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Edward L. Bernays | the manipulation of public opinion

"No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and cliches and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders."

Edward L. Bernays

Edward L. Bernays | Mindless Conformity

"Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man's rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints. It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion. The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda, in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine."

Edward L. Bernays

G. Edward Griffin | They’ve been programmed

"They've been programmed and I'm sad because I know that it's hard for people like that to take an interest - serious interest in world affairs - taken serious interest in what their elected officials are doing and they're not going to be really inclined to study and or discover the deception that's being used against them and so I'm sad because I I see all of that in the flash in my mind as being an indication of how easy it is for the masses to be manipulated"

G. Edward Griffin

Dr. Drew | alles in den Nachrichten Unsinn ist, alles

"I am open to everything now. I'm open to things that I never thought I would have been open to. And I -- I really think that the door fully came open. I've realized that everything in the -- in the news is BS, everything. There's nothing that I can consume on any legacy media that I can trust. And that is shocking. And that's disturbing. And it makes you wonder how long it's been going on for. And I'm concerned, it might have been a very long time."

David Drew Pinsky

Yuval Noah Harari | In a world flooded with irrelevant information

"In a world flooded with irrelevant information, clarity is power."

Yuval Noah Harari

Milosz Matuschek | Permanent Toxic Rape of Consciousness

"Almost a hundred years ago, the philosopher John Dewey said that we are living in the greatest flood of mass suggestion that mankind has ever seen. But in 100 years, the superlative has only swelled, albeit without this being publicized today. Edward Bernays called propaganda the “executive arm of the invisible government”. And he recognized that propaganda is to democracies what violence is to dictators. Perhaps that would be a contemporary definition of propaganda: it is a Permanent Toxic Rape of Consciousness, or PTRC for short. It is a permanent mindfuck by governments and corporate business, mediated by the media, carried out by bought comedians à la Böhmermann, pseudo-journalists à la Lanz, pseudo-intellectuals à la Precht, pseudo-health politicians, such as the pharmaceutical and drugs minister Lauterbach, pseudo-defence politicians such as Strack-Rheinmetall-Zimmermann, and other parvenus such as Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim, Eckart von Hirschhausen, Sarah Bosetti and other stirrup holders in editorial offices, theaters or foundations. "

Milosz Matuschek

Lester Neil Smith | It’s often been observed that the first casualty of war is the truth

"It's often been observed that the first casualty of war is the truth. But that's a lie, too, in its way. The reality is that, for most wars to begin, the truth has to have been sacrificed a long time in advance."

Lester Neil Smith

George Bernard Shaw | The longer I live, the more convinced am I

"The longer I live, the more convinced am I that this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum."

George Bernard Shaw

Georg Schramm | deflate their speech bubbles

"Interest groups make the policy. They pull the strings on which political puppets hang, who are allowed to pretend democracy on the stage of the Berlin puppet show. These political figures are then allowed to deflate their speech bubbles in the public service institutions with the toilet ladies Christiansen and Illner. And if there is still some dribbling left after their intellectual urination, they can mingle with the people at the emotional piss trough on Beckmann and Kerner."

Georg Schramm

Baron Arthur Ponsonby | 10 principles of war propaganda

Wir wollen den Krieg nicht
Das gegnerische Lager trägt die Verantwortung
Der Führer des Gegners ist ein Teufel
Wir kämpfen für eine gute Sache
Der Gegner kämpft mit unerlaubten Waffen
Der Gegner begeht mit Absicht Grausamkeiten, wir nur versehentlich
Unsere Verluste sind gering, die des Gegners enorm
Künstler und Intellektuellen unterstützen unsere Sache
Unsere Mission ist heilig
Wer unsere Berichterstattung in Zweifel zieht, ist ein Verräter.

