In just the last few weeks, Liz Truss, Britain’s new prime minister, has been denounced by critics as a “fascist.” So has Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s newly elected prime minister. Along with all Republicans in Congress, Texas and Florida GOP Govs. Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis and, of course, former President Donald Trump. Every one of the tens of thousands of “MAGA Republicans” who attend Trump rallies, too.
Dangerous fascists, for that matter, all of whom critics say need to be shut up.
Truss is a fascist because she wants to cut taxes. Meloni is a fascist, and getting banned from several social media platforms, because she gave a rousing speech endorsing God, family and country. What a dangerous tyrant. Republicans in Congress are fascists because they support work for welfare and are trying to block the Green New Deal.
“What is so infuriating about these slurs is that the Left doesn’t even understand what a fascist is.” Hillary Clinton said after a recent Trump rally in Ohio, “I remember as a young student … I’d watch newsreels and I’d see this guy standing up there ranting and raving, and people shouting and raising their arms.” Trump’s defeated 2016 Democratic presidential rival was referring to Hitler.
“You saw the rally in Ohio the other night,” added Clinton, the former first lady, senator and secretary of state. “Trump is there ranting and raving for more than an hour, and you have these rows of young men with their arms raised.” She didn’t quite say it, but the implied message was clear: These crazy Trump supporters wanted to say, “Heil Hitler.”
At least President Joe Biden doesn’t call his political adversaries fascists. They are only “semifascists.” What a relief.
Aren’t these the same people who have urged raising the level of civil discourse? Wasn’t Biden supposed to “unify” the country with Trump out of the picture?
What is so infuriating about these slurs is that the Left doesn’t even understand what a fascist is. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, fascism is “a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government.” The Britannica Dictionary defines fascism as “a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government.”
Let all that sink in for a minute. Who are the fascists here? A government that “controls the lives of the people.” Let’s see — we have a group of politicians who shut down schools, businesses, restaurants and churches during COVID-19. A government that is now telling us what kind of light bulbs we can put in our homes, what temperature we can set our thermostat in our living rooms, what kind of car we can buy and what kind of drugs we need to be inserted into our arms.
Who is the leader who is vastly supersizing our centralized government? Biden and congressional Democrats have already spent $4 trillion expanding nearly all the power structures of government in Washington. If this isn’t fascistic, what is?
But here’s the rub. The definition of “fascism” has gradually been evolving over time. Nowadays, according to the Collins Dictionary, fascism “is a set of right-wing political beliefs that includes strong controls of society and the economy by the state” (emphasis added).
By this definition, leftists can’t be accused of being fascists because they want to use government for virtuous ends, while the Right wants to use government to further enrich the rich, spread racism and deny science.
What we have here is a clinical case of “projecting.” Democrats and other leftist parties around the world accuse the Right of wanting to expand government powers when that is precisely the overriding objective of the modern-day American Left.
It is prototypically fascistic. Elevate race and skin color into the public debate. Trample civil liberties. Squash those who disagree with the reigning government. Partner up Big Government with Big Business and micromanage the economy through dictates from the central planners. Put your political enemies in handcuffs and jail without a trial. Trample over the traditional guardrails that were installed to protect liberty — by changing voting rules, ending the 60-vote filibuster in the Senate and discrediting and trying to pack the Supreme Court. Declare everything, including COVID-19 and climate change, an existential threat to justify more power to the politicians.
So what is a fascist really? The Left says it is anyone who opposes what they want to do to expand government.
But the real definition of a fascist is a leader who wants to exploit governmental power to suppress the basic liberties of individuals. It is the partnership of government and private industry for political power and monetary gain. To find it in modern-day America, the folks at the (Biden) White House may want to look in the mirror.
Western politicians and scientists seem to be under the spell of Scientism – the subjective bias of applying science to confirm personal beliefs and cultural policies. This article is a compilation of case studies providing substantial evidence demonstrating that scientists are only seeking evidence that confirm their pre-existing biases instead of describing reality as it actually exists.
CASE STUDY 1: Refusing to Accept Substantial Contrary Evidence
Dear greenies, imagine being so intellectually cooked you’re angry to find out the world isn’t actually going to end Instead of welcoming a report finding no statistical evidence for a global climate emergency, doomsayers are instead screaming bloody murder about a perceived media conspiracy.
Authored by Gemma Tognini Gemma Tognini SkyNews.com.au Contributor and Corporate Affairs Specialist
In case you missed it, there was some terrific news that broke over the weekend.
Really good, in fact.
Results of an international study, delivered by leading scientists from the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics in conjunction with the prestigious University of Milan, found no statistical, data-linked evidence of any kind that the earth (and we earthlings) are in the grips of a climate emergency.
None. Let me repeat that. Nothing to see here, move along.
The Australian’s Graham Lloyd says a new paper has found that it is “not possible” to detect a climate emergency. “They don’t say there isn’t an increase in temperature, they don’t say that it will never be the case,” he said. “But as things stand, it is not possible to see that footprint there.”
The study provided a long-term analysis of a range of extreme weather events such as heat, drought, floods, hurricanes and fires and found no clear positive trends.
This is good news – great news even!
You’d think this would be something to celebrate. You’d think this would be news sharing.
What I saw instead, was a bizarre reaction from many (most, on my observation at least) were of the political left and or Greens, whose response was rage.
Rage that an esteemed scientist would dare to find the earth is in fact in very good health and we are not hurtling towards oblivion.
No wonder these folk get called climate doomsayers. No wonder it looks and sounds like a cult.
Instead of talking about how fabulous that there isn’t any statistical or other evidence of a climate crisis, they scream about media conspiracies.
Imagine being so intellectually cooked that you’re angry the world isn’t going to end.
To me, the findings of this study come as no surprise.
For half a century, there have been predictions of a looming climate-related disaster.
For half a century, they have failed to materialise (another thing to celebrate, but that’s just me).
Here’s a quick snapshot of some of the best.
In 1970, the Boston Globe ran predictions of a global ice age that would consume us all by the year 2000.
