+- +-

+-User

Welcome, Guest.
Please login or register.
 
 
 

Login with your social network

Forgot your password?

+-Stats ezBlock

Members
Total Members: 48
Latest: watcher
New This Month: 0
New This Week: 0
New Today: 0
Stats
Total Posts: 16867
Total Topics: 271
Most Online Today: 119
Most Online Ever: 1155
(April 20, 2021, 12:50:06 pm)
Users Online
Members: 0
Guests: 27
Total: 27

Author Topic: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda  (Read 20451 times)

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution

SEPTEMBER 7, 2019 · 10:19 PM

Podcast #10: Ten Propaganda Tricks Hitler Used to Control the German People

9th in a Series of PODCASTS on Forgotten History by PAUL ANDREWS 👍

Outside of Germany during WWII, people around the world were appalled at the profound deceitfulness of Nazi propaganda, the ridiculous exaggerations, the outright falsehoods, and the astonishing acceptance of German citizens. How on earth could intelligent, rational people have been convinced by all that schlock?

🔊 7 minute Podcast

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #121 on: November 18, 2019, 02:58:02 pm »

Quote
Thoughts and prayers - Urban Dictionary: A useless phrase uttered in times of sorrow or tragedies. Requires the bare minimum of effort because they are too lazy to get involved and actually do something physical to help with the situation at hand but want to come across as if they actually care.

Quote
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensibleThus 😈 political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness … the great enemy of clear language is insincerity. Where there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, ...

The writer Edward S. Herman cited what he saw as examples of doublespeak and doublethink in modern society[8] Herman describes in his book Beyond Hypocrisy the principal characteristics of doublespeak:

What is really important in the world of doublespeak is the ability to lie, whether knowingly or unconsciously, and to get away with it; and the ability to use lies and choose and shape facts selectively, blocking out those that don’t fit an agenda or program.[9]

Learn more about why you need to call bullshit any time politicians bring up virtue signalling euphemisms like "Thoughts and Prayers":

Doublespeak

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Quote
The top-level results compare urban (or “metropolitan”) counties — NCHS’s categories one through four — with rural (or “non-metropolitan”) counties, categories five and six. They deal a devastating blow to the urban versus rural thesis.


📢 Politics Is Not Rural vs. Urban, and Here’s the Data to Prove It

Within each of the 11 “nations” of the U.S., rural and urban voters actually behave very similarly—but very differently from voters in other regional cultures

By Colin Woodard 👍 Nov 8, 2017 · 9 min read

SNIPPETS:

I don’t disagree that the United States is in crisis, with fissures breaking apart our facade of national unity and revealing structural weaknesses of the republic. Our federation — and, therefore, the world — is in peril, and the stakes are enormous. As the author of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, however, I strongly disagree with the now-conventional narrative that what ultimately divides us is the difference between metropolitan and provincial life. The real divide is between regional cultures — an argument I fleshed out at the outset of this series—as it always has been. And I now have the data to demonstrate it. ... ...

That’s not to say that rural, suburban, and urban voters have the same political priorities — they absolutely do not, whether one lives in Thailand, the United Kingdom, or Colorado. But the differences between them are a secondary factor after deeper, wider cultural forces: the shared customs, beliefs, values, underlying assumptions, symbols, and stories that define and sustain the idea of being Thai or British or Far Western. ... ...

Nor are cities reliable bastions of Democratic support. The core counties of major metropolitan areas, like Phoenix, Jacksonville, and Virginia Beach — and lots of smaller ones, like Boise, Chattanooga, Corpus Christi, Mobile, Knoxville, Pensacola, Tulsa, and Wichita — voted Republican in every one of the past five presidential elections. ... ...

Far from voting alike, all but the very largest cities behave like the regional culture they belong to.

Listen to or read full article:

https://medium.com/s/balkanized-america/no-the-divide-in-american-politics-is-not-rural-vs-urban-and-heres-the-data-to-prove-it-c6cc8611f623

Agelbert NOTE: I think Colin Woodward is right.

