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This thread is to expose propaganda of all channels and countries .you can contribute on Russian propaganda also.
Picture speaks 1000 words.
East vs West media propaganda war
- Thread starter ubuntu
- Start date
Picture speaks 1000 words.
thethinker
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My next post was to be Russian propaganda but since someone got personal, I shall stick with US based media. :thumb:
thethinker
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If anyone can verify the authenticity of this pic, it would be great.
thethinker
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http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/...chniques-fox-news-uses-to-brainwash-americans
Fourteen Propaganda Techniques Fox "News" Uses to Brainwash Americans
1. Panic Mongering. This goes one step beyond simple fear mongering. With panic mongering, there is never a break from the fear. The idea is to terrify and terrorize the audience during every waking moment. From Muslims to swine flu to recession to homosexuals to immigrants to the rapture itself, the belief over at Fox seems to be that if your fight-or-flight reflexes aren't activated, you aren't alive. This of course raises the question: why terrorize your own audience? Because it is the fastest way to bypasses the rational brain. In other words, when people are afraid, they don't think rationally. And when they can't think rationally, they'll believe anything.
2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. Fox does not like to waste time debating the idea. Instead, they prefer a quicker route to dispensing with their opponents: go after the person's credibility, motives, intelligence, character, or, if necessary, sanity. No category of character assassination is off the table and no offense is beneath them. Fox and like-minded media figures also use ad hominem attacks not just against individuals, but entire categories of people in an effort to discredit the ideas of every person who is seen to fall into that category, e.g. "liberals," "hippies," "progressives" etc. This form of argument - if it can be called that - leaves no room for genuine debate over ideas, so by definition, it is undemocratic. Not to mention just plain crass.
3. Projection/Flipping. This one is frustrating for the viewer who is trying to actually follow the argument. It involves taking whatever underhanded tactic you're using and then accusing your opponent of doing it to you first. We see this frequently in the immigration discussion, where anti-racists are accused of racism, or in the climate change debate, where those who argue for human causes of the phenomenon are accused of not having science or facts on their side. It's often called upon when the media host finds themselves on the ropes in the debate.
4. Rewriting History. This is another way of saying that propagandists make the facts fit their worldview. The Downing Street Memos on the Iraq war were a classic example of this on a massive scale, but it happens daily and over smaller issues as well. A recent case in point is Palin's mangling of the Paul Revere ride, which Fox reporters have bent over backward to validate. Why lie about the historical facts, even when they can be demonstrated to be false? Well, because dogmatic minds actually find it easier to reject reality than to update their viewpoints. They will literally rewrite history if it serves their interests. And they'll often speak with such authority that the casual viewer will be tempted to question what they knew as fact.
5. Scapegoating/Othering. This works best when people feel insecure or scared. It's technically a form of both fear mongering and diversion, but it is so pervasive that it deserves its own category. The simple idea is that if you can find a group to blame for social or economic problems, you can then go on to a) justify violence/dehumanization of them, and b) subvert responsibility for any harm that may befall them as a result.
6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. This is more of what I'd call a "meta-frame" (a deeply held belief) than a media technique, but it is manifested in the ways news is reported constantly. For example, terms like "show of strength" are often used to describe acts of repression, such as those by the Iranian regime against the protesters in the summer of 2009. There are several concerning consequences of this form of conflation. First, it has the potential to make people feel falsely emboldened by shows of force - it can turn wars into sporting events. Secondly, especially in the context of American politics, displays of violence - whether manifested in war or debates about the Second Amendment - are seen as noble and (in an especially surreal irony) moral. Violence become synonymous with power, patriotism and piety.
7. Bullying. This is a favorite technique of several Fox commentators. That it continues to be employed demonstrates that it seems to have some efficacy. Bullying and yelling works best on people who come to the conversation with a lack of confidence, either in themselves or their grasp of the subject being discussed. The bully exploits this lack of confidence by berating the guest into submission or compliance. Often, less self-possessed people will feel shame and anxiety when being berated and the quickest way to end the immediate discomfort is to cede authority to the bully. The bully is then able to interpret that as a "win."
8. Confusion. As with the preceding technique, this one works best on an audience that is less confident and self-possessed. The idea is to deliberately confuse the argument, but insist that the logic is airtight and imply that anyone who disagrees is either too dumb or too fanatical to follow along. Less independent minds will interpret the confusion technique as a form of sophisticated thinking, thereby giving the user's claims veracity in the viewer's mind.
9. Populism. This is especially popular in election years. The speakers identifies themselves as one of "the people" and the target of their ire as an enemy of the people. The opponent is always "elitist" or a "bureaucrat" or a "government insider" or some other category that is not the people. The idea is to make the opponent harder to relate to and harder to empathize with. It often goes hand in hand with scapegoating. A common logical fallacy with populism bias when used by the right is that accused "elitists" are almost always liberals - a category of political actors who, by definition, advocate for non-elite groups.
10. Invoking the Christian God. This is similar to othering and populism. With morality politics, the idea is to declare yourself and your allies as patriots, Christians and "real Americans" (those are inseparable categories in this line of thinking) and anyone who challenges them as not. Basically, God loves Fox and Republicans and America. And hates taxes and anyone who doesn't love those other three things. Because the speaker has been benedicted by God to speak on behalf of all Americans, any challenge is perceived as immoral. It's a cheap and easy technique used by all totalitarian entities from states to cults.
11. Saturation. There are three components to effective saturation: being repetitive, being ubiquitous and being consistent. The message must be repeated cover and over, it must be everywhere and it must be shared across commentators: e.g. "Saddam has WMD." Veracity and hard data have no relationship to the efficacy of saturation. There is a psychological effect of being exposed to the same message over and over, regardless of whether it's true or if it even makes sense, e.g., "Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States." If something is said enough times, by enough people, many will come to accept it as truth. Another example is Fox's own slogan of "Fair and Balanced."
12. Disparaging Education. There is an emerging and disturbing lack of reverence for education and intellectualism in many mainstream media discourses. In fact, in some circles (e.g. Fox), higher education is often disparaged as elitist. Having a university credential is perceived by these folks as not a sign of credibility, but of a lack of it. In fact, among some commentators, evidence of intellectual prowess is treated snidely and as anti-American. Education and other evidence of being trained in critical thinking are direct threats to a hive-mind mentality, which is why they are so viscerally demeaned.
13. Guilt by Association. This is a favorite of Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart, both of whom have used it to decimate the careers and lives of many good people. Here's how it works: if your cousin's college roommate's uncle's ex-wife attended a dinner party back in 1984 with Gorbachev's niece's ex-boyfriend's sister, then you, by extension are a communist set on destroying America. Period.
14. Diversion. This is where, when on the ropes, the media commentator suddenly takes the debate in a weird but predictable direction to avoid accountability. This is the point in the discussion where most Fox anchors start comparing the opponent to Saul Alinsky or invoking ACORN or Media Matters, in a desperate attempt to win through guilt by association. Or they'll talk about wanting to focus on "moving forward," as though by analyzing the current state of things or God forbid, how we got to this state of things, you have no regard for the future. Any attempt to bring the discussion back to the issue at hand will likely be called deflection, an ironic use of the technique of projection/flipping.
Fourteen Propaganda Techniques Fox "News" Uses to Brainwash Americans
1. Panic Mongering. This goes one step beyond simple fear mongering. With panic mongering, there is never a break from the fear. The idea is to terrify and terrorize the audience during every waking moment. From Muslims to swine flu to recession to homosexuals to immigrants to the rapture itself, the belief over at Fox seems to be that if your fight-or-flight reflexes aren't activated, you aren't alive. This of course raises the question: why terrorize your own audience? Because it is the fastest way to bypasses the rational brain. In other words, when people are afraid, they don't think rationally. And when they can't think rationally, they'll believe anything.
2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. Fox does not like to waste time debating the idea. Instead, they prefer a quicker route to dispensing with their opponents: go after the person's credibility, motives, intelligence, character, or, if necessary, sanity. No category of character assassination is off the table and no offense is beneath them. Fox and like-minded media figures also use ad hominem attacks not just against individuals, but entire categories of people in an effort to discredit the ideas of every person who is seen to fall into that category, e.g. "liberals," "hippies," "progressives" etc. This form of argument - if it can be called that - leaves no room for genuine debate over ideas, so by definition, it is undemocratic. Not to mention just plain crass.
3. Projection/Flipping. This one is frustrating for the viewer who is trying to actually follow the argument. It involves taking whatever underhanded tactic you're using and then accusing your opponent of doing it to you first. We see this frequently in the immigration discussion, where anti-racists are accused of racism, or in the climate change debate, where those who argue for human causes of the phenomenon are accused of not having science or facts on their side. It's often called upon when the media host finds themselves on the ropes in the debate.
