Americans
are being emotionally manipulated to take up cause with those whose ultimate
purpose is the repeal of the First Amendment and erasure of national memory.
AUGUST 25, 2017
Wars are won or lost based mostly on perceptions of events, not on
what actually happens. This is true for any given battlefield, whether it’s the
1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam or the ideological battlefield over the future of
the First Amendment as played out in Charlottesville in 2017. The reality of
what takes place in the public arena is always secondary to any projected
illusion.
So let’s
never forget this: Whoever has the power to dictate public perceptions of
reality is in a position to dictate public opinion and behavior. Abusing
language and images to stir up emotions is an ancient trick of power-mongers.
And once journalism turns into unchecked
propaganda, we become trapped in its dangerous illusions.
Only the teensiest fraction of Americans have any real interest in
violent extremism, whether it be the violence represented by the specter of the
Klu Klux Klan or the violence promoted by groups like Antifa who pretend they
are fighting for social justice. But the media is promoting imagery of the
former as a foil for the latter.
Why Are We Being
Assaulted With Fringe Concerns?
Most
Americans today are still just trying to live freely, to pursue happiness
peacefully. Meanwhile, power elites in politics and the media are providing a
daily platform for fringe elements who identify as white supremacists. Why
would anyone in his right mind do such a thing? Again, we can only deduce that
such imagery serves as a useful foil to lend moral high ground to “counter-protesters.”
The media elites provoking them need white
supremacy bogeymen in order to achieve their ultimate agenda, which,
ironically, is to achieve total supremacy.
Against this
staged backdrop, repeated over and over again, Americans are being emotionally
manipulated to take up cause with those whose ultimate purpose is the repeal of
the First Amendment and erasure of national memory. As Helen Raleigh recently wrote in
The Federalist, this has all the hallmarks of an attempted Maoist-style
cultural revolution.
We should be
asking why these elites insist that violence-prone groups on the American
Left—such as Antifa, Occupy, Moveon.org, etc.—are pure as the driven snow, as
peaceful as sleeping babes. Obviously it disrupts the narrative to know that
the Southern Poverty Law Center inspired gunmen into attempted massacres,
including the one in June that critically wounded GOP Rep. Steve Scalise and the 2012 shooting at
the Family Research Council. So maintaining the illusion of such groups’
innocence is what allowed Michael Moore to argue in a recent CNN interview that
he was promoting a society of “love” while smearing as racist every one of the
60 million Americans who voted for Trump. That’s a rallying cry for national
division.
The polarization
of America didn’t happen overnight. It’s actually not even all that real. It’s
been teased out over many decades by media, entertainment, and academia in
order to reap the agitation we’re seeing today. Understanding the how and why
of this process is critical to reviving civil society and our freedoms. So, how
did this all come to be? There are myriad factors: family breakdown, mob
psychology, fear of being politically incorrect, the cultivation of ignorance
in public education, the inflammation of resentments and hatred and false
guilt.
A lot more factors are responsible for the state of mass delusion
we appear to be in today, but I’ll try to map out three elements I think the
recent gruesome events in Charlottesville highlight: 1. the manipulation of our
language; 2. the deliberate use of such loaded language to cultivate extreme
emotions in people, particularly anger and resentment; and 3. the role of mass
media as a nuclear device to impose those perceptions on a mass scale
Element 1: Loading the
Language
Mavens of social media have inundated us with trendy terms
intended to mold our thought patterns. Let’s just consider two expressions:
“alt-right” and “woke.” First, “alt-right.” It’s a tar-and-feather term
intended to eliminate independent thought by getting the masses to associate
the “right” with various boogeymen like the KKK of old. The goal is to
eliminate their “hate speech.” Once the alt-right domino falls, then
conservatives’ speech goes. Then the speech of everybody else, because the
First Amendment must stand for everyone or it stands for absolutely no one.
Then there’s the expression “woke.” It’s even more direct in its
purpose: literally to activate people into a program of collective thought
reform. “Woke” is a semantic device that promotes social distrust and even
paranoia. The idea is that evil conspiracies—white supremacism, slavery,
Confederate flags—are behind every bush targeting you. It comes with corollary
slogans, such as #staywoke and #stayangry.
Such terms are the pieces of anti-intellectual spaghetti that
stick to the walls of our minds when we are not equipped to think independent
thoughts. The thought police aim to make certain words and thoughts catch on in
the hive mind, thereby cultivating certain emotions and behaviors in people.
