Propaganda in Full Bloom

Abstract:  Frankly, the dark side of our nation has achieved great momentum in seizing the initiative, in military terms.  We are in a war—a cultural war.  According to the public narrative, the left is successfully isolating President Trump, attempting to make him completely impotent politically.  No need for impeachment.  The left is essentially diminishing him in a similar fashion that Stalin and his propaganda machine diminished his relatively more liberal nemesis, Trotsky, of the Menshevik socialist faction.  Diminishment was not enough—Trotsky was ultimately assassinated.  And now we see elements of our history being assassinated.  It would be one thing for the media to objectively point out abuses of power or other forms of corruption.  During the previous eight years, Americans were aware of abuses of power and forms of corruption; yet, the leftist press showed little to no interest.  On the other hand, we have yet to see any objective reporting; rather the left deceives the public with propaganda, as this new Gadfly article argues in a conversation between Old Gadfly, an American citizen with and inquiring mind (IM), and a seasoned combat aviator with an inquiring mind (AM).

Old Gadfly:  Gentlemen, it’s been a week since the Charlottesville spectacle.  Your take?

AM:  We’re witnessing emergent propaganda in full bloom.  I say propaganda because the messaging represents the full meaning of propaganda:  “information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented.”  I say emergent because there is no single, central organizing agent; yet, the messaging is concerted and consistent because of a central, self-organizing ideology called socialism.

IM:  The propagandists create and perpetuate folklore.  They want the public to believe Charlottesville was a contest between groups that are far right and left of the political center, suggesting the so called “white supremacists” and the KKK are far right-wing extremists.  Before we dig deeper, we should first examine how the stage was set.  The individual who organized the “unite the right” assembly, supposedly on behalf of the groups protesting the city’s plan to take down the General Robert E. Lee memorial, was Jason Kessler.  Kessler is an experienced agitator.  According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Kessler has experience in matters such as this, to include working with Occupy Wall Street, a left of center movement; and he apparently voted for Obama.  The SPLC is a well-left-of-center group.  They classify other groups that have different value systems as “hate groups.”  

AM:  One other question to ask:  why did the Charlottesville police, first responders, and national guardsmen—over 1,000—do nothing to squelch the anarchy?  Would a life have been saved had they intervened?  For the left, letting the clashes unfold was good for the optics—they make news cycles easier and so much more visceral in advancing their propaganda.  Given how these groups are generally characterized by the left and understood by the “nice” public, Charlottesville was a setup to further demonize President Trump.  They insist he is a racist (because they cannot call him the N-word) and that white supremacists represent his base.  Although it is factual that Trump has said things used against him, they generally related to concerns about violations of the law (such as illegal aliens associated with sex and drug trafficking) and conflicts of interest (a judge refusing to recuse himself from a Trump lawsuit despite known ties to La Raza—“The term expresses ethnic or racial pride”).  The left has developed these kinds of tactics for decades.

IM:  Let me describe another example.  The media has even drudged up comments made by President Trump about General Pershing related to suppressing a Muslim insurgency in the Philippines (click here for a good history).  Although Trump’s description used during the Presidential campaign represented some enduring folklore about bullets dipped in pig’s blood, his recent tweets merely referenced General Pershing.  Here is what Trump actually said in his recent tweets within the context of terroristic assaults on our culture:  “study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. . . . There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!”  Notice the difference.  Being caught is not the same thing as being shot.  The historical reference is to the Moro rebellion in the Philippines (an interesting history involving presidential politics demonstrating similar parallels to our most recent experience in the Middle East).  Here is a quote from Pershing’s own autobiography: 

These juramentado were materially reduced in number by a practice the army had already adopted, one that the Mohammedans held in abhorrence.  The bodies were publicly buried in the same grave with a dead pig.  It was not pleasant to take such measures but the prospect of going to hell instead of heaven sometimes deterred the would-be assassins.

AM:  Since there is ample evidence of propaganda, let me offer one more example.  I was alerted to this example from a recent Facebook entry where the author spoke about how our military leaders were even rebuking Commander-in Chief Trump for his insensitive Charlottesville remarks.  Unaware of this, I searched for evidence to confirm this allegation.  Sure enough, major newspapers were advancing this meme (incidentally, recall a conversation we had five years ago on memetics and politics).  Here is a quote from the Los Angeles Times:   

America's top-ranking military officers spoke out forcefully against racial bigotry and extremism, a rare public foray into domestic politics that revealed growing unease at the Pentagon with some of President Trump's policies and views.

The members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- the senior uniformed brass of the Navy, Marine Corps, Army and Air Force -- all posted messages on their official Twitter accounts to denounce the far-right extremists behind Saturday's violence in Charlottesville, Va.

The messages did not mention Trump, who is the commander in chief, by name. But the rebuke seemed clear in several posts given the bipartisan furor over Trump's insistence Tuesday that "both sides" were at fault for the violence. 