Christine Prayon | Welke & Co. made “atmosphere against those who think differently”

"I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the way the major socially defining issues have been handled since Corona. I've also talked to the people in charge there and emphasized that I don't want to participate in exposing dissenters to ridicule. Satire must not participate in narrowing the discourse. And now this is exactly what is happening again with the war in Ukraine. Narratives and positions of groups that are high up in the social hierarchy are being repeated incessantly, and at the same time the mood is being set against those who think differently. In my opinion, this no longer has anything to do with satire."

Christine Prayon

Robbie Williams | We’re in a post-truth world

"We're in a post-truth world where you can't believe the media, you can't believe Big Pharma, you can't believe politicians, you can't believe what you're eating, you can't believe yourself. Since we've existed, (if) there is a time where this whole empire could fall, it's now. Of course these things are going to arise because we can't trust anybody or anything. And I personally just believe and invest in my wife and my kids and my family. And yeah, I believe in them,"

Robbie Williams

Winston Churchill | There is only published opinion

"There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion."

Winston Churchill

Niklas Luhmann | the media don’t depict reality, they create it

"Sure, the media don't depict reality, they create it! And that's why we need counter-publicity!"

Niklas Luhmann

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld | The power of radio

"The power of radio can be compared only with the power of the atomic bomb."

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld

Nicolás Gómez Dávila | In an age in which the media broadcast countless pieces of foolishness

"In an age in which the media broadcast countless pieces of foolishness, the educated man is defined not by what he knows, but by what he doesn't know."

Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Prof. Reiner Mausfeld | A ‘war against X’ decreed from above

"A 'war against X' decreed from above - be it against 'terror' or against a pandemic - is never about what is declared to be fought. All that is sold here as a war against a threat must not be successful at all, because its success for the economic and political centers of power lies precisely in not being successful and in remaining as a means of generating fear and securing domination."

Prof. Reiner Mausfeld

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | The most powerful figment of the imagination is public opinion

"The most powerful figment of the imagination is public opinion: no one knows exactly who makes it, no one has ever met it personally, but everyone lets themselves be tyrannized by it!"

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Max Goldt | This newspaper is an organ of infamy

"This newspaper is an organ of infamy. It is wrong to read it. Someone who contributes to this newspaper is absolutely unacceptable socially. It would be wrong to be friendly or even polite to one of its editors. One must be as unkind to them as the law will just allow. They are bad people who do wrong."

Max Goldt

Vince Ebert | They would become afraid of something else virtually overnight

"I'm pretty sure: if the climate change thing was miraculously solved, many Germans wouldn't breathe a sigh of relief. They would become afraid of something else virtually overnight."

Vince Ebert

Tony Benn | I think there are two ways in which people are controlled

"I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all, frighten people, and secondly, demoralise them. An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern. And I think there’s an element in the thinking of some people... ‘We don’t want people to be educated, healthy and confident, because they would get out of control."

Tony Benn

Edward Bernays | If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind

"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it."

Edward Bernays

Dave Smith | basic human liberties

"If you believe that the most basic human liberties ought to be contingent on taking a product from a giant pharmaceutical company then you are not liberal or left wing. You’re not a conservative or patriotic. There is only one word to describe you and that is Fascist."

Dave Smith

Robert A. Heinlein | There is no worse tyranny

"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."

Robert A. Heinlein

Plato | No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth

"No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth."

Plato

Charles MacKay | simultaneously impressed with one delusion

"We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first."

Charles MacKay

Russel Brand | the mainstream media is not your friend

"I’ve made a lot of mistakes, I’ve been wrong many times but I’m beginning to think I’m right about this: the mainstream media is not your friend, the culture is not your friend, the government is not your friend, big business is not your friend. They are operating collegiately in unison to create a set of systems that are beneficial to them and disadvantage you."

Russel Brand

Leonard E. Feeney | Having a television in your home

"Having a television in your home is like having a Jew in your living room."

Fr. Leonard E. Feeney

Caroll Quigley | people can throw the rascals out at any election

"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies."

Caroll Quigley

George Orwell | To keep them in control was not difficult

"Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult."

George Orwell, 1984