One of the biggest and most consistent challenges of my young career so far has been finding ways to talk about solutions to our predicament in a way that people will truly hear. I talk about these solutions constantly, and some readers definitely get it, but others will see me going on and on about a grassroots revolution against the establishment narrative control machine and then say “Okay, but what do we do?” or “You talk about problems but never offer any solutions!”
Part of the difficulty is that I don’t talk much about the old attempts at solutions we’ve already tried that people have been conditioned to listen for. I don’t endorse politicians, I don’t advocate starting a new political party, I don’t support violent revolution, I don’t say that capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction and the proletariat will inevitably rise up against the bourgeoisie, and in general I don’t put much stock in the idea that our political systems are in and of themselves sufficient for addressing our biggest problems in any meaningful way.
What I do advocate, over and over and over again in as many different ways as I can come up with, is a decentralized guerrilla psywar against the institutions which enable the powerful to manipulate the way ordinary people think, act and vote.
I talk about narrative and propaganda all the time because they are the root of all our problems. As long as the plutocrat-controlled media are able to manufacture consent for the status quo upon which those plutocrats built their respective empires, there will never be the possibility of a successful revolution. People will never rebel against a system while they’re being successfully propagandized not to. It will never, ever happen.
Most people who want drastic systematic changes to the way power operates in our society utterly fail to take this into account. Most of them are aware to some extent that establishment propaganda is happening, but they fail to fully appreciate its effects, its power, and the fact that it’s continually getting more and more sophisticated. They continue to talk about the need for a particular political movement, for this or that new government policy, or even for a full-fledged revolution, without ever turning and squarely focusing on the elephant in the room that none of these things will ever happen as long as most people are successfully propagandized into being uninterested in making them happen.
It’s like trying to light a fire without first finding a solution to the problem that you’re standing under pouring rain. Certainly we can all agree that a fire is sorely needed because it’s cold and wet and miserable out here, but we’re never going to get one going while the kindling is getting soaked and we can’t even get a match lit. The first order of business must necessarily be to find a way to protect our fire-starting area from the downpour of establishment propaganda.
A decentralized guerrilla psywar against the propaganda machine is the best solution to this problem.
By psywar I mean a grassroots psychological war against the establishment propaganda machine with the goal of weakening public trust in pro-empire narratives. People only believe sources of information that they trust, and propaganda cannot operate without belief. Right now trust in the mass media is at an all-time low while our ability to network and share information is at an all-time high. Our psywar is fought with the goal of using our unprecedented ability to circulate information to continue to kill public trust in the mass media, not with lies and propaganda, but with truth. If we can expose journalistic malpractice and the glaring plot holes in establishment narratives about things like war, Julian Assange, Russia etc, we will make the mass media look less trustworthy.
By decentralized I mean we should each take responsibility for weakening public trust in the propaganda machine in our own way, rather than depending on centralized groups and organizations. The more centralized an operation is, the easier it is for establishment manipulators to infiltrate and undermine it. This doesn’t mean that organizing is bad, it just means a successful grassroots psywar won’t depend on it. If we’re each watching for opportunities to weaken public trust in the official narrative makers on our own personal time and in our own unique way using videos, blogs, tweets, art, paper literature, conversations and demonstrations, we’ll be far more effective.
By guerrilla I mean constantly attacking different fronts in different ways, never staying with the same line of attack for long enough to allow the propagandists to develop a counter-narrative. If they build up particularly strong armor around one area, put it aside and expose their lies on an entirely different front. The propagandists are lying constantly, so there is never any shortage of soft targets. The only consistency should be in attacking the propaganda machine as visibly as possible.
How To Get Your Dissident Ideas Heard In The New Media Environment
People have been asking me for some advice on how to get started doing what I do and building an audience, so here are a few tips I've picked up on this weird and wonderful journey.https://t.co/UsgCGKiF6E
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) August 29, 2018
As far as how to go about that attack, my best answer is that I’m leading by example here. I’m only ever doing the thing that I advocate, so if you want to know what I think we should all do, just watch what I do. I’m only ever using my own unique set of skills, knowledge and assets to attack the narrative control engine at whatever points I perceive to be the most vulnerable on a given day.
So do what I do, but keep in mind that each individual must sort out the particulars for themselves. We’ve each got our own strengths and abilities that we bring to the psywar: some of us are funny, some are artistic, some are really good at putting together information and presenting it in a particular format, some are good at finding and boosting other people’s high-quality attacks. Everyone brings something to the table. The important thing is to do whatever will draw the most public interest and attention to what you’re doing. Don’t shy away from speaking loud and shining bright.
It isn’t necessary to come up with your own complete How It Is narrative of exactly what is happening in our world right now; with the current degree of disinformation and government opacity that’s too difficult to do with any degree of completion anyway. All you need to do is wake people up in as many ways as possible to the fact that they’re being manipulated and deceived. Every newly opened pair of eyes makes a difference, and anything you can do to help facilitate that is energy well spent.
Without an effective propaganda machine, the empire cannot rule. Once we’ve crippled public trust in that machine, we’ll exist in a very different world already, and the next step will present itself from there. Until then, the attack on establishment propaganda should be our foremost priority.
_____________________
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76 responses to “How To Defeat The Empire”
There is an easy to make people see it… Show it happening in everyday life, out of the political scene. It is exactly THE SAME.
Our pattern of recognition is thus easily fooled, if we attribute to politics what is not only there!
It won’t make you obsolete, sorry, but one thing I do is share your stuff from time to time. Thanks for keeping on writing it.
Thank you Caitlin. I totally agree.
One of the commentators (Ken) wrote …
“Want to see how to make effective propaganda ? – use ridicule, humor and satire. this Australian group are showing what really works – better than thousands of words of stale debate and endless argument that go nowhere. Expose the Elite, show them in their underwear. Power to the people. https://youtu.be/0yzeOqV7eKI ”
He is absolutely right. The Juice Media skits are brilliant, they make you laugh first, then think. Ideal to copy and share with all your friends who also will laugh, then think and then also share. Its easy and quick and VERY effective.
Murder is the only 100% effective solution, in dealing with criminals of this magnitude. Name a more effective approach. We give murderers the electric chair. These idiots have commited genocides. Plural. Forget your pedantically futile approach. You are driven by a bias which is held steady by the fear that what you think you know isall that will work. They have to die. Then we can exit this hellishly overdone, theatrical, megalomaniacal narcissist-psychopath manipulation scheme that had afflicted the world like smallpox for centuries. Die die die die die. God slay the queen.
She’s already history I believe, there’s a substitute in her place, the same goes for Charlie boy and Doris J. Looking forward to the rest of the culprits to stand at the military tribunals, it can’t come soon enough. My only regret, we won’t have the pleasure of stringing them up with piano wire from the lamp posts.
Sadly, everyday conversations with Australian and American friends suggest that this strategy is not going to work. Most people cannot let go of lifelong indoctrination.
The ancient Greeks knew better:
http://drnissani.net/MNISSANI/RevolutionarysToolkit/Restoration%20of%20Democracy%20in%20Thebes.htm
Defeating the Empire – Violent action is out of the question, I think we can agree. We have to hope that several million people, plus, will agree to a number of key issues, a platform. Then, they must agree to action. Money talks. As a group, these people might stop paying their mortgages, stop paying on their credit cards, buy only necessities (food, heat, A/C, water, gas, etc. – no new adult/child toys, no new clothes, not junk). We could create something similar to the mortgage crisis. Message to federal leadership would be, “adopt our platform or we do not pay”. Again, key issues only! Maybe term limits for Congress, roll back on middle-income taxes with appropriate increases on the extra-wealthy, major anti-pollution legislation, reduced military spending and American belligerence … add your own. Mere voting will never work as anyone who has ever read either party’s campaign platform knows. Both parties are essentially the same.
Here’s an example of the Empires familias at work.
Smithsonian animation on WTC tower collapses on 9/11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzInIjD6nKw
Here’s it being refuted with a picture.
https://www.google.com/search?q=wtc+tower+collapse&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi45ODQv9jkAhUJilwKHb8bBeoQ_AUIEigC&biw=1920&bih=888#imgrc=w38yNaS7CcxdPM:
“decentralized guerrilla psywar against the institutions”. Right problem, wrong answer. A psy war would cost billions in communication costs. Here’s a solution for a tiny fraction of the cost. (Would love to see free speech loving lefties join the right in this war.) “New Political Atom Bomb Can Free America From Tyranny, Own and Stockpile Political Weapons Grade Plutonium Now at Pre Hiroshima Prices, Get Rich” https://medium.com/@PowerVotes/help-free-america-from-tyranny-de641755063d
What a load of “cristian” crap. A pomxi scheme at its best. Get lost capitalist infiltrator.
Awesome article. I think you nailed it right between the eyes.
Most working class people ALREADY know that we live in a fake democracy that is essentially a dictatorship of the rich, and they ALREADY know that the rich treat us like dirt, and they ALREADY know that the solution to our many consequent problems is to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor (i.e., making what I call an egalitarian revolution). What they don’t know is that they are the vast majority in feeling this way, not the hopelessly weak and small minority that the mass media try to make us think we are (by censoring all expressions of egalitarian revolutionary aspirations.)
Hundreds of people just in my little zip-code (02135, population 44,000) neighborhood inside Boston, MA, USA, have posed for publicly viewable photos holding a sign declaring their aim is egalitarian revolution ( see them at https://www.flickr.com/photos/182436693@N06/with/48717970343/ by–in some devices–clicking on the little ‘people’ icon at the bottom first) . This would not be possible if the ruling class propaganda was succeeding in making people support the status quo!!!