In 2008, Good Morning America ran stories predicting most of New York City would be under water by 2015 due to rising sea levels.
And don’t forget 2000, when the UK’s Independent ran on a story that claimed British children would never see snow again within a few short years.
And of course, the various predictions of Prof. Tim Flannery, including but not limited to telling us back in 2007 that “even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and river systems”.
If you reacted to the results of this Italian study with anything other than happiness then may I kindly suggest seeking professional help.
Importantly, the study’s authors aren’t saying we can just sit back and enjoy our existing energy sources without further revision.
But what they are saying is that it needs to be done in context.
Imagine that, a sensible response that won’t plunge the country further into an energy crisis.
The EU didn’t just miraculously decide that gas and nuclear are renewables for fun.
Have a look at what’s going on in Britain, Italy, Germany and other parts of the EU.
Those in the Senate who are high fiving themselves over the Albanese government’s legislated climate targets, the Teal Brigade and yes, the Greens.
Best heed the bell that’s been tolled here.
They may be basking in the afterglow right now but it doesn’t take much to go from hero to villain – especially when Australian families will be looking for someone to blame.
CASE STUDY 2: Denigrating Opponents of the Status Quo
A psychological study analysing 390 climate change sceptics denigrates them for confused thinking and diagnoses them with “denialism”. Contrary to expectations, the study revealed that sceptics were more likely to have higher analytical skills than the general public. Instead of further research into why this was so, it was generally conceded that sceptics were unaware of climate modelling projections.
CASE STUDY 3: Unnecessary Sacrifice and Societal Change
Green Ideology, supported by biased, narrow minded Scientism, will seek to transform society no matter the personal or financial cost.
UK may ‘go back to pre-industrial revolution’ times as energy crisis worsens
Brexit movement leader Nigel Farage says former UK prime minister Boris Johnson was the “high priest of net zero” during his time – even as the former leader lashed out at energy policy.
“What nuclear power gives you is baseload but for us to build a major new nuclear facility in Suffolk on the east coast of England – which is what Boris was doing on that day – it’ll be at least 12 years before that’s in production,” he told Sky News host Chris Kenny.
“By that time, we may well have economically have gone back to pre the Industrial Revolution because we won’t have any hot water, we won’t have any computers.”
Europe’s energy crisis has ‘just been getting worse’
Sky News host Chris Kenny says Europe’s energy crisis has been worsening as the world mourns Queen Elizabeth II.
“Crippling power bills are forcing manufacturers to close their doors for a couple of days each week, standing down staff,” he said.
Mr Kenny said parts of Germany have banned hot showers at gyms and swimming pools as well as portable air conditioners and heaters and Paris has resorted to turning off the Eiffel Tower’s lights early.
“And in Britain, millions of businesses will have their power bills capped for six months, to help them stay afloat,” he said.
“Boris Johnson, in one of his final speeches as PM, hit the nail on the head, identifying nuclear as the solution, while calling out weak poltictions for dropping the ball.”
CASE STUDY 4: Inconsistencies in Confirmed Public Information
Statistics are easily confirmed and denied to suit the political necessities of a particular time period. For instance, carbon dioxide forms 0.04% of the atmosphere. 97% is produced naturally while 3% was produced by humans. Of this 3% produced, a small nation such as Australia contributes only 1.3% out of all of the CO2 produced by humans, which is negligible. Facts are ethereal and modelling changes to suit cultural and political bias. Sea levels have not changed over the previous 70 years, as has been confirmed by historic records and photographs.
By Josh Boak, Zeke Miller, posted September 2, 2022 in National News.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — President Joe Biden charged in a prime-time address that the “extreme ideology” of Donald Trump and his adherents “threatens the very foundation of our republic,” as he summoned Americans of all stripes to help counter what he sketched as dark forces within the Republican Party trying to subvert democracy.
In his speech Thursday night (Sept. 1) at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, Biden unleashed the trappings of the presidency in an indictment of Trump and what he said has become the dominant strain of the opposition party. His broadside came barely two months before Americans head to the polls in bitterly contested midterm elections that Biden calls a crossroads for the nation.
“Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal,” he said before an audience of hundreds, raising his voice over pro-Trump protesters outside the building where the nation’s founding was debated. He said he wasn’t condemning the 74 million people who voted for Trump in 2020 but added, “There’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans,” using the acronym for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.
The explicit effort by Biden to marginalize Trump and his followers marks a sharp recent turn for the president, who preached his desire to bring about national unity in his inaugural address.
“President Biden’s speech to the nation last night was more inflammatory than healing,” said Daniel Darling, director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, in an email to Baptist Press. “For a President who campaigned on unity and healing the country, he continues to govern in a way that is deeply polarizing. It was a campaign speech disguised as an official word from the commander-in-chief.”
Delivering a preemptive rebuttal from Scranton, Pennsylvania, where Biden was born, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said it is the Democratic president, not Republicans, trying to divide Americans.
“In the past two years, Joe Biden has launched an assault on the soul of America, on its people, on its laws, on its most sacred values,” McCarthy said. “He has launched an assault on our democracy. His policies have severely wounded America’s soul, diminished America’s spirit and betrayed America’s trust.”
Asked on Friday if he considered all Trump supporters a threat to the country, Biden said, “I don’t consider any Trump supporter a threat to the country.”
He added: “I do think anyone who calls for the use of violence, fails to condemn violence when it’s used, refuses to acknowledge when an election has been won, insists on changing the way in which the rules to count votes, that is a threat to democracy.”
He said that when people voted for Trump, “they weren’t voting for attacking the Capitol. They weren’t voting for overruling the election. They were voting for a philosophy he put forward.” Last week, he compared the “MAGA philosophy” to “semi-fascism.”
“Equality and democracy are under assault” in the U.S., Biden charged in the speech, casting Trump and his backers in the GOP as a menace to the nation’s system of government, its standing abroad and its citizens’ way of life.
Trump and his supporters “promote authoritarian leaders and they fan the flames of political violence,” he said. They “are determined to take this country backwards.”
“Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love,” he said.
