Creepy National Review Cover

There is considerable buzz about a National Review cover that has an eerie similarity to old communist posters. No, it was not done on purpose. They did not deliberately copy the Soviet poster, they copied the style from the whole period. It is just that good propaganda techniques are good propaganda techniques, and they can be used by anyone. (Pam Dewey, the beloved editor here at the prophecy podcast, thinks the Soviet poster was used as a template by the artist.) 

In fact, a movie I just saw about advertising, Branded, shows a display in Moscow where various luminaries wrote to Lenin about his marketing skills, and, according to the movie, Lenin’s marketing guys were in great demand in the West. There is something evocative about these old Soviet posters, and they were a reoccuring prop in the movie. While the founder of modern marketing is more correctly viewed as Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, it seems likely that Lenin was also present at modern marketing’s birth. I talk about Edward Bernays in a previous post. 

In the movie, the power of advertising causes us as consumers to psychically empower the brands as monsters that feed off our energies, like the old Star Trek episode, "Day of the Dove."  In this episode of Star Trek the alien feeds off negative emotions. 

One interesting aspect is the obvious fact that fast food providers want us to be fat, as that means more sales. So the fast food industry gets together in the movie and tries to change the culture so that fat is cool. 

Only Our Hero Can See The Brand Monsters From The IdWhile I cannot recommend that you pay $10 to go see it in the theaters…it is not doing well—at the 7 PM show there were just 4 of us in the audience…I can recommend that you wait and rent it on Netflix. Just close your eyes when the sex scene in the car occurs. I suppose such scenes are now mandatory in modern cinema. 

(In an odd coincidence the climactic scene in the movie, a reenactment of the ancient Hebrew ceremony of the Red Heifer, takes place just outside of Tver, Russia, the city where I met my wife. I am very familiar with the area.) 

To my eyes the National Review cover seems almost comical. Regardless of whom you vote for, or don’t vote for, do not be deceived by the propaganda of this election cycle. Whatever you do, do not feed the monsters of the Id that the movie Branded portrayed. If you believe the propaganda, you become a slave to it—which was of course, the whole point of the movie. 

SOP CIA

The news program begins with an interview of Dulles—long time head of the CIA. Based on the rest of this program and the one I posted yesterday, Dulles was either lying or clueless. I think he was lying. Note the terms he uses—"as far as I know" and "reasonable moral standard." Dulles was quite a piece of work. 

All the information in this old program was well known, and not even a little bit secret. This was the SOP—standard operating procedure—of the CIA for decades. 

If you want to know why the people of Iran hate the US Government, it is made clear in this news program. The US stole their oil and made the Shah, a brutal dictator, ruler of Iran. 

Watch this program carefully and you can see that it is pro-CIA propaganda. Note the use of the term "regime." Whenever the term regime is used, you are being played, or at least they are trying to play you. 

Propaganda Documentary

Each of these documentaries I have been recommending have been reusing the same clips, but to slightly different points. This one is more unusual as it is produced by North Korea! It is fun to watch the North Korean spin on the Korean War. 

The most interesting point was that children by age 5 can identify 200 corporate logos. What are your children watching? 

PsyWar

While it should be obvious that this documentary is a anarchist framing on the subject of propaganda, it is a good presentation of the problems caused by our modern marketing and modern propaganda.  All video does such framing, even documentaries that critique framing!

We are being played by the Media. Who controls the Media? It is not you or me, it is the elite. If you limit your viewing to the mainstream, you will be programed. I think it is the commercials more than the content that is a problem. 

Do you need that latest gadget that the ad is promoting? Constant repetition of ads leads to the desire to own the product as the product seems to have moved from a luxury to a necessity. Of course I am not including the latest iThing in my critique! 

There is much that one could criticize in this video. For example, the idea that success is exploitive seems a hackneyed syndicalist anarchist view. My posting of a video or a link should not lead anyone to conclude that I support everything that a link or embeded video might say. The whole point of me posting these kinds of things is my personal desire to read and watch a wide variety of viewpoints. I hope you will share this desire. 

Media Manipulation

There are many reasons for Media manipulation. I mentioned one in an older blog post-Good Television. Watching the Marshall McLuhan documentary I posted on Tuesday would be helpful to understand this aspect of media manipulation. 

But there are bold outright lies like the one I posted last week that was used against Romney. 

Here are a few more. 

You can not trust the media. And no, I am not saying you can trust the new media either. Do not watch just one kind of media, watch many and evaluate them.