of the condition more than 20 years ago.
Please note that I hDisinformation and confusion generated at ever higher levels. And that is the description of the condition more than 20 years ago.
Please note that I have put the original German text to the end of this review. Just if you might be interested.
An even better understanding and overview of the overall situation can be seen in combination with his second work "Manufacturing Consent." Long after its first publication, the work has lost none of its topicality. Each society returns to already reached points in eternal cycles, where writings like these serve as a memorial not to forget critical thinking. Chomsky provides a brief overview of Woodrow Wilson's Creel Commission, Public Relation, the Iraq War, Walter Lippman's spectator democracy and the general state of the media landscape.
Due to the lack of investigation and research on the subject, it is impossible to gauge the extent of propaganda in times of digitization. Neither universities nor NGOs are able to deal with the whole extent of the problem, because unfortunately they are often too deeply involved in the dissonant connections and contradictions. Respectively dependent on these or so blind that they do not see the overall picture as experts for just individual aspects.
It is almost impossible to explain to people after decades of consumption that they have been manipulated. They often have a significant influence on elections and economic and political power because of their prosperity. It would be a sacrilege, heresy and blasphemy only to suggest, that their thought patterns could have been wrong all her life. That their scriptures and commandments, in the form of newspapers, magazines and news programs, are lies and deceit. Even young people who have just been hooked on already associate the ideology that has been instilled with themselves and make them a part of their ego, their identity, their personality. Then they immediately grasp any gentle criticism of it as if it was insulting and attacking them as human beings. An ingeniously diabolical concept of programming people to pervert their trust and their good faith in such a way.
The reporting itself is full of empty phrases and emotions, focused only on the characters and the simplest level of action, never describing deeper or higher levels. Always staying at the level of the human aspect and one-dimensional viewing. A life of responsible and mature media consumption does not extend the spectrum of thoughts of consumers, but restricts it and steers it in the desired paths. Those newsflashes are self-potentiating feedback loops that only reinforce the fundamental mentality.
Once conditioned, it is reinforced with each consumption. To read the newspaper, to consume the daily newscast, to integrate one's social network in the study of these subjects. Out of this arises the opinion that has been inoculated, which is reinforced with every letter and every word. And never is it objective, scientifically clean reporting, but black rhetoric. No informational value, but the selection of the facts according to which of it serves the representation of the opinion that should be strengthened.
When they consume media, people are entirely passive. Democratically unemancipated, subliminal messages are incorporated which, at a deeper level, bring about transformations. Thus, the supposedly only daily and focused reporting about an event has the long-term benefit, that specific correlation are always seen in a just one particular context. People become unable to understand complex connections. They unlearn to selectively seek objective data, compare and form their own opinion. If they even know channels in which unfiltered messages are not branded. They only react more and no longer act independently. Like conditioned, vegetative reflexes of the reptilian brainstem which had never had higher brain functions.
Desinformation und Verwirrung, erzeugt auf immer höherem Niveau. Und das ist die Zustandsbeschreibung von vor über 20 Jahren.
Ein noch besseres Verständnis sowie Überblick über die Gesamtsituation erschließt sich in Kombination mit seinem zweiten Werk "Manufacturing Consent". Lange nach seiner Erstveröffentlichung hat das Werk noch nichts von seiner Aktualität eingebüßt. Jede Gesellschaft kommt in ewigen Kreisläufen wieder an bereits erreichte Punkte, an denen Schriften wie diese als Mahnmal dienen, kritisches Denken nicht zu vergessen. Chomsky liefert einen kurzen Überblick über Woodrow Wilsons´s Creel Commission, Public Relation, den Irakkrieg, Walter Lippmans specatator democracy und dem generellen Zustand der Medienlandschaft.
Es ist aufgrund der mangelnden Recherche und Forschung zu dem Thema unmöglich, das Ausmaß der Propaganda in Zeiten von Digitalisierung nur im Ansatz zu ermessen. Weder Universitäten noch NGOs können sich mit dem ganzen Ausmaß der Problematik befassen, weil sie selbst leider häufig zu tief in die dissonanten Zusammenhänge und Widersprüche verstrickt sind. Beziehungsweise von diesen abhängig oder so betriebsblind, dass sie als Experten für einzelne Aspekte das Gesamtbild nicht sehen.
