George Bernard Shaw | Every faltering regime
"Every faltering regime has tried to bind its subjects by war as a last resort."
George Bernard Shaw
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George Orwell | Narrative Essays
“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind. War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it. Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. (On the manipulation of language for political ends.) We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell
NATO | Cognitive Warfare
"[....]Cognitive warfare is achieved by integrating cyber, information, psychological, and social engineering capabilities. Exploiting information technology, it seeks to create confusion, false representations, and uncertainty with a deluge of information over-abundance or misinformation. This is achieved by focusing attention on false targets, causing distraction, introducing false narratives, radicalizing individuals, and amplifying social polarization to muster the cognitive effects needed to achieve short-term and long-term objectives."
NATO
Frederick B Hodges | everything we have is for our benefit
"The reason we have troops overseas in Germany is not to protect Germans, everything we have is for our benefit."
Frederick Benjamin „Ben“ Hodges
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
Robert McNamara | Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities
"Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve."
Robert McNamara
Cardinal John Murphy Farley Archbishop of New York, calls horse and rider
"The war that is being prepared will be a battle between international capital and the ruling dynasties. Capital wishes to have no one over it, knows no God or Lord, and wishes to have all states ruled as a great banking business. Their profit shall become the sole guide of the rulers ... Business ... one and only."
Cardinal John Murphy Farley Archbishop of New York
Lenin | The highest art of war
"The highest art of war is to avoid military engagements altogether and defeat the enemy by destroying his moral principles, his religion, his culture and his traditions. When a country has been demoralized in that way it can be taken over without a single shot being fired."
Vladimir Iljitsch Lenin
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.
Smedley Darlington Butler | Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys
"Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. The was the "war to end wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason. No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United State patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure". Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month! All that they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill...and be killed"
Smedley Darlington Butler
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
Thích Nhất Hạnh | In order to rally people, governments need enemies
"In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us."
Thích Nhất Hạnh
Haris Silajdžić | if you kill a quarter-of-a-million people, you’re invited to a peace conference
"If you kill one person, you're prosecuted. If you kill ten people, you're famous; if you kill a quarter-of-a-million people, you're invited to a peace conference."
Haris Silajdžić
Bertolt Brecht | When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible
"When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer."
Bertolt Brecht
Harry S. Truman | Bait and bleed
"If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances."
Harry S. Truman
Jean-Luc Godard | Cannes is a propaganda tool
"Zelensky's intervention at the Cannes festival goes without saying if you look at it from the angle of what is called "staging": a bad actor, a professional comedian, under the eye of other professionals in their own professions. I believe I must have said something along these lines a long time ago. It therefore took the staging of yet another world war and the threat of another catastrophe for us to know that Cannes is a propaganda tool like any other. They propagate Western aesthetics whilst thinking it is not a big deal, but it is just that. The truth of the images is only advancing slowly. Now imagine that the war itself is this aesthetic deployed during a world festival, whose stakeholders are the states in conflict, or rather “interests”, broadcasting representations of which we are all spectators for… you, like me. We often say “conflict of interest”, which is a tautology. There is no conflict, big or small, unless there is interest. Brutus, Nero, Biden, or Putin, Constantinople, Iraq or Ukraine, not much has changed, apart from the mass murder."
Jean-Luc Godard | "Cannes is a propaganda tool like any other. They propagate Western aesthetics..."
Smedley Darlington Butler | I might have given Al Capone a few hints
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
Smedley Darlington Butler
Tom Clancy | What the government is good at is collecting taxes
"What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else."
Tom Clancy
Albert Einstein | The masses are never militaristic
"The masses are never militaristic until their minds are poisoned by propaganda."
Albert Einstein
Kevin Sorbo | what the governments of disarmed citizens have done
"If you think mass shooters have killed too many people, just wait till you find out what the governments of disarmed citizens have done."
Kevin Sorbo
Karl Kraus | How is the world ruled and led to war?
"How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print."
Karl Kraus
George Orwell | horrible features of war
"One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting."
George Orwell
Winston Churchill | bodyguard of lies
"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."
Winston S. Churchill
George Orwell | The most effective way to destroy people
"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history."
George Orwell
J.F.C. Fuller | into the invisible hands of a plutocracy
"The government of the Western nations, whether monarchical or republican, had passed into the invisible hands of a plutocracy, international in power and grasp. It was, I venture to suggest, this semioccult power which....pushed the mass of the American people into the cauldron of World War I."
J.F.C. Fuller
Winston Churchill | the Russian people by the hair
"[Bolshevism] among the Jews is nothing new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States)... this worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire."
Winston Churchill