The 😈 Republicans figured that out a long time ago. That is why the following map correlates so well with the one above.



Quote
The stark urban-rural divide in the country is to be found almost exclusively in the Midlands, where it has a disproportionate 🐘 effect 😈 on the Electoral College, as that region straddles several historic swing states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, and Missouri among them.

Full article:

https://medium.com/s/balkanized-america/no-the-divide-in-american-politics-is-not-rural-vs-urban-and-heres-the-data-to-prove-it-c6cc8611f623
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 916
Re: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #123 on: November 27, 2019, 08:26:07 am »

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Resisting Anti-Impeachment Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #124 on: November 27, 2019, 12:39:46 pm »


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Published on Thursday, November 28, 2019
by Common Dreams

'An Unjust Society Is Far Costlier': AOC Says Beware the 😈 Deficit Scolds Who Only Complain About Paying for Stuff When It Benefits People

"I see decisions made every day that cost the American public billions of dollars a year for bogus reasons and 🐘🙊 nobody asks  how we pay for it."

byEoin Higgins, staff writer

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday asked voters to question why U.S. politicians and pundits only consider the cost of government programs when those programs help the public and least fortunate—and ignore price tags on policies that benefit the most wealthy and powerful.

"Look out for those in politics who like to label themselves 'fiscally responsible,' yet only seem to care about the price of justice—not the cost of oppression."
—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez


The New York Democrat made the comments on Twitter, pointing out that members of Congress approved billions in funding for Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

"I see decisions made every day that cost the American public billions of dollars a year for bogus reasons and nobody asks how we pay for it," said Ocasio-Cortez.

Even though her colleagues know about ICE abuses, said Ocasio-Cortez, they voted for funding the agency without a thought.

"I saw members voting YES without even a summary of the bill," said the congresswoman. "Nobody cared then how we'd pay for it. Now 🦍 ICE is setting up fake universities to trap students."

Reporting Wednesday exposed how ICE used a fake university in Michigan to entrap over 250 undocumented students since January.

Reporting from The Detroit Free Press indicated that the dummy school was set up solely to lure students to the U.S. and then deport them:

The students had arrived legally in the U.S. on student visas, but since the University of Farmington was later revealed to be a creation of federal agents, they lost their immigration status after it was shut down in January. The school was located on Northwestern Highway near 13 Mile Road in Farmington Hills and staffed with undercover agents posing as university officials.

...

Attorneys for ICE and the Department of Justice maintain that the students should have known it was not a legitimate university because it did not have classes in a physical location.

New York Times contributor Wajahat Ali tweeted that appeals to fiscal responsibility in government programs is a losing strategy for Democrats.

"Bringing a calculator to a knife fight each time and losing," said Ali.

Ocasio-Cortez suggested it was a question of morality.

"Look out for those in politics who like to label themselves 'fiscally responsible,' yet only seem to care about the price of justice—not the cost of oppression," said the congresswoman. "Everything has a price. And an unjust society is far costlier than one that invests in and values all people."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/28/unjust-society-far-costlier-aoc-says-beware-deficit-scolds-who-only-complain-about


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #127 on: December 14, 2019, 06:14:30 pm »

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 916
The Christmas Eve Confessions of Chuck Todd
« Reply #128 on: December 26, 2019, 07:27:53 am »
Excellent analysis of the failures of **** Toad (and by extension, the rest of the corporate media opinion-manufacturing industry) by one of the country's best observers of the press.

The Christmas Eve Confessions of Chuck Todd
That disinformation was going to overtake Republican politics was discoverable years before he says he discovered it.


Jay Rosen

‘Round midnight on Christmas eve, Rolling Stone posted a short interview with Chuck Todd, host of “the longest running show on television,” NBC’s Meet the Press.

Its contents were explosive, embarrassing, enraging, and just plain weird.

Three years after Kellyanne Conway introduced the doctrine of “alternative facts” on his own program, a light went on for Chuck Todd. Republican strategy, he now realized, was to make stuff up, spread it on social media, repeat it in your answers to journalists — even when you know it’s a lie with crumbs of truth mixed in — and then convert whatever controversy arises into go-get-em points with the base, while pocketing for the party a juicy dividend: additional mistrust of the news media to help insulate President Trump among loyalists when his increasingly brazen actions are reported as news.

