State of Propaganda in the Twenty-first Century

State of Propaganda in the Twenty-first Century.

One of the things that genuinely impresses me is the sophistication of contemporary propaganda. I find it astounding that so many of the people, working in modern academia today, can see the machinations of Qing Dynasty foreign policy, understand the complexity and the context of Fourier's Theory of the Four Movements, and have the time to explore the reception of Spinoza in nineteenth-century Central-European economic thought, and yet, these same people can't see the obvious biases working in the major news outlets today. The academics I know can comb through archives in the Balkans searching for Muslim collaborators to Nazi war crimes. They can search for official state propaganda records in local archives in Ukrainian villages. Some even explore the complex of interfaith diplomatic relationships across the Baltic region during the early modern period. And yet they all buy the DNC's message hook, line, and sinker.

Few of us ever speak out.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_persuasion
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogelfrei)
mpcdot.com/forums/topic/9029-trumps-war-on-complexity/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

I'm neither a Republican, nor a democrat, nor a Johnson/Paulite.

More than anything I'm disappointed.

It's entirely possible that everyone who thinks for a living is too busy to follow the news. Or they may just be lazy. It might also be this "right side of history" non-sense you hear from a younger generation of academics.

I'll tell you-I've seen some shit.

A woman a few doors down from my office was recording a lecture last January about "Reproductive Rights and Black Lives Matter". Her basic contention was that the police state had taken the mother of Michael Brown's reproductive rights by killing him. The level of absurdity knows no bounds with these people.

Sometimes I read Althusser and feel hopeless. His basic contention is that we all live under the Repressive state apparatus.

The RSA keeps us from thinking alternative thoughts.

The Police State Apparatus enforces the laws of oppression ensuring compliance from any deviation.

So we're all trapped in a terrible system.

Well, so much for fostering discussion.

Shh, bad goy!

Here have a bump, also am I the only one that thinks regular propoganda in the modern world just doesn't work anymore?

I think it may be a form of selective blindness.

It is much easier to be objective about some long dead civilisation, much less so when Machiavelli is sitting in your own government.

Even those that can see the trend find it hard to speak out about it because most don't want to hear it. They have jobs and mortgages and pensions and won't stand to hear anything that might detract from those.

bump

>Academics can't get their heads out of their own arses
It has been like this since the 60s, growing more and more absurd by the day

Tell me, how does one destroy a nation of thinkers? Give them imaginary problems to solve

Leftist propaganda is never intellectual (especially when academic or ostensibly intellectual) and normally seeks to be personal.

There is a meme of arrogance that permeates modern society that asserts contemporary society is morally, intellectually, and spiritually superior to any and all previous societies and thus its inhabitants are incapable of mental suggestion.

Hubris will be society's undoing.

I'd like to think that the sort of Propaganda that worked during the 15th century doesn't work today. But the tactics are the same.

During debates people seem to side with authorities and the people shouting the loudest and who repeat themselves the most often.

It either makes an appeal to emotion, ethics, or authority, never to logic, for it has no ground in logic

Adding on to that
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_persuasion

bump

I am too tired to contribute, but the thread deserves a bump.

>I'd like to think that the sort of Propaganda that worked during the 15th century doesn't work today. But the tactics are the same.
bump im interested in the tactics used and the ones you mentioned in the OP

Logic kills malicious propoganda

I think that originality plays a big role. So many people want to be academics, so few positions available, so often people come up with nothing. They are searching for "black intellectuals" everywhere now. Martinique, Haiti, SE Asia, South Africa during the eighteenth century. It's gotten to the point where people are just making shit up.

Academia, including the students as well as the professors, is ultimately the same as any other competitive human endeavour: the will to power. You must also factor into this everlasting situation the problem that comes along with the seeking of power, that of the threat of loss power. In order to, let's say you are a modern professor, not lose your current power, you would be wise to side with those who have greater power than your own in order to maintain what current power you have. This is how it always has been. It is not that modern propaganda is terribly more sophisticated and therefore more powerful than previous forms of indoctrination, it is that the will to power is being brought out into the open more clearly than previous generations due to technology and social media. "All is force against force, nothing more." The only thing you can try to do your best at is to "ride the tiger" like Evola.

Not if the man preaching logic, is shouted down by a mob

It always amazes me that otherwise intelligent and highly educated people- even in science- can find a way to rationalise dropping evidence based worldviews when facts contradict their religion

People's brains find a way to create little fenced off that are not subject to rational analysis

Never underestimate people's abilities to hold two contradictory views

People can't change, just the times do. It's why we can look at history and see the same things repeating over ad infinitum while no one learns a thing.

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>mfw I was going to share my thoughts but they've all been said
Well posted friends

So you're suprised they're really good at their jobs but bad at something that has nothing to do with their jobs?

Most professors do meaningless, useless work and are essentially welfare babbies so they need to vote dem or republicans would cut funding for all but the top 1% of them who can actually do work that influences society.

It's not a matter of whether one can see. It's whether or not one is permitted to see. The Qing Dynasty is dead, and no one has assets tied up in some deal that might go sour if a Qing's toes got stepped on.

Fifteenth-Century tactics relied on accusations that were unanswerable. Thought crimes were big with that crowd. Think Spanish inquisition and the origins of thought crimes as coming from this era.

Today, you see people

Why not research something more useful? Why not make a field guide to the creation of empires? Why not look into mitigating the side effects of industrialization, or accelerating it so that the rest of the world may be pushed forwards? Why do we need black intellectuals? The former are answered we need from history, the latter is not.

What is numbers worth when the mob is weak but the wise men are strong?

Look at what happened in the Battle of Sacromento. (natsocs vs antifa)

There are a lot who do see it, but power is a real thing. It is a very dangerous thing to say the truth. If Noam Chomsky did not have academic credibility from Linguistics, Philosophy, etc. you'd probably never had heard of him because he'd be fired or more effectively torn down in some way. Even then, you bet he waited until he had tenure before he began to criticize Israel.

Also, a lot of academics are specialists and charlatans.

>uld be wise to side with those who have greater power than your own in order to maintain what current power you have. This is how it always


I think you're really on to something here. It's sad to see so much groupthink happening in the faculty at my university. The only people that sound reasonable, and make logical arguments, are the least popular people (Econ, Law, and old professors). The guys knocking on death's door say some great shit in meetings and will actually disagree with the retarded new generation of social justice types.

>accusations that were unanswerable
So... Nothing has changed then? Cry witch on your neighbor and steal his land. Cry racist on a rival and steal his job

Many of the more useful people in my field do this sort of thing. I know a guy who went to China and Japan recently to give talks on sustained economic growth based on his researches into central European economies during the last 500 years. His talk covered what they did right to continue growth, and what caused growth to end, giving them evidence of historical errors.

>Also, a lot of academics are specialists and charlatans.

This is 100% the truth. So many of the people I've met just sound intelligent and say the right buzzwords. You read their books, research, look at their writing and realize, holy fuck, they know nothing.

Your brain is retarded. If you don't purposely question it and challenge it you will be taken for a ride.

It's more along the lines of crying that they are disbelievers. IF you questioned the lord's arbitrary right over the serf in medieval/early modern Europe--this even happened in the most enlightened parts of central europe in the 18th century--you'd be accused of aethism and the emperor/prince/sovereign/protector would Vogelfrey (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogelfrei) your as. Basically, you'd be cast out of the protection from your lord and people could hurt you, rape you, murder you, or whatever, without consequence.

This person is onto something.

You need to push yourself and think. Without intellectual tension, without a constant argument, new ideas, new thoughts and unique approaches, your brain get's retarded.

Most academics make about what skilled workers make. It's only the lecture tour charlatans that have deals, assets, etc.

I think what's far more common to see is activism that doesn't match up with reality because so many of the people one meets in academia have never had real jobs.

They work hard to keep undesirables out of the soft sciences. There are paths, trials, tribulations and even age-based goalposts one must meet to ever hope to get tenure.

For instance, some of the most prestigious awards have age limits.

