The media’s greatest crime against democracy
by Nicolai Sennels
The media’s greatest crime against democracy and public debate is that over the past forty years — slowly but surely — it has shifted the political scale. What was Left is now Center, and what was Center before has become Right. What was once Right has now turned into the “radical Right”. What was overly egalitarian and in some areas close to Communism is today Left.Some claim that the media’s shifting of the political scale is a result of Arab oil money invested in our big media companies. Namely, that supporting Western values and national culture is a hindrance for immigration and Islamization. Others claim that the change happened because most journalists are Leftists (in Denmark, nine out of ten students in the journalism schools vote for the Left). A third explanation is that a certain worldview — systems theory — has conquered the universities. Systems theory claims that to a high degree an individual’s actions are determined by outer factors — the system that the individual is an “indivisible part of”. The Rightist view that individuals are responsible for their own success, happiness, and actions, consequently suffers.
Whatever the reason: Moving the political scale has made it easier to convince voters that high taxes, a large and powerful state, multiculture, and extremely powerful and wealthy non-democratic multinational organizations such as EU and UN are good for us.
In the meantime, it has been left up to the “extreme Right” or “radical Right” — or even racists or Nazis — to insist that our Western culture’s values are superior to, for example, multiculture or Islamic culture. The same stamp is given to citizens and parties that oppose the dominance of supranational political organizations led by officials and lawyers whose directives and conventions overrule our democratic laws.
Cui bono? With more money and a bigger state, those in power become yet more powerful. With the disappearance of national identity and borders, those who want to spread a certain religion have an easier time.
This is wrong, and the ensuing lack of discernment and determination to protect our culture may lead to the West’s downfall. Shifting the political scale is the biggest crime committed by the media.
Nicolai Sennels is a psychologist and the author of “Among Criminal Muslims: A Psychologist’s experiences with the Copenhagen Municipality”.
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16 comments:
Quote of the day:
"Cui bono? With more money and a bigger state, those in power become yet more powerful."
I hate to rob a certain commenter of his most eloquent French, but yes, le bingo!
Question of the day:
Who exactly are "those in power", and what is the nature of their power?
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
This set of 6 youtube videos, titled Behind the Big News, explains how the MSM's influence came about. Here's the first. You can click the references of the other parts,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVt4Ygdw8tM
As a mass media ex-academic and long-time professional practitioner I’d like to add that the issue is more complex than it’s usually thought to be. Like with our other main dysfunctions – e.g. immigration – the Right has a theory blaming the Left, and vice versa. The truth is that both put out malignant forces that bend the respective media in ways channeling the dual dysfunction.
Two thinkers that are hardly a conservative’s bedstand companions are crucial here. One is Marshall MacLuhan and his notion of television as a cool medium that suspends critical thinking – a notion that young grads of Long March Gramscian university programs harnessed toward changing people’s notion of social reality in directions desirable to the progressive Left. The other one is Mr. Gramscian himself, Herbert Marcuse, who concealed his own side’s media plans but nailed correctly those of the other side (in “One Dimensional Man”, 1972):
“The irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the consumers... to the producers and, through the latter to the whole [social system]. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood.”
Our media have been conceived not for some sinister revolutionary purpose but to sell us stuff. Or rather, to sell us – to advertisers [or government budget approvers]. There is only one way to escape the rot. MacLuhan (and not Leary as misattributed) said it best: “Tune in, turn on, drop out.” Except for our purpose this aphorism ought to have a whole different meaning than it had in the 60s.
@Takuan Seiyo:
There is a prime case in the U.K. of the most unlikely group - the underclass breaking through the media prescribed attitudes and habits that demand certain intellectual and emotional reactions.
The case broke every rule in the book not only did it parody but went on to manipulate the narrative of the false consciousness media.
So shocked were the establishment at these antiheroes that they could not accept that they had the intelligence to breakthrough to consciousness.
“It is argued (in a pre-sentence report) for both that they were not of sufficient intelligence to conceive and implement this plan without the involvement of others.”
" ... said he was not mentally capable of organising such a kidnap plot."
“It is argued (in a pre-sentence report) they were not of sufficient intelligence to conceive and implement this plan without the involvement of others.”
Case article and source
By the way, I think the Federal Reserve should be abolished :)
The excess liquidity in the system makes it easier for states to support media, who in return supports the states.
The European Union, as usual, is a really extreme example of this. They are not content with the coverage they're getting in our statist-biased media, and thus wish to use our tax money to purchase their own staff of journalists to tell everyone just how wonderful the EU is, and how you owe it gratitue, and yet more tax money...
"By the way, I think the Federal Reserve should be abolished"
Henrik, you have my vote! ;-)
Take care,
Sag.
@In Hoc
The underclass has never bought the story peddled by the cultural elites – and that goes for every country, not only the UK. There are two major problems though:
(a) The underclass has very few people able to offer a credible national leadership alternative. Hitler was very much the result of the underclass getting tired of the way things were. Germany’s reactionary aristocracy was uniformly against him. And Hitler’s governance was very much the result of a few pervert psychos (Goebbels, Göring) joining underclass dung-kickers (Himmler, Bormann etc.) to refashion the world.
(b) The underclass has bought into the story peddled by the commercial elites. And that story is almost as harmful as the one purveyed by the cultural elites, and put out by the same media.
Henrik and Sag,
True about"the Fed" But I also wonder,
what is the reason for an International Monetary Fund? These multi-government organizations are downright dangerous. I don't see how they can avoid being but supporting of power-gathering/totalitarianism.
Sag,
About "who's in power and the nature of the power."
Good questions towards which we should work for a full understanding!
Cui bono?
As any rookie detective will tell you; in all crimes that are not ones of passion, first follow the money.
Takuan Seiyo (per Herbert Marcuse) “The irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the consumers... to the producers and, through the latter to the whole [social system]. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood.”
The line that really caught my attention was:
"The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood".
Does anyone else see the striking resemblance between this media methodology and that of Islam? Let's do a quick substitution:
Islam indoctrinates and manipulates; it promotes a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood.
Doesn't that set off more than a few alarm bells?
Islam's rampant cognitive dissonance literally demands that it somehow immunize itself against "its falsehood". This is achieved through (to again paraphrase):
… prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the ummah ... to the ulema and, through the latter to the sharia.
The parallels are too striking and too immediately functional to be ignored. Perhaps this is why the media and Islam manage to make such supremely odd yet ideally suited bedfellows. They both deal in the same underworld of manipulation and indoctrination for the strict purpose of control. In the case of Islam; adherents are channeled into global jihad. In the case of mass media; viewers are funneled into the wallet of network advertisers and to a lesser degree, the reporters’ own journalistic mindset.
In this is a possible key to unlocking Islam’s relative immunity to its own falsehoods. The Liberal Left also enjoys a similar passion for cognitive dissonance and both barbs of this modern day deconstructionist spearhead need to be blunted; ideally using the same rational tools in each case.
@Zenster
Immunity against its falsehood is the mark of all religious or other fanatics, the most salient of whom, in our society, are the “Progressives.” The most harmful to us, too.
Exactly as you say, it’s the immunity to fact, reason, truth, even self-preservation, that binds the Progressives and the Muslims on the same boat, which they steer jointly to ram our own leaking ship. And the mass media are of course nothing but the Progressives’ megaphone on that vile trireme.
Alas, I do not believe that any rational or even civilized key exists to unlock and defeat either insanity. Much stronger stuff is needed, though in the case of Muslims nothing more than an impenetrable wall, of the sort that they have been wise enough to build in their own societies and their own minds, to keep us out.
You may enjoy revisiting Conan Doyle’s "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client." Read it with particular attention to how Adelbert Gruner immunizes Violet de Melville against the falsehood he foists upon her, and how she persists in her immunity to the end, despite Holmes’s prodigious efforts to prove the falsehood.
