Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/16/the-sinophobic-history-of-brainwashing.html
…
3 Likes
“Why don’t you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?”
7 Likes
looks at the real-life sci-fi-like history of psychological warfare in America.
so there’s at least a ‘chapter’ (or six) on fox"news"?
3 Likes
Can anyone explain why such a large population in the US believes the 2020 election was ‘stolen’ based on some random Russian posts on social media about how the ballot counters in some precinct were seen using thumb drives? Conspiracy theories used to be the domain of a few crackpots, now they seem to be the norm for half the people in the USA? I blame Facebook.
“My team lost the Sportsball Championship to that team that I hate, and these articles that look pretty authentic back up my view! We won, it was those cheating refs and the fixers who run the league who made it impossible for us to win!”
A lot of people treat politics with the same tribal loyalty as they do sports. That makes them more susceptible to thinking it’s a game in a way, and that it’s about winning, about showing the other side who’s boss, forgetting that it’s about who does the dirty work of actually governing for the good of all.
4 Likes
Certainly facebook and other social media platforms, optimized for “engagement” helped spread conspiracy theories. But the break down of trust in public institutions since the 70s didn’t help, either. There were lots of good reasons to be pissed at the government in the 70s (Watergate, Cointelpro, Kent State, Vietnam, our support for authoritarian regimes, etc), but bad faith actors took the opportunity to weaponize people’s anger and mistrust of government (such as Reagan, running on an anti-government, anti-institutional platform for example and far right evangelicals aligning with him to push their backward agenda, white supremacists building up a toehold in the GOP from the ground up since that period, etc) and turned it into a violent anti-government mainstream movement. The popularization of conspiritorial thinking via folks like Art Bell, Alex Jones, and even the X-Files helped make that view even more mainstream at the same time. Plus, there was the whole embrace of “outsider” status by middle class white people that Grace Elizabeth Hale talked about in her book…
And here we are…
5 Likes
Odd, a key serious book is never mentioned.
5 Likes
Something of a disappointment if you are expecting Dr. Fu Manchu to have a special flavor of oriental commie evil at his disposal; but certainly suggests that they had someone on staff who would have been qualified as a religious functionary or cult leader under other circumstances. Not rookie work.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