4. Rewriting History. This is another way of saying that propagandists make the facts fit their worldview. The Downing Street Memos on the Iraq war were a classic example of this on a massive scale, but it happens daily and over smaller issues as well. A recent case in point is Palin's mangling of the Paul Revere ride, which Fox reporters have bent over backward to validate. Why lie about the historical facts, even when they can be demonstrated to be false? Well, because dogmatic minds actually find it easier to reject reality than to update their viewpoints. They will literally rewrite history if it serves their interests. And they'll often speak with such authority that the casual viewer will be tempted to question what they knew as fact.
5. Scapegoating/Othering. This works best when people feel insecure or scared. It's technically a form of both fear mongering and diversion, but it is so pervasive that it deserves its own category. The simple idea is that if you can find a group to blame for social or economic problems, you can then go on to a) justify violence/dehumanization of them, and b) subvert responsibility for any harm that may befall them as a result.
6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. This is more of what I'd call a "meta-frame" (a deeply held belief) than a media technique, but it is manifested in the ways news is reported constantly. For example, terms like "show of strength" are often used to describe acts of repression, such as those by the Iranian regime against the protesters in the summer of 2009. There are several concerning consequences of this form of conflation. First, it has the potential to make people feel falsely emboldened by shows of force - it can turn wars into sporting events. Secondly, especially in the context of American politics, displays of violence - whether manifested in war or debates about the Second Amendment - are seen as noble and (in an especially surreal irony) moral. Violence become synonymous with power, patriotism and piety.
7. Bullying. This is a favorite technique of several Fox commentators. That it continues to be employed demonstrates that it seems to have some efficacy. Bullying and yelling works best on people who come to the conversation with a lack of confidence, either in themselves or their grasp of the subject being discussed. The bully exploits this lack of confidence by berating the guest into submission or compliance. Often, less self-possessed people will feel shame and anxiety when being berated and the quickest way to end the immediate discomfort is to cede authority to the bully. The bully is then able to interpret that as a "win."
8. Confusion. As with the preceding technique, this one works best on an audience that is less confident and self-possessed. The idea is to deliberately confuse the argument, but insist that the logic is airtight and imply that anyone who disagrees is either too dumb or too fanatical to follow along. Less independent minds will interpret the confusion technique as a form of sophisticated thinking, thereby giving the user's claims veracity in the viewer's mind.
9. Populism. This is especially popular in election years. The speakers identifies themselves as one of "the people" and the target of their ire as an enemy of the people. The opponent is always "elitist" or a "bureaucrat" or a "government insider" or some other category that is not the people. The idea is to make the opponent harder to relate to and harder to empathize with. It often goes hand in hand with scapegoating. A common logical fallacy with populism bias when used by the right is that accused "elitists" are almost always liberals - a category of political actors who, by definition, advocate for non-elite groups.
10. Invoking the Christian God. This is similar to othering and populism. With morality politics, the idea is to declare yourself and your allies as patriots, Christians and "real Americans" (those are inseparable categories in this line of thinking) and anyone who challenges them as not. Basically, God loves Fox and Republicans and America. And hates taxes and anyone who doesn't love those other three things. Because the speaker has been benedicted by God to speak on behalf of all Americans, any challenge is perceived as immoral. It's a cheap and easy technique used by all totalitarian entities from states to cults.
11. Saturation. There are three components to effective saturation: being repetitive, being ubiquitous and being consistent. The message must be repeated cover and over, it must be everywhere and it must be shared across commentators: e.g. "Saddam has WMD." Veracity and hard data have no relationship to the efficacy of saturation. There is a psychological effect of being exposed to the same message over and over, regardless of whether it's true or if it even makes sense, e.g., "Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States." If something is said enough times, by enough people, many will come to accept it as truth. Another example is Fox's own slogan of "Fair and Balanced."
12. Disparaging Education. There is an emerging and disturbing lack of reverence for education and intellectualism in many mainstream media discourses. In fact, in some circles (e.g. Fox), higher education is often disparaged as elitist. Having a university credential is perceived by these folks as not a sign of credibility, but of a lack of it. In fact, among some commentators, evidence of intellectual prowess is treated snidely and as anti-American. Education and other evidence of being trained in critical thinking are direct threats to a hive-mind mentality, which is why they are so viscerally demeaned.
