The optimist, reading the past, sees our increasing freedom over time and predicts: in the future we will be freer than ever. The pessim-ist, reading the present, sees increasing clampdowns on freedom, and predicts: in the future we will all be slaves. The realist, reading past and present, observes: we only gain and keep freedom by fighting for it.
To fight for something requires strong fear or anger. Who in the West really believes we’re losing freedoms today? We mostly have comfortable lives filled with gadgets, full fridges, and safe beds. Bad things tend to happen elsewhere, to other people. Who may or may not deserve it. We’re enormously complacent, if not smug, and any-one who seriously claims the state is working hard to reduce our freedoms tends to be seen as paranoid.
However, while wealth and freedom correlate, full fridges and streaming TV shows do not equal freedom. Bread and circuses is a classic way to appease the people without giving them real freedom.
We are so good at self-deceit, rationalization, and maintaining the sense of normalcy no matter how bizarre things get. “So far so good!”
and “stop complaining!” fight for first place as the prime motto of the human race. Reality is badly out of focus to most individuals. We are easy to manipulate, and we are surrounded by propaganda.
It seems to me, observing this closely for more than a decade, that our governments are indeed working overtime to remove bricks in the freedom pillar. The process is slow, careful, and international. I think I’ve got a good explanation as to why they feel they have to do this, as told in my story at the start of the chapter, and I think that by now, the mechanisms are becoming clear to many other people too. A sig-nificant part of the process is to convince people that everything is normal. This plays on our desire to be relaxed and calm about things.
When a person in authority tells us, “It’s all OK,” we want to believe them. When he’s an out-and-out psychopath, it’s even harder to resist that sincere smile and firm handshake.
In 2003, the US invaded Iraq, again, and between January 3 and April 1267, 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 anti-war protests. In the US, however, the country actually sending soldiers to kill and be killed, protests were muted and small by comparison. This was, perhaps, at the height of power of the US propaganda machine personified by Fox News. That TV station has gotten quieter since Barack Obama’s second term, when it bet so pub-licly on the wrong psychopath. However, that doesn’t mean the pro-paganda went away. Instead it went underground, spread wider, and infiltrated our new digital media.
67 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War
I don’t know how many government employees and contractors have fake accounts on sites like Reddit so they can try to influence what stories get reported, and how people respond to them. The sock puppets are there, that’s a certainty, and it’s something I’ll return to later in this chapter. For now, let’s examine how the classic propa-ganda media operated. These patterns seem to repeat fairly often, so I expect we’ll see them come back in new clothes over and over:
• Make false analogies. Free speech is a human right. Companies are legal persons, and have human rights like persons. Supreme Court decision coming soon!
• Promote a climate of fear. Terrorists attempt to explode bombs on school bus. Justice Minister announces sweeping powers of deten-tion without trial.
• Think of the children. Pedophiles are plotting to rape your chil-dren. Home Affairs Minister announces new censorship laws to protect your family from Internet porn.
• Use circular reasoning. Unlike those evil terrorists, we’re a demo-cracy. Everyone knows democracies are good. Therefore, your gov-ernment is good. Elections are tomorrow!
• Appeal to self-interest. Ecologists want to raise the price of everything, so even if they might be right in theory, the market proves they are wrong.
• Flatter by comparison. President-for-life Smith of Eurasia is an evil dictator who eats children’s hearts. And now, back to domestic politics.
• Flood with useless data. Wife of footballer confesses sex addiction, love affair with lesbian gardener. Now, back to the banking takeovers of this week.
• Stir fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Teenager arrested for anti-social on-line comments, facing terrorism charges and life imprison-ment. Congress debates new security powers.
• Debate empty emotional issues. Should Muslims be allowed to write books about Christ? More coming up on this hot story after the news!
• Create confusing terminology. New report calls for harmonized integration of third-pillar powers, citing “inefficiencies” in crimin-al justice system. Download the full report now (registration re-quired).
Of course, journalists and editors don’t need to invent and insert these messages deliberately. They are as just gullible as anyone and can be manipulated in exactly the same ways. It just takes a few clever, well-placed people close to the top of the food chain, crafting wedge issues, talking points, and other propaganda elements. Feed these into the hierarchy, and they spread to the whole system.
As a note, I’m shocked that my “teenager arrested for antisocial on-line comments, facing terrorism charges” line actually came true in 2013, multiple times. I wrote it several years ago as an absurd carica-ture.