DONATE

Showing posts with label Propaganda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Propaganda. Show all posts

Monday, February 24, 2025

Intro to Documentary: Unpacking The Lies We've Been Fed

Intro by John R. Houk, Blog Editor

© February 24, 2025 [UPDATE 3/4/25]

 

Propaganda has shaped the ills in health and politics that have afflicted America from the early 20th century straight through to our present time in the 21st century.

 

Thanks to The Gateway Pundit I found a Documentary that explains this nefarious process imposed on Americans and brainwashed them into compliance to tyranny. The Documentary’s title is, “Unpacking The Lies We've Been Fed” produced by Ty And Charlene Bollinger. The Bollingers during the COVID Tyranny have been vilified by the Mockingbird Press. AND YET more and more evidence has been released post-COVID that have vindicated their past exposés.

 

The Bollingers have a website that sells anti-Pharmaceutical health products and access to many of their videos: The Truth About Cancer.

 

I’m uploading “Unpacking The Lies We've Been Fed” to my Odysee and UGETube video channels to share with my readers.

 

Here is the Disclaimer about the Documentary from the website:

 

“The content of this website is based on research conducted by TTAC Publishing, LLC, unless otherwise noted. The information is presented for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose or prescribe for any medical or psychological condition, nor to prevent, treat, mitigate or cure such conditions. The information contained herein is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a doctor or qualified healthcare professional. Therefore, this information is not intended as medical advice, but rather a sharing of knowledge and information based on research and experience. The Truth About Cancer encourages you to make your own health care decisions based on your judgment and research in partnership with a qualified healthcare professional.”

 

JRH 2/24/25

READER SUPPORTED!

PLEASE! I need more Patriots to step up. I need Readers to chip in $5 - $10 - $25 - $50 - $100 (PAYPAL - one-time or recurring). PLEASE YOUR generosity is NEEDED. PLEASE GIVE to Help me be a voice for Liberty:

Please Support SlantRight 2.0

Big Tech Censorship is pervasive – Share voluminously on all social media platforms!

Our Senior Citizen Family Supplements our income by offering healthy coffee products. BETTER YOUR HEALTH with healthy & good tasting COFFEE and enjoy some weight management supplements. BUY Happy Coffee & Weight Loss Supplements at the Diana Wellness Store: https://dianawellnessstore.com

>>DRINK COFFEE-MANAGE WEIGHT or MAKE SOME EXTRA CASH<<

***************************

[Blog Editor: I received an email notification from Odysee that "Unpacking The Lies We've Been Fed" has received a copyright complaint. Which means Odysee has joined the anti-Fair Use doctrine crowd. Thus I changed the video embed below to UGETube.]

Odysee/UGETube VIDEO: Unpacking The Lies We've Been Fed

Posted by SlantRight 2.0/John Houk

Published February 24, 2025

 

H/T: The Gateway Pundit (https://tinyurl.com/bddf3wzy).

 

Excerpts from The Gateway Pundit for a Description:

 

‘“Unpacking the Lies We’ve Been Fed”
by Ty and Charlene Bollinger with special collaboration with Michael Skow.

 

Big Pharma has spent over $5 BILLION to buy off and lobby members of Congress.

 

As we saw with Senators like Bernie Sanders during the RFK Jr @RobertKennedyJr hearings, these congressmen are doing the bidding of companies like Pfizer and vaccine manufacturers, no matter how many Americans die or are injured or killed as a result. …’

 

The Documentary Website: https://unpackthelies.com/film/

Monday, May 6, 2024

An Intro to Dr. Malone’s – ‘Fascism, Globalism, and the “Medical-Industrial Complex”’

Intro by John R. Houk, Blog Editor

May 6, 2024

 

Dr. Robert Malone (self-described inventor of mRNA tech – OF INTEREST: HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE) is a person that evokes love, hate and a little of in between the love-hate emotion stretching across both sides of the political spectrum. Leftist-Globalists (science & Mockingbird Media) outright vilify him. A large element of the Right honor his academic-science pedigree yet there are a significant amount of Anti-Medical Tyranny advocates (I won’t go into the who, what & why) who have disagreements with Dr. Malone. Those disagreements have led to mutual civil lawsuits between people who should otherwise be allies against the Globalist agenda.

 

Dr. Robert Malone (Daily Wire Photo 2/1/22)

 

On a personal level, as far the Anti-Medical Tyranny advocates go. Rather than focus on their disagreements, I focus on their agreements. Even if hubris among these science Anti-Medical Tyranny fellows prevents openly congratulating each other’s agreements, it is there and is huge AGAINST Medical Tyrants.