13. Guilt by Association. This is a favorite of Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart, both of whom have used it to decimate the careers and lives of many good people. Here's how it works: if your cousin's college roommate's uncle's ex-wife attended a dinner party back in 1984 with Gorbachev's niece's ex-boyfriend's sister, then you, by extension are a communist set on destroying America. Period.
14. Diversion. This is where, when on the ropes, the media commentator suddenly takes the debate in a weird but predictable direction to avoid accountability. This is the point in the discussion where most Fox anchors start comparing the opponent to Saul Alinsky or invoking ACORN or Media Matters, in a desperate attempt to win through guilt by association. Or they'll talk about wanting to focus on "moving forward," as though by analyzing the current state of things or God forbid, how we got to this state of things, you have no regard for the future. Any attempt to bring the discussion back to the issue at hand will likely be called deflection, an ironic use of the technique of projection/flipping.
Last edited:
thethinker
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@Ewald - you seem to be a natural at all of the above 14, especially 2 and 14. Did you learn it or picked it from one of the news channels?
thethinker
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How US media propaganda came into existence :
Templeton Times: Chapter 5 The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations by John Coleman
CHAPTER 5
As I have previously related, the modern science of making public opinion through advanced techniques of manipulating mass-opinion began at one of the West's most advanced propaganda factory situated in Britain at Wellington House. This facility dedicated to social engineering and creating public opinion at the commencement of World War I, was under the aegis of Lords Rothmere and Northcliffe, and the future director of studies of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), Arnold Toynbee. Wellington House had an American Section, whose most prominent members were Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays. As we discovered later, Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, a fact carefully hidden from public view.
Jointly, they centered work on techniques to "mobilize" support for World War I among the masses of people who were opposed to war with Germany. The public perception was that Germany was a friend of the British people, not an enemy and the British people saw no need to fight Germany. After all, was it not true that Queen Victoria was the cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm II? Toynbee, Lippmann and Bernays worked to persuade them that war was necessary, using the techniques of the new science through new arts of mass-manipulation via the communications media for its propaganda purposes tinged with willingness to lie, which was just getting into its stride, having learned a great deal of experience during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902).
It was not only the British public whose perception of events had to be altered, but also a recalcitrant American public. To this end Bernays and Lippmann were instrumental in getting Woodrow Wilson to establish the Creel Committee, which created the first body of methodological techniques for dissemination of successful propaganda and for the science of polling to secure the "correct" opinion.
From the beginning the techniques were designed in such a way that polling (public opinion-making) was based on one obvious, but striking feature: - it was concerned with people's opinions, not with their understanding of the processes of science. Thus, by intent, the pollsters elevated an essentially irrational element of mind to a primary level of public focus. This was a conscious decision to undermine the grasps of reality of masses of people in an increasingly complex industrial society.
If you have ever watched "Fox News" where viewers are given the results of a poll about "what Americans are thinking," and then for the next hour found yourself shaking your head and wondering what the results of the poll reflected about your own thinking processes, then you could only have felt more puzzled than ever.
The key to understanding Fox News and the poll might lie in what Lippmann had to say about such matters. In his 1922 book, Public Opinion, Lippmann outlined Tavistock's psychological warfare methodology.
In an introductory chapter, "The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads," Lippmann stressed,
"that the object of study of the public opinion social analyst is reality as defined by internal perception or images of that reality. Public opinion deals with indirect, unseen, and puzzling facts, and there is nothing obvious about them. The situations to which public opinions refer are known only as opinions...."
"The pictures inside the heads of these human beings, the pictures of themselves, of others, of their needs, purposes, and relationship, are their public opinions. Those pictures, which are acted upon by groups of people, or by individuals acting in the name of groups, are Public Opinion with capital letters. The picture inside so often misleads men in their dealings with the world outside."
From this evaluation, it is easy to take the next decisive step made by Bernays, - that the elites who run society can and do marshal the resources of mass communications to mobilize and alter the "herd" mind.
One year after Lippmann's book, Bernays authored Crystallizing Public Opinion. He followed that in 1928 with a book entitled quite simply: Propaganda.
In the first chapter, "Organizing Chaos" Bernays wrote:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized, habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country.
We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas-suggested, largely by men, that we have never heard of... Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.
Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conductor or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons - a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million - who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires, which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
In Propaganda, Bernays followed his praise of the "invisible government" by underscoring the next phase that propaganda techniques would follow:
As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented. With the printing press and the newspaper, the telephone, telegraph, radio and airplanes, ideas can spread rapidly and even instantaneously over the whole of America.
To back up his point, Bernays quoted the mentor of "public opinion manipulation," H. G. Wells. He cited a 1928 article in the New York Times in which Wells welcomed "modern means of communication" for "opening up a new world of political processes," and for allowing "the common design" to be "documented and sustained against perversion and betrayal." For Wells, the advent of "mass communication" leading up to television meant fantastic new paths for social control beyond the wildest dreams of the earlier mass-manipulation fanatics of the British Fabian Society.
Templeton Times: Chapter 5 The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations by John Coleman
CHAPTER 5
As I have previously related, the modern science of making public opinion through advanced techniques of manipulating mass-opinion began at one of the West's most advanced propaganda factory situated in Britain at Wellington House. This facility dedicated to social engineering and creating public opinion at the commencement of World War I, was under the aegis of Lords Rothmere and Northcliffe, and the future director of studies of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), Arnold Toynbee. Wellington House had an American Section, whose most prominent members were Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays. As we discovered later, Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, a fact carefully hidden from public view.
Jointly, they centered work on techniques to "mobilize" support for World War I among the masses of people who were opposed to war with Germany. The public perception was that Germany was a friend of the British people, not an enemy and the British people saw no need to fight Germany. After all, was it not true that Queen Victoria was the cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm II? Toynbee, Lippmann and Bernays worked to persuade them that war was necessary, using the techniques of the new science through new arts of mass-manipulation via the communications media for its propaganda purposes tinged with willingness to lie, which was just getting into its stride, having learned a great deal of experience during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902).
It was not only the British public whose perception of events had to be altered, but also a recalcitrant American public. To this end Bernays and Lippmann were instrumental in getting Woodrow Wilson to establish the Creel Committee, which created the first body of methodological techniques for dissemination of successful propaganda and for the science of polling to secure the "correct" opinion.
From the beginning the techniques were designed in such a way that polling (public opinion-making) was based on one obvious, but striking feature: - it was concerned with people's opinions, not with their understanding of the processes of science. Thus, by intent, the pollsters elevated an essentially irrational element of mind to a primary level of public focus. This was a conscious decision to undermine the grasps of reality of masses of people in an increasingly complex industrial society.
If you have ever watched "Fox News" where viewers are given the results of a poll about "what Americans are thinking," and then for the next hour found yourself shaking your head and wondering what the results of the poll reflected about your own thinking processes, then you could only have felt more puzzled than ever.
The key to understanding Fox News and the poll might lie in what Lippmann had to say about such matters. In his 1922 book, Public Opinion, Lippmann outlined Tavistock's psychological warfare methodology.
In an introductory chapter, "The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads," Lippmann stressed,
"that the object of study of the public opinion social analyst is reality as defined by internal perception or images of that reality. Public opinion deals with indirect, unseen, and puzzling facts, and there is nothing obvious about them. The situations to which public opinions refer are known only as opinions...."
"The pictures inside the heads of these human beings, the pictures of themselves, of others, of their needs, purposes, and relationship, are their public opinions. Those pictures, which are acted upon by groups of people, or by individuals acting in the name of groups, are Public Opinion with capital letters. The picture inside so often misleads men in their dealings with the world outside."
From this evaluation, it is easy to take the next decisive step made by Bernays, - that the elites who run society can and do marshal the resources of mass communications to mobilize and alter the "herd" mind.
One year after Lippmann's book, Bernays authored Crystallizing Public Opinion. He followed that in 1928 with a book entitled quite simply: Propaganda.
In the first chapter, "Organizing Chaos" Bernays wrote:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized, habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country.
We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas-suggested, largely by men, that we have never heard of... Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.
Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conductor or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons - a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million - who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires, which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
In Propaganda, Bernays followed his praise of the "invisible government" by underscoring the next phase that propaganda techniques would follow:
As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented. With the printing press and the newspaper, the telephone, telegraph, radio and airplanes, ideas can spread rapidly and even instantaneously over the whole of America.
