American Slavery Was African Slavery Purchased

Contrary to the “myths to live by” created by Alex Haley and others, Africans were by no means the innocents portrayed in Roots, baffled as to why white men were coming in and taking their people away in chains. On the contrary, the region of West Africa from which Kunte Kinte supposedly came was one of the great slave-trading regions of the continent—before, during, and after the white man arrived. It was the Africans who enslaved their fellow Africans, selling some of these slaves to Europeans or to Arabs and keeping others for themselves. Even at the peak of the Atlantic slave trade, Africans retained more slaves for themselves than they sent to the Western Hemisphere.

Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, pg. 120

Truth vs Propaganda

 

The Media and Islam

The real Muhammad is no longer revealed in numerous books or in much of the media, a phenomenon largely the result of the ubiquitous presence of political correctness in the West.  With few exceptions, he is falsely portrayed as an irenic man who founded a religion of peace, contrary to the Koran’s numerous verses that specifically advocate violence and the killing of “infidels.” . . . 

In recent years, the Western print media, movies, and television have produced various negative portrayals of Jesus Christ and of Christianity.  But Muhammad’s past violent activities, clearly stated in the Koran and in the Hadith, are overlooked by the media and by apologists of Islam.

Alvin J. Schmidt, “The American Muhammad: Joseph Smith, Founder of Mormonism,” pg. 208-209

With Absolute Power Lies Come True

Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but can also lie and make their lies come true.

Eric Hoffer, cited by Alvin J. Schmidt in, “The American Muhammad: Joseph Smith, Founder of Mormonism,” pg. 187

The Power of the State to Manipulate

Part of the reason for [the half-hearted and inefficient tyrannies of the past] was that in the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance.  The invention of print, however, made it easer to manipulate public opinion, and the film and radio carried the process further.  With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit it simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end. . . .   The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the State, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time.

George Orwell, 1984

How Genocide Begins with Groupthink

Perhaps most important to a genocidal plan is neutralizing any possible support for the victims. The Ottoman government maintained a well-coordinated propaganda campaign that vilified the Armenians in the eyes of their Turkish neighbors. In like manner, the Jews were demonized among their neighbors in Nazi Germany.

This sort of thing happens in all mass killings, including those done for reasons other than ethnicity. For example, in Stalinist Russia, several million peasant farmers in the Ukraine were deliberately starved to death in the winter of 1932-33 in what is known as the Holodomor. Soviet propaganda demonized these people, known as “kulaks,” as enemies of the people because they resisted the forced collectivization of agriculture, i.e., the confiscation of their farms. In Rwanda, Hutu propaganda vilified and scapegoated the Tutsis, often through radio, priming the popular mindset for the mass slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis during a 100-day period in 1994. The list of “final solutions” goes on and on.

Information warfare through a centrally controlled media is key to turning neighbor against neighbor. It plays a huge role in caricaturing perceived enemies and growing an us-versus-them mindset. In short, propaganda that psychologically manipulates a population is key to laying the groundwork for extreme social polarization, and ultimately for genocide.

This sort of propaganda thrives on ignorance and dissipates under conditions of social trust and general goodwill. This is why free speech and freedom of expression are not negotiable to any free society.

Stella Morabito, We Must Never Forget That Genocide Begins With Groupthink

Study History to Avoid Genocide

Humans are very susceptible to groupthink, ignorance, propaganda, agitation, and psychological manipulation that weakens their resolve. People are also often all too eager to blame their own problems on convenient scapegoats. These human flaws clarify why “Never forget” is the cry associated with the Holocaust and all crimes against humanity.

This is why everybody must respect the study of history. After all, studying history is about remembering. It’s about learning from experience, which is why we must emphatically reject any attempt to water down the accurate teaching and study of history.

Stella Morabito, We Must Never Forget That Genocide Begins With Groupthink

Dare To Tell the Truth

Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school, and the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool.

Plato

H/T J.L. Pattison

How Revolutionaries Play Victim

It is well to note in connection with the crackdown of revolutionaries of the appearance of a tactic that has often been used since by Communists, their sympathizers and fellow-travelers.  It is the device of taking attention away from Communist methods and violence by focusing attention on real or imagined wrongs done by those who oppose them.  To put it more bluntly, it is the device of turning revolutionaries into the victims and the prosecutors into aggressors.  This is accomplished by downplaying the purposes and methods of revolutionaries and focusing upon the allegedly unsavory tactics of those who act to contain and restrain them. Revolutionaries are portrayed as innocent advocates of unpopular ideas, beset by heavy-handed Yahoos. 