 

AND SO, I’m going to share a Dr. Robert Malone Substack post which I encourage to read with some critical thinking discernment. Why? Because quite possibly you will not concur with all of Dr. Malone’s assessment. NEVERTHELESS, it is my opinion Dr. Malone’s assessments in the post should be eye-opening of the-how threatens an individual’s personal Liberty.

 

The title: Fascism, Globalism, and the “Medical-Industrial Complex”: Fight for life, freedom, and sovereignty.

 

The three assessments addressed in the title:

 

1. The Medical Industrial Complex

 

2. Censorship, propaganda, and psychological warfare technology

 

3. Globalization versus nationalism, and a battle worth fighting

 

JRH 5/6/24

READER SUPPORTED!

PLEASE! I need more Patriots to step up. I need Readers to chip in $5 - $10 - $25 - $50 - $100. PLEASE YOUR generosity is NEEDED. PLEASE GIVE to Help me be a voice for Liberty:

Please Support SlantRight 2.0

Big Tech Censorship is pervasive – Share voluminously on all social media platforms!

Our Senior Citizen Family Supplements income by selling healthy coffee products. If you are not a donate-kind-of-individual, buy some healthy, feel-good & taste-great COFFEE: https://dianahouk.beneve.com/

**************************

Fascism, Globalism, and the “Medical-Industrial Complex”

Fight for life, freedom, and sovereignty.

 

By ROBERT W MALONE MD, MS

May 4, 2024

Who is Robert Malone [Substack]

 

Mussolini Quote on Fascism

 

Today, I’m delving into three important topics, covered from a Christian conservative/free market and nationalist perspective. I will place each within a global geopolitical framework.

 

My goal over the past four years of the COVID crisis has been to decipher our collective experiences. This has guided me to focus on the broader, more comprehensive picture.

 

Throughout this past year, I have actively participated in three ‘Global Crisis Summits’ (Brussels at the EU Parliament, Romania, and Washington DC in conjunction with CPAC), among numerous others.  Just three days ago, I returned from Romania, where I had the privilege of speaking at the ‘Make Europe Great Again’ conference. These experiences have underscored the fact that our understanding of the COVID crisis is most effective when viewed within a broader global context.

 

Today, I will dig into three fundamental topics that have been at the forefront of what has happened over the past few years.

 

1)    Medical Industrial Complex

2)    Censorship, propaganda, and psychological warfare technology

3)    Globalization versus nationalism, and a battle worth fighting

 

1.     The Medical Industrial Complex

 

We need to start with the meaning of words.

 

“Medical Industrial Complex” refers to the increasingly powerful, transnational, public-private partnerships linking academia, pharma/biotech and both national government and supra-governmental organizations such as the United Nations and its Agenda 2030 treaty, the World Health Organization and its International Health Regulations, and the World Economic Foundation among others.

 

These types of public-private cooperative relationships have a name. That name was created by Benito Mussolini. We know this name. The name is Fascism (corporatism). That is the union of the state and corporate power. We should call it what it is.

 

One of the things that has happened throughout the COVID crisis and the ongoing process of globalization and harmonization is the weaponization and perversion of language.

 

We have to call things by their true names despite what that may imply or how the press may react to it. For example, we are not far-right. We are center-right. The truth is that our opponents have become far-left. We have allowed the press and corporate media to redefine language and demonize us as far-right, but the truth is that they are the radicals. They are the far-left. We have to refuse to allow them to capture and pervert our language. We must take it back.

 

Language controls thought. It controls how we structure our understanding of the world.

 

Pharma and biotech are major global economic engines, and the profit and power of this sector have allowed managerial leaders in this sector to become more powerful than individual nation-states through corruption, electoral interference, and economic hegemony.  The COVIDcrisis provides abundant examples to illustrate this.  Weaponized fear of a modestly pathogenic respiratory virus has enabled the sector to extract concessions and wealth from both national and supernational (EU) organizations.  At this point, there does not appear to be any organization that can hold these “public-private partnerships” accountable for their actions and misdeeds.

 

Pharma and biotech were once major economic engines for the US and European economies. They are no longer. Overall, these sectors are now increasingly dominated by US and EU competitors, in particular our unrestricted warfare competitor, the Chinese Communist Party, and our geopolitical frenemy, India.