That does sound more accurate...
Any solutions for the rot in academia, Mr Science Man?

what you think outside of university i want to hold discussions?
fuck man im tired of writing pointless essays all the time.

yeah, people are often blind and stupid. you sure your own views are so correct?

I don't really consume media, but I do think for myself, and only real difference in the viewpoints between liberal and conservative is that the conservative one is born of fear and greed, and the liberal viewpoint is motivated by selflessness and sacrifice. Like I said, there's stupid cunts on both sides, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to figure out which pair of those attributes are the godly ones.

Here's a pic of Germany ca 2013-2014

I think you need to write more essays. Writing is a big problem today. Message boards, twitter, and facebook have made people incomprehensible. Recruiters come to us and ask for students that can write good emails. I'm not kidding.

You need to practice organizing your thoughts and constructing a well-reasoned, thoughtful argument using proper grammar and easy prose. In other words, not what I'm doing here.

The essays should be made shorter and more frequent to get you into the habit of thinking.

It's more of a question of people not questioning things. "Godly ones" or otherwise should be discussed. People now hardly think about contemporary politics. They just scream racism.

>Message boards
If anything mb/ibs allow for much easier to read discussions than twitter/fb/forums, and for better structuring. Meanwhile, grammar and spelling wise, it is up to the poster.

>ukrainian

no such villages

Also, what parts of writing a good email do most people lack in your opinion?

Professional and to the point. New graduates (not from my university) forget to write professional greetings (titles, time of day greeting, closing). They also have trouble making themselves understood. Clarity is an issue.
So, research labs do lots of coordination, and they require people with good organizational skills and language skills, to get those people talking to one another. Big research consortiums come to job fairs and ask for those students.

Also, I'm told, excel spreadsheet skills are vastly under appreciated.

Because pure logic just leads to paralyzingly solipsism. Even the most logical individual probably only spends an hour a day thinking rational thoughts . The rest is impulse, instinct, emotions and noise.

>Excel
Eww, I'd rather just use python

Anyway, I started this thread because a fellow academic let me down. One can always count of this person to think. The person looked at me and said "Gosh, if only someone would run on a platform of rebuilding our infrastructure."

I said, I'm not certain, but I believe that might be Trump's platform. The response was facile,

"Trump preaches hate."

This is very accurate.

It seems like half the people getting PhDs in the first place just couldn't find jobs out of their undergraduate degree

>One part of someone's standpoint invalidating their whole position
nigga wat

And that is the state of Propaganda. Someone I know to be a deep, critical thinker capable of analyzing european economic trends a hundred years ago, through thickets of government propaganda, can't parse that in his own time.

So, does history offer any insight into getting people to see through propaganda, Mr Science Man?

Give it a rest guy, don't worry you look very smart to the random basement dwellers you're trying to impress

>He thinks the world is well educated and caring

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I wish I had anything useful/interesting to add. People are just pack animals essentially. We're more easily led in numbers. The base emotions, fear, hate, and want of acceptance, can be exploited with little effort to make us fall "in line" with propaganda.

The most dangerous propaganda in my opinion is that which is very slightly on your "side" of the spectrum. Basically things that make us more and more extreme in our opinions. We must be wary we do not fall into the same traps we see others fall into time and time again.

Bump

Years ago I attended a lecture of a prominent scholar on the state of trains in America. He said we could make America great again with trains. We could fix all of the ills we experience today and the infrastructure is there so all we need to do is make it happen. But there are powerful lobbies, airline, petroleum, road construction, automotive, manufacturing, etc. and everyone gets paid to hate on trains.

What was his solution?

Realize that these interests seek to shape your thinking.

Stop reading national newspapers. Stop listening to mainstream news stations. Read local news. Read foreign news. Vote out officials in the pockets of lobbyists.

Basically the problem is we send way too fucking many people to university. Most of these kids show up, knowing basically nothing from high school, barely able to write a full sentence, with no interest in being there. They just know society expects the to get a degree to be successful, and that college is a place to drink a lot and try and have casual sex.

4 years later they haven't learned a thing. They have $60k worth of debt, and no idea what to do with their lives so they decide to go to grad school.