Todd repeatedly called himself naive for not recognizing the pattern, itself an astounding statement that cast doubt on his fitness for office as host of Meet the Press. While the theme of the interview was waking up to the truth of Republican actions in the information warfare space, Todd went to sleep on the implications of what he revealed. It took him three years to understand a fact about American politics that was there on the surface, unconcealed since the day after inauguration. Many, many interpreters had described it for him during those lost years when he could not bring himself to believe it. (I am one.)

You cannot call that an oversight. It’s a strategic blindness that he superintended. By “strategic blindness” I mean what people mean when they quote Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

The ostensible purpose of the Rolling Stone interview was to promote a special edition of Meet the Press on December 29 that will focus on the weaponization of disinformation. But its effect is to bring MTP — and by extension similar shows — into epistemological crisis. With Todd’s confessions the mask has come off. It could have come off a long time ago, but the anchors, producers, guests, advertisers and to an unknown degree the remaining viewers colluded in an act of make believe that lurched along until now. One way to say it: They agreed to pretend that Conway’s threatening phrase, “alternative facts” was just hyberbole, the kind of inflammatory moment that makes for viral clips and partisan bickering. More silly than it was ominous.

In reality she had made a grave announcement. The nature of the Trump government would be propagandistic. And as as Garry Kasparov observes for us, “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” This exhaustion, this annihilation were on their way to the Sunday shows, and to all interactions with journalists. That is what Kellyanne Conway was saying that day on Meet the Press. But the people who run the show chose not to believe it.

That’s malpractice. Chuck Todd called it naiveté in order to minimize the error. This we cannot allow.

Now let’s look more closely at his Christmas Eve confessions…

* “The Ukraine story for me really crystallized it,” Todd said. By “it” he meant the damage that disinformation “was doing to our politics.” His show has been “at the forefront” of the problem. “Whether we’d liked it or not, our platform has been used, or they’ve attempted to use our platform” to disseminate fabrications. (What has to change to prevent this went unremarked upon.)

* “We have a systemic issue here.” Which is that it’s easy to spread lies through social media. (And on Meet the Press!)

* Peter Wade, the Rolling Stone interviewer, asked about Sean Spicer’s inauguration crowd size lies. “Were you surprised that the president and other administration officials and their allies just kept it going?” Todd’s answer: “I guess I really believed they wouldn’t do this. Just so absurdly naive in hindsight… if people want to read my answer to your question, ‘Boy, that Chuck Todd was hopelessly naive.’ Yeah, it looks pretty naive.”

* Todd said he had been studying up on Trump’s methods. “He learned at the feet of a master of deception in Roy Cohn, who learned at the feet of the original master of deception of sort of the modern political era in Joe McCarthy.” (But McCarthy not only deceived the country. He exploited existing routines in journalism to do it, which is the theme of this book. “He was able to generate massive publicity that made him the center of anti-communism because he understood the press, its practices and its values; he knew what made news.” The press was implicated in McCarthy’s rise because he had gamed it by, for example, announcing wild new charges just before the wire services deadline. The accusations would be out there. The investigation of them took more time and made less news.)

* Todd said he recognized that “the right has an incentive structure to utter the misinformation” when they come on his show. And they welcome a confrontation with journalists over it because fighting with the press helps them with core supporters. (Again, this seemed to be new information to him.)

* He said he he was “stunned” that Ted Cruz came on MTP and did as Senator John Kennedy had done before: repeat the debunked claim that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election in a material way. “I was stunned because he’s a Russia hawk… I was genuinely shocked.” He revealed that the Cruz camp had asked to come on Meet the Press in order to spread a false story! Another shock. “And I really naively thought, maybe he wants to remind people.” Meaning: remind them that the Ukraine plot is Russian disinformation. “And it turned out not to be the case.”