Yes, we need to change the narrative. But the KEY big lie that we need to expose as a lie is the idea that only a small and hence hopelessly weak minority want an egalitarian revolution. It is the hopelessness that we need to refute, not the supposed support for the status quo. We need to figure out ways (like the photos) to help people discover that they are part of a large and hence potentially powerful majority, not a hopelessly small and weak minority as the mass media work hard to make people think. This is what it takes for people to gain the confidence to start acting like the majority they really are instead of–as presently–being paralyzed by hopelessness.
This is a really important point. No one’s moving off the couch if they think everyone in their neighbourhood is a hopelessly lost servant to the establishment. And dunno about you, but I have to fight constantly against that idea.
I was just catching up on my reading at Black Agenda Report (https://blackagendareport.com/malcolm-russiagate-and-fbi), and by chance saw this quote:
“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses. The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” –Malcolm X
I don’t see this working until every other country on the planet and their respective oligarchical systems are exposed in their own way. If the US becomes a saintly nation some other nation(s) will take on the role of the narrative creators/enablers. Its a human failing and based on game theory. It is all built on lies everywhere. So, I would rather stay in a country that has stronger narrative shield generators…(ie the US) until we are able to leave the planet for good. But they will follow us everywhere so we just have to keep running…
jump off any cliff. you may get to another planet. the sooner the better.
Advocating resignation and defeatism.
Now, which cast would want the people to think like that? Let me think…
Well, there’s also waking-up-inside-the-Matrix, which sucks, because you just realize you woke up in this big, damned control-matrix, and you don’t have a schematic diagram of it, and nobody else is awake, and it sure didn’t stop working when you woke up in it.
But there you are…
How are you gonna’ get lunch today?
What’cha gonna’ do after lunch?
only, there’s no fucking matrix.
I don’t know if defeating anything, except direct attacks, is all that useful. As things stand, when we defeat one state we get another. Instead of head-on conflict, exciting as it may be, I recommend seduction, sabotage, subversion, as more practical alternatives.
To take another angle, see http://www.1freeworld.org/anaprax1.htm . Or, to boil it down to the old IWW slogan, ‘Build the new world in the shell of the old.’ Or better, grow the new world. There are already some people doing this: Food Not Bombs, community gardens not yet gentrified, free stores. This stuff may turn out to be important before the oncoming Collapse.
That isn’t intended to suggest people should not also spread the word. But I think it’s important to put something on the ground. And of course we should continue to oppose and undercut the War, which is evidently not only the ‘health of the state’ but the lifeblood of capitalism.
Let’s say the authority of the bourgeois ‘narrative’ is destroyed, their ability to manufacture consent is no more; in short they can no longer rule as before and the ruled can no longer be ruled as before. These are simply some of the necessary conditions for a revolution. The plutocrats and their state machine remain, armed to the teeth and fully prepared to use full repressive force to remain in place.
Without studying actual revolutions that have succeeded in overthrowing actual ruling classes, without understanding all the necessary conditions and the sufficient ones for a successful overthrow, then the rulers will remain.
From university professors to yellow press editors to shockjocks to pious reverends, one of the great tricks bourgeois ideologues use to discourage the proper study of revolutions is to say ‘Oh look at how that turned out, look and see what happens when you use violence to effect change. You get Napoleon, you get Stalin, you get totalitarianism.’ ‘These outcomes are always inevitable’, they intone. They’re not, but that’s always their ‘trump’ card, that’s the real, rotten core of their narrative control.
The only response is to seriously study how revolutions succeed in overthrowing the rulers; then how and why the aftermaths of revolutions haven’t gone as predicted; then how best to safeguard the gains of a revolution.
We live under the most entrenched and bloodthirsty ruling class in human history. They’ll never surrender their power peacefully just because they lose their narrative control. They’ll never surrender their power peacefully under any conditions. To think so shows that their narrative control is still effective, and to propound that delusion simply does their bidding.
When the majority understand that no ruling class in history has ever surrendered its power peacefully, then the central tenet of the rulers’ narrative control is all but over, and one necessary condition for revolution has been fulfilled. Until then, all bets are off.
I don’t believe I have ever read a more succinct explanation of our predicament than this article, Caitlin. Brilliant work, and a superb example for us to emulate! Thank you so much for the work you do, work which clearly demonstrates the empathy you have for your fellow human beings. The ruling sociopaths will never be able to genuinely demonstrate any such empathy for others, which is the whole problem with having them rule. We have to change this. We simply have to.
John Bolton is out; can Mr. Pompeo please be next?
Why were they hire in the first place?
My grandfather for many years fought against a TV set in his home. He was right though; the infernal machine destroyed this country and its family structure. Millions of human beings the world over can not survive life without their TV set. They are ” TV junkies ” need their daily fix every single day. I am afraid that there is nothing that is going to make them stop watching it, or believing all of the nonsense that comes out of it. Perhaps some really rich dude will set up a TV network for Ms Johnstone and set the world on fire!