Also worthy of careful consideration is Takuan Seiyo's observation about how:
Our media have been conceived not for some sinister revolutionary purpose but to sell us stuff. Or rather, to sell us – to advertisers…
This is one of the great modern tragedies. Imagine an electronic instrument that is capable of the following:
● Active display of real time images with full animation
● Full color output with convincing three-dimensionality
● Portable and compact form factor
● Synchronized stereo sound
● Wireless reception
Consider how powerful of an educational tool such a device could be.
That tool is television and as far back as 1958 was already being warned about as becoming a “vast wasteland” by no less than Edward R. Murrow. Instead of some painstakingly accurate Masterpiece Theater presentation of a Dicken’s novel, most people are watching Squeal of Fortune.
What does it say about a society that seeks to escape reality by watching so-called “Reality Shows” that are more intricately scripted than a WWF wrestling match?
Very early in television’s career, people like Rod Serling and other concerned producers involved in this nascent industry were deeply troubled about future prospects for the overall quality of television programming.
At first, television’s main goal was to supplant radio broadcast which, at that time, reached a majority of American households. In order to do this, relatively high quality content was necessary to divert public attention away from the wireless set towards this new “horseless carriage” of the media. All of this effort was with the explicit intent to sell television to the consumer.
Fast forward a decade or so; the radio is nearly dead as a form of home entertainment, especially family entertainment. The television reigns supreme and so begins the death spiral of high quality content. No longer was the television a product being sold to American consumers.
Once television’s supremacy was guaranteed it was ratings and not quality of content that became the Holy Grail for this new media. In order to garner high Nielsen Ratings, one had to maximize audience share.
With television’s stranglehold upon broadcast network entertainment assured, suddenly the viewer became the product. That product was now sold to another newer and far more lucrative consumer, the advertiser. In order to maximize market share and the evermore precious ratings, production content had to appeal to the largest possible viewing audience.
This ushered in the rise of Lowest Common Denominator Programming and the death of quality content in network broadcast entertainment.
@Zenster
It's arguably worse with the Internet, because whatever you watch, watches you. You click on content xyz, and an hour later ads tailored specifically to the demographic/psychographic profile of content xyz watchers pop up on your screen. It's the stuff of dystopian science-fiction.
Takuan Seiyo: It's the stuff of dystopian science-fiction.
Written by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth in 1952 and translated into more languages than any other modern science fiction story, it ranks as the ne plus ultra of dystopian sci-fi: "The Space Merchants".
Takuan Seiyo: (per McLuhan) “Tune in, turn on, drop out.” [sic]
Or, as post-Brezhnev era Soviets were fond of saying:
“Turn on, tune in, Andropov.”
Less well-known than the famous “Turn on, tune in and drop out” quip is another observation by McLuhan:
McLuhan once said to his friend and colleague Tom Langan, while watching television, “Do you really want to know what I think of that thing? If you want to save one shred of Hebrao-Greco-Roman-Medieval-Renaissance-Enlightenment-Modern-Western civilization, you’d better get an ax and smash all the sets.” [emphasis added]
Thanks, Zenster, this is a gem, I never heard of it. I'll trade you one: Tom Wolfe on the 1965 Marshall McLuhan love-fest organizned in SF, naturellement, by a bunch of progressive advertising industry tycoons:
http://www.digitallantern.net/mcluhan/course/fall96/wolfe.html
Would be more productive to smash-up the universities. Doubt the masses of pre-WW2 Germany or Russia had televisions, in the U.K. it was probably not untill the ninteen seventies that TV ownership was common place. At most I would say television is a political pacifier and reinforcer other than a driver, once the novelty of ownership has subsided, television in Scotland is sometimes referred to as the joke box.
A dumb message - islam remains a dumb message no matter what the transmission vocal, coin, pamphlet or TV.
Enjoyed my time watching East Germany TV with the juxtaposition of the uniform fields and the 'naked' beauty of the Fräulein presnters.
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