To back up his point, Bernays quoted the mentor of "public opinion manipulation," H. G. Wells. He cited a 1928 article in the New York Times in which Wells welcomed "modern means of communication" for "opening up a new world of political processes," and for allowing "the common design" to be "documented and sustained against perversion and betrayal." For Wells, the advent of "mass communication" leading up to television meant fantastic new paths for social control beyond the wildest dreams of the earlier mass-manipulation fanatics of the British Fabian Society.
thethinker
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https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It's time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.
Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about "dirty trick" tactics used by GCHQ's previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking "Five Eyes" alliance. Today, we at the Intercept are publishing another new JTRIG document, in full, entitled "The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations."
By publishing these stories one by one, our NBC reporting highlighted some of the key, discrete revelations: the monitoring of YouTube and Blogger, the targeting of Anonymous with the very same DDoS attacks they accuse "hacktivists" of using, the use of "honey traps" (luring people into compromising situations using sex) and destructive viruses. But, here, I want to focus and elaborate on the overarching point revealed by all of these documents: namely, that these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself.
Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: "false flag operations" (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting "negative information" on various forums. Here is one illustrative list of tactics from the latest GCHQ document we're publishing today.
GCHQ describes the purpose of JTRIG in starkly clear terms: "using online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world," including "information ops (influence or disruption)."
Speaking of disruption, isn't it surprising that Mr.Ewald always attempts to derail threads by attacking posters instead of debating the message? Like this current thread for example :thumb:
One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It's time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.
Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about "dirty trick" tactics used by GCHQ's previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking "Five Eyes" alliance. Today, we at the Intercept are publishing another new JTRIG document, in full, entitled "The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations."
By publishing these stories one by one, our NBC reporting highlighted some of the key, discrete revelations: the monitoring of YouTube and Blogger, the targeting of Anonymous with the very same DDoS attacks they accuse "hacktivists" of using, the use of "honey traps" (luring people into compromising situations using sex) and destructive viruses. But, here, I want to focus and elaborate on the overarching point revealed by all of these documents: namely, that these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself.
Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: "false flag operations" (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting "negative information" on various forums. Here is one illustrative list of tactics from the latest GCHQ document we're publishing today.
GCHQ describes the purpose of JTRIG in starkly clear terms: "using online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world," including "information ops (influence or disruption)."
Speaking of disruption, isn't it surprising that Mr.Ewald always attempts to derail threads by attacking posters instead of debating the message? Like this current thread for example :thumb:
t_co
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@W.G.Ewald is too obvious. I'm far more concerned with some of the purported 'Indian' members on this forum who seem to do nothing except encourage Sinophobia.https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It's time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.
Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about "dirty trick" tactics used by GCHQ's previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking "Five Eyes" alliance. Today, we at the Intercept are publishing another new JTRIG document, in full, entitled "The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations."
By publishing these stories one by one, our NBC reporting highlighted some of the key, discrete revelations: the monitoring of YouTube and Blogger, the targeting of Anonymous with the very same DDoS attacks they accuse "hacktivists" of using, the use of "honey traps" (luring people into compromising situations using sex) and destructive viruses. But, here, I want to focus and elaborate on the overarching point revealed by all of these documents: namely, that these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself.
Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: "false flag operations" (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting "negative information" on various forums. Here is one illustrative list of tactics from the latest GCHQ document we're publishing today.
GCHQ describes the purpose of JTRIG in starkly clear terms: "using online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world," including "information ops (influence or disruption)."
Speaking of disruption, isn't it surprising that Mr.Ewald always attempts to derail threads by attacking posters instead of debating the message? Like this current thread for example :thumb:
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desiwatcher
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curious about this coincidence of german state sponsored english media so interested in India's racism just about a week before the INDIA-AFRICA Summit.
link -
notice how the narrator conveniently forgets to mention where these ignorant notions about africa came from in the first place, which media depicted them as such which is now spread all around the less-educated and vulnerable world.
link -
notice how the narrator conveniently forgets to mention where these ignorant notions about africa came from in the first place, which media depicted them as such which is now spread all around the less-educated and vulnerable world.
desiwatcher
Regular Member
- Joined
- Oct 8, 2015
- Messages
- 17
- Likes
- 3
curious about this coincidence of german state sponsored english media so interested in India's racism just about a week before the INDIA-AFRICA Summit. link - notice how the narrator conveniently forgets to mention where these ignorant notions about africa came from in the first place, which media depicted them as such which is now spread all around the less-educated and vulnerable world.