Es ist beinahe unmöglich, Menschen nach Jahrzehnten des Konsums erklären zu wollen, dass sie manipuliert wurden. Sie haben auf Wahlen großen Einfluss und wegen ihres Wohlstands auch ökonomische und politische Macht. Es wäre ein Sakrileg, Häresie und Gotteslästerung nur anzudeuten, ihre Denkmuster wären ihr ganzes Leben lang falsch gewesen. Ihre heiligen Schriften und Gebote, in Form von Zeitungen, Magazinen und Nachrichtensendungen sind Lug und Trug. Wenn selbst junge, gerade erst frisch angefixte Menschen bereits die ihnen eingeträufelte Ideologie mit sich selbst assoziieren und zu einem Teil ihres Egos, ihrer Identität, ihrer Persönlichkeit machen. Dann fassen sie jede sanfte Kritik daran unmittelbar als Beleidigung und Angriff auf sie als Mensch auf. Ein genial diabolisches Konzept, die Menschen so zu programmieren, ihr Vertrauen und ihr Gutglauben derartig zu pervertieren.
Die Berichterstattung selbst ist voll von leeren Phrasen und Emotionen, nur auf die Charaktere und simpelste Handlungsebene fokussiert, nie tiefere oder höhere Ebenen beschreibend. Immer auf der Stufe des menschlichen Aspektes und eindimensionaler Betrachtung bleibend. Ein Leben mündigen Medienkonsums erweitert das Spektrum der Konsumenten nicht, sondern schränkt es ein und lenkt es in die gewünschten Bahnen. Es sind sich selbst potenzierende Rückkopplungsschleifen, die nur die Grundmentalität verstärken.
Ist die Konditionierung erfolgt, wird sie mit jedem Konsum verstärkt. Die Zeitung zu lesen, die Nachrichtensendung täglich zu konsumieren, das eigene soziale Netz in die Beschäftigung mit diesen Thematiken zu integrieren. Daraus erwächst die Meinung, die eingeimpft wurde, die mit jedem Buchstaben und jedem Wort verstärkt wird. Und nie ist es objektive, wissenschaftlich saubere Berichterstattung, sondern schwarze Rhetorik. Kein Informationswert, sondern Selektion der Fakten danach, welche am ehesten der Repräsentation der zu bestärkenden Meinung dienen.
Wenn sie Medien konsumieren, sind Menschen gänzlich passiv. Demokratisch unemanzipiert werden unterbewusste Botschaften mit eingebaut, die als tiefere Ebene Transformationen bewirken. So hat die vermeintlich nur tagesaktuelle und auf ein Ereignis fokussierte Berichterstattung den Langzeitnutzen, gewisse Zusammenhänge immer in einem bestimmten Kontext darzustellen. Die Menschen werden unfähig zum Verstehen komplexer Zusammenhänge. Sie verlernen selbst selektiv objektive Daten zu suchen, zu vergleichen und eine eigene Meinung zu bilden. Sofern sie überhaupt Kanäle kennen, in denen ungefilterte Nachrichten nicht gebrandmarkt werden. Sie reagieren nur mehr und agieren nicht mehr selbstständig. Wie konditionierte, vegetative Reflexe des Reptilienstammhirns als hätte es nie höhere Hirnfunktionen gegeben.
The illusion of a mature, open minded awareness is a constructed propaganda model.
Reread 2021 with extended review
In modern media, it´s important to nThe illusion of a mature, open minded awareness is a constructed propaganda model.
Reread 2021 with extended review
In modern media, it´s important to never let the uncomfortable and in-depth facts crawl too close to the light, and to achieve this it´s best to mention them in the shortest newsflashes at lousy airtime and in subsidiary columns with ten words. It´s a difficult but essential game, because if a media company completely forgets such a report it could be exposed to the criticism of not openly and objectively reporting about essential topics. Therefore, the extremely important message about the controversial reform of the health care, pension, educational, etc. system is placed in poorly legible font size somewhere on the left bottom half of page 74 where nobody reads it.
Praise the independence of the media, it´s not as if MSNBC is close to the only larger media outlet that dares to criticize the economic system while CNN, BBC, etc. are, well, reporting about the irrelevance of the political and financial circuses without ever questioning the foundations of this madness.
