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Feral Finster's avatar

The Ten Commandments of War Propaganda:

1. We don’t want war, we are only defending ourselves.

2. Our adversary is solely responsible for this war.

3. Our adversary’s leader is inherently evil and resembles the devil.

4. We are defending a noble cause, not our particular interests.

5. The enemy is purposefully committing atrocities; if we are making mistakes this happens without intention.

6. The enemy makes use of illegal weapons.

7. We suffer few losses, the enemy’s losses are considerable.

8. Recognized intellectuals and artists support our cause.

9. Our cause is sacred.

10. Whoever cases doubt on our propaganda helps the enemy and is a traitor.

Besides keeping the population riled up and distracting them from defeat and economic decline, crude war propaganda begs the question how can anyone *negotiate* with an enemy so *evil*?

As if there's something in the water on the Russian side of the border with Ukraine that turns people into monsters.

Landru's avatar

Being a boomer it took a few years into the Vietnam war to understand almost nothing from promoters of war can be believed. Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia etc. just reinforced my radar. I am always thankful people with integrity like Caitlin, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate work to provide truth when few other will. How many years will it take for the general public to realize they were lied to yet again, 2-4 yrs.

Feral Finster's avatar

Goering on war:

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

anti-republocrat's avatar

It's in their genes, doncha know. That's why it's so believable.

David RS's avatar

Good post.

In 3., you could replace "resembles the devil" with "is literally Hitler".

Regarding no negotiations with an enemy so evil, just see Sen. Lindsey Graham's May 8 comments about there being "no offramp" for Russia.

Vin LoPresti's avatar

Next up. Images of Russian soldiers huddled around a fire eating roasted meat, intercut with images of small Ukrainian dogs, which those barbaric Russkies are using as a food source -- after roasting alive, of course. With all the dog lovers in the US, that'll put a helluva shock-charge into the innumerable war-loving factions; they'll be out in the streets calling for Russian heads on pikes. I'm fortunately unable to verify this story.

Doris Wrench Eisler's avatar

Very sickening, and a testimony to the fact some people will believe anything, but what is more disturbing is that "evidence" could be manufactured to support this insane accusation.

Rob Brown's avatar

Watching this unfold and also looking at everything else the US and its allies have done, it's a wonder we ever even heard the truth about Iraq.

What is depressingly *not* surprising is how so many people believe that Iraq was just a one time thing and that usually, the government tells the truth. Or that only Republican presidents lie.

The Inquisitive Inquisitor's avatar

What's impressive is not only did we know the truth of the matter in real time about Iraq, but despite knowing the truth nothing was done about it. So much for the truth.

arthur brogard's avatar

we make a big mistake in passively absorbing 'news'. have done in the past. the msm feeds us with propaganda and we absorb it thinking it is 'news'. it is not.

we need to do wholly what we currently do in part: dynamically, pro actively, seek out dependable authoritative sources for ourselves.

you know today the msm is simply redundant in fact.

we make the news, we find the news, we report the news today. it is a new world given the instant global comms we have. existing msm paradigm is redundant, anachronistic.

in numb braindeadness the mass follow the daily direction and pap of msm.

there's nothing happening there. nothing dynamic on the part of the 'viewer', the 'reader', the client.

they forget yesterday as a matter of habit. they are habituated to cleanse the mind anew each day the better to absorb the 'cause du jour'

this won't continue forever. they'll wake up.

the enormity of the deception and the evil is so great they can be excused, really, for not seeing it, not being aware of it.

that's how i see it.

George Cornell's avatar

Don’t they eat the babies after they’ve raped them..

Rob Brown's avatar

"First, they pull them out of the incubators and throw them on the floor. Then they rape them as they're dying. Then they eat the bodies after they're dead. None of that can be independently verified, but it's obviously what Russians do because they're just born Chaotic Evil, and if you express the tiniest sliver of doubt that it's true then it's worth asking why you are defending baby rape. Is it something you do, too?" (That was my shitlib impression. I hope it was good.)