Red lights illuminated the brick of Independence Hall, as the Marine Band played “Hail to the Chief” and a pair of Marine sentries stood at parade rest in the backdrop. Still, the major broadcast television networks did not carry the address live.
“His use of the symbols of the American military, his attempt to portray half the country as irredeemable fascists, and the bizarre red backdrop did not convey a leader wishing to heal but divide,” Darling said. “It was especially appalling to see the pro-life movement–of which the President used to be a member–portrayed as enemies of democracy.
“What America needs in this moment is a president willing to help heal our deep divides, to resist the election-year urge to consider his ideological adversaries as enemies of the state, and to ratchet down the rhetoric coming from the White House. We are at a dangerous moment, where the incentives on all sides are toward demonization, where partisans seem increasingly eager to engage in political violence. Preserving democracy requires cool heads and warm hearts, not cheap campaign rhetoric.
“For Christians, this is a moment of opportunity, to both display courage in advocating for transcendent truths and civility in seeing even those who disagree with us as image-bearers of the Almighty. And should pray for leaders willing to do the same.”
Iowa GOP chair Jeff Kaufman said in a statement that Biden was using the tactics of an authoritarian regime, “trying to turn his political opponents into an enemy of the state.”
The video below demonstrates how highly paid consultants are infiltrating governments around the world to endorse a radical woke world view of gender. The more radical the change, the more highly awarded the advisor. It seems that something sinister is whispering to the governments of the world.
2 Corinthians 11:3
3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
One of the hallmarks of democratic society is a healthy, free-flowing media ecosystem.
In times past, that media ecosystem would include various mass media outlets, from newspapers to cable TV networks. Today, the internet and social media platforms have greatly expanded the scope and reach of communication within society.
Of course, journalism plays a key role within that ecosystem. High quality journalism and the unprecedented transparency of social media keeps power structures in check—and sometimes, these forces can drive genuine societal change. Reporters bring us news from the front lines of conflict, and uncover hard truths through investigative journalism.
That said, as Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley and Carmen Ang detail below, these positive impacts are sometimes overshadowed by harmful practices and negative externalities occurring in the media ecosystem.
The graphic below is an attempt to catalog problems within the media ecosystem as a basis for discussion. Many of the problems are easy to understand once they’re identified. However, in some cases, there is an interplay between these issues that is worth digging into. Below are a few of those instances.
Explicit Bias vs. Implicit Bias Broadly speaking, bias in media breaks down into two types: explicit and implicit.
Publishers with explicit biases will overtly dictate the types of stories that are covered in their publications and control the framing of those stories. They usually have a political or ideological leaning, and these outlets will use narrative fallacies or false balance in an effort to push their own agenda.
Unintentional filtering or skewing of information is referred to as implicit bias, and this can manifest in a few different ways. For example, a publication may turn a blind eye to a topic or issue because it would paint an advertiser in a bad light. These are called no fly zones, and given the financial struggles of the news industry, these no fly zones are becoming increasingly treacherous territory.
Misinformation vs. Disinformation Both of these terms imply that information being shared is not factually sound. The key difference is that misinformation is unintentional, and disinformation is deliberately created to deceive people.
Fake news stories, and concepts like deepfakes, fall into the latter category. We broke down the entire spectrum of fake news and how to spot it, in a previous infographic.
Simplify, Simplify Mass media and social feeds are the ultimate Darwinistic scenario for ideas.
Through social media, stories are shared widely by many participants, and the most compelling framing usually wins out. More often than not, it’s the pithy, provocative posts that spread the furthest. This process strips context away from an idea, potentially warping its meaning.
Video clips shared on social platforms are a prime example of context stripping in action. An (often shocking) event occurs, and it generates a massive amount of discussion despite the complete lack of context.
This unintentionally encourages viewers to stereotype the persons in the video and bring our own preconceived ideas to the table to help fill in the gaps.
Members of the media are also looking for punchy story angles to capture attention and prove the point they’re making in an article. This can lead to cherrypicking facts and ideas. Cherrypicking is especially problematic because the facts are often correct, so they make sense at face value, however, they lack important context.
Simplified models of the world make for compelling narratives, like good-vs-evil, but situations are often far more complex than what meets the eye.
The News Media Squeeze It’s no secret that journalism is facing lean times. Newsrooms are operating with much smaller teams and budgets, and one result is ‘churnalism’. This term refers to the practice of publishing articles directly from wire services and public relations releases.
Churnalism not only replaces more rigorous forms of reporting—but also acts as an avenue for advertising and propaganda that is harder to distinguish from the news.
The increased sense of urgency to drive revenue is causing other problems as well. High-quality content is increasingly being hidden behind paywalls.
The end result is a two-tiered system, with subscribers receiving thoughtful, high-quality news, and everyone else accessing shallow or sensationalized content. That everyone else isn’t just people with lower incomes, it also largely includes younger people. The average age of today’s paid news subscriber is 50 years old, raising questions about the future of the subscription business model.
For outlets that rely on advertising, desperate times have called for desperate measures. User experience has taken a backseat to ad impressions, with ad clutter (e.g. auto-play videos, pop-ups, and prompts) interrupting content at every turn. Meanwhile, in the background, third-party trackers are still watching your every digital move, despite all the privacy opt-in prompts.
How Can We Fix the Problems with Media? With great influence comes great responsibility. There is no easy fix to the issues that plague news and social media. But the first step is identifying these issues, and talking about them.
The more media literate we collectively become, the better equipped we will be to reform these broken systems, and push for accuracy and transparency in the communication channels that bind society together.
* * *
Visual Capitalist is raising funds to build The VC App – the first of its kind, combining verifiable and transparent data with beautiful, memorable images. Back them now.
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice. “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
– Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”
We are living in a world where the degree of disinformation and outright lying has reached such a state of affairs that, possibly for the first time ever, we see the majority of the western world starting to question their own and surrounding level of sanity. The increasing frenzied distrust in everything “authoritative” mixed with the desperate incredulity that “everybody couldn’t possibly be in on it!” is slowly rocking many back and forth into a tighter and tighter straight jacket. “Question everything” has become the new motto, but are we capable of answering those questions?