 

To the extent that drugs and biologics are manufactured in the USA, they are made using precursor compounds that are also manufactured by CCP and Indian-controlled companies. If the USA and NATO find themselves in a major “hot” conflict with these offshore competitors, we will find ourselves without access to essential medicines within weeks due to supply chain restrictions.

 

Much of the current drug supply is manufactured offshore in facilities that are essentially self-monitored, as the FDA has chosen to rely on local inspection and monitoring. The FDA assumes that these quality control processes are being performed according to US regulatory standards.  To the extent that independent monitoring of imported drug and biological products has been performed, the data indicate that FDA “trust” in this offshore quality control monitoring is misplaced.

Dr. Malone Exhibit 1

 

Exhibit 1: The FDA conducted no inspections in China or India between April 2020 and March 2021.

Dr. Malone Exhibit 2

 

Exhibit 2 shows that FDA inspector days for the Chinese region were less than ten days per year.

 

Chinese pharmaceutical imports in 2022 were around $196 billion, the second-largest U.S. goods import, just behind the automotive industry.

 

The US Federal response to this threat has not been to create policies favoring repatriation of these industries to the US and its allies, but rather to fund a Virginia facility to stockpile precursor compounds.  But Congress has not followed through on even this modest program, and although the facility has been obtained, the purchase of the stockpile has not been funded.

 

Meanwhile, the integrity, transparency, consistency and reliability of the FDA has been compromised.  A massive wave of retirements and resignations has resulted in the agency being transformed from within, due to loss of both expertise and the rise of a politicized culture largely staffed by non-US trained personnel. Today’s FDA is one in which regulatory decisions have become unpredictable, arbitrary, and capricious, as well as decoupled from previously accepted international norms. The revolving door between FDA retirees and big pharma gets ever larger.

 

The corruption of the FDA is now recognized worldwide, and this has eliminated a key US competitive advantage.  Previously the FDA was seen as the global “gold standard” neutral guarantor of biopharmaceutical product purity and quality.  Now the FDA acts to choose winners and losers in the global competition to innovate in order to address unmet human health needs (and to generate profit and industrial growth by doing so).

 

The loss of FDA integrity has destroyed the logic that purchasing and importing US biopharmaceutical products merits higher costs to ensure higher quality. Politicized governmental actions have economic consequences.

 

2.     Censorship, propaganda, and psychological warfare technology

 

Social media developed by the US intelligence and enhanced by the UK intellectual community has been developed as a weapon. Make no mistake about it, social media as we know it; Facebook, Twitter- as it was formerly embodied, all of these social media tools are weapons. They are psychological warfare weapons. They were designed as weapons.

 

They were designed and deployed in Arab Spring as political psywar weapons in order to facilitate regime change. This strategy is considered a huge success by US intelligence. Then the shock came when Nigel Farage and his UK Independence Party used social media to achieve Brexit. This was done in large part via decentralized social media communication, and that shock was further enhanced when Mr. Trump became President Trump.  Suddenly, the United States intelligence community, the State Department, and all the infrastructure that they control and use to exert control all over the world woke up and recognized that they had a problem. And that problem now extends to the populist movement here and across the world, a populism which we represent as center-right conservatives.

 

That challenge now represents an existential threat to NATO itself, because if Europe wakes up to the techno-totalitarianism that is being imposed from the central bureaucracy in Brussels (that is, the European Union), and it begins to exert the value of the independent nation-state, there is a perceived risk by the US State Department and intelligence community that the European Union, that structure that has been created to hold a Europe together will dissolve. It will fragment, and if that fragments, NATO will fragment, and if NATO fragments, then the United States Foreign Policy Establishment believes that they will find themselves at significant military and geopolitical disadvantage in an increasingly multilateral world.

 

This is resulting in a response from the US Intelligence Community and State Department, in which they feel justified to employ virtually any non-kinetic method in order to enforce and maintain the current status quo. Recognize that this is the case. To be clear, I'm not advocating for the dissolution of the European Union or the dissolution of NATO. I am reporting to you that this is the perception of the American and the five Eyes intelligence community, and they will do anything to avoid this consequence. They feel justified by the utilitarian logic that “anything goes, the ends justify means”, in order to defend the current world order and the plans for the future that they have developed.

