Todd Suomela's Library tagged propaganda →  View Popular, Search in Google

"As much fun as it is to kick around the Boomers, we gotta move past it. Generational politics is a dead-end. Fuck it, someone slap the shit out of me if I ever say the word “Millennial’ after this. Because once we’ve set up this economic collapse as nothing more than generational warfare, we’re already lost–we’ve created a narrative which the wealthy can easily co-opt and spin for their own fiendish ends.

So keep your eyes on the prize, Millennials: it’s capitalism that’s the problem. Not the grey-hairs."

generational-analysis generation politics argument capitalism social-security propaganda

"This is the fourth and last entry in a series that has examined the climate change disinformation campaign as an ethical matter. The purpose of this series has been to distinguish between responsible scientific skepticism, an approach to climate change science that should be encouraged, and the tactics of the climate change disinformation campaign, strategies deployed to undermine mainstream climate change science that are often deeply ethically offensive. "

climate-change climate science denial ethics skepticism disinformation agnotology ignorance propaganda

"Everyone who has been paying attention knows that there is a strong anti-science movement in this country — driven partly by populist anti-intellectualism, but increasingly by corporate interests that just don’t like what science has to say. It’s an old problem — tobacco companies succeeded for years in sowing doubt about the health effects of smoking — but it’s become significantly worse in recent years."

sts science money lobbying propaganda

"The public should realize that "generational warfare" is an agenda that was deliberately designed by the 1 percent to distract the rest of us from the class war that they have been successfully waging over the last three decades. Rather than have a public debate on the policies that have redistributed so much income upward, the 1 percent want to pit children against their parents and grandparents, forcing them to fight over crumbs. "

wall-street protests activism social-security propaganda generation one-percent

social-networks propaganda military darpa research

1. they chose the right target
2. they made a great poster
3. they gave their action time to build
4. they created a good scenario for conflict
5. they are using their momentum to escalate

wall-street protests activism social-movement growth propaganda

"Tragicomically, the study found that bosses often believe their own guff, even if their underlings do not. Bosses are eight times more likely than the average to believe that their organisation is self-governing."

work labor business management values propaganda human-resources tragedy

"Horkheimer described the book's theme in his foreword to the five volume series:

The agitator's technique of persuasion, the mechanism of mediation that translates inchoate feeling into specific belief and action make up the theme of that volume. As mediator between the world and the individual psyche, the agitator molds already existing prejudices and tendencies into overt doctrines and ultimately into overt action."

politics propaganda conservative revolution critical-theory

"Smart organizations (and government departments) treat any wireless network as untrusted for exactly this reason: someone can have added an inconspicuous wall-wart loaded with penetration tools to your network, and it could be listening in on everything your users type.

Moral of story: if you can't see the wires you can't trust the channel."

security technology surveillance propaganda ideology technology-effects

"Sure, there will always be liars in positions of influence—that's stipulated, as the lawyers say. And the media, God knows, have never been ideal watchdogs—the battleships that crossed the seas to avenge the sinking of the Maine attest to that. What's new is the way the liars and their enablers now work hand in glove. That I call a mendocracy, and it is the regime that governs us now."

politics media history media-reform lying objectivity balance ideology 1970s conservatism republicans deception propaganda

"Who, then, does it serve to imagine that we are wolves and sheep, fools and savages? Lee Clarke, a disaster sociologist and professor at Rutgers, wrote after Hurricane Katrina, “Disaster myths are not politically neutral, but rather work systematically to the advantage of elites. Elites cling to the panic myth because to acknowledge the truth of the situation would lead to very different policy prescriptions than the ones currently in vogue.” That is to say, if we are wolves and sheep, and so not to be trusted, then they are the shepherds and the wolf-killers."

disaster media metaphor propaganda militarism government framing crisis earthquake country(Japan)

"It has long been understood by disaster researchers that both the general public and organizational actors tend to believe in various disaster myths. Notions that disasters are accompanied by looting, social disorganization, and deviant behavior are examples of such myths. Research shows that the mass media play a significant role in promulgating erroneous beliefs about disaster behavior. Following Hurricane Katrina, the response of disaster victims was framed by the media in ways that greatly exaggerated the incidence and severity of looting and lawlessness. Media reports initially employed a “civil unrest” frame and later characterized victim behavior as equivalent to urban warfare. The media emphasis on lawlessness and the need for strict social control both reflects and reinforces political discourse calling for a greater role for the military in disaster management. Such policy positions are indicators of the strength of militarism as an ideology in the United States. "

disaster media metaphor propaganda militarism government framing crisis law

"Author of the landmark study The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry offers a stunning and original analysis of the “claim of emergency.”

For sixty years, modern democratic governments have undermined democracy and increased executive power by invoking the idea of emergency. They have bypassed constitutional provisions concerning presidential succession, the declaration of war, the use of torture, civilian surveillance, and the arrangements for nuclear weapons. In the desire for swift national action, we citizens devalue thinking and ignore ways to check government power, plunging our countries into a precarious state between monarchy and democracy. Drawing on the work of philosophers, neuroscientists, and artists, Elaine Scarry proves decisively that thinking and rapid action are compatible. Practices that we dismiss as mere habit and protocol instead represent rigorous, effective modes of thought that we must champion in times of crisis. Scarry’s bold claim on behalf of fundamental democratic principles will enliven and enrich the ongoing debate about leadership."

book publisher emergency democracy government crisis propaganda surveillance shock-doctrine thinking decision-making

in list: Books Noted

"Here is where cults of personality come in handy. The dictator wants a credible signal of your support; merely staying silent and not saying anything negative won’t cut it. In order to be credible, the signal has to be costly: you have to be willing to say that the dictator is not merely ok, but a superhuman being, and you have to be willing to take some concrete actions showing your undying love for the leader."

sociology belief propaganda political-science cult-of-personality dictatorship totalitarian personality

"The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda."

government propaganda social-media internet spying politics military

"This article extends the idea of ‘structured immediacy’ (Leudar et al., 2008b) by investigating methods that adversaries use to make the past relevant and consequential in conflicts. Our strategy was to revisit our analysis of political discourse immediately following the 9/11 attacks in the USA (Leudar et al., 2004; Leudar and Nekvapil, 2007). We did this to document what the adversaries did as ‘practical historians’. We found that they used two related methods. One was to situate contemporary events relative to historical antecedents, alongside other contextual particulars, and by doing this provide these events with history-contingent meanings. The other was to attempt to constrain historical understandings of the contemporary events in the future. We interpret the results using the concept of ‘structured immediacy’ that points to how context — historical and otherwise — enters immediate settings of talk as a source of meaning. "

history practice propaganda ideology communication political-science 9-11 media journalism

family religion evangelical propaganda rhetoric conservative politics

conservatism right-wing propaganda rhetoric extremism

fascism right-wing ideology propaganda language

2 notes: people have low opinions of education in general but high opinions of their personal experience of education (e.g. performance of their children's school); international comparisons for reading put U.S. near the top, for science and math in the middle but still statistically close "8th grad science: 17th of 41 (statistically, could be anywhere from 10th to 27th)"

education reform statistics public government propaganda polls polling bias