Fra Global Research.
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Utdrag:
"Propaganda is an organized attempt to get large numbers of people to think or do something — or not think or do something. It’s not like classical rhetoric, which is about persuasion through argument, but rather a means of sub-rational manipulation. For the past two decades, professor Mark Crispin Miller has taught a course on propaganda at New York University, in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.
In September 2020 after urging his students to look into the scientific rationale for the mask mandates, to assess the truthfulness of the propaganda drive promoting them, he was subject to an administrative “review” for that and other alleged crimes. Miller is suing 19 of his department colleagues for libel after they signed a letter to the school dean demanding that “review” of Miller’s conduct, falsely accusing him of “explicit” hate speech, mounting “attacks on students” “advocating for an unsafe learning environment” and discouraging his class from wearing masks.
Miller’s case shows that the infringement of academic freedom is inimical to independent thinking and free inquiry. Without such freedom, higher education is more than likely to teach students only to believe what they are told by state and corporate powers, which means not educating them at all — a failure damaging to them and catastrophic for democracy".
COVID Propaganda.
While it acquaints his students with the history of modern propaganda — its birth in World War I, its use by the Bolsheviks and by the Nazis — Miller’s course on propaganda is primarily concerned with teaching students to perceive and analyze propaganda in real time, or to look back at very recent propaganda drives. This is not an easy thing to do, he warns his students, since, while it’s easy to spot propaganda that you disagree with, it can be very difficult to recognize it as propaganda when it tells you something that you want to hear, and want to think is true.
“That’s the most effective propaganda,” Miller says. “It works best when you don’t see it for what it is. You think it’s news. You think it’s entertainment. You think it’s information. You think it’s expertise. So, you will agree with it. Someone else out there is spewing disinformation, but you’re getting the real thing. So, it’s hard to study propaganda, because you must make an effort to pull back and be as impartial as possible. Read comprehensively, do all the research you can [on] all sides of that issue. See what the propaganda has blacked out. See what the propaganda has stigmatized as fake, as hoax, as junk science, and look at it objectively.
What’s hard is that you have to move out of your comfort zone. Sometimes you discover that a thing you’d fervently believed for years was false, or half true. I’ve had this experience myself many, many times". Miller made these points at the first “meeting” (via Zoom) of his propaganda course in September 2020, noting that such a thorough and impartial propaganda study can be difficult, not just because it makes you question your own views. Such a study can also pose a social challenge, as your discoveries may come as a shock to those around you — friends, roommates, family, even other of your teachers, who’ve never looked into the matter for themselves.
Propaganda is an organized attempt to get large numbers of people to think or do something — or not think or do something. It’s not like classical rhetoric, which is about persuasion through argument. It’s a kind of sub-rational manipulation. ~ Professor Mark Crispin Miller.
What Is Propaganda?
“The COVID crisis has been driven by a number of propaganda themes,” Miller says. However, the word “propaganda” does not automatically mean that the information is false or malign. Propaganda can be true and used for benevolent ends. Public service ads encouraging you not to smoke, for example, are a form of propaganda.
The problem with propaganda is that it’s inherently biased and one-sided, which can become outright dangerous if the other side is censored. This is particularly so when it comes to medicine and health, and the censoring of COVID-19 treatment information and the potential hazards of the COVID vaccines is a perfect example of this. “Propaganda is an organized attempt to get large numbers of people to think or do something — or not think or do something. That’s really all it is. That’s an informal definition but it’s a good one", Miller says.
“It’s not like classical rhetoric, which is about persuasion through argument. [Propaganda] is a kind of sub-rational manipulation. It’s been with us for a long time, but the rise of the digital world, our absorption into the digital universe, has radically intensified this kind of effort and made it successful beyond the wildest dreams of [Nazi minister of propaganda] Dr. [Joseph] Goebbels or [profession public relations pioneer] Edward Bernays.
This incredible technological sophistication enables them, first of all, to move people at the deepest level. It also enables them to suppress dissidents with remarkable efficiency, spotting the word ‘vaccine’ in a post and then blocking it. At the same time, it gives them an astonishing advantage when it comes to surveillance of every single one of us … It is going to require a tremendous amount of skill and sophistication on our part, to organize under that watchful eye"".