 

As a consequence, psychological warfare technology is being widely deployed by “democratic” governments. This is technology that was developed for offshore combat. NATO considers this to be a central tenet of its current warfare planning. NATO calls psychological warfare technology a key aspect of modern hybrid warfare. This advanced technology is being deployed by governments and globalists on common citizens now because of the existential threat to the dissolution of the European Union, the perceived existential threat to NATO, and the need to maintain consensus by controlling all information in an increasingly multilateral world. This is being accomplished through propaganda techniques (such as the IC denial that Hunter Biden’s laptop was real in 2019), neuro-linguistic programming, and nudging, as well as censorship and the manipulation of internet algorithms of search engines.

 

In other words, in response to the threat of China, Russia, the rise of the Middle East, the fall of the petro-dollar, there is a widely accepted belief among the western “democracies” that it is necessary and acceptable to deploy psychological warfare technology on their citizens.

 

I argue this is fundamentally unethical. Psychological warfare technology, as it is currently being deployed and has been developed, can completely control all aspects of information that you receive, what you think, what you feel, and what you hear.

 

In a world in which governments feel it is acceptable to deploy psychological warfare technology on their citizens, the concept of individual and national sovereignty becomes completely obsolete. We can argue about whether or not “in-person voting” or “remote ballots” or “long periods for voting” is enabling for voter fraud. But all of this is completely irrelevant in the face of modern psychological warfare.  When this psywar technology is deployed on citizens by their government, when everything that they hear, feel, think, believe, is controlled through this tech, through social media, through established media, through all messaging- then the nuance of voting is completely irrelevant.

 

Again, this is unethical and a breach of human rights. Humans have the right to access information in a democracy, which is fundamental to the social contract. How can we have a social contract when the citizens of nation-states are not allowed the information to make informed decisions? That's where we're at right now, and it's justified because of the fear of this existential crisis.

 

This is evil as far as I'm concerned. This is a major breach of human ethics. We're disrespecting the ability of individuals to act as sovereign beings.

 

Most importantly, the deployment of propaganda and censorship blocks innovation and adaptation to change. Cultures cannot adapt; they cannot innovate if they don't have access to full, diverse, accurate information. This is the most important thing of all. We will become stagnant. Do we have examples of this type of stagnation? What happens when information is completely controlled? The former Soviet Union knows the answer. Those who lived under Ceausescu in Romania know the answer. Those who lived under Salazar in Portugal know the answer.

 

3.     Globalization versus nationalism, and a battle worth fighting

 

There are many lessons that we can learn from the COVID crisis, but one of the key ones has to do with “what is globalism”. We toss this term around, we never seem to define it. It's as if it's amorphous beast. We can't put our hands around it.

 

Globalism is central planning.

 

Centrally Planned Economy – Investopedia

 

We have seen the effects of central planning during the COVID crisis.  The former residents of the Soviet Union understand central planning. We understand the harm that comes from central planning, from bureaucrats determining our future, making decisions about how a nation state, an economy of people, should adapt to changing conditions.  During COVID we have seen how easily centralized planning can be corrupted and perverted to support a wide variety of hidden agendas.

 

Central planning is also associated with cultural homogenization, the drive to create one culture, which is basically driven in the current case by intentional destruction of diversity to reduce economic friction.

 

This globalization thrust is basically justified by large economic forces in order to support the agenda of transnational, globalist organizations, particularly corporations in their cooperative relationships with large transnational governmental organizations.  Recently, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink spoke the quiet part out loud, when he discussed the need to reduce the global human population and substitute robotic workers to produce goods and services.  This is all perversely driven by a model for future society collectively referred to as transhumanism.

 

This is anti-human.  This is a death cult, aligned with a wide range of promoted anti-human policies including abortion, destruction of religion and family values, and of course the abomination of gender reassignment surgery and transgenderism.

 

These policies are being actively and globally promoted using censorship, propaganda, and modern psywar methods.

 

We must have access to unrestricted information, which means free speech and freedom of thought. Now, that comes at a price—a price of personal responsibility, a price that people will be potentially exposed to information that may be damaging or offensive. But if we refuse to allow them to have access to information and diversity of thought, we will prevent our ability as nation-states and cultures to adapt to changing conditions.

 

And if there's one thing that we absolutely must have right now, it's the ability to innovate and adapt. That's how we escape the Malthusian trap. All this fear of global warming and population growth; that's what this is all about. And the counter argument to the Malthusian argument is that humans adapt. Humans can change, humans can innovate. But they can't innovate if all information is controlled.