* “One of the things we don’t fully appreciate in mainstream media,” he said, is that “it’s become fun to attack the press,” and “it doesn’t matter if we’re right or wrong.” The attacks keep coming. “Trump has turned this into sport.”

* As if discovering this for the first time, he marveled at pervasive bad faith on the right. He said that prominent people he knows in the Republican coalition who would normally trust skeptical accounts in the establishment press over Sean Hannity’s latest conspiracy theory will now parrot the conspiracy theory. “Wow, have we gone off the rails on the right side of the silo of the conversation that’s taking place.”

* He confessed to not understanding the motivations of Republican office holders who spread lies that are easily disproved. “I don’t get why so many people are comfortable uttering stuff that they may know will look ridiculous in three or four years.”

* He said that when the Trump era is concluded, “we’re going to have another reckoning” over how the press performed during it. About journalists in the run-up to the Iraq war, he said it’s not that they didn’t believe what they were reporting, but reported it anyway. Rather: “They were too trusting of their sources. They maybe were too naive.” (That word again…)

* Throughout the interview, Todd repeatedly changed the term “disinformation” in Rolling Stone’s questions to “misinformation” in his answers, as if United States Senators were just poorly informed and not actively and deliberately misleading the public. (Thus he continued to perform his naiveté while simultaneously calling himself out for it, a weird combo.)

* In a crucial error of ommission, he said nothing about what he or his show would do to change course— other than broadcast his Dec. 29th special on the problem of misinformation.

* And to cap it off, he said of Republican operatives and office holders. “I think we all made the mistake of not following Toni Morrison’s advice, which is when people tell you who they are, believe them.” (Fact check: It was Maya Angelou who said this, not Toni Morrison.)

What to make of this performance?

It’s not naive of him. It’s malpractice. Chuck Todd’s entire brand is based on the claim that he understands politics. Since 2007 he has been NBC’s political director, which means he has influence over all coverage. He is literally the in-house expert on the subject. You don’t get to claim you are naive about politics when you have these kinds of positions. It would be like a chief risk officer saying, “I didn’t understand the gamble we were taking.” Well, that’s your job.

It’s not that he was naive. He did not care to listen. I am going to use my own writing to show what I mean, but there are many others who could be quoted in similar fashion. On January 22, 2017, two days after Trump was inaugurated, I wrote about Sean Spicer’s crowd size spectacular. There several audiences for it, I said. One of course was the press. For them the message was…

We are not bound by what you call facts. We have our own, and we will proceed to put them out regardless of what the evidence says. It’s not a problem for us if you stagger from the room in disbelief. We’re not trying to “win the news cycle,” or win you over. We’re trying to demonstrate independence from and power over you people. This room is not just for briefings, announcements and Q & A. It’s also a theater of resentment in which you play a crucial part. Our constituency hates your guts; this is the place where we commune with them around that fact. See you tomorrow, guys!

Another message went to core supporters:

To the core Trump constituency — and an audience primed for this over years of acrid ‘liberal media’ critique — two things were said. “We’re going to rough these people up.” (Because we know how long you have waited for that.) But also, and in return, you have to accept our “alternative facts” even if your own eyes tell you otherwise. This too is a stark message. The epistemological “price” for being a solider in Trump’s army is high. You have to swallow, repeat and defend things that simply don’t check out.

That disinformation was going to overtake Republican politics was discoverable years before Chuck Todd discovered it. That attacks on the press were baked into Trump’s political style was knowable from 2015 on.

It’s not naiveté. It’s a willful blindness to what the Republican Party had become. Four years before Trump was elected, Tom Mann and Norm Orstein wrote, “The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” Chuck Todd as NBC’s political director, and Meet the Press as its premiere politics show could have taken seriously what these exemplary members of the Washington establishment were saying back in 2012. They chose not to, but not because of their naiveté. They thought they knew better than Mann and Ornstein. And they were probably afraid of sounding too extreme themselves.