Presently the answer is a resounding no.
The social behaviourist sick joke of having made everyone obsessed with toilet paper of all things during the start of what was believed to be a time of crisis, is an example of how much control they have over that red button labelled “commence initiation of level 4 mass panic”.
And can the people be blamed? After all, if we are being lied to, how can we possibly rally together and point the finger at the root of this tyranny, aren’t we at the point where it is everywhere?
As Goebbels infamously stated,
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State [under fascism].”
And here we find ourselves today, at the brink of fascism. However, we have to first agree to forfeit our civil rights as a collective before fascism can completely dominate. That is, the big lie can only succeed if the majority fails to call it out, for if the majority were to recognise it for what it is, it would truly hold no power.
The Battle for Your Mind “Politicians, Priests, and psychiatrists often face the same problem: how to find the most rapid and permanent means of changing a man’s belief…The problem of the doctor and his nervously ill patient, and that of the religious leader who sets out to gain and hold new converts, has now become the problem of whole groups of nations, who wish not only to confirm certain political beliefs within their boundaries, but to proselytize the outside world.”
– William Sargant “Battle of the Mind”
It had been commonly thought in the past, and not without basis, that tyranny could only exist on the condition that the people were kept illiterate and ignorant of their oppression. To recognise that one was “oppressed” meant they must first have an idea of what was “freedom”, and if one were allowed the “privilege” to learn how to read, this discovery was inevitable.
If education of the masses could turn the majority of a population literate, it was thought that the higher ideas, the sort of “dangerous ideas” that Mustapha Mond for instance expresses in “The Brave New World”, would quickly organise the masses and revolution against their “controllers” would be inevitable. In other words, knowledge is freedom, and you cannot enslave those who learn how to “think”.
However, it hasn’t exactly played out that way has it?
The greater majority of us are free to read whatever we wish to, in terms of the once “forbidden books”, such as those listed by The Index Librorum Prohibitorum[1]. We can read any of the writings that were banned in “The Brave New World”, notably the works of Shakespeare which were named as absolutely dangerous forms of “knowledge”.
We are now very much free to “educate” ourselves on the very “ideas” that were recognised by tyrants of the past as the “antidote” to a life of slavery. And yet, today, the majority choose not to…
It is recognised, albeit superficially, that who controls the past, controls the present and thereby the future. George Orwell’s book “1984”, hammers this as the essential feature that allows the Big Brother apparatus to maintain absolute control over fear, perception and loyalty to the Party cause, and yet despite its popularity, there still remains a lack of interest in actually informing oneself about the past.
What does it matter anyway, if the past is controlled and rewritten to suit the present? As the Big Brother interrogator O’Brien states to Winston, “We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not? [And thus, are free to rewrite it as we choose…]”
Of course, we are not in the same situation as Winston…we are much better off. We can study and learn about the “past” if we so desire, unfortunately, it is a choice that many take for granted.
In fact, many are probably not fully aware that presently there is a battle waging for who will “control the past” in a manner that is closely resembling a form of “memory wipe”.
***
William Sargant was a British psychiatrist and, one could say, effectively the Father of “mind control” in the West, with connections to British Intelligence and the Tavistock Institute, which would influence the CIA and American military via the program MK Ultra. Sargant was also an advisor for Ewen Cameron’s LSD “blank slate” work at McGill University, funded by the CIA.
Sargant accounts for his reason in studying and using forms of “mind control” on his patients, which were primarily British soldiers that were sent back from the battlefield during WWII with various forms of “psychosis”, as the only way to rehabilitate extreme forms of PTSD.
The other reason, was because the Soviets had apparently become “experts” in the field, and out of a need for national security, the British would thus in turn have to become experts as well…as a matter of self-defence of course.
The work of Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, had succeeded in producing some disturbingly interesting insights into four primary forms of nervous systems in dogs, that were combinations of inhibitory and excitatory temperaments; “strong excitatory”, “balanced”, “passive” and “calm imperturbable”. Pavlov found that depending on the category of nervous system temperament the dog had, this in turn would dictate the form of “conditioning” that would work best to “reprogram behaviour”. The relevance to “human conditioning” was not lost on anyone.
It was feared in the West, that such techniques would not only be used against their soldiers to invoke free-flowing uninhibited confessions to the enemy but that these soldiers could be sent back to their home countries, as zombified assassins and spies that could be set off with a simple code word. At least, these were the thriller stories and movies that were pumped into the population. How horrific indeed! That the enemy could apparently enter what was thought the only sacred ground to be our own…our very “minds”!
However, for those who were actually leading the field in mind control research, such as William Sargant, it was understood that this was not exactly how mind control worked.
For one thing, the issue of “free will” was getting in the way.
No matter the length or degree of electro-shock, insulin “therapy”, tranquilizer cocktails, induced comas, sleep deprivation, starvation etc induced, it was discovered that if the subject had a “strong conviction” and “strong belief” in something, this could not be simply erased, it could not be written over with any arbitrary thing. Rather, the subject would have to have the illusion that their “conditioning” was in fact a “choice”. This was an extremely challenging task, and long term conversions (months to years) were rare.
However, Sargant saw an opening. It was understood that one could not create a new individual from scratch, however, with the right conditioning that was meant to lead to a physical breakdown using abnormal stress (effectively a reboot of the nervous system), one could increase the “suggestibility” markedly in their subjects.
Sargant wrote in his “Battle of the Mind”: “Pavlov’s clinical descriptions of the ‘experimental neuroses’ which he could induce in dogs proved, in fact, to have a close correspondence with those war-neuroses which we were investigating at the time.”
In addition, Sargant found that a falsely implanted memory could help induce abnormal stress leading to emotional exhaustion and physical breakdown to invoke “suggestibility”. That is, one didn’t even need to have a “real stress” but an “imagined stress” would work just as effectively.