A new film about the importance of protest and whistle-blowing is coming out soon about
Katharine Gun, the unknown whistle-blower behind the Iraq War (played by Keira Knightley).
Check it out the movie review on today’s The Intercept , which calls “Official Secrets” …”The Best Movie Ever Made About the Truth Behind the Iraq War (by Jon Schwarz)
Caitlin, you’re absolutely correct that you do what you do best, and everybody should do what they can do best, in order to bring the status quo down.
i find BDS the only thing that works and that which i can do with relative ease. each person know who their enemy is, each one decides how they BDS what and what they are willing to risk. little need to organize a movement, except spreading info about who owns and produces what, who is associated with whom doing what misdeeds, etc.
you look around and can find whom and what to BDS very easily. don’t buy, don’t participate, don’t endorse, don’t associate, etc etc etc. million ways to BDS the evil. put some fear in the evil.
“Without an effective propaganda machine, the empire cannot rule… Until then, the attack on establishment propaganda should be our foremost priority”…couldn’t agree more, Caitlin!! How to do it?? Keep on protesting in every conceivable manner is how I see it. Keep pouring it out…it is read by those we want to target! Proof is in the Globalists’ constant attempts to stomp out our protest! They can’t and know they can’t. Power is always in the hands of the people…when they finally get going and realizing it. Until then, keep writing, speaking out, making our dissatisfaction known. Once dissent stops, our TAKEOVER will be quick! We cannot let that happen! Thank you, Caitlin, and other activist writers, for giving those of us readers a chance to voice our protests, too.
Agreed, the purpose of propaganda in general is to suppress dissent. So the biggest thing we can do to challenge that is to show our dissent. For some reason, I see that different than protesting. Protesting to me seems to have a short duration. In contrast, dissent is in for the long campaign, perhaps a never ending campaign.
It seems to me to be embodied by the difference between OWS and the yellow vest movement.
OWS picked up their marbles and went home. The yellow vest movement seems to understand that there is no end to their campaign even when they have success.
The departure of John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor, may suggest a chink in the Empire’s armor.
“John has never seen a war he doesn’t like.”
— President Trump
Today, Sept 10, Canada’s national, taxpayer owned broadcaster, the CBC, told us how numerous cities have declared a “climate emergency” and that they will try to be carbon neutral by 2050.
Apparently “emergency” and 31 years can go hand in hand and most people just don’t think about how this can work??
Due to bullshit like this Canada is proceeding with 2 massive pipelines which will move about 90 million gallons of the worst dirtiest oil, per DAY, for the next 50 years. While at the same time our senior politicians tell us that the money from the export of this OIL will help fight climate change. Go figure??
I’ll guess .001%…..and that’s problem.
Good article Caitlin, I have been trying to do this for years now in my own way. I have been telling everyone to boycott the corporate news, don’t read it, don’t watch it on TV. If they get starved for ad dollars they will need to find a new business model. Unfortunately, most people seem unable to stop themselves. They agree that it is all lies, and that it just makes them angry to read or watch, but the corporate news folks know exactly how to hook people. I have found that many people I know (not all) are addicted to the news. They have to watch, even though they know it is BS. This keeps the ad dollars flowing, along with the propaganda. So my question is, how do we get people to break the habit of watching the propaganda shows?
get Trump elected again in 2020, and put worse candidates for the next 30 years. do whatever you can to make pretzels out of the Deep State narratives, while BDSing their toxic products from mortgages to cars. the status quo will be done by then, and the zombies will have no addictive propaganda to watch. think long term and look far ahead. there’s no quick easy fix.
Some truth that the mainstream medias won’t talk about are important to know. I reproduce this recent article by Paul Craig Roberts:
“Media Response to Engineering Report on WTC 7
Many readers have responded to my request to let me know if they come across a report in the presstitute media of the study concluding that WTC 7 fell by controlled demolition. At this time, the only known examples in the US media are a local TV station in Anchorage Alaska ( https://www.ktva.com/story/41015153/fire-did-not-cause-world-trade-center-building-7-collapse-uaf-study-suggests ) and a local newspaper in Fairbanks Alaska ( Fairbanks Daily News-Miner ).
The online site of the British newspaper Express provides this account: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1175375/9-11-world-trade-center-twin-towers-September-11-conspiracy-theories
Other readers report:
“There have been no news that I have seen in any paper in canada on this report.”
“I haven’t come across a single report on tv news, and I monitor it daily.”
Reports on the study are confined to a few alt-news internet sites.
So, here we have a stunning piece of news from experts and it is blacked out. What more proof do you need that you live in The Matrix where what you know is only what those in charge want you to know?”
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/09/10/media-response-to-engineering-report-on-wtc-7/
Similar to the days of Noah, we are living in a Matrix. And in this Matrix, the bad thing is that there seem to be no salvation.