But when honestly defined, the term “woke” actually means
“programmed.” You can see it in today’s manufactured mobs composed of
individuals who identify as social justice warriors. Any different opinion is
likely to trigger a panic attack in them. They are blindly obedient to college
professors who get them to confess their guilt for being born into “white
privilege”—or being born at all. They parrot taunts to their perceived enemies
and take safety in mobs that threaten violence, knowing full well when the
local political machine has kneecapped police, whether it be in Berkeley or
Charlottesville.
The
coordinated mob violence we see playing out essentially over the existence of
historical monuments and free speech goes well beyond indoctrination and
brainwashing. It is a cult mindset deliberately
cultivated by elites in education, pop culture, and academia.
When Anti-Fascism Means
Fascism
So in a very real sense, as George Orwell wrote in “1984,” words
take on their opposite meanings. For example, freedom means slavery and vice
versa. Ignorance means strength. Today it’s clear that the hyped term
“anti-fascism” as in Antifa actually means fascism.
Is there anything President Trump could have said or done that
would have made a difference under today’s social and media conditions? Perhaps
for a few thoughtful people, his choice of words would have made a difference.
But for the most part, even if he had from the outset spoken in a presidential
manner and with all of the Left’s approved words, nothing would have changed in
the propaganda media. Even if Trump had mimicked the SPLC and said the
Charlottesville rioting was only about white supremacy and the KKK and that,
yes, all historical monuments that Alinskyites want down should come down, it
would not have changed the anti-speech trajectory of the anti-speech mob.
We are in
full mass delusion mode.
Our language has been undermined to game our perceptions. Those altered perceptions
pull us into the groupthink that feeds fake public opinion cascades.
Large segments of society, including many who should know better, have fallen
for it, speaking apologetically and bolstering what is clearly a ruse to repeal
the First Amendment. They fear someone might think them a bigot if they
criticize the violence perpetrated by anti-speech activists like Antifa and
Occupy. So they feed the violence by giving it a pass.
Element 2: Using
Distorted Language to Rub Resentments Raw
The growth
of this cult-like mentality is reflected in Orwell’s essay “Politics
and the English Language.” He states that the whole point of manipulating
language is to obfuscate in order to control. Anger and resentment are strong,
natural motivators for getting people to attack perceived enemies. Bitterness
is at the heart of every grudge, and those drunk on power have always depended
on such misery to play their divide-and-conquer games.
Once
bitterness sets in, it rots out the human capacity for social harmony and acts
of mercy. At best, it’s passive-aggressive. At worst, it’s the short fuse to
violence. At the core of it all is identity politics enforced by political correctness, special
tools of propagandists to divide us in order to conquer us.
The whole point of manipulating language
is to obfuscate in order to control.
When people
nurse grudges, they tend to grow into obsessions. Obsessions easily become
delusions as we perseverate upon them, creating ever more monsters in our
minds. Pretty soon a bunch of kids are pulling down a statue in
Durham, North Carolina to engage in what psychiatrist Joost Meerloo described
as “ecstatic participation in mass elation.” In his book “The Rape of the Mind,”
Meerloo called this type of mob action “the oldest psycho-drama in the world.”
When minds
become captive to the propagandist’s boogeymen, our survival mechanisms go into
effect and we feel we must slay monsters, whether real or imaginary. This is
especially true when a mob of supposedly like-minded folks come together to
face off against their common enemy. Like in Charlottesville or any other place
where a governor might abuse his power to promote riots by making sure there
is no law enforcement present
to maintain order. That was always the real point of promoting the riots in
Charlottesville and so many other places by
getting the police to stand down. The purpose of the media collusion is to get
their movie running 24/7 in as many heads as possible.
We’ve not
been vigilant as we’ve been taken down a long road of what influence guru
Robert Cialdini calls “pre-suasion,” or
laying the groundwork to influence others’ decisions, then taking advantage of
the “privileged moments” that ensue. The privileged moment of the Left today
consists of a pompous moral elevation to get people to focus on a
well-cultivated fear of being tainted by association with racist nutcases.
Unless we quickly become more vigilant to this ruse, it’ll be too late when we
realize we’ve been manipulated by Stalinists all along.
Alinskyite Cultivation
of Hatred
None of this
is new. The archetypal agitation expert Saul Alinsky considered resentment an
absolutely essential tool for replacing freedom with totalitarianism. All in
the name of freedom, of course. If you study history, you’ll note how all
tyrants project their own intentions onto their perceived opponents. It’s a
well-documented pattern in all genocides.
Fascism can only come to power in America, for example, through an echo chamber
repetitiously promoted as “anti-fascism.”
Free speech is an essential antidote to
any form of slavery.