Sargant goes on to state in his book:
“It is not surprising that the ordinary person, in general, is much more easily indoctrinated than the abnormal…A person is considered ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal’ by the community simply because he accepts most of its social standards and behavioural patterns; which means, in fact, that he is susceptible to suggestion and has been persuaded to go with the majority on most ordinary or extraordinary occasions.”
Sargant then goes over the phenomenon of the London Blitz, which was an eight month period of heavy bombing of London during WWII. During this period, in order to cope and stay “sane”, people rapidly became accustomed to the idea that their neighbours could be and were buried alive in bombed houses around them. The thought was “If I can’t do anything about it what use is it that I trouble myself over it?” The best “coping” was thus found to be those who accepted the new “environment” and just focused on “surviving”, and did not try to resist it.
Sargant remarks that it is this “adaptability” to a changing environment which is part of the “survival” instinct and is very strong in the “healthy” and “normal” individual who can learn to cope and thus continues to be “functional” despite an ever changing environment.
It was thus our deeply programmed “survival instinct” that was found to be the key to the suggestibility of our minds. That the best “survivors” made for the best “brain-washing” in a sense.
Sargant quotes Hecker’s work, who was studying the dancing mania phenomenon that occurred during the Black Death, where Hecker observed that heightened suggestibility had the capability to cause a person to “embrace with equal force, reason and folly, good and evil, diminish the praise of virtue as well as the criminality of vice.”
And that such a state of mind was likened to the first efforts of the infant mind “this instinct of imitation when it exists in its highest degree, is also united a loss of all power over the will, which occurs as soon as the impression on the senses has become firmly established, producing a condition like that of small animals when they are fascinated by the look of a serpent.”
I wonder if Sargant imagined himself the serpent…
Sargant does finally admit:
“This does not mean that all persons can be genuinely indoctrinated by such means. Some will give only temporary submission to the demands made on them, and fight again when strength of body and mind returns. Others are saved by the supervention of madness. Or the will to resist may give way, but not the intellect itself.”
But he comforts himself as a response to this stubborn resistance that “As mentioned in a previous context, the stake, the gallows, the firing squad, the prison, or the madhouse, are usually available for the failures.”
How to Resist the Deconstruction of Your Mind “He whom the gods wish to destroy, they first of all drive mad.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “The Masque of Pandora”
For those who have not seen the 1944 psychological thriller “Gaslight” directed by George Cukor, I would highly recommend you do so since there is an invaluable lesson contained within, that is especially applicable to what I suspect many of us are experiencing nowadays.
The story starts with a 14 year old Paula (played by Ingrid Bergman) who is being taken to Italy after her Aunt Alice Alquist, a famous opera singer and caretaker of Paula, is found murdered in her home in London. Paula is the one who found the body, and horror stricken is never her old self again. Her Aunt was the only family Paula had left in her life. The decision is made to send her away from London to Italy to continue her studies to become a world-renowned opera singer like her Aunt Alice.
Years go by, Paula lives a very sheltered life and a heavy somberness is always present within her, she can never seem to feel any kind of happiness. During her singing studies she meets a mysterious man (her piano accompanist during her lessons) and falls deeply in love with him. However, she knows hardly anything about the man named Gregory.
Paula agrees to marry Gregory after a two week romance and is quickly convinced to move back into her Aunt’s house in London that was left abandoned all these years. As soon as she enters the house, the haunting of the night of the murder revisits her and she is consumed with panic and fear. Gregory tries to calm her and talks about the house needing just a little bit of air and sun, and then Paula comes across a letter written to her Aunt from a Sergis Bauer which confirms that he was in contact with Alice just a few days before her murder. At this finding, Gregory becomes bizarrely agitated and grabs the letter from Paula. He quickly tries to justify his anger blaming the letter for upsetting her. Gregory then decides to lock all of her Aunt’s belongings in the attic, to apparently spare Paula any further anguish.
It is at this point that Gregory starts to change his behaviour dramatically. Always under the pretext for “Paula’s sake”, everything that is considered “upsetting” to Paula must be removed from her presence. And thus quickly the house is turned into a form of prison. Paula is told it is for her best not to leave the house unaccompanied, not to have visitors and that self-isolation is the best remedy for her “anxieties” which are getting worst. Paula is never strictly forbidden at the beginning but rather is told that she should obey these restrictions for her own good.
Before a walk, he gives as a gift a beautiful heirloom brooch that belonged to his mother. Because the pin needs replacing, he instructs Paula to keep it in her handbag, and then says rather out of context, “Don’t forget where you put it now Paula, I don’t want you losing it.” Paula remarks thinking the warning absurd, “Of course I won’t forget!” When they return from their walk, Gregory asks for the brooch, Paula searches in her handbag but it is not there.
It continues on like this, with Gregory giving warnings and reminders, seemingly to help Paula with her “forgetfulness” and “anxieties”. Paula starts to question her own judgement and sanity as these events become more and more frequent. She has no one else to talk to but Gregory, who is the only witness to these apparent mishaps. It gets to a point where completely nonsensical behaviour is being attributed to Paula by Gregory. A painting is found missing on the wall one night. Gregory talks to Paula like she is a 5 year child and asks her to put it back. Paula insists she does not know who took it down. After her persistent passionate insistence that it was not her, she walks up the stairs almost like she were in a dream state and pulls the painting from behind a statue. Gregory asks why she lied, but Paula insists that she only thought to look there because that is where it was found the last two times this occurred.
For weeks now, Paula thinks she has been seeing things, the gas lights of the house dimming for no reason, she also hears footsteps above her bedroom. No one else seems to take notice. Paula is also told by Gregory that he found out that her mother, who passed away when she was very young, had actually gone insane and died in an asylum.