 

States and cultures which resist propaganda, censorship, and weaponized fear have a competitive advantage. In a multilateral world, Romania should not apologize for advocating for autonomy. Independent European nation-states should not apologize for going their own way and innovating. They must do so. They must do so because it will give them a competitive advantage.

 

I argue that independent nation-states are the laboratory for innovation, cultural innovation, political innovation, and economic innovation. They must be allowed sovereignty and autonomy. If they don't, the world's ability to adapt to change will be stifled.

 

The best way to allow the world to adapt to change is by respecting the principle of subsidiarity. This is the concept that decision-making authority should be delegated to the smallest, most local competent level.  The principle of subsidiarity demands decentralization. The ultimate component of a decentralized adaptive world is not the nation-state, it is the family. We need to celebrate the family as the core of the principle and thrust of the concept of subsidiarity.

 

The weaponization of fear via propaganda to control people is unethical. We have seen repeated justification by academics and bureaucrats and governments and transnational organizations - that the weaponization of fear is acceptable in the service of the overall public good as they define it. We have seen this in the case of the COVID crisis in the service of public health. The weaponization of fear by governments to control people is unethical, and it should not be allowed under any circumstances. It should not be tolerated. We must call it out when we see it.

 

Last point: We have a difficult fight ahead of us. This difficult fight is not going to be resolved with one election, the election of one politician, or a change in leadership at the European Council or the President of the United States. These issues have been developing for decades, in many cases for at least a century, and they are not going to be resolved in the short term.

 

We have a long-term fight in front of us, which will require years of effort in fighting this fight.

 

Do not self-victimize, and don't complain. Again and again, I hear this cry of

 

§  poor me”.

 

§  “It's such a hard job we face”.

 

§  “There's so many obstacles”.

 

§  “Our opponents are so entrenched, they're so powerful”.

 

§  “They have so many forces”.

 

§  “They control the media”.

 

§  “They are so mean”.

 

§  “They are so unethical”.

 

Stop whining. We have a fight. We have to fight that fight, and it does no good to complain.

 

It's a wonderful thing. What a wonderful thing to have a worthy opponent.

 

It is the greatest gift in the world, and by God, we have a worthy opponent. We must not complain. We must not shirk. We must confront the evil that is ahead of us, and it is not going to be easy.

 

Fight for your future and that of your children. Celebrate this opportunity to fight for your future. What a gift to have an opportunity at this point in time to make a difference. Celebrate it.

 

Refuse to be a victim. Choose life, not death. Do not apologize, and fight for life, freedom, and sovereignty.

 

Thank you for reading Who is Robert Malone. This post is public so feel free to share it.

 

© 2024 Robert W Malone, MD

 

Who is Robert Malone HOMEPAGE

SUBSCRIBE/SUPPORT Who is Robert Malone


Monday, November 6, 2017

The Bolshevik Revolution Reveals Six Phases From Freedom To Communist Misery


Communist genocide/murder in the 20th century is only dwarfed Islamic genocide/murder Muslims committed from days of its founder to the present. Stella Morabito writing for The Federalist says Communist 20th century regime victims numbered to the rounded number of 100 MILLION. Bill Warner of Political Islam estimates 270 MILLION jihad victims died in 1400 years at the hands of Islamic theopolitical Muslims.

Just think! In about a hundred period Communist regimes kill a little more than one-third the victims of Islam motivated butchery. Keeping that in mind, November 7 will mark the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution that produced the first dedicated Communist nation.

Morabito has some thoughts about that anniversary. Read her essay by keeping in mind the modern Communist movements in America deluding their adherents about Marxist proclivities: Antifa, Refuse Fascism, Black Live Matter (BLT), New Black Panthers, SPLC to name a few and let’s include the Democratic Party pretending to care about the poor and American minorities.

JRH 11/6/17
***************
The Bolshevik Revolution Reveals Six Phases From Freedom To Communist Misery
A hundred years on from the Bolshevik Revolution, we’d do well to study the stages and trends that put free societies on the path to totalitarianism.

NOVEMBER 6, 2017


Scarcity, terror, and the mass murder of more than 100 million victims are communism’s main contributions to human history. As we mark the centennial of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia on November 7, we should never forget that legacy. Communism is a fount of human misery and death. Few today really understand what that system of so-called government is all about.

In a nutshell, communism enforces a privileged elite’s centralization of power. This means it always puts too much power into the hands of too few people. They tend to weasel their way into power as their ventriloquized agitators use talking points like “justice” and “equality” while promoting a false illusion of public support.