Fortunately, according to many prophecies, the Second Coming of Jesus is very near and I pray the Rosary to hasten His Glorious return because I have really really seen enough bullshit.
Expose them – cripple their narrative – with humor !
https://youtu.be/PmCDxmZI3I8?list=PLrQu8dSg1bHbQ0fVv8CD8EFAk8hTInigg
https://youtu.be/iFkzJc7kJKc?list=PLrQu8dSg1bHbQ0fVv8CD8EFAk8hTInigg
Raise awareness for Julian Assange like this – effectively
https://youtu.be/1efOs0BsE0g?list=PLrQu8dSg1bHbQ0fVv8CD8EFAk8hTInigg
There was once some perception that responsible journalism involved a certain degree of actual research to determine the truth of matters being reported upon. A casual glimpse at the products of that profession today shows it is consumed by institutional propaganda and narrative control for which “truth” and the relative good or evil represented thereby is totally subjective regardless of whether the facts are obvious to any person having even a modicum of cognition available. Can one set aside their own inherent and subsequently developed biases even for a moment? The basic problem would seem to be with the processes of democracy, or what might pass for same and the overlords’ (who control mass media) need to maintain the illusion of free will regarding our “elected” leadership and resulting social policies. We can point out the lies and spin all day long but in the final analysis the true rulers of this world will yield only tokens enough to quiet the rabble from time to time. On the plus side, God forbid that insane self-serving leaders of herded rabble ever actually get control of things because they usually start off with murdering anyone who even slightly disagrees with their own ideology while building their own empire at the expense of everyone else. The idea for true success is to gradually shift the status quo, not blow it all up and start anew.
Beware of being “against” something, anything. You are much more effective by concentrating on what you are for.
“Everything furthers. Perseverance brings success.” (I Ching)
Want to see how to make effective propaganda ? – use ridicule, humor and satire. this Australian group are showing what really works – better than thousands of words of stale debate and endless argument that go nowhere. Expose the Elite, show them in their underwear. Power to the people.
https://youtu.be/0yzeOqV7eKI
https://youtu.be/J6vvpQEaRdk
https://youtu.be/cOmdkN6MOwU
Seen these Caitlin?
While the propaganda wars are being dominated by the 1 percenters, one thing I notice about people is if they perceive themselves to be fat, sassy, and well-fed with adequate possessions and money security, they are more likely to NOT listen to alternate suggestions. Materialism is their sword and shield, they use it well. I’ve talked to many successful people and the vast majority are secure with what they know and why should they change? To them the world is the immediate structure that cradles them in this false security. Alas, I’ve been hammered by these people a zillion times for my “extreme” views. If one reads the right alternate publications, one can learn vast volumes of truths. Will it set you free? Not yet and not immediately. But, truth forms the terra firma in getting people to learn and deal with truth and it becomes refreshing and takes on new value for those who are open to it.
Great article, Caitlyn. You hit the ground running are are to be commended.
Caitlin wrote: “not with lies and propaganda, but with truth.”
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Yes, and it often takes courage to be different, think by oneself according to the facts, and counter the mass brainwashing by pro-war corporate media, which is lying non-stop. Like in this remarkable video, where we can see how Tulsi has the right stuff:
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“Every single time for three years, this is where the propaganda comes in. . . . I will not apologize to you or to anyone, anyone, — let me finish, let me finish — for doing all that I can, all that I can, to prevent our country from continuing to make these perpetual wrong decisions that have taken a toll on the lives of my brothers and sisters in uniform. I will continue to do all that I can to make sure that we end these wasteful regime-change wars that have taken such a toll on all of us and have made our country less safe.”
— Tulsi Gabbard talking straight to NBC News host on national TV
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Tulsi Shuts Down MSNBC Host Mid-Smear — The Jimmy Dore Show
Many thanks for your very interesting piece on propaganda and your very pertinent idea for waging anti propaganda and anti psychological warfare in order to oppose the establishment dominant narrative.
Today thanks to the web which is a formidable tool, the corrupt politicians have lost the monopole of propagandizing the people. That is why, since the advent of the web, the governments everywhere in the world are desperately seeking censorship and restriction of dissident voice
thanks to the web,not only it become possible to wage a counter propaganda inside a nation or inside a continent, but it become possible to do so at worldwide et international level. For example, I’m now based in Paris and i’m reading your piece, it is very easy to put your piece on twitter, facebook and my website where French visitors can be feed with original ideas and reflections coming from somebody based in Australia, United States, Germany or elsewhere for example
Thanks to the web, il will become possible to wage International counter propaganda and international anti psychological warfare initiated by imperialist powers in ordre to prepare psychologically and mentally the public opinion before invading, killing and destroying nations and peoples as it has been the case since 11/9, 18 years ago
Since the advent of internet, the US and its satellites all over the world wage their wars not by sending their own troops and soldiers but by unleashing paid mercenaries and Jihadists financed, trained and armed with western weapons. By doing, the western corrupt governments can continue to wage, invade and destroy discretely, far from the regards of their public opinion, other nations and other nations in Africa, the middle east, latin america, where the multinationals and the corporate are coveting mineral and agricole resources
for more comments and news on anti establishment propaganda and psychological warfare , my twitter @elmir1975,
Two very useful references in order to understand techniques and tools of propaganda ,
Edward Berney, Propaganda, How to manipulate opinion in democracy
Serge Tchakotine, The rape of the masses by political propaganda
For a week or do the BBC were calling MPs, who were trying to stop PM Johnson from forcing his way over Leaving the Union, the Rebel Alliance.