Despite Paula being reduced to a condition of an ongoing stupor, she decides one night to make a stand and regain control over her life. Paula is invited, by one of her Aunt Alice’s close friends Lady Dalroy, to attend a high society evening with musical performances. Recall that Paula’s life gravitated around music before her encounter with Gregory. Music was her life. Paula gets magnificently dressed up for the evening and on her way out tells Gregory that she is going to this event. Gregory tries to convince her that she is not well enough to attend such a social gathering, when Paula calmly insists that she is going and that this woman was a dear friend of her Aunt, Gregory answers that he refuses to accompany her (in those days that was a big deal). Paula accepts this and walks with a solid dignity, undeterred towards the horse carriage. In a very telling scene, Gregory is left momentarily by himself and panic stricken, his eyes bulging he snaps his cigar case shut and runs after Paula. He laughingly calls to her, “Paula, you did not think I was serious? I had no idea that this party meant so much to you. Wait, I will get ready.” As he is getting ready in front of the mirror, a devilish smirk appears.
Paula and Gregory show up to Lady Dalroy’s house late, the pianist is in the middle of the 1st movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata #8 in C minor. They quickly are escorted to two empty seats. Paula is immediately immersed in the piece, and Gregory can see his control is slipping. After only a few minutes, he goes to look at his pocket watch but it is not in his pocket. He whispers into Paula’s ear, “My watch is missing”. Immediately, Paula looks like she is going to be sick. Gregory takes her handbag and Paula looks in horror as he pulls out his pocket watch, insinuating that Paula had put it there. She immediately starts losing control and has a very public emotional breakdown. Gregory takes her away, as he remarks to Lady Dalroy that this is why he didn’t want Paula coming in the first place.
When they arrive home, Paula has by now completely succumbed to the thought that she is indeed completely insane. Gregory says that it would be best if they go away somewhere for an indefinite period of time. We later find out that Gregory is intending on committing her to an asylum. Paula agrees to leave London with Gregory and leaves her fate entirely in his hands.
In the case of Paula it is clear. She has been suspecting that Gregory has something to do with her “situation” but he has very artfully created an environment where Paula herself doubts whether this is a matter of unfathomable villainy or whether she is indeed going mad.
It is rather because she is not mad that she doubts herself, because there is seemingly no reason for why Gregory would put so much time and energy into making it look like she were mad, or at least so it first appears. But what if the purpose to her believing in her madness was simply a matter of who is in control?
Paula almost succeeds in gaining the upper-hand in this power-struggle, the evening she decided to go out on her own no matter what Gregory insisted was in her best interest. If she would have held her ground at Lady Dalroy’s house and simply replied, “I have no idea why your stupid watch ended up in my handbag and I could care less. Now stop interrupting this performance, you are making a scene!” Gregory’s spell would have been broken as simple as that. If he were to complain to others about the situation, they would also respond, “Who cares man, why are you so obsessed about your damn watch?”
We find ourselves today in a very similar situation to Paula. And the voice of Gregory is represented by the narrative of false news and the apocalyptic social behaviourist programming in our forms of entertainment. The things most people voluntarily subject themselves to on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Socially conditioning them, like a pack of salivating Pavlovian dogs, to think it is just a matter of time before the world ends and with a ring of their master’s bell…be at each other’s throats.
Paula ends up being saved in the end by a man named Joseph Cotten (a detective), who took notice and quickly discerned that something was amiss. In the end Gregory is arrested. It is revealed that Gregory is in fact Sergis Bauer. That he killed Alice Alquist and that he has returned to the scene of the crime after all these years in search for the famous jewels of the opera singer. The jewels were in fact rather worthless from the standpoint that they were too famous to be sold, however, Gregory never intended on selling these jewels but rather had become obsessed with the desire to merely possess them.
That is, it is Gregory who has been entirely mad all this time.
A Gregory is absolutely dangerous. He would have been the end of Paula if nothing had intervened. However, the power that Gregory held was conditional to the degree that Paula allowed it to control her. Paula’s extreme deconstruction was thus entirely dependent on her choice to let the voice of Gregory in. That is, a Gregory is only dangerous if we allow ourselves to sleep walk into the nightmare he has constructed for us.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”
– Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”
Cynthia Chung is the President of the Rising Tide Foundation and a writer at Strategic Culture Foundation, consider supporting her work by making a donation and subscribing to her substack page. This article was originally published on The Saker.
As noted by Fyodor Dostoevsky, author of The Brothers Karamazov, MSNBC needs to take note of the following: “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” And then there are the words and insights of Christian existential philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard: “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
MSNBC, CNN and their ilk are worse than that Pravda, that is because Pravda was being written under the regime of Stalin. MSNBC and CNN are doing so under the mantle of a democracy, and they know that what they are doing is nothing less than the presentation of the evilest of propaganda.
The fact is, as noted by their words and actions the extremists, which is the leftist, are locked in mental paradigm that is and has been forged through the abuse of contradiction, which is known as the Leibnizian reduction.
Leibnizian reduction, in their mind, allows and give the evilests conscious permission to ignore and totally avoid the links between their delusional ideological statements that would be universally proven as false; as objective truth is always true, because objective facts, such as the laws of physics and biology is what it is and a behaviour can be seen for all to determine what is taking place. For example, the evilests of the left, as determined by their actions live and present the following and refuse to accept the contradictions that actually exist in what they are saying and doing:
a) Everyone is equal but some must be given more privileges while others need to pay reparations based on the colour of their skin.
b) We will hire the best person for the job without using a merit-based selection process.
c) We are democratic and free, yet you cannot have the freedom of speech to say what you think.
d) People need to feel safe as feelings are more important than protection from physical harm.
e) Personal truth does not need to be based on facts or reality.
f) All religions are free to practise in our society unless it is based on Judeo-Christian traditions.
g) The borders of Ukraine need to be protected at all costs, yet illegal immigrants must be assisted and encouraged to cross over the porous Mexican border.
h) We live in a democratic country yet only one party has the right to rule since any other party is considered to be a threat to democracy.
i) The current president is cognisant and alert, and medical examinations are futile.
h) Treason is not treason when actions that are taking place are being acted in the name of democracy.
The use of counterfactuals in these statements are impossible and absurd, yet it withstands the scrutiny of the evil leftists because they choose to accept them as they would a catechism of faith. By trusting in the absurd they deny that which is, in all actuality, the truth and discard the hard, precious lessons of the past 10,000 years.