Consider these choice quotes from Alinsky’s book “Rules for
Radicals,” which serves as a guidebook on the art of cultivating hatred in
people: “The organizer must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the
community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of
overt expression . . . an organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and
discontent; provide a channel into which people can angrily pour their
frustrations . . . your function – to agitate to the point of conflict.”
Here’s
another choice quote from that piece of work: “The one thing that all oppressed
people want to do to their oppressors is sh-t on them.” The trick is to get
people to conjure up the illusion of white hoods behind every bush, and
redefine the word “hate” so it applies to anybody who thinks a thought
independent of elitist groups like the SPLC.
Alinsky knew that a few power-hungry elites like himself couldn’t
simply undermine a free nation on their own. He needed drones to do his
bidding—mob mobilization papered over with the euphemism “community
organizing.” This is why totalitarians—from Marx to Lenin to Stalin to Mao to
Castro and so on—always depend upon agitating and mobilizing masses via the
abuse of mass media. Real debate is anathema to that goal, which is why free
speech is always such an enemy of tyrants. Free speech is an essential antidote
to any form of slavery.
Element 3: Mass
Manipulation Via Mass-Media Propaganda
Our brains work primarily by making associations towards whatever
is capturing our attention at any given moment. Out of sight, out of mind. But
obsess on something and it consumes you. This is why power elites make a point
of directing our focus 24/7.
Social
psychologists and marketing experts know very well that we are driven by our
perceptions of reality, not by reality itself. As Cialdini pronounced, “What’s focal is causal.”
Once the media captures our focus, manipulators can take advantage of
“privileged moments” to get us to behave their way.
This human vulnerability has become magnified in the age of social
media. False images and memes now flicker like strobe lights through our brains
at breakneck speed. The only way to discern reality is to put down the devices
and actively seek out what is real from what is perceived. And to ask some real
questions, such as: Where exactly is the violence coming from? Are things
really as they seem? Are we being hypnotized to echo the constant flickering of
this imagery?
Media Collusion with
Rioting
An oft-quoted proclamation from Bolshevik power-monger Vladimir
Lenin goes like this: “The press should be not only a collective propagandist
and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses . . .
We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and
concealing truth… We can and must write in a language which sows among the
masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.”
Media elites largely now collude with rioting that serves their
agendas. But, as all community organizers understand, it’s nearly useless to
try to mobilize people who’ve got productive lives to live and an interest in
the world beyond themselves. Such people have family loyalties and strong
friendships and no appetite for hatred. They tend to be people who are
culturally literate with natural curiosity and a basic grasp of human history,
or at least of human nature.
Since love and knowledge and self-reliance stand in the way of
totalitarian goals, all of that has to be destroyed. Only by creating the
predictable sense of alienation their policies promote can Alinskyites grow
their necessary hive of drones.
The End Result: Division
and Loneliness
In the end, the war against free speech is a war against
conversation and human fellowship. Without free speech, our alienation from one
another would become complete. We couldn’t get to ever really know one another
once all of our social interactions became regulated. Real friendships would be
obstructed.
Without free speech, our alienation from
one another would become complete.
When “Coming
Apart” author Charles Murray was undergoing his tarring and feathering by the
mob at Middlebury College that refused to let him speak, he spent some time
looking out at the individuals in the mass. He reflected on
what he found, especially in how the students mindlessly modeled the behavior
of their peers: “Many looked like they had come straight out of casting for a
film of brownshirt rallies. In some cases, I can only describe their eyes as
crazed and their expressions as snarls. Melodramatic, I know. But that’s what
they looked like.”
In fact,
they look like kids in the grip of a cult mindset: Lost. Lonely. Deluded.
Deceived. Just scan these sad mugshots of Antifa protesters released
by the Portland, Oregon police department after they were arrested for violent
acts on May Day this year. It’s a collection of faces filled with cluelessness,
loss, and delusion. The mugshot of the
identified white supremacist who plowed his car into the crowd, killing a
woman, fits right in with them.
Finally,
consider the young environmental activist Jeff Jacoby wrote about in the Boston
Globe recently. She was peer-pressured into a desperate
door-to-door attempt to save the planet and ended up sobbing from exhaustion at
the reporter’s doorstep: “It gnaws at her to see how angry so many people are
these days. She wasn’t raised to hate people whose politics are different from
hers, she told us.”
Indeed, this gnaws on all people of goodwill when resentments are
rubbed so raw. Yet alienated people are being filled with hatred and deployed
to the streets to serve the agendas of political and media elites. Jacoby’s
headline states “we are a nation on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” I’d add
that because of the gaslighting tactics of power elites, we are actually in the
throes of a nervous breakdown.
Stella
Morabito is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow Stella on Twitter.