J M Hatch's avatar

Last laugh is on the Russians, the Ukrainians already sprayed the people of Eastern Ukraine with depleted uranium shell dust, a gift from Uncle Sam and NATO.

Eat NATO for Breakfast #16 - NATO and depleted uranium. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXnyGKxUg9M

Brian Bixby's avatar

You forgot the accusation of being on the Russian payroll.

Grasshopper Kaplan's avatar

America ate me , and spit me back out since I taste bad, since I was young helpless child.

Wish Mom had aborted me

America has been pure unending evil

Wish I can go back to Russia

arthur brogard's avatar

It's not that USA is pure unending evil, really, it's that the American people are in the grip of a cabal of relentless pure unending evil.

Same as is happening to Ukrainians.

How about a cost benefit analysis right now, today?

Count the dead and injured and the property destruction

And compare that with an estimate of how many dead and injured and what destroyed if Ukraine had acceded to Putin's requests prior to all this?

But the 'cabals of evil' have urged them down this path.

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May 21, 2022
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arthur brogard's avatar

no I don't think they can be holus bolus 'excused' for ultimately or from the word 'go' in a democracy they are responsible for what their leaders do.

In a democracy the people ARE the leader really, should be.

So 'they' can't be excused.

But I put 'they' in commas because we can't condemn the whole mass of people. Many of them can be and should be excused for they've tried to resist.

And many were just too unsophisticated, too unknowing and how are we to dictate the level of awareness and sophistication individuals must have in our society?

And many were too 'devout' and 'faithful' in that they know even to themselves that they do not know. They know themselves to be ignorant. But they don't have the pride, the arrogance, the temper, the wit, the desire, the individualism, the intellectual training, the whatever it might take - to 'find out' for themselves. So they 'trust' and follow obediently, like good soldiers. Can't really blame them for that too much.

So I don't think they can be excused but I think many of them can. Nice definite unambiguous answer there. :)

The Inquisitive Inquisitor's avatar

No, they send them to an organ harvesting farm in Siberia where they treat them like the Japanese treat their Wagyu beef cattle before slaughter.

George Cornell's avatar

I once was the only civilian on a flight into Grand Rapids. The rest were all GIs returning from Iraq. They told me how Saddam would have the wives and daughters of his enemies raped in front of them. I didn’t have the heart to tell them the US promoted exactly the same BS about the N Vietnamese. Of course there was probably baby eating too. Who can prove there wasn’t!?

J M Hatch's avatar

Better yet, you could have told them that the CIA gave him the money to buy his way into running a successful coup d'état against the (democratically elected) Baathist Party of Iraq, and of course CIA/DOD gave him the chemical weapons, delivery devices, and intelligence to deploy them first on Iran and then on his own people.

Ray's avatar

a truth free media is leading us to a very dark time

The Inquisitive Inquisitor's avatar

Pathetic. Despicable. But not surprising. It's all entertainment afterall, right? And what's more entertaining than insane fabrications of one-year-old babies being raped? How's that absurdity any different than accusations by QAnon of Dems being satanic pedophiles who seek the blood and adrenaline of children for sustenance and power?

Rob Brown's avatar

I'm suddenly feeling very, very tired.

And I'm wondering whether, if the Ukraine government went so far as to say "In addition all the baby rape (which by the way we under-reported the first time and is actually something that literally every single Russian soldier does because they're Russian), Russians are also torturing puppies to death because that's how Russians get their kicks", people would hear that and be like "Okay, I find THAT hard to believe!" or if they would accept *that* uncritically as well.

J M Hatch's avatar

I can recall a ferocious backlash against a Lance Cpl. David Motari, Marine who killed a puppy in Iraq, court-martialed and given dishonorable discharge, making him hardly employable. I can remember the backlash against the conviction of Edward Gallagher, so yes, people are less important than puppies, at least in America.

Rob Brown's avatar

Oh, I saw video of that, much as I wish I hadn't. I'm glad that it wasn't overlooked entirely, as I first assumed.

On the one hand I'm glad that people care about animals, but it would sure be nice if they cared every bit as much about humans as well. All humans, not just the "worthy victims".

