Modern Propaganda Exhausts Critical Thinking

The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.

 The Russian Religion of Spaceflight

The space programme was presented as the result of the great work of the proletariat. The Moon, a 1965 film by Pavel Pavel Klushantsev, presents a future in which Soviet people live a life of peace and progress on the colonised moon, thanks to the technological advances capable under communism. We had made it to the stars and, as the saying went, “there was no bearded old God there”. Only science. Only the Soviet system. Space themes were woven into everyday life, into endless festivals ...

 The Absurd Visions from a Post-Hypnotic Suggestion

I hardly heard him for trying to keep track of what was going on in my skull. I knew it was just post-hypnotic suggestion, even remembered the session in Missouri when they'd implanted it, but that didn't make it any less compelling. My mind reeled under the strong pseudo-memories: shaggy hulks that were Taurans (not at all what we now knew they looked like) boarding a colonists' vessel, eating babies while mothers watched in screaming terror (the colonists never took babies; they wouldn't st...

 Marxism-Leninism as a "spiritual atom bomb"

In our great motherland, a new era is emerging in which the workers, peasants and soldiers are grasping Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung's thought. Once Mao Tse-tung's thought is grasped by the broad masses, it becomes an inexhaustible source of strength and a spiritual atom bomb of infinite power. The large-scale publication of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung is a vital measure for enabling the broad masses to grasp Mao Tse-tung's thought and for promoting the revolutionization of our p...

 E-Prime Communication

Alfred KSCorzybski, the founder of the discipline of general semantics, thought that the verb "to be" could lead to confused thought, confused action, and even fascism. Because so much of fascism consists of vilification of the memy, and because so much of vilification of the enemy consists of calling hem subhuman, identifying them with the forces of evil, and so on, fascists might find it hard to write propaganda without "to be. Korzybski considered the use of "to be" as an aipciliary verb...