Clarence B. Carson, A Basic History of the United States, Vol. 4: The Growth of America 1878-1928, pg.224-225

Do NOT Believe Absurdities

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Voltaire

Don't Believe the LIE!

We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false. 

CIA director William Casey, 1981

H/T Alec Satin

Communications and Truth

The speed of communication is wondrous to behold.  It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.

Edward R. Murrow, cited in Special Features on DVD of “Good Night, and Good Luck.”

Promoting an Agenda

Social agendas are promoted through public education and the media.  A typical example starts with movies and television portraying a yet to be accepted social behavior in a humorous way, then progressively show that behavior in a positive light, then ultimately ridiculing those who oppose that behavior.

When a large enough percentage of the public considers that behavior normal, politicians get elected and change laws to discriminate and eventually criminalize those who do not embrace those views.  The homosexual agenda has successfully employed this method.

The Islamic agenda is just beginning to use this method.  In Canada a new television series, "Little Mosque on the Prairie," portrays the experiences of a Muslim family in a typical American city.

William J. Federer, What Every American Needs to Know About the Qur'an, pg.232

Learn to Discern

Create a critical mass of people who cannot discern meaning and truth from nonsense, and you will have a society ready to fall for the first charismatic leader to come along.

Richard Terrell, Resurrecting the Third Reich, p. 176.  Cited by Erwin W. Lutzer, When A Nation Forgets God, p.82

Liberal Compulsory Propaganda

To those with the vision of the anointed, the public serves not only as a general object of disdain, but as a baseline from which to measure their own lofty heights, whether in art, politics, or other fields.  Systemic processes which offer channels of expression of the public's views and values are to be circumscribed and circumvented.  Art, music, and ballet are to be financed by compulsory exactions from the public, while ignoring or disdaining what the public itself wants or does not want.  Similarly, so-called "public television"--taxpayer-subsidized television--is in fact the least responsive to the public's desires and most reflective of the vision of the anointed.  Shamelessly one-sided propaganda for the environmentalist movement, for example, has become a staple of so-called "nature" programs on "public television" for years.

Failure to use tax money  to finance things not liked by the taxpaying public is routinely called "censorship."  If such terminology were used consistently, virtually all of life would be just one long, unending censorship, as individuals choose whether to buy apples rather than oranges, vacations rather than violins, furniture rather than mutual funds.  But of course no such consistency is intended.  This strained usage of the word "censorship" appears only selectively, to describe public choices and values at variance with the choices and values of the anointed.  If a  public library declines to buy some avant-garde book approved by the anointed, because either the librarian or the taxpaying public does not like it, that is called "censorship"--even though the book remains freely available to all who wish to buy it and no library can possibly purchase even a tenth of all the books published, so that discretionary preferences are inevitable and the First Amendment does not guarantee either an audience or money.


Thomas Sowell, "The Vision of the Anointed," p.20

The Cultural Current

I've observed, as I'm sure you have, the power of what I call "a cultural current."  That is, a dominant idea promoted by the media and willingly adopted by a critical mass of people who want to believe a myth so badly they will close their minds to all contrary evidence.  When such a cultural movement gains momentum, people will stare at facts and filter out what they don't want to believe.  Contrary evidence will be ignored or reinterpreted to fit their deepest wishes.  And the more people who believe the myth, the more difficult it is for those who wish to counter it.  In a spirit of euphoria, all warning signs are brushed aside.  Before we know it, we are in a world where facts do not matter.

Erwin W. Lutzer, When A Nation Forgets God, p.80

Indoctrination in Education

Among those with a sense of mission are those who teach the young, whether teachers in the schools or professors in colleges and universities.  Those among the academics or school teachers who lack either the inclination or the talent to become public intellectuals can instead vent their opinions in the classroom to a captive audience of students, operating in a smaller arena but in a setting with little chance of serious challenge.  In such settings, their aggregate influence on the mindset of a generation may be out of all proportion to their competence — not simply in what they directly impart, but more fundamentally in habituating their students to reaching sweeping conclusions after hearing only one side of an issue and then either venting their emotions or springing into action, whether by writing letters to public officials as part of classroom assignments or taking part in other, more direct activism.  In these cases as well, there are few, if any, constraints beforehand and no accountability for the consequences afterwards.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.515