The leftists are authoritarian fascists and simpletons who care only to deny facts, regulate thoughts, control words and restrict actions that do not meet with their dystopian cultist thinking.
There is no dialogue or empathy in the left; they only wish to impose a brand of socialism or communism that will never work, as can be seen by the over 100 million deaths through socialism in the 20th century. However, the actions of these leftists clearly and unequivocally demonstrate that the cultist leftist have no idea about history, they do not care about history, in fact they are blind to what even history means.
The facts of history speak for themselves. The socialist/communists, or communist/socialists (it makes no difference), have killed more than anyone else: The crusades killed 1 to 3 million people and the inquisition is believed to have killed between 30 000 to 300 000 people – 96 million people short of the communist death count.
The cultist socialists never mention the fact that currently 340 million Christians are being persecuted by other nations and ethnicities.
Clearly, and unambiguously the writer of this article is ignorant. Is the writer so blind that he/she/they/them (or whatever other nonsense they/he/she/them want to be known by now) is actually so stupid that the writer actually wants to have his/her/him/they (or whatever) rights removed, or does he/she/they/them want to join ethnic minorities in looting, taking and murdering people on the street?
Just like Biden, the writer of this simplistic article will be one of the useful idiots cancelled once the US embraces fully rigged elections by allowing anyone to vote, regardless of nationality or the number times they voted – either living or dead.
And speaking about voting, it has now been discovered that the oh so self-righteous Hillary Clinton has been found to have actually interfered in the previous elections, by engaging in what can only be referred to as treason in collusion with the tech giants. And guess what? Not one word from any of the leftist media.
This writer and the left are not only hypocrites, they are liars, and that word liar does not in any way describe how devious these leftists actually are. They are a disgrace to the entire human race.
Changing words from the article actually evokes a clearer truth:
Biden’s USA has been embraced globally by woke and radical figureheads (anyone perverted enough to work at CNN) because it’s a contemporary model for how that might work), and Democrats in the U.S. can use Biden’s denials — that his purges of white conservatives aren’t racist, that his victories in rigged elections are actually authentic and democratic and that his mode of hypocrisy is about freedom of the elite, even as he persecutes anyone who doesn’t practice a narrow reactionary and woke version of it.
No other nation in the world is destroying election integrity and endorsing systematic racism against whites like the US. The utter hypocrisy and blindness to the truth is astounding. The woke leftists have called evil good and traditional good evil. Astonishing national disaster and fatal collapse is bound to occur if they continue down this racist, narcissistic, truth hating path. There is no utopia for the left, just degradation, corruption and hopelessness.
This article also reminds me of a piece written by USSR Journalist Yuri Bezmeno. In my lead in to this insightful article by Bezmeno, I will note and begin with the following:
The mainstream media of the West, but especially in the US, has become a relativist censoring media, it now presents self-righteous censorship of objective news, and its reporting presents what can now be described as sycophantic silences to actual objective events that need objective reporting. Or it presents, like this article by Elizabeth Spiers, an orchestration of words that can only be described as having less substance than dried vomit.
The fact of the matter, as I have already noted, history has informed us for many millennia, civilisations have died as a result of their own self-deluded self-righteousness, superior minded hypocrisy and self-inflicted lies.
History also points out that when a civilisation is succumbing to its own death throes (which in this case self-evidently is America); what we see now is that the external enemies (and supporting internal enemies) of America have already planned and are gleefully anticipating, with much elated enthusiasm, as they secretly sneer, snigger, chuckle, chortle and laugh, as they excitedly wait for the order, from their leader, to march in and crush this now deluded woke cult called America.
As such, to understand the fate of the former United States of America, which is now also being referred to as the Dis-United Appalling-States of America, the writer of this article should take note – which of course the writer self-evidently won’t – of the profound sociopolitical insights of a former USSR Journalist Yuri Bezmenov, who presents what will happen to the writer and what was once the united states (note the use of lowercase letters) of america?
What will happen (and to some significant degree it is already happening with all of the lawlessness that is taking place) is that and writer of this absurd little self-righteous article, and all of the other mainstream delusional leftists will be the following, as noted by USSR Journalist Yuri Bezmenov:
[T]he useful idiots, the leftists who are idealistically believing in the beauty of the Soviet socialist or Communist or whatever system, when they get disillusioned, they become the worst enemies. That’s why my KGB instructors specifically made the point: never bother with leftists. Forget about these political prostitutes. Aim higher. They serve a purpose only at the stage of destabilization of a nation. For example, your leftists in the United States: all these professors and all these beautiful civil rights defenders. They are instrumental in the process of the subversion only to destabilize a nation. When their job is completed, they are not needed any more. They know too much. Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist-Leninists come to power – obviously they get offended – they think that they will come to power. That will never happen, of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot.
The Lord forbid that this should ever happen. And yet the radical left cannot see the consequences of their choices, and our choices shape our destiny.
As everyone knows, the news media knows what’s best for us and they always tell the truth. The only problem is that they use really big and complicated words that we simple folk just don’t understand. How will you ever keep up? Well, don’t worry! We prepared this special translation guide just for you, so the next time you’re watching the news you’ll be able to follow along!
1) “Debunked conspiracy theory” = a completely factual event that is 100% true and we don’t like it
2) “This is dangerous misinformation” = we don’t really agree with it but people are still sharing it
Having been a regular viewer of PBS NewsHour for many years now, it is time to inform PBS NewsHour I will no longer view the programme. That is because news is about and only about ethics, integrity, robust questioning, authenticity and presenting objective reality.
However, when news and reporting become nothing more than a presentation of self-serving sycophantic ideology, and highly embarrassing groveling and propaganda (which would make any totalitarian regime proud); there is no point in viewing this type of news. That is because this ‘type of news’ is no longer news. It is what a healthy genuine democracy (referring to a totalitarian regime) would describe this sort of journalistic toadying as being nothing more than an ‘obsequious upholding of the ideological propaganda political party line of the totalitarian regime.’
Added to this, is the fact that if any objective critical questioning and analysis is presented to this form of self-serving sycophantic and ideological groveling; what happens is that this robust and objective questioning is immediately met with a declaration of immense and severe outrage by these news organisations in question.
