How To Make Your Mind Harder For The Propagandists To Manipulate by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!
(2025-05-17 at 21:41:40 )

How To Make Your Mind Harder For The Propagandists To Manipulate by Ms Caitlin Johnstone!

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

The domestic propaganda that westerners are fed by the powerful does not typically consist of whole-cloth fabrications, but rather of distortions, half-truths, manipulated emphasis, and lies by omission.

The worst mistake you can make when reading the news is to assume there is a good reason why the mass media report on something in the way that they do. That there is a good reason why Israel-Palestine gets framed as a complex and morally ambiguous issue with no clear path forward, even though it all looks pretty self-evident to you. That there must be a valid and legitimate reason why one story gets more coverage than a seemingly far more important story, like how the release of one Israeli-American hostage is currently getting far more news media coverage than the deliberate starvation of an entire enclave full of civilians.

In reality there is no valid and legitimate reason why such things are covered the way they are. The coverage happens in the way that it happens because it serves the information interests of Israel and the western empire, and for no other reason.

So much western ignorance is facilitated by the manipulative way the imperial media report on what is going on in the world. People assume that because they are not hearing about a given issue all the time or in a particularly urgent tone of reporting, it must not be an especially important matter that needs their attention. They assume that if one side of a conflict is not framed as being clearly in the wrong, then it must not be.

Westerners assume that if the world were experiencing another Holocaust, another Transatlantic Slave Trade, another Cuban Missile Crisis, they would hear about it in the news at an appropriate level of urgency. But that simply is not how it works. The only reason the western public is ever told about anything bad that happens at a high level of frequency and urgency is when it is convenient for the western empire, like when Russia invaded Ukraine. When that happened it was the main story in every western outlet for ages, and Russia was clearly framed as the evil aggressor, with all the NATO aggressions which provoked the invasion going completely unmentioned.

When people hear the word "propaganda" they tend to think it means the same thing as "lies", but that is not accurate. The domestic propaganda that westerners are fed by the powerful does not typically consist of whole-cloth fabrications, but rather of distortions, half-truths, manipulated emphasis, and lies by omission.

Most of the worst things the United States and its allies are doing in the world are reported accurately by the western press at certain times and in certain publications, but they simply are not given any emphasis and amplification after those brief mentions. If you look at the hyperlinks I cite in my articles to describe the criminality of the empire it is usually either straight out of the mainstream press or some other independent author who is citing mainstream news reporting. The difference is that I regularly spotlight those admissions, while the imperial media will mention them once halfway down an article somewhere and then let the daily news churn carry it away down the memory hole.

Western propaganda does not consist so much of manipulating what gets reported but how it gets reported. How often something gets mentioned. How often the perpetrator of an abuse is explicitly named. The type of language used to describe a given offense. These adjustments might sound insignificant when they are described, but when put into practice across the board they are extremely effective at shaping public perception of world affairs.

The only way to get around this is to maintain an acute awareness of what is being reported while ignoring distorting factors like frequency, emphasis and tone. You have to just focus on the raw data of what is being reported about what the empire is up to from day to day without allowing your perception to be colored by the way in which that data is reported. If you come across a key piece of information about the empires criminality you have got to hold onto it and remember its significance for yourself, because the imperial press sure are not going to remind you. They are going to be acting like it never happened by next week.

It is bizarre once you start noticing how much of a disconnect there is between reality and the mass medias reporting on world events. They will occasionally mention actual important things, but there is no accurate sense of proportionality to any of it. It is like if you were at a restaurant with a friend and a waiters uniform caught fire, and your friend just casually mentioned "Oh that guy is on fire" before going back to talking about the meal for the rest of the conversation while the guy burned to death at the other end of the room. It is utterly surreal.

So one of the most important things you need to do to maintain a truth-based worldview is to take complete control over your own understanding of the importance of the pieces of information which come across your field of vision. You can not rely on others to tell you how important they are, because all the most amplified and influential voices in our society are working to manipulate your understanding of their importance, and most ordinary people you will interact with are being manipulated by those voices to some extent. Public political discourse is overwhelmingly dominated by these distortions.

You have got to interpret the urgency and importance of information for yourself!

By standing on your own two feet and looking at the raw data with fresh eyes before it gets jumbled around by the imperial spin machine, you make your mind much harder to bend to the will of the empire!

"This Ms Caitlin Johnstone article, its pictures, and its links are here:"

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Ah, the Buddha Ms Caitlin speaks the truth!!! - Cousin Lucky