They aren't really inspired by the subjects they study. They aren't driven to excel in the private sector. In a different time they would have been monks or priests.

Modern day Academia has replaced the Clergy. Professors are the new priests, and students their acolytes. Social justice gives them righteous purpose and zeal. Science is ironically the new dogma.

I think that's a useful enough observation. I've found myself walking things back in my mind lately.

the polarization of politics now reminds me of a Stephen King book, Insomnia.

In't it funny that a guy who wrote a cautionary tale on the perils of political activism (abortion) would get so butthurt about Trump?

This is partially true. Every year a few shitheads join the grad programs and waste their generous funding because they couldn't find a job and the only thing they are good at is taking standardized tests.

We weed a lot of them out. Half won't finish their graduate degrees. Some will finish but most will never have a decent job. Maybe one of every cohort will have a good job.

This is partially true. Every year a few shitheads join the grad programs and waste their generous funding because they couldn't find a job and the only thing they are good at is taking standardized tests.

We weed a lot of them out. Half won't finish their graduate degrees. Some will finish but most will never have a decent job. Maybe one of every cohort will have a good job.

One the zeal: A professor recently said that it seems like marxist/maoist self-critique. Read Darkness at Noon.

I met a former civil engineer a few months ago, he was shitting on the DOT for allowing trucking to take hold and that it was destroying our nations roads and bridges.

Unrelated, but as my summer job I ended up working at a small trucking company, finding freight. 80klbs is the weight limit for standard loads+cab&trailer. Most cars weigh less than 5klbs.
Also, I visited a factory near my town that made train car parts. A supervisor there told me they were doing layoffs.

When you're surrounded by the lowest common denominator it always drags the conversation down to their level. On an institutional scale this leads to the kind of emotional manipulation and complete lack of skepticism and critical thought you're describing.

The few actual smart people are left with their opinions largely unchallenged and become complacent and secure in their world view. They are The Authorities after all.

What's going on in that image, OP? The hand of God instructing St. Beardo to dig black babies out of the earth?

The next wave to overturn it is going to be something astounding.

God dammit, Satan, I didn't need that confirmation

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>>Vote out officials in the pockets of lobbyists
It seems like the general view on this board and many other places is that this is a problem that cannot be voted out. I firmly believe that brief periods of revolution and/or violence are necessary not only for our current society, but for the advancement of human civilization.

Funny? Yes. Surprising? No.
Like I said, we're all susceptible to propaganda and extremism. I still manage to respect artists and scientists, who are in all likelihood much smarter than me, regardless of the fact that I find my own logic at odds with their emotions.

Thanks for the heads up Lucifer.

We're just pattern matching machines and even the best of us still miss 9/10 patterns. It's a mistake to presume educated or even intelligent implies rational. There is also a lot tribalism with it, but I;m very tired right now.

Its part of the way propeganda works. When you're not the one targeted, it seems stupidly obvious, phony, and unrealistic. But when it plays upon your beliefs, in this case the leftist belief that everyone is truly "good", it can play your own wants and desires against you

Something academics (including you apparently) don't understand is that "logic" doesn't play as much of a part in people's convictions as their gut instincts.

Instincts kick in, then we use our reasoning to justify our instincts. Smarter people are capable of more advanced mental gymnastics to explain their instinctual moral reactions (so they believe a lot of stupid things, despite being smart).

They also enjoy being the only ones intelligent enough to understand their mental gymnastics, and look down on regular people who think stupid things like "a wall will slow illegal immigration significantly".
>It's clearly more nuanced than that, you primitive redneck.

This is why they hate Trump. He represents the people's common sense and effectively bypasses academia and professional mental gymnasts. We don't need them if we have someone who speaks directly to us and to our concerns.

Related:

mpcdot.com/forums/topic/9029-trumps-war-on-complexity/

ITT: a faggot trying to sound smarter than he is

If you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it. - Einstein

Lots of people get politically radicalized in college.

Instead of turning me into a blue-haired nu-male, college made want to drive a tank into the NSF and Harvard Yard. It also made me more cynical about science than even the most hardcore fundamentalist Christians I know.