Tag: Propaganda

Most important interview yet?

In 1951 Hannah Arendt warned a Technocratic Totalitarianism was coming. Different to Fascistic or Communistic Totalitarianism, it would be led not by gang-leaders like Hitler or Stalin, but by dull bureaucrats or technical experts.

Learn how we got here – and how we can respond – in this conversation between Ivor Cummins and author Prof. Mattias Desmet1The Psychology Of Totalitarianism, 2022

A wide-ranging discussion that explains and clarifies much – including the key differences between dictatorships and totalitarian regimes.

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    The Psychology Of Totalitarianism, 2022

Mattias Desmet with John Waters

Truth-speech in a Time of Industrialised Lies

Empathy as a useful tool for both apprehending science and exposing the dangers of seeing rational, technical knowledge as the only kind worthy of pursuit and living by.

Higher education increases vulnerability to mass formation.

The centre of gravity in totalitarianism lies in the minds of the masses: the ideology they believe. A return to human principles is the best resolution.

Speaking out is critical. Because history shows the true atrocities start once dissonant voices are silenced.

John Waters/Mattias Desmet from John Waters on Vimeo.

Build Back Better 2.0?

Global elites rebrand to ‘Rules-Based World Order’ or similar

Don’t underestimate. This is a clever new slogan.

Because scared people will feel safer with ‘rules‘ controlling their own and others behaviour. They will also welcome policing of those reassuring rules – regardless of human rights violations involved.1As already shown by reactions to lockdowns, masks, jab passports, censorship, bodily autonomy, religious and personal freedom…

But…

Continue reading Build Back Better 2.0?
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    As already shown by reactions to lockdowns, masks, jab passports, censorship, bodily autonomy, religious and personal freedom…

Coronavirus, Propaganda and States of Fear

March 2020, Dr. Colin Alexander1Senior Lecturer in Political Communications within the School of Arts and Humanities at Nottingham Trent University anticipated twenty ‘plays’ the British Government would use in its Covid propaganda – mirroring the wartime propaganda ‘playbook’ developed during the First and Second World Wars.

December 2021, in a PANDA Open Science meeting, he recapped before giving – in my opinion, one of the better talks on the psychology of what we are all being put through.

Ever heard of “self-haunting”? Me neither. But it explains a lot.

How will the Covid-critical be treated in a post-pandemic society? Unsure. But there are worrying undercurrents.

Both reckoning and reconciliation are needed.

Here is his original video from March 20202From Nottingham Trent University website.

… one of the highest achievements for the propagandist within the dissemination of mass communications is the successful transfer of a contested subject with a multitude of legitimate positions into the realm of public consensus wherein the vast majority consider alternative positions to be illegitimate and where some don’t even realise that alternative positions exist at all.

Colin Alexander, Jan 2021

Also here’s an article from July 2021 in which he explains why the UK’s “Freedom Day” is another example of Covid propaganda – and why greater ‘propaganda literacy’ amongst the public is important.