He’s not naive. He’s an insider who thought his read was better. You can smell on his Christmas eve confessions the regrets of the insider who thought he knew these people well because he broke bread with them, rang them up for off-the-record conversations, and enjoyed the kind of green room bonhomie that says, “sure, we have different roles, but we’re all part of the same industry called Washington.” He thought he could predict what a Ted Cruz would do because he has behind-the-scenes knowledge. Naiveté is not a good word for that. He thought himself savvier than the rest of us. I was not at all shocked that Senator Cruz took the party line on Ukraine interfering in 2016. Were you? Todd was because he had miseducated himself.

It’s not naive. It’s a lack of imagination, a failure of insight. The practices common to political journalism have premises to them. When the premises shatter, the practices make less sense. This has been the central problem of covering the Trump movement since 2015. (I wrote about it here.) A simple example is fact-checking. One of its premises is that candidates and office-holders can be shamed into staying roughly within factual bounds. A president who has no sense of shame “breaks” the practice by busting the premise. Doesn’t mean you stop fact-checking. But you do have to alter your expectations, and start thinking about alternatives.

A key premise for Meet the Press is symmetry between the two major political parties. The whole show is built on that. But in the information sphere — the subject of Chuck Todd’s confessions — asymmetry has taken command. The right wing ecosystem for news does not operatelike the rest of the country’s news system. And increasingly conservative politics is getting sucked into conservative media. It makes more sense to see Fox News and the Trump White House as two parts of the same organism. As these trends grind on they put stress on Meet the Press practices. But if takes imagination to see how the show might be affected— or changed. In place of that we have Chuck Todd pleading naiveté.

So what will they do now? My answer: they have no earthly idea. This is what I mean by an epistemological crisis. Chuck Todd has essentially said that on the right there is an incentive structure that compels Republican office holders to use their time on Meet the Press for the spread of disinformation. So do you keep inviting them on the air to do just that? If so, then you are breaking faith with the audience and creating a massive problem in real time fact-checking. If not, then you just broke the show in half.

There is simply nothing in the playbook at Meet the Press that tells the producers what to do in this situation. As I have tried to show, they didn’t arrive here through acts of naiveté, but by willful blindness, malpractice among the experts in charge, an insider’s mentality, a listening breakdown, a failure of imagination, and sheer disbelief that the world could have changed so much upon people paid so well to understand it.


AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Quote
The nature of the Trump government would be propagandistic. And as as Garry Kasparov observes for us, “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”

Yep. It is the "1984" playbook. It is furthering 🦀 Trump Tyranny through cognitive dissonance inducing continuous brain scrambling propaganda in far too many people and scaring the crap out of the rest of us.


I will resist Trump and his wrecking crew of lying, cruel, murderous bastards up to and including my last breath!
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Can You Trust TV News? NO!
« Reply #130 on: January 03, 2020, 09:01:37 pm »
Can You Trust TV News?
2,443 views•Jan 2, 2020


Thom Hartmann Program
201K subscribers

Last week in an interview Chuck Todd admitted that he has now, finally, after all these years, realized that Republicans come on his show and others specifically to tell lies and spread disinformation. How can you trust TV news and chat today?

🔴 Subscribe for more clips like this: https://www.youtube.com/user/thomhart...

Which raises the question: what is Chuck, and what are the other reporters going to do about this? Given that an entire political party has now become the naked tool of oligarchs around the world and giant corporations, with an absolute willingness to lie to the American people regularly, it seems like, at the very least, these weekends news shows should be running on a 30-minute delay so that the staff of the networks will have time to fact check statements and put accurate information on the on-screen Chiron‘s.

Or, they could simply ban them until the Party tells the truth, or ban individual Republicans on three strikes you’re out basis: after three lies within a one month period, you're banned for the next six months.

In any case, we have a real crisis right now with an entire political party committed to not just ignoring the truth but actively spreading lies and disinformation. Watch the media carefully to see how they deal with it.

Thom discusses the lies on network television.

🔥 WATCH NEXT: How Corrupt is our Media

⭐ Join our Membership and Support the Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/user/thomhart...
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Agelbert NOTE: Pay Attention to HOW the New York Times REPEATEDLY LIES pretending Trump is "against" war.