These techniques of concealing and hushing critical voices are revealed and explained by Herman and Chomsky who emphasize that the essential thing is to more or less subtly shape the mind of the people on a consensus. Over many years and decades, the message is repeated in various forms through always similar reporting until it has flowed into the faith and the attitude of the vast majority of pseudo informed and fringe educated people. As an encore, it´s common practice to scatter confusing, inconsistent, exaggerated, and scary messages, which makes people even more accessible to the suggested solutions and options for action. The stoked fear can be combined with blind faith in authorities, which tremendously helps boosting the success of the wished opinion.
Herman and Chomsky defined the new kind of influence and media control as a propaganda model in which the owners and shareholders of the media dictatorially determine the type of coverage and content. To mask this one-sidedness, supposedly objective reporting is simulated without ever touching the real core of the problems, the exponential growth dogma.
An example: Unworthy killed terrorists in rogue states against heroic fighters in submissive vassal states. Cheapest simplification, pigeonholing, black and white painting, worthy and unworthy, friend and foe, good and evil. Adult children's books mistaken for education and information with the bad witch sizzling in the oven until it´s perfectly medium rare.
Twenty years after the publication of Hermans´ and Chomskys´work and the 50th anniversary of Operation Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operati... there is the question where we stand now, because what was possible at that time without technical goodies could soon have been expanded to unimaginable dimensions, let´s say individual, personalized propaganda to each smartphone, no matter which socioeconomic status, education, or ideology. It kind of seems as if a revision of the situation, a remake of Manufacturing Consent would urgently be needed, but, duh, which media would review something telling dirty, stinking, lies about the news. Self cannibalizing sucks.
However, Herman and Chomsky and, or their progressive successors should sit down with some of the leading activists and journalists and create a combination of the evaluation of the status quo and a prognosis of future developments. That would be a book.
In the past, blanket control and censorship without the internet were easy and now, this facilitated communication can be a blessing or a curse. An awakened, enlightened, not brainwashed civil society can solidarize and compel positive changes with its sheer mass whereas an apathetic, oppressed, and indoctrinated society may misuse the tools and turn their utility into the opposite. With a hammer, one can build a house or break a skull. Integrating this crucial new factor and thinking ahead with the concepts is a functional logic puzzle.
The media are still just as controlled as at any time of the democratic age, however, a significant amount of power has been put into the hands of users to get their data and earn money. This could be the overlooked factor, undermining the influence of the controlling bodies and finally bringing them down because they have given the masses an opportunity to unite and solidarize in exchange for unprecedented surveillance in a way never seen before.
Also, the new industries are not interested in concealing the lies of the past, since they have no contaminated sites, no skeletons in the closet, it´s in their interest to make the old dinosaurs appear in the worst light possible. By this means they can still bind people to their services, because they associate it with something positive while, at the same time, they can weaken their competitors by explicitly promoting and fueling the debates. Of course, they are also opportunists, followers, and profiteers of the situation, but not so directly to blame as the old industries that caused the whole mess.
How far the technology for control and manipulation has progressed now, can´t be estimated. Facebook alone employs thousands of people who are only concerned with the addictive flow production and the formation of perfect, cuddly filter bubbles. Google can influence a person's opinion across all platforms and age groups. The new giants are increasingly replacing the big media companies and it´s so much more entertaining and the people more united than with the passive, earlier methods. But the goal, controlling the dogmas, has remained the same.
Kind of a warning: As soon as one has read some Paul Hawken, Silvia Federici, Bill McKibben, Colin Crouch, Klein, William McDonough, Jessica Valenti, Henry David Thoreau, John Perkins, Steward Brand, Rebecca Solnit, George Monbiot, Kendi Ibram X, Yanis Varoufakis, Shiva Vandana, Jonathan Safran Foer, Ziegler, Davis Angela Y, Rachel Carson, Brittney Cooper, Kristof Nicholas D, etc., there is no way back, all once objective democratic institutions, media outlets, etc. just seem ridiculous, worthless, pathetic sockpuppets of corporate interests without any possibility of change....more
Mario the lone bookwolf
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Books:
chomsky-noam
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