So, how would it ever be possible for a free society like America to succumb to such tyrannical forces? I think we’ve spent precious little time trying to dissect and understand this process. So, in this three-part series, I hope to map out six stages that lead us into this dangerous direction. Within each phase, several trends take hold. I’ll discuss the trends in more detail in parts II and III.

There is a lot of overlap among the phases, but I think they can be roughly identified as: 1.) Laying the groundwork; 2.) Propaganda; 3.) Agitation; 4.) State takeover of society’s institutions; 5.) Coercing conformity; and 6.) Final solutions. But first let’s look a bit more closely at what communism really means for human beings.

‘Power Kills. Absolute Power Kills Absolutely’

Thousands of texts examine and analyze communism ideologically, historically, economically, and so on. It always amounts to a bait-and-switch scheme hatched by egomaniacs who want to dictate to everybody. Why? Because it’s all about the consolidation of power by a tiny elite—in Vladimir Lenin’s words, “the vanguard”—who claim to promote equality and justice and blah, blah, blah.

But once communism gets its foot in the door and you don’t get with their program, it promises you death in a variety of forms: economic death, social death, and literal death. That’s predictable whenever you put too much power into the hands of too few people. And that’s why we should always firmly oppose any system that demands the consolidation and centralization of power.

Although communist and socialist governments murdered well more than 100 million people in the course of the twentieth century, that number spikes even further when you include the practical bedfellows of communism, like Nazism and fascism, for example. According to the calculations of Professor R. J. Rummel, author of “Death by Government,” totalitarian regimes snuffed out approximately 169 million lives in the twentieth century alone. That number is more than four times higher than the 38 million deaths—civilian as well as military—caused by all of the twentieth century wars combined.

As Rummel states: “Power kills. Absolute power kills absolutely.” The common thread that runs through communist and fascist ideologies is their totalitarian nature, which means they control people by breeding scarcity, ignorance, human misery, social distrust, the constant threat of social isolation, and death to dissenters. All in the name of justice and equality.

They cannot abide any checks or balances, particularly checks on government power as reflected in the U.S. Bill of Rights. They fight de-centralization of power, which allows localities and states true self-governance. Such restraints on the centralized power of the state stand in the way of achieving the goal of communism: absolute state power over every single human being.

Lenin’s Blood-Soaked Legacy

It should astonish us to realize that the obsessions of a few wild-eyed revolutionaries can blue-pill whole populations of peaceful citizens. But it’s all a matter of conjuring up illusions and mass delusions, no matter the brand of totalitarianism. Lenin was a fiery orator of propaganda, as was Adolph Hitler.

To achieve absolute power, Lenin focused on fomenting a class war, while Hitler set his sights on a race war. Either way, the divide-and-conquer modus operandi of fascist and communist demagogues is pretty much the same, no matter what each side might claim about the other. Their propaganda content may differ, but not so much their divide-and-conquer methods. Attitudes of supremacy come in a virtual rainbow of flavors and colors.

As Saul Alinsky taught and the agitprop [Blog Editor: I don’t know about you, but I had uncertainty about the definition of “agitprop.” Here is a definition at the end of this paragraph next to asterisk (*).]of groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center illustrates so perfectly, the goal of all such radicals is to seize power by fueling resentment and hatred among people through various forms of “consciousness”—particularly class and race consciousness. That’s what identity politics is all about. That division is a key tool for totalitarians in their conquest of the people. Once their organizations breed enough ill will, the “masses”—made up of mostly alienated individuals—can be baited and mobilized to do the bidding of power elites, with a rhetorical veneer claiming justice and equality.

*agitprop:

Noun
1. Agitation and propaganda, especially for the cause of communism.

2. (often initial capital letter) an agency or department, as of government, that directs and coordinates agitation and propaganda.

3. Also, agitpropist. A person who is trained or takes part in such activities. (Dictionary.com)

Most of today’s enlisted rioters—groups that call themselves things like “Indivisible,” “Anti-Fascist,” “Stop Patriarchy,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Refuse Fascism,” or moveon.org—are pretty much unabashedly communist (or just plain fascist) in their goals and aims and tactics. The chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party of the USA, for example, founded Refuse Fascism. It’s a pro-violence group that planned street theater on November 4, with the stated goal of overturning the 2016 election and taking out the Trump administration.

If you’re a true student of history, you can see that this is an old movie: mobs of disaffected, alienated people being exploited and mobilized by power elites. Unfortunately, very few Americans today, especially younger generations, are inquisitive students of history.