Seven Things You Should Know About 🦀 Donald Trump and Iran
2,074 views•Premiered 35 minutes ago


The Intercept
134K subscribers

President Trump kicked off 2020 by ordering the assassination of Qassim Suleimani, the top Iranian general who was considered to be the second most important man in Iran.

Everyone’s worried what happens next, what kind of retaliation is coming America’s way, and whether we’re on the verge of some sort of major conflict in the Middle East—the kind of war that would make Iraq look like a walk in the park.

The Intercept's Mehdi Hasan says there's seven things you should know about Donald Trump and Iran.

Subscribe to our channel: https://interc.pt/subscribe
Category News & Politics
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #132 on: January 14, 2020, 01:30:53 pm »
Agelbert NOTE: A perfect example of those who do NOT resist Brainwashing Propaganda:

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 916
More government Newspeak in the Age of Trump. NARA, whose mission statement proclaims that public access to records "strengthens democracy" and allows citizens to "claim their rights of citizenship," explains that it "altered" these public records to "to keep the focus on the records.” Takes me back to the good old days of, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

National Archives exhibit blurs images critical of President Trump


The original, unaltered photo of the 2017 Women’s March in the District. An altered version appears in an exhibit at the National Archives. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Joe Heim


The large color photograph that greets visitors to a National Archives exhibit celebrating the centennial of women’s suffrage shows a massive crowd filling Pennsylvania Avenue NW for the Women’s March on Jan. 21, 2017, the day after President Trump’s inauguration.

The 49-by-69-inch photograph is a powerful display. Viewed from one perspective, it shows the 2017 march. Viewed from another angle, it shifts to show a 1913 black-and-white image of a women’s suffrage march also on Pennsylvania Avenue. The display links momentous demonstrations for women’s rights more than a century apart on the same stretch of pavement.

But a closer look reveals a different story.

The Archives acknowledged in a statement this week that it made multiple alterations to the photo of the 2017 Women’s March showcased at the museum, blurring signs held by marchers that were critical of Trump. Words on signs that referenced women’s anatomy were also blurred.

In the original version of the 2017 photograph, taken by Getty Images photographer Mario Tama, the street is packed with marchers carrying a variety of signs, with the Capitol in the background. In the Archives version, at least four of those signs are altered.

A placard that proclaims “God Hates Trump” has “Trump” blotted out so that it reads “God Hates.” A sign that reads “Trump & GOP — Hands Off Women” has the word Trump blurred out.

Signs with messages that referenced women’s anatomy — which were prevalent at the march — are also digitally altered. One that reads “If my **** could shoot bullets, it’d be less REGULATED” has “****” blurred out. And another that says “This **** Grabs Back” has the word “****” erased.

The Archives said the decision to obscure the words was made as the exhibit was being developed by agency managers and museum staff members. It said David S. Ferriero, the archivist of the United States who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009, participated in talks regarding the exhibit and supports the decision to edit the photo.

“As a non-partisan, non-political federal agency, we blurred references to the President’s name on some posters, so as not to engage in current political controversy,” Archives spokeswoman Miriam Kleiman said in an emailed statement. “Our mission is to safeguard and provide access to the nation’s most important federal records, and our exhibits are one way in which we connect the American people to those records. Modifying the image was an attempt on our part to keep the focus on the records.”

Archive officials did not respond to a request to provide examples of previous instances in which the Archives altered a document or photograph so as not to engage in political controversy.

Kleiman said the images from the 2017 and 1913 marches were presented together “to illustrate the ongoing struggles of women fighting for their interests.”

The decision to blur references to women’s genitals was made because the museum hosts many groups of students and young people and the words could be perceived as inappropriate, Kleiman said in the statement.

Kleiman said the National Archives “only alters images in exhibits when they are used as graphic design components.”

“We do not alter images or documents that are displayed as artifacts in exhibitions,” she said. “In this case, the image is part of a promotional display, not an artifact.”

When told about the action taken by the Archives, prominent historians expressed dismay.