…But already they are running anti-Corbyn/Corbyn is a Disgrace stories.
I am 71 years in age. I learned very early (age 17) that what you say is true. My method of overcoming the psycho-narrative was simply to stop purchasing and/or reading main stream media. That was not so simple in the early days as alternatives were few. Mostly I cultivated a broad range of contacts with whom to share information. That is much easier to do now but will become more difficult as the emerging tech-oligarchs begin to assert their power.
When I’m in a position to speak, and be heard. I speak. I spread the word of others who know their stuff.
So many brave others. Slowly it works. Yes there’s the choir, and those they oppose, but the vast majority know next to nothing, have never really inquired, and therefore they remain imprisoned in ignorance, and yet …sometimes ready to accept the possibility of another narrative. This is how the numbers gradually grow. One day there will be a tipping point. Then, all it takes is for a child to cry ” the Emperor has no clothes” and suddenly the crowd gets it. The spell is broken, and the King is literally exposed for the vain prick he is.
There is little that one can actually ‘do’. So few resources, so little time, so many other duties. But when we can, we can seek like-minded comrades, and speak together. In time the whisper becomes a murmur, the murmur becomes conversation, conversation becomes a shout , a demand… for truth and justice, for real hope, for real change. And if necessary ….a call to arms.
Forums like this are playing a vital role. Make no mistake… our process may be slow, but it is thorough and unstoppable.
Never give up, Ms Johnstone; humanity needs you!
Dear Caitlin, I am deeply troubled by your apparent acceptance of the “climate catastrophe” narrative. You encourage us to examine narratives, propaganda and deception in the media but you have swallowed the climate hysteria hook line and sinker. Stop and do some checking up on the scientists who continue to study the planet and its systems. Here is a good p[lace to start.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/09/07/there-is-no-climate-emergency/
I’m trying to find where Caitlin has even mentioned the word “climate” in this article.
LOL. And I bet if you read a cookbook you wouldn’t find that many mentions of auto rebuilding either.
Bravo!!!!!
I wish I could have coffee with you every Tuesday at 2:00 pm and talk about solutions.
“As long as the plutocrat-controlled media are able to manufacture consent for the status quo upon which those plutocrats built their respective empires…”
I humbly have to disagree with you Caitlin.
In France, most of the people in the “yellow vests” movement do not trust the mainstream medias at all.
In a way, the yellow vests have made the demonstration that in the West, it is of no importance to disagree or not with the mainstream medias because the State and the police are still the main enforcers of the statu quo, the same way it was in the days of Thomas More in the 16th Century.
I like to quote Thomas More in his book “Utopia”:
“Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all that they have so ill-acquired, and then, that they may engage the poor to toil and labour for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they please; and if they can but prevail to get these contrivances established by the show of public authority, which is considered as the representative of the whole people, then they are accounted laws; yet these wicked men, after they have, by a most insatiable covetousness, divided that among themselves with which all the rest might have been well supplied…”
The difference between the 16th Century and the 21st is that we are now according to many prophecies very near the Second Coming of Jesus. It could be any day now and I pray the Rosary to hasten His Glorious return because I have really really seen enough of all the bullshit.
If somebody likes the world as it is now, he surely has a problem.
I completely agree with you Caitlin.
Your article also address those annoying people who use the line, “But what are you doing to make a difference in the world?” They seem to do so as a way of ridiculing and belittling people.
As you point out, the mind set needs to change first. This takes honest communication and information – lots of it. At the moment this is the “doing” that needs to be done.
None of us know what happens next – we just need to wait and see.
Certainly, the fiction of a two party system is wearing very thin! This needs to be our focus in the run up to the election.
The climate emergency is much worse than the public is lead to believe. The scientist don’t want to be seen as wide eyed alarmist but that is what is needed right now. 9 million sq miles of permafrost is melting in the arctic, an area the size of china, the US and most of Canada! Melting releases CO2, methane, potent green house gases, but also anthrax! There is enough carbon to double the amount in the atmosphere. We could tip into a run away green house effect, which seems to be what happened to Venus!
I support Bernie, not because he will save us because he can’t do it on his own. He sees clearly what needs to be done and with our help, we can remake our country while seeking a path to a sustainable future. No other candidate has that agenda.
