This week we have concentrated on propaganda promulgated by the molders of public opinion in the U.S.A. which includes the main stream media.
We have also revisited the master American propagandist Edward L. Bernays.
Bernays is called by some "The Father of Spin", but Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter described him as a professional poisoner of the public mind, exploiter of foolishness, fanaticism and self-interest (Wikipedia).
Some may wonder why we are concerned with a free press, because since this is America we must have the best press in the world, right?
Besides, they might go on to say, the freedom of the press is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution:
Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of ... the press ...
(First Amendment). We can check how well we have been doing with a comparison to the other nations of the world easily enough.
The following list of countries are the top 47 nations in the world, in terms of press freedom, beginning with Finland at #1, and the U.S.A. at #47:
Finland, Norway, Estonia, Netherlands, Austria, Iceland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Cape Verde, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Ireland, Cyprus, Jamaica, Germany, Costa Rica, Belgium, Namibia, Japan, Surinam, Poland, Mali, OECS, Slovakia, United Kingdom, Niger, Australia, Lithuania, Uruguay, Portugal, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, Slovenia, El Salvador, France, Spain, Hungary, Ghana, South Africa, Botswana, South Korea, Comoros, Taiwan, United States of America ...
(Reporters Without Borders, 2011-2012, emphasis added). You might ask "what laws has congress passed to do this damage to our press?"
The answer is that they have allowed the press, as well as themselves, to become the property of the 1%, a few for profit corporations, whose first interest is profits for stockholders, not true news for the public.
Furthermore, the U.S. press is known around the world, and to a lesser extent at home, as a great propaganda engine (Blind Willie McTell News).
Then, because propaganda was involved in promoting dark matter, another post "Heretics Deny The Dark Matter of Faith - 2", dealt with some of the discord within the ranks of scientists.
Today, that series is continued because it fits in with the recent posts on Dredd Blog this very week that focus on exposing the origins of our institutionalized propaganda.
Once again some cosmic propaganda in the form of the book The 4% Universe, concerning this dark subject matter, is struggling to get out of its cocoon.
The dark matter theory has been published in tons of textbooks, and in reams of scientific papers.
That book attempts to hawk to mere mortals, who do not understand such starry eyed things, that what we see, feel, hear, taste, and measure in experiments (the scientific method) applies so far to only "4%" of the total universe.
The post today will tie all that in with a statement Noam Chomsky made about the subject matter of institutionalization of propaganda:
And one of the striking features of the modern period is the institutionalization of that process, so that we now have huge industries deceiving the public — and they're very conscious about it, the public relations industry. Interestingly, this developed in the freest countries — in Britain and the US — roughly around time of WWI, when it was recognized that enough freedom had been won that people could no longer be controlled by force. So modes of deception and manipulation had to be developed in order to keep them under control.
(Noam Chomsky, emphasis added). Let's remember that the subject is not only "dark matter", but is also the Dredd Blog scientifically rebellious binding of that subject with "faith," because this dark matter is more "scientific faith" than it is provable science.
The big deal in cosmology at the moment is "dark matter", so let's cut to the chase and let one of the foremost experts explain why this dark matter subject is so hot to trot:
‘We are on the verge of finding out what dark matter is’, Professor Carlos Frenk told the British Science Festival in Bradford. Frenk, director of Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology, predicts that within the next few months, ‘Either dark matter will be discovered, or our model of the universe is not quite right.’
(Dim Galaxies Shed Light, emphasis added). The professor said we will soon be "finding out what dark matter is", "dark matter will be discovered", "or our model of the universe is not quite right"?
What the hell, we don't know what 96% of the universe is, nor have we discovered it yet, but he hope to discover it soon?
The 96% of "things that have not been discovered" are so much more "everywhere" than all that 4% we have discovered, and do know about?
But you can read all about the undiscovered unknown in tons of textbooks and reams of scientific papers?
In a recent post, Dredd Blog discussed the failure of the social engines that produce American knowledge.
Today "we", you readers and I, will again go through some other interesting information associated with some of that post's listed reasons for the failures of some of these knowledge engines in contemporary American society.
To begin to expand that background into today's post, lets notice an interesting development, which is that Sigmund Freud has fallen from grace in contemporary educational circles tasked with knowledge production:
In this respect, at least, contemporary hostility to Freud expresses a sound intuition. What Freud offers is a way of thinking in which the experience of being human can be seen to be more intractably difficult, and at the same time more interesting and worthwhile, than anything imagined in the cheap little gospels of progress and self-improvement that are being hawked today.
If Freud has been misunderstood, neglected or repudiated, he would have expected nothing else. He is rejected now for the same reason that he was rejected in fin-de-siècle Vienna: his heroic refusal to flatter humankind.
(Prospect Magazine). That article contains a great discussion of the well known minds that were at work during Freud's lifetime, a time of worldwide stress and tension, not unlike our world today.
Before moving along, I should also mention something often overlooked, Freud's sense of humor and courage, both clearly indicated in that article:
As his correspondence with Einstein confirms, he did not share the hope that reason could deliver humankind from the “active instinct for hatred and destruction,” which was clearly at work in Europe at the time. When he left Nazi-occupied Austria to spend the last year of his life in Britain, he knew that the destruction that lay ahead could not by then be prevented. But fate could still be mocked, and so defied. When leaving Austria, Freud was required to sign a document testifying that he had been well and fairly treated. He did so, adding in his own hand: “I can most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone.”
(ibid). Edward L. Bernays studied the results of his uncle Freud's research into the nature of the subconscious mind.
Based upon that study of Freud's work, Bernays went on to prove, in my opinion, that Freud was on to something.
If Freud was so utterly wrong, Bernays could not have developed such a finely tuned propaganda engine based substantially upon Freud's work.
An understanding of propaganda unparalleled in world history and admired not only in America, but also admired by the most infamous propagandists of all time:
Bernays work inspired Joseph Goebbels; more than any other individual ...
Now, let me tie this background of Bernays into the American engines of knowledge production that we have been discussing.
I will begin with a momentary focus on a comment made on Dredd Blog by an American student who had read a Dredd Blog post concerning Bernays:
Although I have an extensive education in the field of social work and likely encountered his theories at some point I do not recall this person.
(A Closer Look At MOMCOM's DNA - 4, comment by Marcelle). After reading the Dredd Blog post which explained the great impact Bernays has had on American knowledge production (or the lack thereof, depending on your viewpoint), that blogger was somewhat amazed to not have remembered Bernays.
The individual who was such a master of propaganda that he was the favorite of Goebbels, and who is the foundation of American propaganda, does not, like his uncle Sigmund, seem to be mentioned in contemporary American knowledge for some "reason" (wink, wink). Interview with Saul Alinsky (1970) ...