"There's no reason for the National Archives to ever digitally alter a historic photograph," Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley said. "If they don't want to use a specific image, then don't use it. But to confuse the public is reprehensible. The head of the Archives has to very quickly fix this damage. A lot of history is messy, and there's zero reason why the Archives can't be upfront about a photo from a women's march."

Wendy Kline, a history professor at Purdue University, said it was disturbing that the Archives chose to edit out the words "****" and "****" from an image of the Women's March, especially when it was part of an exhibit about the suffragist movement. Hundreds of thousands of people took part in the 2017 march in the District, which was widely seen as a protest of Trump's victory.

"Doctoring a commemorative photograph buys right into the notion that it's okay to silence women's voice and actions," Kline said in an email. "It is literally erasing something that was accurately captured on camera. That's an attempt to erase a powerful message."

The altered photograph greets visitors to "Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote," an exhibit that opened in May celebrating the centennial of women's suffrage. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1920, prohibits the federal government and states from denying the right to vote on the basis of sex.

"This landmark voting rights victory was made possible by decades of suffragists' persistent political engagement, and yet it is just one critical milestone in women's battle for the vote," reads a news release announcing the exhibit on the Archives website.

Archives spokesman John Valceanu said the proposed edits were sent to Getty for approval, and Getty "then licensed our use of the image."

A Getty spokeswoman, Anne Flanagan, confirmed that the image was licensed by the National Archives Foundation but said in an email Friday evening that Getty was still determining whether it approved alterations to the image.

Karin Wulf, a history professor at the College of William & Mary and executive director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, said that to ensure transparency, the Archives at the very least should have noted prominently that the photo had been altered.

"The Archives has always been self-conscious about its responsibility to educate about source material, and in this case they could have said, or should have said, 'We edited this image in the following way for the following reasons,' " she said. "If you don't have transparency and integrity in government documents, democracy doesn't function."

AGelbert

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 36274
  • Location: Colchester, Vermont
    • Renwable Revolution
Re: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #134 on: January 18, 2020, 12:51:28 pm »
More government Newspeak in the Age of Trump. NARA, whose mission statement proclaims that public access to records "strengthens democracy" and allows citizens to "claim their rights of citizenship," explains that it "altered" these public records to "to keep the focus on the records.” Takes me back to the good old days of, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."


Karin Wulf, a history professor at the College of William & Mary and executive director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, said that to ensure transparency, the Archives at the very least should have noted prominently that the photo had been altered.

"The Archives has always been self-conscious about its responsibility to educate about source material, and in this case they could have said, or should have said, 'We edited this image in the following way for the following reasons,' " she said. "If you don't have transparency and integrity in government documents, democracy doesn't function."


 :( Yep. The hell of it is our taxpayer dollars are paying for these Fascist Government Truth Distorting Perception Management Crimes. As your post about Barr today makes clear, blurring or erasing "inconvenient" signs is the prelude to erasing "inconvenient" people. ☠️ 

Our Government needs a thorough housecleaning with literally thousands of prison sentences for these cruel police state promoting bastards. >:(
« Last Edit: January 18, 2020, 07:15:25 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

+-Recent Topics

Future Earth by AGelbert
March 30, 2022, 12:39:42 pm

Key Historical Events ...THAT YOU MAY HAVE NEVER HEARD OF by AGelbert
March 29, 2022, 08:20:56 pm

The Big Picture of Renewable Energy Growth by AGelbert
March 28, 2022, 01:12:42 pm

Electric Vehicles by AGelbert
March 27, 2022, 02:27:28 pm

Heat Pumps by AGelbert
March 26, 2022, 03:54:43 pm

Defending Wildlife by AGelbert
March 25, 2022, 02:04:23 pm

The Koch Brothers Exposed! by AGelbert
March 25, 2022, 01:26:11 pm

Corruption in Government by AGelbert
March 25, 2022, 12:46:08 pm

Books and Audio Books that may interest you 🧐 by AGelbert
March 24, 2022, 04:28:56 pm

COVID-19 🏴☠️ Pandemic by AGelbert
March 23, 2022, 12:14:36 pm