The narrative managers are working overtime and we can do our part by pointing it out at every turn.
Caitlin, keep up the good work and I appreciate your spirit and insights!
Well, the anthrax, would probably solve the problem of industrial pollution and so many other ills of society; maybe we should embrace it.
I read your tweets that request questions from followers, but I don’t have a Twitter account. Please, in your next show, address the subject of enhanced interrogation of Julian Assange in HMP system. I can’t stop visualizing Bloody vaGina Haspel taking round-trip luxury flights to Belmarsh with a water-tight helmet of lampreys in her bag. When the light of a trillion suns penetrates your closed eyelids, it’ll be because Jack Jim From The Office Ryan didn’t crack Venezuela’s launch codes in time.
Although I like the concept of psywar-counter-propaganda guerrilla warfare in the world of political ideas, a challenge lies in this: Most of this stuff, great as it is, is just preaching to the choir…not backed by enough power to be an effective counter-propaganda machine that gets the attention of the sheep.
Just brainstorming here: Seems to me that the challenge is to find ideas for a strategy that engages the elites in a way that’s not threatening to them so that they will put their power behind policies that will be better for all of us, including them? Something like letting the elites know we don’t hate them but we do hate their behavior…loving the sinner and hating the sin? Can we show in scientific, not just emotion-evoking, ways that doing policy X (whatever change we may want to see) will benefit all?
Do we want to be perceived as attacking the elites or attacking basic human problems that afflict us all?
Also, all of us do need to keep in mind that the most important thing each of us can do is changing our own lifestyles do de-support the wrong behaviors of elites and to support better ways. especially resource-sustainable living…Try to reduce our own consumption levels and de-cooperate as much as we can by the way we live. Simplifying your lifestyle is the ultimate rebellion…being more like the Na’vi in “Avatar” who didn’t care about having blue jeans and lite beer?
Hmmm. you have said that they control the narrative, and that we must smash that, but the population will hold on to it even during it’s death throes, if there is no replacement narrative for them to believe in. We must create the new narrative, and only when that is 100% convincing, will the general population migrate from the old narrative to the new one. We old hippies have been trying to create that new narrative since the 70s, evolving through hippy to survivalism, to new age, to conspiracy, and we now have a pretty sophisticated new narrative, as each of those phases added value and matured.
But you kiddy winks are not tying it all together in your own minds, believing in it and LIVING it. Until YOU live the new narrative, and make sure that everyone who sees you living that narrative is jealous of you and wants to join you, it will not happen. Its not about talking or preaching or educating or about changing others in any way. It truly is about “be the change you want to see”. And that will have to be down to the younger generations having the courage to live the new narrative. We old hippies cannot do it for you any more. Many of us ARE living it, but we are invisible to you youngsters who have dismissed us out of your awareness. Open you minds, look around you, stop hating, and learn from each of the older generations, from the old hippies down. Get off your lazy scared arses and start living the new narrative.
Christine, I agree with you 100%!
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I just turned 69, which means I was born in 1950 and, therefore, turned 18 (draftable age) in 1968, during the US’s genocide in SE Asia for corporate profit. Young people were coming home in coffins for corporate profit.
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This was a desperate situation, especially for (how can I put it nowadays without offending anyone?) young people who had penises and testicles, that almost literally forced them to seek alternative ways of living. The so-called “counter-culture” movement of the ’60s and ’70s was IMO born out of this desperation.
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Twin Oaks community was founded in the 1960s and still exists today:
https://www.twinoaks.org/
I visited Twin Oaks twice in the 1970s and was for a short period of time a member of a spin-off community, East Wind, which was at first located in West Brookfield, Mass, but was re-located to near Hardenville/Gainesville, Missouri. It too still exists today.
https://www.eastwindblog.co/
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IMO, the “design” of these communities offers a viable alternative to the fatally-flawed, corporate-controlled arrangement — The Matrix – that the vast majority of people live in today. The people in these communities “live the new narrative”. They live a rather simple life that no doubt many people reading Caitlin’s articles would find very interesting. But they’re likely not going to read anything like that on this web site because, if history is a guide, Tim and Caitlin are not going to devote any of their writing to describing a detailed alternative to The Matrix that they describe so well and criticize so much. They’re going to continue to do something else.
“What I do advocate, over and over and over again in as many different ways as I can come up with, is a decentralized guerrilla psywar against the institutions which enable the powerful to manipulate the way ordinary people think, act and vote.”
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IMO, the effect of Tim and Caitlin’s above strategy on their readers, if effective, will be what we have been seeing on the streets of Hong Kong – young, “woke” people who are marching in the streets and copying a scene from the 1970s movie “Network” – shouting “I’m mad has hell and I’m not going to take it any more!”. The problem is that these woke folk have absolutely no idea just exactly HOW THEY WANT THINGS TO BE! All they know is that they want all the fatal flaws of the present arrangement – flaws that result in their lives and Mother Earth’s fragile biosphere becoming increasingly unlivable – to simply “stop”.