Blame and criticism of others (who are not members of the sycophantic self-serving party line’ collective) is what is taking place in America now. The mainstream American media now is one which, rather than being ethical, objective and self-reflective. And having the intellectual capacity, and moral scholarly insight, to deeply, honestly, factually, authentically and intellectually examine (at the highest cognitive and analytical level), circumstances as to what is actually taking place, and to then reporting objectively. What the American mainstream media is doing instead, as noted is blaming, criticising and viciously attacking those reporters and news commentators who have the integrity to ask important objective questions.
This is taking place despite of the sociological, journalism and organisational research universally and irrefutably informs how important integrity, openness, transparency and accountability is for a healthy organisation (especially a news organisation) to not only successfully operate and exist but to also know and understand that personal morality and organisational ethical, open, transparent and accountable process is what advances the profound and important cognitive and intellectual skills and capabilities of critical thinking and associated high-order erudite thinking and writing. Profoundly and axiomatically, it is all of these skills, knowledge and capabilities that then combine to help develop and advance a highly complex, social, ethical and politically sophisticated news organisation and a healthy universally understood and axiomatically democratic society as well.
To this effect one only needs to read the American Declaration of Independence to see this in action. In preparation for the writing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Congress, in June of 1776, appointed a committee of five men. They were: Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and John Adams to write the Declaration of Independence. Even though no Minutes were kept, what is immutably certain is that the committee engaged in robust discussion, which included the general outline of what should be considered, written and presented in this Declaration document.
The Committee eventually decided that Thomas Jefferson would be the person who would write the first draft. It is profoundly important to note that in terms of robust discussion, that neither the 1776 Declaration of Independence, nor the writing and signing of the 1787 American Constitution, would ever have taken place, if the current 2021 self-serving unhealthy political climate and the associated obsequious nature and reporting in the mainstream news organisations, had been in place at that time of the founding of America’s democracy. As a result of this academic and highly sophisticated intellectual thinking by the Founding Fathers, America was at one time at the forefront of the world in terms of research, writing, journalism, objective reporting and media commentary, book publishing, manufacturing and so much more. However, and tragically, this is no longer the case for America.
In less than 240 years the nation of America is in what could only be described as being in catastrophic decline. Along with this decline, which includes the military, manufacturing, research, objective education principles and practices, and the American media itself. All of this has become a self-evident joke which the world can see. However, this self-inflicted joke is one which America refuses to see and acknowledge. Here is but one example: When riots, looting and arson were taking place throughout America, these riots, the looting and the arson were being reported in newspapers and presented on mainstream American media as being peaceful riots, arson and looting. All of this could best be described (in the current non-banned book by Hans Christian Andersen) titled: “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
However, and importantly, as noted there are those in the World who see and know what the truth is. All of these empirical knowers are sniggering and openly laughing at America in relation to what is taking place. The external enemies of America are especially delighted and are gleefully, with immense joy, loudly laughing at how America is self-destructing in its own hypocrisy, and drowning itself in its self-made quagmire of subjective feelings-based nonsense of postmodern relativism.
America’s current self-evident ideologically Socialist political system, and with the support of its embarrassing fawning mainstream media would (to pursue its ideological goals), rather see itself socially implode (which is not taking place), than to engage in the pursuit of universal objective truths that matter, and which objectively advances a nation.
America has in its anthem the words “the land of the free, and the home of the brave.” However (which all the world knows and can see for itself) America is now, self-evidently, not the land of the free but is the land that is ruled by fear. It is no longer the home of the brave, but the home of the afraid; and those who are also constantly cowering and obsequiously apologising.
If America was the land of the free and the home of the brave, the brave would have freely, and many times by now, announced that the emperor has no clothes. And the reason this has not, and is not taking place, is because of fear.
The existential American reality is that “the land of the free, and the home of the brave” no longer exists. What American has become instead, as noted, is the land that is now ruled by fear; and it is the home of where everyone is afraid. And this decline into the never ending apologising abyss of self-destruction, is all of its own making.
“Hey mum, hey dad, look, there is a wonderful peaceful riot, with looting, book burning and firebombing of buildings taking place.” “Yes, isn’t that simply wonderful. We certainly don’t have to grovel and apologise for any of these types of peaceful riots. That is because all of these peaceful riots, peaceful book burnings and peaceful fire bombings is why we can now all proudly call this type of peaceful rioting action as being true American patriotism, and true American freedom of expression at its very best.”
“Hey mum, hey dad, the police have been peacefully attacked, and the police station has been firebombed, burned and destroyed.” “We don’t use the word attacked anymore. Attacked is a dreadful prejudiced word that has been rightly cancelled. You won’t understand how important this type of peaceful firebombing patriotism of police stations actually is; until you are at least fifteen. This is all about what we Americans call peaceful patriotic spiritual American freedom, with the inalienable Constitutional freedom and America’s Democratic right to oppress the people, for the people, and by the people.”
“Hey mum, hey dad, look, there’s the President. He’s walking onto Air Force One. and look, he’s not wearing any clothes.” “Quiet, of course he is. If he wasn’t wearing any clothes the media would have told us so. We’re not stupid, and neither is our Democratic media. That is why we always only watch the Democratic inspired American media of authentic elected Democratic truth.
“It is our true Democratic American media that will always tell us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Which is the only truth we really need to hear. And as you now firmly know, we are making sure that you will have this exact same and immovable and important self-righteous patriotic love and understanding of this our now and all-important spiritual sycophantic American freedom of expression that we now all truly and proudly have.”
“What does sycophantic mean?” “It means that we are always right, and you are always right and that you will always agree with us and support this new and wonderful Democratic fawning American patriotism.” “You mean fawning is like a baby deer.” “Yes, fawning is like a baby deer.” “Great, I love fawning. Thanks mum, thanks, dad, I will always agree with you and I already love this new fawning Democratic American patriotism. You’re the best. I love you both. Just like I love our new sycophantic Democratic America.”
Online Church for Christ 