Years ago there was an announcement by the IDF making the rounds about how they provided vegan uniforms (no leather, I guess) for whichever of their soldiers were vegan. The same soldiers who kill Palestinians regularly. So there's another case of caring more about animals than humans. (Not to mention that plenty of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip DO own pets like people everywhere. I wonder how those vegan IDF personnel reconcile that with their professed commitment to animal welfare whenever Gaza gets bombed, since the pets aren't any more bomb-proof than the humans.)

The Inquisitive Inquisitor's avatar

Oh come on. Yes, some people in America care more about puppies than they do muslims or arabs, but they are hardly the majority. Trump's base for example doesn't care about puppies being murdered by American gi's and they don't care about teenage Arab and/or Muslim boys being murdered by same. Trump's base also doesn't care about Ukrainians being murdered by Russian gi's and Trump's base loves them some Putin.

Rob Brown's avatar

Have you ever even talked to a Trump voter? Or do you just believe everything BlueAnon tells you about them and imagine them to be all the same?

The Inquisitive Inquisitor's avatar

Have I ever talked to one? Jesus! I'm surrounded by them on all sides. The question is Mr. Canuck, have you ever talked to one or better yet, have you ever had to live amongst them? No, you haven't.

Victory Palace Poetry's avatar

When the media is resorting to using atrocity propaganda against Russia, and given the number of times this tactic has been used in the enemedia's history, you can tell Russia is succeeding in its objective vis a vis Ukraine.

arthur brogard's avatar

No surprises there. We've just seen two years of covid propaganda. We don't need to be told, we KNOW that our governments are totally mendacious. AND our mass media is the same. AND our population largely doesn't know/doesn't care.

Largely. Not wholly.

Those are the facts.

Well established now.

How to deal with them?

Well the growth of such as substack, scheerpost, eugyppius, lifesite, the expose, represents the creation of a growing number of 'sources of truth and reason' which are effectively networked, connected together, via their audiences, aren't they? Us.

Those and many more.

Currently we have no 'centres for the 'sources' but that will happen.

And they are building their reputations - some consistently good, some not quite so much.

It is a web within a web.

A distributed web of reliable and topical sources.

Eventually it will be very strong. And very widespread. You know it will grow across countries - across languages. With translation softwaren now ubiquitous this becomes possible. So it gets to be really global, really a thing of the people, all people.

And I reckon eventually it will become known to the wider mass of people - which is by far the majority, maybe 90% compared to those 'inside' this inner web, i.e. 9 times as many.

It will become known to them and they will come to see it as not a bunch of far out whacky space cadets but as definitely an authoritative, true and reliable source.

The masses will begin to turn to it.

As throughout the ages the masses have always turned this way or that seeking the sense, the truth and the way that will free them of irksome yokes, oppression.

What we've got right now is a population that largely doesn't see itself as oppressed.

Is the problem.

They have faith in vaccines.

They even have faith in masks.

They believe the narratives.

But the results over time will break the news to them. I think that's unavoidable. Here, there and everywhere, about this and then that and then the other.

And they'll begin this paradigm shift: to turning to this 'inner web' for the truth, the facts and the way.

So I reckon we just keep going.

And each one of us tries to build a library of unassailable facts, of real data, of excellent dissertations, of illuminating conversations, discussions, videos, whatever.

To help build this 'web within the web' and make it stronger and stronger.

Build indexes to it, guides to it, directories of the inhabitants of it.

We are totally, absolutely totally and completely in our tiny infancy at the moment, there's so far we can go, we have not yet begun to fight.

For instance the best we have for mask refutations are perhaps the graphs and charts in the book 'unmasked' and similar that have been published in many of our 'source' areas.

But the public see none of that.

And if they did it wouldn't appeal to them much.

But there's the whole world of high tech and advertising smarts out there for us to employ did we wish and did we get activist enough.

Those charts could be presented in dynamic videos of great appeal that just pounded the message home.

Just like the govt propaganda does but better by an order of magnitude.