“The Army doesn't tolerate racism, extremism, or hatred in our ranks,” Gen. Mark Milley, chief of staff of the Army, tweeted Wednesday. “It's against our Values and everything we've stood for since 1775.”

To the undiscerning eye, the Times author wants you to believe the military leaders are rebuking the President, not the extremism.  The President rebuked racism, extremism, bigotry, and hatred.  The military leaders’ statements are completely congruent with the President’s.  Notice General Milley never used the term “far-right” in his statement.  Nor did any other military leader.

 Old Gadfly:  For so many “nice” Americans, they are at the mercy of a leftist media, relying upon their reporting as settled truth.  We know the KKK spawned as a domestic terrorist group on behalf of the Democrat Party during the post-Civil War reconstruction era.  According to the left, white supremacists are supposed to represent fascists, Nazis, and neo-Nazis because historical revisionists and progressives deny that these groups spawned from socialism, which is a left of center ideology.  The left sets the rules for the creation of truth, and they define or characterize the political right.  They do this by distorting history and creating labels (racist, xenophobe, misogynist, homophobe, etc.) reminiscent of the N-word.  The hateful left wants “nice” people to think the right is hateful.  Unfortunately, the right lacks a deeper understanding of these concepts and how they actually manifested in history; thus, they silently acquiesce to the deception.  This is not new in history.  Hayek observed and documented similar developments in his seminal book, The Road to Serfdom, initially published in 1944 for a Western European audience.  Here is an excerpt from Chapter 11, “The End of Truth”:

The most effective way of making everybody serve the single system of ends toward which the social plan is directed is to make everybody believe in those ends. To make a totalitarian system function efficiently, it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the same ends. It is essential that the people should come to regard them as their own ends. Although the beliefs must be chosen for the people and imposed upon them, they must become their beliefs, a generally accepted creed which makes the individuals as far as possible act spontaneously in the way the planner wants (bold italics added for emphasis; p. 171).

Predictably, Hayek’s book was roundly rebuked by the progressive left in academic, media, Hollywood, and political circles.  So, he essentially went into hiding for a few years to collect his bearings.  He resurfaced with some lectures at the University of Cairo to vet his ideas about the concept called liberty.  These lectures provided the inspiration and logic for his next seminal work, The Constitution of Liberty.  Ironically, Hayek revised the Foreword to The Road to Serfdom in 1956 for an American audience.  A year later, speaking at America’s National Press Club, Soviet communist leader Nikita Khruschev taunted Americans with this statement:  “. . . I can prophesy that your grandchildren in America will live under socialism.  And please do not be afraid of that.  Your grandchildren will not understand how their grandparents did not understand the progressive nature of a socialist society.”

This brings me back to the dynamics of Charlottesville.  Good classical liberals mostly represent the Republican Party based on the principles of individual liberty, limited government (via a Constitutional Republic) and the rule of law, private property, a free market, and the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Pathetically, a growing number of so called Republicans betray these principles and their corruption weakens any resolve to combat the forces intent on destroying the idea of America.  See for example Ken Buck’s excellent book, Drain the Swamp:  How Washington Corruption Is Worse than You Think.  Classical liberalism is the form of liberalism that socialists in Europe, especially Germany, and the Soviet Union attacked.  Socialism is a left of center ideology.  This can and should be understood as a political axiom.  Communism is a left-wing manifestation of socialism.  Fascism and Nazism are a right-wing manifestation of socialism.  Both manifestations are left of center on the broader political spectrum.  Both are illiberal.  Yet, the left has been very successful in convincing too many “nice” people, whether American or European, that fascism and Nazism are an extreme right of center phenomenon.  This makes it easy then to appropriately demonize Nazi, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist groups and then to associate them with the Republican Party and conservatives.  Since the left claimed the liberal label, even though their concept did not even come close to representing the classical liberal principles, classic liberals then took on the label of conservative.  People forget or do not even recall what the Reagan conservative movement was all about.  He championed the conservation of classical liberal principles.

Too many “nice” Americans live in their comfort zones while being programmed to “act spontaneously” based on leftist propaganda.  Even some of my closest friends have lamented Trump’s tweets.  But when I asked if they receive them directly, they admitted they did not, which means they only know about the tweets based on how the leftist media portray them.  The left now attacks our history (whether good or bad).  It won’t be long before they attack “nice” people in their comfort zones when the left crosses the threshold of (a) realizing taxation is not enough to meet the demands of a large central government and welfare state and begin confiscating private property (like your retirement accounts that you built based on your own labor); and (b) prosecuting those who question their deceptions and actions as hate speech.

We must warn our family and friends.  There is no straddling the fence here.  One cannot claim political independence and hope others solve our problem.  The idea of America is under full assault.  The left controls the public narrative.  Americans must break out of their “nice” trance.  Become discerning.  Be outraged at “the end of truth” tactics of the left.  Be courageous.  Pick the right side:  either a truly liberal America or a socialist tyranny.  Fight for truth and justice.