Certain sports figures, for example, claim to be exercising their First Amendment rights by showing hostility towards the American flag during the national anthem, based on a superficial understanding of history. They don’t realize the net effect of their actions is to show hostility against the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, for which the flag stands. Perhaps they don’t understand how their actions are easily exploited by those who would ultimately deprive everyone, including themselves, of all freedom of expression. Without freedom of expression, we all become slaves to the forces of tyranny. Sadly, using freedom to destroy freedom is an old tactic of all totalitarians.

Six Phases to Unfreedom

Many of the social trends we see today point to dangerous conditions in which a totalitarian system like communism can rear its ugly head again. If enough folks don’t push back against these developments, tyranny can secure a foothold. So let’s try to clarify some of these patterns so we might better confront them and preserve freedom for everybody.

At least two dozen major trends have unfolded over the years and continue to unfold that indicate an erosion of human freedom and the growth of a centralized power. I’ve grouped them into six different phases, even though there is a lot of overlap. I’m sure you can add many more major developments to the list. Below are summaries of the phases as well as the trends within each phase, as I see them.

1. Laying the Groundwork

This is usually a generational or decades-long process, in which minds can be closed to reason and more influenced by emotion and propaganda. This happens in many ways: through the mass bureaucratization of life that allows for policies that promote polarization, dependency, and human isolation; through disabling independent thinking by educational fads that actually cultivate ignorance and shun content knowledge; through the attack on the humanities in both K-12 and higher education; and through the lack of general knowledge about how mass psychology works.

All the while, as new communications technologies develop and proliferate, they are embedded into the groundwork that promotes tyranny over liberty. Through the effects of these trends, people become less open to logic, and more persuaded by the proliferation of images and emotional appeals, cemented by groupthink.

2. Manufacturing Propaganda

Propaganda has always been with us, and always will be. But as people become less able to discern fact from fiction, propaganda feeds on itself more intensely. As emotions trump facts, propaganda tends to become more forceful and more focused on driving people to agitate for collectivist agendas. It takes a multitude of forms, but the Orwellian manipulation of language is always the key to thought reform.

Then, journalists increasingly become propagandists, and promote illusions of alternative realities. This includes the revision of history, as well as trends such as gender ideology, which pushes to de-sex everybody in the eyes of the law. As propaganda takes the form of political correctness, it threatens people with social rejection if they don’t conform to the politically correct agendas. In this way, it induces self-censorship and preference falsification to create the illusion of public opinion support for its agendas. Political correctness is the sort of agitprop that can grow a cult mindset in the population.

3. Agitating the Masses

Once the groundwork has been laid and propaganda absorbed by enough people, agitation can proliferate. As Lenin made clear, agitation and propaganda go together and are absolutely essential to communist revolutions. As that sort of agitation becomes more prevalent in public life, there’s more speed on the road to totalitarianism.

Agitation can involve protests, parades, marches, and demonstrations. It also involves organized shout-downs of legislators and a hundred other means of trying to affect public policy by influencing public opinion. During this phase, imitative behaviors proliferate (such as we’ve seen among NFL players during the national anthem). It seems that hatred and frustration are more palpable everywhere in the society.

Indeed, the media, Hollywood, and academia—and the Southern Poverty Law Center—would have us focus on nothing else. We see iconoclasm in this phase, as in the defacing of public statues and national monuments. The education establishment becomes involved in politically agitating children, creating confusion and frustration, and even cultivating hostility towards their parents if they aren’t with the program.

4. Consolidating the Takeover of Society’s Institutions

About 100 years ago, the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci introduced his theory of “cultural hegemony,” which cast cultural institutions as the enemy, claiming they were used to maintain power. So the key to achieving communism in the West was through destroying its culture, not through promoting socialist economic policies that had little appeal in the West. This would require a “long march through the institutions” of society, destroying them from within so communism could fill the vacuum.

Radicals of the 1960s like Herbert Marcuse and Alinsky picked up on this theme, noting that “the system” (i.e., American freedom) could only be destroyed from within once radical operatives had control over society’s institutions. The deep state is one example that’s been building through decades of bureaucratic bloat, with operatives embedded throughout the government, including in the military and intelligence agencies. And, of course, the cultural takeover of the media, academia, and entertainment is both broad and deep.

