Propaganda, Lies, Deceit and Half Truths

"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives.

I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that.

That's what's insane about it."

John Lennon

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We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. George Orwell

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Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. George Orwell

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They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening . George Orwell

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The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. George Orwell

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If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves. -- Howard Zinn, historian and author

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Propaganda quotes

"Understand that all battles are waged on an unconscious level before they are begun on the conscious one, and this battle is no different. The power structure wishes us to believe that the only options available are those which they present to us, we know this is simply not true, and therefore we must redefine the terrain of this conflict, and clearly, it is a conflict of worldviews and agendas." - Teresa Stover

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"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." George W. Bush - 43rd US President

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“Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.” -H.L. Mencken

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"The propaganda system allows the U.S. Leadership to commit crimes without limit and with no suggestion of misbehavior or criminality; in fact, major war criminals like Henry Kissinger appear regularly on TV to comment on the crimes of the derivative butchers." Edward S. Herman, political economist and author

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"When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic." Dresden James.

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"When the representative body have lost the confidence of their constituents, when they have notoriously made sale of their most valuable rights, when they have assumed to themselves powers which the people never put into their hands, then indeed their continuing in office becomes dangerous." --Thomas Jefferson

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"Today the world is the victim of propaganda because people are not intellectually competent. More than anything the United States needs effective citizens competent to do their own thinking." - William Mather Lewis

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"The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves." Dresden James.

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"If the test of patriotism comes only by reflexively falling into lockstep behind the leader whenever the flag is waved, then what we have is a formula for dictatorship, - not democracy... But the American way is to criticize and debate openly, not to accept unthinkingly the doings of government officials of this or any other country." - Michael Parenti

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"The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about.": Noam Chomsky

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"We have made the Reich by propaganda" Joseph Paul Goebbels - German Politician, 1897-1945 America, too, is made by media propaganda.

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"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." Noam Chomsky - American Linguist and Activist. b.1928

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Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. George Orwell and the American media and its propaganda machinery are expert in this field.

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"The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments". Michael Parenti

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"Special forces" is our propaganda term for our own brand of "terrorists." Emet Tsedeq

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"The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted." - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country . . . we're dominated by the relatively small number of persons . . . it is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world." Edward Bernays - Propaganda, Liveright Publishing Company, New York, 2005, excerpts from pp. 9-19 -

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - H. L. Mencken

"And if Bradley Manning really did as he is accused, he is a hero, an example to us all and one of the world's foremost political prisoners." - Julian Assange

"The term propaganda rings melodramatic and exaggerated, but a press that-whether from fear, careerism, or conviction-uncritically recites false government claims and reports them as fact, or treats elected officials with a reverence reserved for royalty, cannot be accurately described as engaged in any other function." - Glenn Greenwald



"The greatest threat to peace is the barrage of rightist propaganda portraying war as decent, honorable, and patriotic." - Jeannette Rankin



"Propaganda is as powerful as heroin; it surreptitiously dissolves all capacity to think." - Gil Courtemanche



"The truth is not in the commercial media because the truth is a dagger pointed at its heart, which is its pocketbook." - George Seldes

"The foulest damage to our political life comes not from the 'secrets' which they hide from us, but from the little bits of half-truth and disinformation which they do tell us. These are already pre-digested, and then are sicked up as little gobbits of authorised spew. The columns of defence correspondents in the establishment sheets serve as the spittoons."N E.P. Thompson, British historian

"Today the world is the victim of propaganda because people are not intellectually competent. More than anything the United States needs effective citizens competent to do their own thinking." -- William Mather Lewis - President, George Washington University 1923-1927

"Almost all people are hypnotics. The proper authority saw to it that the proper belief should be induced, and the people believed properly." - Charles Fort

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the [public] is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country." - Edward Bernays

"[In] Democratic societies ... the state can't control behavior by force. It can to some extent, but it's much more limited in its capacity to control by force. Therefore, it has to control what you think. ... One of the ways you control what people think is by creating the illusion that there's a debate going on, but making sure that that debate stays within very narrow margins. Namely, you have to make sure that both sides in the debate accept certain assumptions, and those assumptions turn out to be the propaganda system. As long as everyone accepts the propaganda system, then you can have a debate". - -Noam Chomsky (24/10/1986)



"We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable.



Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly." -John Pilger 04/11/2009)



What luck for rulers that men do not think". - Adolf Hitler





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