[Pretorian]

I'd like to discuss in this thread tactics and methods of raising sheeple in above mentioned countries;
In Soviet Union, any child was surrounded by propoganda from the very moment he was seeing the light for the first time. Pretty much every building in the center of any city was decorated with Lenin's portraits, red banners, 3-feet lettered slogans like "Long Live The Communist Party of the Soviet Union--- Intelligence, Honour and Integrity of Our Era! " "Lenin is Always Alive" "Peace May Labour! "' -- you wont believe how much shit they could come up with.
Every child since children garden following by school was learning small verses about good and kind grandaddy Lenin , how good he was with kids, how smart he was, ets, ets. Also everyday in school we had a "political information time" when each pupil had to prepair some info to read about evil capitalists kicking someone''s ass in Nicaragua or abouts.
Shorty, not very many people gave a fat flying duck about it. One friend of mine answering what would he want most of all in his life, said that he wants communism to come sooner. That was the most jawdropping answer I've ever heard by that time. i was 9, he was 10 or 11.

In the USA I've seen more brainwashed people than anywhere else by far. Meantime I do not see the amount of propoganda being anywhere close to waht was going on in SU. Where is it getting in peoples heads then? and how?

[max_power29]

Not necessarily In order of importance/potency of brainwashing:

1.T.V./mainstream media programming
2. public education
3. the "american dream" myth (along with everyone can get rich if they work hard and get educated),
4. the endless economic growth myth
5.the constitution myth (government gives a damn about the constitution especially bill of rights) the Constitution was actually written by and for the wealthy only. Savinar has interesting insight into this. wealthy=buys the most "free" speech. This fact actually makes the # 1 source of brainwashing possible: t.v and MSM.
6. American history myths, (war is fought for our freedoms myth goes along with this one)
7. keeping people in the dark about what "money" or a "dollar" actually is. (central bank is a government institution myth goes along with this)
8. Myth- Government is your benevolant friend and is there to benefit you and not themselves (cops, courts, city, county, state, federal, ect.) Government is not just organized crime.
9. Myth- Religion deserves the utmost respect and esteem(as opposed to being ridiculous, backwards, retarded, nutty, superstitious cults)-See the church scene in Borat, you wuill be laughing your ass off at the same time as being scared as hell.
10- 2 party federal government myth. The republicans and democrats are not different. They are one in the same. They pretend to be different to give citizens the illusion that they have a sporting chance of picking the sort of government they want.

So you can see american brainwashing depends on mostly 1. mainstream media and 2. sacred 'murrken cultural "myths" which people begin working on ingraining in other peoples and their own kids psyches virtually since the day they are born also. These myths are perpetuated by parents, relatives, teachers, clergy, government, etc. virtually any and every authority figure perpetuates these american myths. People must get over these cultural myths to get an accurate picture of whats really going on.

I think people of the "baby boomer" generation tend to be the biggest chearleaders and perpetuators of these myths.

[evilgenius]

It started with being forced to recite the pledge of allegiance every school morning. There was a direct appeal to the same human instinct that Hitler appealed to with all of the rousing marching songs. To this day there is a stirring at the flag or the anthem. The feeling is visceral. It doesn't come from the mind but the body.

Then there was the propaganda of excelism. The best example being that of the pointing out how the Russkies missiles weren't as accurate as ours. We could hit home plate from thousands of miles while the Russkies landed outside of the stadium. It was never pointed out what lack of a difference there was when you were talking about 100 megaton weapons.

Somehow we lost Vietnam while not losing a single battle. People even today say we could have won if our military hadn't been constrained by 'the left'. They never elaborate that it was the left that got the US into the headlock with Russia in the first place. It was the left that sought the deepest involvement in the struggle. Incidently, if you haven't guessed, left in America never meant communist or too liberal. It meant less conservative than the recalcitrant old men that were always holding onto the past. The classic nostlgia driven definition of fascism could be at times applied to the right in America, Goldwater, but there was always a nostalgic bent on the American left as well. There still is today, Biden.

The communists were bad mouthed but their philosophy was never discussed. Sure all the bad examples of those devoted to communism were announced, but there was never any discussion of what it meant to be communist. It was strictly defined, in other words, in a capitalist construct. It was down to winners and losers and not to right and wrong.

The capitalists managed to define Marx as a thinker with thoughts somehow alien or at odds to capitalism. I was astonished when I finally read Marx how much he thought like a true capitalist. He wasn't suggesting that communism was coming on some parallel path to capitalism. He was suggesting that communism would evolve out of capitalism.