But, most importantly, the mediating institutions have been relentlessly attacked. Those are the institutions that protect the individual from encroachment by the state, particularly the family, the church, and all voluntary and civic associations. We can see and feel especially how the family has been eroded today. All of these institutions have been deeply affected by statist forces, rendering them more vulnerable than ever to total absorption by the mass state, a prerequisite for communism.

5. Forcing Conformity

This is perhaps the most unsettling phase, when otherwise discerning people who have been duped by the rhetoric of social justice finally awaken to the deceit within the agitprop. This is the stage in which you are told to conform and convert—or else. We see small shop owners threatened with financial ruin if they don’t disavow their faith. We see Catholic nuns, like Little Sisters of the Poor, threatened for not disavowing their faith. We see echoes of Maoist-style “struggle sessions”—otherwise known as sessions of criticism and self-criticism—as college students are forced to admit to white privilege simply because they had happy childhoods.

False confessions proliferate, along with apologies and recantations for showing even the slightest hint of a politically incorrect viewpoint. A surveillance state can grow with new technologies being used for data mining. At the same time, human resources departments start telling employees to report for discipline any politically incorrect private conversation that they might overhear.

Millennial celebrity Lena Dunham modeled a Soviet-style surveillance state by tweeting to American Airlines that she overheard two flight attendants having a “transphobic” conversation for which they should be punished. The practice of ritual defamation—smears such as “bigot,” “racist,” “KKK”—become commonplace. And, perhaps most chilling, psychiatry is used as a political weapon.

6. The ‘Final Solutions’ Phase

Of course we aren’t there. Not yet, anyway. But perhaps you’ll agree that we should always be aware of the lessons of history if we don’t want to repeat its more unsavory chapters. In the last phase, which is fast and furious, totalitarian elites let loose their inclination to brutally eliminate their perceived enemies.

It happens in what Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov identified as the “normalization” stage, after subversion of a nation is complete. It’s as though they can’t do anything but eliminate their perceived enemies because they just don’t know how to do anything else. The body count in the Soviet gulag state, including reigns of terrors and purges intended to rid the country of counter-revolutionaries, was in the tens of millions.

In this phase, violence is considered simply a necessary means to achieving the goal of centralized power. There is not even a pretense of due process or respect for free speech. Yet there are pretexts given for eliminating perceived enemies, excuses that have the perpetrators projecting their own intentions upon their victims. That’s an old and tragic story.

‘Confirm Thy Soul in Self-Control, Thy Liberty in Law’

America is still a free nation with laws on the books that protect individuals from abuses by the state. But we should be very disturbed by the emergence of trends that, if left unchecked, would lead to the consolidation of centralized power by elites who would abolish the Bill of Rights. Communism, as well as fascism and all such forms of totalitarianism, is the natural product of such unchecked trends.

So when people disrespect the American flag “because oppression,” they tend to be clueless that their freedom to do so is extremely fragile. Freedom must be fought for, tooth and nail. Then it must be appreciated and nurtured, never taken for granted.

We are still in the fight to preserve freedom. But when we review the preponderance of trends that point us in that direction, we ought to pay attention to the symptoms and work to reverse those trends. We ought to be looking hard for a cure, or at least a path to sanity and balance.

This means filling the vacuum of ignorance with knowledge and teaching students how to dispassionately assess information and process it on their own rather than rely on emotion and groupthink—and finding a way to do so quickly. It means cultivating respect for reality over pseudo-reality. It means reaching out in goodwill to others, no matter their political persuasion, to de-fang the polarization causing so much alienation and unhappiness in our society.

All of these trends, which I’ll explore in more detail in Parts II and III, will lead to absolute power, if left unchecked. Centralized power, as crystallized in the political system of Communism, has always led to scarcity, distrust, death, and just plain human misery. It really does deserve to be buried in the ash heap of history.

As we try to stem such tides, I hope we can take to heart these lines from the second verse of Katherine Lee Bates’ grand hymn, “America the Beautiful”:

“America, America, God mend thine every flaw. Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law.” [Bold Text Blog Editors]

Individual freedom cannot survive if it isn’t balanced with a widespread sense of personal responsibility, self-regulation, self-governance, and the rule of law that allows for dispassionate due process is critical to preventing the loss of liberty that comes via its abuse. In the overall pattern of human history, this is the road less-traveled. But as America has proven, it is the only road that allows for mending flaws and the pursuit of happiness.
____________
Blog Editing by John R. Houk

Stella Morabito is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow Stella on Twitter.

Copyright © 2017 The Federalist, a wholly independent division of FDRLST Media, All Rights Reserved.