And with a crucial difference: our perhaps flamboyant and populist presentations can be accompanied by sober and authoritative references backing up and demonstrating every thing we say.

We have a tremendous stock pile of ammunition: we have the truth. A vast world of data and logical reasoning.

We have a tremendous innate ability amongst us in all fields. The sciences, the arts, the humanities.

We have it all.

And we haven't yet started. Not at all. I contend not at all.

Where I live in two years I have not seen one single public presentation designed to get truths across to the people. Not one flyer handed out. Not one piece of paper posted up anywhere at any time. Not one tiny bit of graffiti. Far less a bombardment.

So what I'm saying is that yes the problem is huge but it is being addressed, the troops are signing on, the army is a-building, the ammunition is being collected and stock piled, the weapons of 'war' are being assembled.

We all ought to know that because we all should be part of it.

The covid

The Ukraine war

Vaccines

Abrogation and theft of democracy

Denial of truth and reason

Dissemination of outright lies

Wholescale malfeasance

It's all got to go and it will.

Beli Tsari's avatar

Without a sneeringly obsequious, dead eyed hive-minded PMC, programmed by gleefully brainwashed yuppie liberal parents; intentionally blatant große Lüge would be mistaken for a bad taste "Onion" wannabe. It's like Tea Party 'Baggers or crankhead MAGA Nazis: this ridiculously obvious BS is like those films of monkeys, hitting a switch for a methamphetamine fix; electrodes sticking out of where their brain used to be? Little WHITE lies & TV dopamine fixes are now trying to trigger adrenaline, like Fallschirmjäger turning GREEN upon death?

Boris Petrov's avatar

Stay Calm - and Support Russia against Ukro-Nazis

The Inquisitive Inquisitor's avatar

I'm calm as calm can be, but I support no side, and this conflict has three sides or more, in this tragedy, or I should say tragedy for the unwashed Ukrainians being exploited, dispossessed and murdered.

The Revolution Continues's avatar

Why do we bother with making fictional entertainments when we can just have these insane fairy tales made up by the mainstream media thrown at us? What's next? "Russians raid Kiev Zoo and barbecue rare white rhinos?" "Russians create food trucks serving roasted baby-meat delicacies?" "Russians wake up each morning and drink the freshly squeezed blood of Ukrainian virgins?" Atrocity propaganda by its very nature reveals the over-zealousness of its creators. Let's hope the public can smell a rotten story by the scent of its rotten writers.

The Inquisitive Inquisitor's avatar

Once again, who is this "we?" Most Americans are not paying any attention to Russia's war on Ukraine. Most Americans are not concerned with it. The national mainstream news is for insiders, it's not for the unwashed. Local news is for the unwashed and local news limits its coverage of Russia's war on Ukraine instead focusing on local violence, the weather and sports.

The Revolution Continues's avatar

You must hang with a different crowd than I do. Most people I know are paying attention to the war. They watch national news on mainstream media outlets for the most part. "We" or most Americans love to be entertained and watch fictional stories on TV. That's what I was saying--we don't need any more soap operas or space operas on the telly when we have these insane propaganda pieces that are much more salacious than anything rom-com scriptwriters can come up with.

David RS's avatar

Speaking of Ukraine War atrocities, have we had any status updates from the International Commission Investigating the Bucha Atrocities?

I was hoping that by now that the Commission's forensic experts would have at least published a preliminary list of victims, with cause of death and estimated time of death.

Doris Wrench Eisler's avatar

Yeah, like, "we're not Nostradamus, who knew?" But they act like they know, and the idiot Bush even claimed God instructed him, gave the high five. But, as pointed out, they did know: Scott Ritter told them, and if Colon Powell wasn't obviously full of shit, shit exists nowhere.

Lawguy's avatar

The weird thing is that this type of propaganda always works and has always worked. I doesn't much change over the centuries because it doesn't need to. People always believe it.

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May 21, 2022
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J M Hatch's avatar

Greed, mendacity, and sometimes just plain exhaustion at getting through another day in bonded slavery hell contribute to intentional ignorance.