Noam Chomsky, the distinguished American philosopher, political activist, and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has compiled a list of the ten most powerful and effective strategies resorted to by the agendas “hidden” to establish a manipulation of the population through the media. Thanks to this media paraphernalia and propaganda, power have created or destroyed social movements, justified wars, tempered financial crises, spurred on some other ideological currents, and even given the phenomenon of media as producers of reality within the collective psyche. But how to detect the most common strategies for understanding these psychosocial tools, in which we surely participate? Fortunately Chomsky has been given the task of synthesizing and exposing these practices, some more obvious and more sophisticated, but apparently all equally effective and, from a certain point of view, demeaning. Encourage stupidity, promote a sense of guilt, promote distraction, or construct artificial problems and then magically, solve them, are just some of these tactics.
1 – THE STRATEGY OF DISTRACTION
The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction, that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information. The strategy of distraction is also essential to keep the public interested in the essential knowledge in science, economics, psychology, neurobiology, and cybernetics. “Keep the public’s attention distracted away from the real social problems, captivated by issues of no importance. Keep the public busy, busy, busy; no time to think; back to the farm and other animals.
Excerpt from “Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars”
2 – CREATE PROBLEMS, THEN OFFER SOLUTIONS
This method is also called “problem-reaction-solution.” This creates a problem, a “situation” due to cause some reaction in public, so that it is the principal measures that we want to accept. For example, develop or intensify urban violence or arrange for bloody attacks, so that the public demand the principal of safety laws and policies to the detriment of freedom. Or also: create an economic crisis to accept as a necessary evil recession of social rights and the dismantling of public services.
3 – THE GRADUAL STRATEGY
To make it accept an unacceptable extent, simply apply it gradually, like a dropper, for consecutive years. This is how radically new socioeconomic conditions (neoliberalism) were imposed during the 1980s and 1990s: the minimal state, privatization, precariousness, flexibility, mass unemployment… so many changes that would cause a revolution had they been implemented at once.
4 – THE STRATEGY OF DEFERRING
Another way to make an unpopular decision acceptable is to present it as “painful and necessary” in obtaining public acceptance for the moment for a future application. It is easier to accept a future sacrifice than an immediate sacrifice. First, because the effort is not used immediately. Then, because the public, the mass, always has the tendency to expect naively that “everything will improve tomorrow,” and that the sacrifice required may be avoided. This gives the public more time to get used to the idea of change and accept it with resignation when the time comes.
5 – GO TO THE PUBLIC AS A LITTLE CHILD
Most of the advertising directed at the general public uses discourse, arguments, characters, and particularly children’s intonation, as if the viewer were a very young child or a mentally impaired person. The more you mislead the viewer, the more it tends to adopt an infantile tone. Why? “If you address a person as if she had the age of 12 years or less, then, due to suggestibility, it will tend, with some probability, a response or reaction that lacks a critical sense as of a person 12 years or younger.
Excerpt from “Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars”
6 – USE THE EMOTIONAL SIDE MORE THAN THE REFLECTION
Making use of the emotional aspect is a classic technique to cause a short circuit on rational analysis, and finally to the critical sense of individuals. Moreover, the use of the emotional register allows you to open the door to the unconscious to deploy graft or ideas, desires, fears, compulsions, or induce behaviours …
7 – KEEP THE PUBLIC IN IGNORANCE AND MEDIOCRITY
Making the public incapable of understanding the technologies and methods for their control and their bondage. “The quality of education given to the lower social classes should be as poor and mediocre as possible so that the gap of ignorance that lies between the lower classes to upper social classes is and remains almost impossible for them to overcome.
Excerpt from “Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars”
8 – TO ENCOURAGE THE PUBLIC TO BE COMPLACENT WITH MEDIOCRITY
Promoting the public to think that fashion is the fact of being stupid, vulgar and uneducated…
9 – SELF-BLAME STRENGTHEN
Make the individual believe that he/she alone is to blame for their own misfortune because of the failure of their intelligence, their abilities, or their efforts. Thus, instead of rebelling against the economic system, the individual themselves are helpless and blame themselves, which leads to a depressive state. One of its effects is to inhibit action. And without action, there’s no revolution!
10 – GETTING TO KNOW THE INDIVIDUALS BETTER THAN THEY KNOW THEMSELVES
In the course of the last 50 years, advances in science have led to an accelerated, growing knowledge gap between the public and those owned and used by the ruling elites. Thanks to biology, neurobiology and psychology applied, the “system” has enjoyed advanced knowledge of the human being, either physically or psychologically. The system has been able to better understand the average person than she/he knows themselves. This means that in most cases, the system has more control and greater power over individuals than the individuals have over themselves.
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