[pea-jay]

Both societies brain wash. The only difference is in the USSR you knew when they were force feeding you the proper "thoughts"

In the US, it is far more insiduous. It happens in a far more sophisticated manner whereby our thoughts are shaped by a combination of "good ideals" and fear of "failure". The message is smooth and slick and well adapted to appeal to our emotional being (and not rational side). Most folks dont even know their thought processes have even been manipulated.

[Kyn]

The western, capitalist propaganda has all advantages:
The west is the richest region in the world, this generation being the richest in history. Ok, most humand beings on earth are poor but that's just because they're ruled by corrupt dictatorships (we installed them, but nobody knows or cares), suffer from civil wars (we started them, but nobody knows or cares) and in the US, there are a lot of poor people, but in the world of the media, they're not, and hey, they're still richter than the poorest in the world, no? Then, the SU collapsed. What more do you need to know?

It's quite easy to paint the west as being democratic and free, because there are indeed more liberties than in other regions and in other epochs, and there are free elections. Free, if you define not-free as how an election looked in the SU or a lot of dictatorships.

Btw, best propaganda is propaganda that's not too political. The western media perfectionized that. Not to mention something is better than to critisise it, and making something ridicolous or looking inhuman without actually saying that, is better than direct propaganda by the state.

[shakespear1]

Great topic.

After reading "Age of Propaganda" - Pratkanis/Aronson, I came away thinking that both sides were and continue to do the same thing, but the level of sophistication was the differentiating factor.

The word PR is used when referring to the West and Propaganda is used when referring to the East.

[dukey]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ush Spent $1.6 Bil. on 'Spin'

[I_Like_Plants]

Let's see....

From earliest life, I remember we had a TV, and it was on shows and cartoons whenever we kids were in the house and not eating or sleeping. Hence, weekend mornings (cartoons!) and early evenings, afternoons. We still played outside a lot, that's been changed and now kids watch TV even more.

I need to explain that Americans paid, and pay, for these TVs and now they pay a hefty fee, somewhere around $80 a month, for the programming. They're brainwashed so well they're paying to be brainwashed!

Endless commercials, especially during kids' watching times. And the shows used to push products themselves, so we had Bozo The Clown and Mr. Greenjeans and Checkers & Pogo pushing stuff. Yes, I had a Checkers and Pogo camera, and the skateboard. My brother actually went on the show!

The American Dream was pushed through such propaganda tools as The Game Of Life (tm) "You will learn about life, when you play the game of life!" went the song in the commercial. Everyone had one of these. Also, Monopoly - somehow this game originally invented by a jobless man as a protest against rapacious capitalism became something every family had and one learned to rejoice in putting one's friends and family out of biz.

Glorification of low-paid McJobs, starting in the 1960s and even earlier. The paper route, McDonalds, all of our parents knew the "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean" mantra.

All kinds of consuming and fund-raising all through school. Selling candy bars and shit, and the whole Scouting thing, which started out as a great program but became by the time I came along, a vehicle to sell lots of expensive uniforms and shit, and the yearly jamboree where we were was held downtown, in a convention center type building.

Somehow, people are being convinced very effectively to not do stuff with their hands. You only see old folks doing doilies, mending, building stuff. You go and buy a birdhouse. You go and buy a bench for the garden. Less and less people are gardening too, even with the organic DIY gardening movement.

At least the Soviets had good intentions. Yeah they killed a bunch of their own people - should have learned from us and killed a bunch of other people. And Lenin, from what I have heard, was a fairly decent guy. I think you'd rather have him babysit your kids than any of the group in charge in the US now.

[I_Like_Plants]

The only bright spot is, that kind of total-surveillance, cubicle/feedlot society takes TONS of energy to run. It takes tons of energy to make all the stuff like computers and cameras, to keep that many people off of the farm fields and into the cubicles, to keep the massive farm-robots going to do the farming, all that.

Much more energy than can be kept going with anything but gobs and gobs and gobs of oil. Which is why we, the Evil Empire, are at war with the rest of the world to get all the oil I suppose.

But the whole edifice WILL come crumbling down. And most of the feedlot-humans will die.

It will be wonderful.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pea-jay', 'B')oth societies brain wash. The only difference is in the USSR you knew when they were force feeding you the proper "thoughts"

[denverdave]

What really makes the american brainwashing work is not just the immersion in disinformation, but neat total absence of knowledge about the way things are in other places to put it in context. Most people in other countries have a much better idea of where they stand as far as standards of living, rights, etc, while most americans have very little perspective. The American sheeple have no idea how much they take for granted compared to thrid world people, and yet how much we don't have compared to other countries with similar standards of living, such as better quality of life, healthcare, mass transit, etc.

[denverdave]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pea-jay', 'B')oth societies brain wash. The only difference is in the USSR you knew when they were force feeding you the proper "thoughts"