Why are the Lambs Silent? by Rainer Mausfeld, Jan 18, 2016
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2016/02/431754.shtml
Techniques – fragmentation and propaganda – make serious violations of moral norms by the ruling elites morally and cognitively invisible to the population. With many examples, professor Mausfeld gives insight in the actual management of our democracy and how people are kept in apathy and in the illusion of being informed.
“You already know enough. So do I. We don’t lack knowledge. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and draw conclusions.”
Sven Lindquist (1992). Exterminate All the Brutes.
For Paul Lazarsfeld, the mass media is the “most respectable and efficient of social narcotics.” When citizens feel informed by the mass media, they are so overpowered by their feeling of being informed that “the addict is kept from recognizing his own malady,” Lazarsfeld diagnoses.
Controlling opinions is more important than purely emotional control because opinions are usually more stable than emotions. Therefore a special importance comes to techniques that can control opinions. No special knowledge of psychology is needed for these simple techniques. They are the standard methods of the mass media:
1. Declare facts to be opinions. Dealing with facts as though they are mere opinions is one of the most frightening aspects of totalitarian thought systems, Hannah Arendt explained.
2. Fragment the presentation of connected facts so the context is lost.
3. De-contextualize facts so they are removed from their real contexts and seem as isolated cases.
4. Re-contextualize facts, embed them in a new context with “positive” accompaniments so they lose their original context and the possible potential of moral indignation…
RELATED LINK
New Ebook Anthology “Alternative Economics: Reversing Stagnation,” 140 pp, translated by Marc Batko, Feb 28, 2016
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/604567