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These young people cannot describe a better arrangement because they never have contact with anybody or any web site that describes in great detail that better arrangement. (Anyway, such people or web sites are too fucking boring, man! Nobody wants to describe a better world. “We aren’t qualified to do that.” “Experts” should be doing that for us. We’re going to just sit around bitching, meditating and examining our inner selves. That’s the magic formula.)
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IMO, the brave Hong Kong kids are going to realize the fundamental deficiency of their present strategy very soon. But maybe I’m wrong and Utopia will soon be reached in Hong Kong and the protesters’ shining example will spread throughout the world.
Nice One, Caitlin!
There might be all sorts of reasons why Extinction Rebellion might fade away, but at the moment it’s mobilising massive numbers of young people who absolutely oppose the status quo. IMHO this is deeper than Occupy, which worked with people roughly ten years older that the young people rallying in School Strikes etc. Will their “radicalisation” stick? We don’t know yet, but being part of a rebellion that’s millions strong is pretty inspiring and empowering, particularly when here in Australia the ER and School Strike young people are seeing real results. Corporates are allowing staff to attend the strikes. AFAIK that’s NEVER happened before. So, the revolution belong to them, not those of us who for all sorts of valid reasons have not previously been successful in making a meaningful difference to how the world works.
And, I meant to say that our job is to support the ER and School Strike people in any way we can. Attend the strikes for a start.
I tend to agree with what you say, Caitlin.
In the first place, we have very powerful opposition out there. They are the elitest of the elite in $$$ terms and most of them (and there are very few) have been there for a long time – generations. They are educated. They know what they are doing. To achieve their objectives they control the money, they control the industry, they control the media.
One of the tactics is to create disasters around the world on a continuous basis. There are so many at any one time that the average citizen does not know where to focus her/his energies. In my mail today, I have messages seeking my help against Palestinian settlement clearances, floods in southern Laos, wildfires in Greece, victims of Dorian, World Beyond War, justice for Julian Assange … There are so many things to be done that we are flummoxed and that tends to de-energise us.
That has to be the plan. Get [people running in every which direction and scatter the energies.
One difficulty is knowing what their objective is. It seems that they are trying to create circumstances that will hugely depopulate the world. Will this be to take it back to another era? or to project it into an era as yet unthought of (by us)?
This is important because, we can see the tactics, but we do not know the strategy or the objective, and it makes it hard to fight.
The core of the problem in the US is that in 2012 Obama nullified the Smith Mundt Act – an act which made it illegal to propagandize or intentionally lie to the American public. Until 2012 the US could propagandize any foreign nation, but not its own citizens. Given this fact, we can now assume that every word uttered or published by a federal agency or the white house is a lie. We now have the Pentagon censoring the internet and deeming all dissent as “conspiracy theory” (not only that, but conspiracy theory that promotes terrorism.) ergo, all dissenters are now ‘terrorists’. connect those dots. Nothing we hear from the government is true, but to question it labels a person as a terrorist. talk about ‘controlling the narrative’.
I read H.R. 5736. Nowhere does it say what you allege.
What exactly is the true purpose and intent of H.R. 5736? Like most things Congress passes, it’s not at all clear. It would take a great deal of study and research for a college educated person to figure out what we are being sold here, and the obfuscation appears to be deliberate. These are the kinds of convoluted games sociopaths like to play, and that makes me very suspicious.
Dearest Catlin – I enjoy your posts and agree with them. Sadly, you preach to the choir. What percentage of Americans do you estimate read and understand what you write? As an educated American, I’ll guess 5%. The other 95% are either too dull (65%) or too invested in the “narrative” to care. Keep it up. Some of us do listen and understand. America is, sort of, a democracy, meaning those who get it are far outnumbered. The U.S. is a corpocracy, nearly a fascist state. Most of us are brainwashed from day one by teachers who are similarly brainwashed and/or dull.
I’ll guess .001%…..and that’s problem.
Wow. Might be my absolute favorite post yet, and that is saying something. Thank you, Caitlin. The length and format are perfect for sharing. Even more, I feel the heat you are generating both as comforting warmth, and as a burn to get my own butt in gear and work a little harder.
I’m a senior and most of my friends and acquaintances say they are Progressive. However, they listen to mainstream news regularly and love Maddow. I have finally settled on bringing attention to whatever piece of information I am sharing and making sure I finish with a hopefully thought provoking question. It seems to work occasionally.
Yes Yes and Yes! A decentralized guerrilla was on our institutional narratives Is it really so hard to comprehend? It seems some folks are just unable to let go of the savior President fantasy that will save us all or their beloved place in in the partisan bickering partyhouse. Life will not be the same without the great tangible enemies on the other side of the aisle preventing the good guys breaking through and leading us down the garden path. So very dramatic and completely vapid at the same time