In 1994 the U.S.-Republicans demonstrated how parties tend to manipulate people instead of standing for certain political thoughts: The Republican party contracted a consultant to find out the most-wanted topics of the U.S.-population, and afterwards the same consultant wrote a paper, called the Contract with America. Out of this, Republican Politicians all received a positive list of words they were told to use in speeches about themselves and a list of negative words for political competitors.
This kind of thought control plays with the issue that words with negative/positive connotations go deeper than neutral words. They get integrated into the listening person's way of thinking. Even if someone understands the strategy, it will still be difficult to forget the black-and-white-images, as soon as they have been listened to.
TEXTBLOCK 1/6 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658649
With World War I an entire system of ideas how wars work collapsed. Suddenly it was no longer mostly soldiers who had to fight. War became an engagement of every day's life. Everybody got involved.
Propaganda therefore changed as well. The campaigns were no longer temporarily and recent but had to be planned for years. Who failed in organizing it or used the wrong keywords failed. Masters of modern propaganda became the British, whereas the Germans failed completely in the beginning.
TEXTBLOCK 2/6 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658475
A very different form of voluntary disinformation are the calls for donations. Donations offer the possibility to do something good, to help the poor. Afterwards one does no longer have to feel guilty for being luckier than those "others". The same pictures of starving and desperate children for decades, of starving babies with big sad eyes. The pictures show a terrible life. But the idea that contributing money would change the destiny of those children and other people is a lie. States use their population for paying money to make the states' policy less unjust. In fact the money of the Western donators perpetuates the dependence and because of this prolongs the misery into a vicious circle of disinformation on both sides, but it is clever to have one's people believing that they can change the world.
TEXTBLOCK 3/6 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658671
One of the easiest tools for disinformation is to exchange the words written below a photograph. The entire meaning of the picture can be varied like this:
- The visit of a school-group at a former international camp can change into a camp, where children are imprisoned (which happened in the Russian city of Petroskoy in 1944).
- Victims of war can change nationality. The picture of the brutal German soldier in World War II that was shown in many newspapers to demonstrate the so-called typical face of a murderer, turned out to be French and a victim in other newspapers.
- In 1976 a picture of children in a day-nursery in the GDR is taken: The children, coming out of the shower, were dressed up in terry cloth suits with stripes. The same year the photograph with the happily laughing boys and girls wins the contest "a beautiful picture". Two years later a small part of the photograph can be seen in a Christian magazine in West-Germany, supposedly showing children from a concentration camp in the USSR. The smiling faces now seem to scream. (source: Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (ed.): Bilder, die lügen. Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung im Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Bonn 1998, p. 79)
TEXTBLOCK 4/6 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658773
Disinformation might also be welcome:
While the ones criticize disinformation and try to fight against it, others do nothing against it. And others again seem to enjoy getting disinformed. How this works? It is the result of a society that does no longer want to live under the pressure of doing and hearing everything at the same time. Acceleration of life seems too fast. The only way to get out is to refuse certain things/messages/truths. Receiving disinformation can be more comfortable than getting so-called correct information. This is especially true for the readers of the yellow press. The yellow press lives on that perspective, the commodity of getting light news, mostly wrong news and lies - but those being wrapped up in nice pictures and stories about those who seem to reign the world.
The aim is the escape out of reality.
A surplus of information, information terror, can produce disinformation. The profusion can get exploited for disinformation. This works in that way that in the mass of information the individual has no possibility to get an overview of the different ways of thinking and to reach a stage of objective knowledge.
TEXTBLOCK 5/6 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658602
"Although this is a free society, the U.S. mainstream media often serve as virtual propaganda agents of the state, peddling viewpoints the state wishes to inculcate and marginalizing any alternative perspectives. This is especially true in times of war, when the wave of patriotic frenzy encouraged by the war-makers quickly engulfs the media. Under these conditions the media's capacity for dispassionate reporting and critical analysis is suspended, and they quickly become cheer-leaders and apologists for war." (words as propaganda, by
The mass-media would have a possibility to get out of this circle of being disinformed and making others disinformed. To admit that oneself is not always informed correctly, and also mention that the pictures shown are not in any case suitable to the text, as some of them are older, or even from another battle.
For the media it would be easy to talk about the own disinformation in public. Doing this would provoke the government or in the case of the
TEXTBLOCK 6/6 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658661
Joseph Stalin (1879-1953):
After Lenin's death he took over and became a dictator without any limits of power. Everyone who dared to talk or act against him or was in suspicion of doing so, got killed. Millions were murdered. His empire was one made out of propaganda and fear. As long as he was in power his picture had to be in every flat and bureau. Soon after his death the cult was stopped and in 1956 the De-Stalination was started, though he was partly rehabilitated in 1970.
Latitude: 45.42, Longitude: -75.7
The headquarters of the Communications Security Establishment CSE are located in Ottawa. Here all processed intercepted data from Canadian monitoring stations come together to be further analyzed by special signals intelligence analysts. For that purpose the dictionary system is used.
Headquarters of the US National Security Agency in Maryland.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), probably was the most influential German dramatist and
theoretician of the theater in the 20th century. During the existence of the Third Reich he fled from Germany to Scandinavia and to the USA, where he tried to go on with his work. In the 1950s he became director of the newly founded Berliner Ensemble, in East Berlin.
for more information see: