Unfortunate Inevitability - To Tolerate The Intolerant ? Or Object ?

Sadly in dealing with ex Scientologists and critics a small few hold attitudes and opinions that are...disappointing and disturbing, to say the least. Recently one person sent me a series of messages privately. I am not going to disclose his name publicly because I feel that would violate an implied confidence. I don't intend to ruin his reputation or betray confidences. To be perfectly clear I in no way encourage his beliefs and don't support them at all.

I will give him  the pseudonym Freddy for ease. His name isn't Freddy. Freddy sent me a message which I responded to below. FYI I am Mockingbird. And Freddy is the person sending messages to me.

From Freddy:

"You should watch this series

http://thegreateststorynevertold.tv/"

I will save you the trouble of going to his link. It featured a six hour video. By looking at the site briefly I realized it is a pro Hitler site and video. Needless to say I didn't watch the video, got out of the site and wrote back to Freddy.

Below is my response and the response I got.

.

 Originally Posted by mockingbird

Aside from conventional history's view of Hitler which I accept there is another large body of damning evidence: Hitler's own words. I in looking at Hitler and Hubbard saw more than enough of Hitler's doctrine to satisfy a very high standard of proof that he was a genuine thoroughly evil person cut from the exact same cloth as Hubbard.

They were birds of a feather. In analyzing cult leaders and malignant narcissists and the systems of relational subjugation and abuse they rely on I realized both he and Hubbard used the same methods because both shared the psychopathology that drove them to think, feel and behave in the manner they did. I certainly have seen more than enough doctrine by both to know they each had deep hatred in their hearts and were quite willing to deceive and enslave others.

This is independent of the historical account. I have studied True Believer by Eric Hoffer, Cults In Our Midst by Margaret Singer, the eight criteria for thought reform by Robert Jay Lifton, videos and articles on malignant narcissism, traumatic narcissism as described by Daniel Shaw, The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout and quite a bit of other supporting information.


Just from examining some of Hitler's writings and speeches it is abundantly clear he fit the guru model by Lifton, the traumatic narcissist by Shaw and the cult leader by Singer.

By his own words he is exposed. I could NEVER support him, his actions or ideology. End quote of my response

Freddy's response:

"What words did you read that were his and how did you know they were his.

I am not asking you to support him. There is a lot of evidence in that series. Not of just what he was doing, but what Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt were doing.

I don't know if you noticed or not but the government isn't doing a damn thing about Scientology. There is a reason for that, and it isn't the reasons given.

The Holocaust is the only event in history enforced by law even today. You might want to know why that is. Then, you might not." End Freddy's response.

. Originally Posted by mockingbird

Freddy, my not accepting Hitler is not an issue I intend to debate.

I don't buy the anything can be taken out of context argument. It holds no water as I extensively studied Hitler's remarks and Hubbard's and how sociopaths and narcissists write. His remarks are quite clear.

If you want you can read Hitler's books and speeches. I put a brief comparison in my Hubbard and Hitler thread.

You are consistently presenting false dichotomies and switching topics without resolution. That's Hubbard's tactic, not mine. End response.

Freddy's response.
You haven't given a single quote from his book to support what you say. I didn't switch dichotomies, I presented other facts to show there is contrariness to to what people accept and what really goes on.

But if wiping Hitler out was such an advance for the protection of humanity then why is the world still in turmoil.

Mind control is alive and well in the world and it doesn't just come from cults. End quote.

My response:

 Originally Posted by mockingbird

I did present an extensive list of Hitler quotes in my thread Hubbard and Hitler.

If you think you are going to pressure me or most people into reconsidering Hitler you are going to be quite disappointed. I am satisfied that Hitler was a monstrously evil person.

You claim not to use false dichotomies but then present one of if Hitler was so bad then why didn't destroying him make the world good.

That's a false dichotomy. The world can have other bad things in it and Hitler can be evil too. End my response

Freddy's response.

Bullshit! End quote.

And that ladies and gentlemen is now my life. Reduced to defending my Anti Hitler position with both history AND my own hundreds of hours of studying cults, narcissists, sociopaths, influence and the writings and speeches of both Scientology cult leader Ron Hubbard and comparing them to Hitler's as well to independently examine the character of Hubbard and Hitler. Hubbard and Hitler in my opinion had very similar minds, both inhumanly cruel and depraved. Utterly lacking compassion and empathy. 

I had through two separate routes completely satisfied my own mind with the conclusion that Hitler is one of the most evil  human beings to ever walk the earth. I am still convinced of this fact. 

I am saddened that some exes embrace racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, and other frankly ugly and evil ideologies.

I have run into probably less than a dozen openly antisemitic or blatantly racist folks in the ex and critic community.

But they can be among the most prolific posters at the sites they use and to me that is cause for concern.

I wouldn't have even written this series unless this kind of exchange had not occurred several times with different individuals. Only one out in the open pro Hitler. An antisemite here, a Holocaust denier there.

To be clear, I have no interest in supporting racism, antisemitism, religious discrimination, sexism, anti LGBT discrimination or other denials of human rights. So please don't approach me to consider any of those positions. My mind is made up.

If you are offended by this and don't want to talk to me, I am willing to accept that. I don't intend to tolerate the intolerant. 

Racist Remarks

I saw the two following quoted comments online and told the person who made them I considered them a racist and the remarks to have coded racist language: what do you think ? Do you agree ? Disagree ? 



These two quotes are all the evidence I need to be convinced you are a racist. Admitting I see that is not name calling. It's like calling a person I see painting a painter. It's a statement of fact describing an action.

Begin quote
"Bernie Sanders is an anachronism.

He is the identical ultra left Democrat as those of the 1960s and 1970s that had glorious-sounding theories about how to fix the problem of poverty, crime and illiteracy. By the state building free public housing and giving away trillions in other welfare entitlements to those who didn't want to work. By eviscerating and lowering traditional educational standards when "minorities" failed to graduate for such "racist" and "discriminatory" reasons like they were illiterate.

Sanders is an archetypical charicature of the wacky inventor whose scientific theories famously failed. Sanders, and others like him were the architects of social experiments that turned America's inner cities into murderous terror zones that citizens and police alike are afraid to even venture into. Crime is out the roof. Poverty is soaring. Educational levels have plummeted. Unemployment is off the charts. Drug dealing and use is out of control. Criminal rates amongst inner-city blacks/hispanics are beyond outrageous. And violent crime is overwhelming the police, hospitals, social agencies and criminal justice system.

It's "normal" now for a weekend in Chicago, for example, to have FIFTY SHOOTINGS over the weekend. That is the actual number from the previous weekend in America's third largest city. FIFTY shootings, one city. That's not a city, that's a war zone."
End quote

And

      Begin quote

"HellYeah! They take from the rich (e.g. Obamaphone) and give to the poor.

Oh, wait a second, they are the rich. So, if you are George Soros with a net worth of $24.2 Billion, if you believe in giving to the poor (e.g. welfare, choking taxes, food stamps, et al) why don't you keep 200 million for yourself personally and DONATE the other 24 Billion to any crime-infested inner city in America.

With that 24 Billion you can help all the thieves, drug dealers, murderers, gang members, welfare queens and deadbeat fathers who don't support their children. You can put in your new testing methods into the collapsed school systems there--to ensure that "no child is left behind" and that they all pass each course and graduate high school, despite the fact they can't do simple math and are illiterate.

You can create more basketball courts (the rage over the last decade in Democratic party managed ghettos) to stop the overwhelming number of violent crimes and murders.

You can fund some more of those mandatory "SELF-ESTEEM" classes in public schools so that when a student can't pass any tests, they don't get down on themselves and think that they might need to study more to improve. Instead, you can fund all kinds of rewards and trophies for ghetto denizens who can't string together a single grammatical sentence and hold celebratory events which praise their outstanding mastery of Ebonics.

And you can showcase to the world how your 24 Billion dollars transformed that ghetto into a crime-free, high production zone where people are self-reliant and go on to lead productive lives without welfare.

You can do it billionaires! Show us how your theories work!!

Billionaires, don't let the fact that trillions have already been spent on that failed social experiment by the Democratic Party since the 1950s deter you. Billionaires, don't lose your "self esteem" just because all the trillions of dollars bought were poverty-ridden ghettos that have become murder zones, with a typical weekend in any of those cities having dozens of shootings and/or deaths.

Don't get down on your theories, billionaires, we believe you when you lecture us about how the problem is that we don't give more money to the ghettos.

Show us how it works--with your own money this time.."
End quote

Those two quotes are racist. You use the racist terms "welfare queen, ghettos, ebonics, ghetto denizens who can't string together a single grammatical sentence,they all pass each course and graduate high school, despite the fact they can't do simple math and are illiterate, welfare entitlements to those who didn't want to work".

Your racist remarks are the reason I pointed out that you're a racist.

I am completely convinced by the two quotes above.

STATISTICAL EVIDENCE OF CULT BRAINWASHING BEING USED ON FOX NEWS AUDIENCE

1. STATISTICAL EVIDENCE OF CULT BRAINWASHING BEING USED ON FOX NEWS AUDIENCE
   
   YouTube Video:
   

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   stuff at ESMB
    

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Fox News Echoes GOP's Misleading Definition Of Welfare

Here's another article that demonstrates a distortion that Fox news uses to fool a lot of people. The term welfare generally is used to describe Temporary Aid To Needy families, a program that now is about one percent of the federal budget. Very tiny relative to the entire budget. But Fox uses welfare to describe the combination of over eighty programs including Medicare and Medicaid along with earned income tax credits and pell grants.

Fox does this to perpetuate the welfare queen myth. And take attention away from income inequality and tax breaks for the wealthy and immense corporate welfare. It is a lie and red herring.

Fox News Echoes GOP's Misleading Definition Of Welfare
Research October 20, 2012 4:20 AM EDT ››› DAVID SHERE

Fox's Eric Bolling relied on a Republican-commissioned study on federal spending for social benefit programs to claim the government spends more than $1 trillion on welfare. In fact, spending on welfare comprises less than two-tenths of a percent of the federal budget.




Study: Federal Government Spent About $750 Billion On Social Benefit Programs In 2011

CRS Study Found That Spending On Federal Benefits and Services For People With Low IncomesTotaled $746 Billion In 2011. A Congressional Research Service study commissioned by Senate Republicans found that "federal spending for low income programs" totaled "$746 billion" in fiscal year 2011. At the request of the Budget Committee, CRS counted more than 80 social benefit programs in its analysis, but excluded programs specifically targeted to help veterans. [Congressional Research Service, 10/16/12, via The Weekly Standard]

GOP Senate Committee Used Study To Claim Total Federal Spending On Welfare Is $1.03 Trillion With State Data

GOP Senate Budget Committee: "Including Available Data On State Spending On Federal Welfare Programs, The Total Amount Spent On Federal Welfare Stands At $1.03 Trillion." A press release about the study noted that Sen. Jeff Sessions and the Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee requested the analysis. The press release, calling the results "staggering," claimed:

The report reveals that total means-tested welfare spending is currently the single largest category of spending in the federal budget--more than Medicare, Social Security, and national defense. Including available data on state spending on federal welfare programs, the total amount spent on federal welfare stands at $1.03 trillion.

[...]

CRS identified 83 overlapping federal welfare programs that together represented the single largest budget item in 2011 -- more than the nation spends on Social Security, Medicare, or national defense. The total amount spent on these 80-plus federal welfare programs amounts to roughly $1.03 trillion. [United States Senate Committee On The Budget -- Republicans, 10/18/12]

Sen. Jeff Sessions: Study Shows "That The United States Spends More On Federal Welfare Than Any Other Program In The Federal Budget." In a statement about the report, Sen. Jeff Sessions said:

"These astounding figures demonstrate that United States spends more on federal welfare than any other program in the federal budget. It is time to restore -- not retreat from -- the moral principles of the 1996 welfare reform. Such reforms, combined with measures to promote growth, will help both the recipient and the Treasury. [United States Senate Committee On The Budget -- Republicans,10/18/12]

Fox's Bolling Echoed Senate Republicans' Claim That "Welfare Spending In America Crossed $1 Trillion"

Eric Bolling: Welfare Spending "Crossed $1 Trillion." Discussing the study on Fox News' The Five, co-host Eric Bolling repeatedly claimed that "welfare spending in America crossed $1 trillion for the first time in history." [Fox News, The Five, 10/19/12]

The Five Included Graphic Showing That Spending For Social Security And Defense Was Eclipsed By Welfare. During the Five segment, Fox aired a graphic claiming federal expenditures for welfare totaled $1.03 trillion, while it was $731 billion for Social Security, and $700 billion for defense.



[Fox News, The Five, 10/19/12]

Kimberly Guilfoyle: "It's The United States Of Dependency Now." During the segment, co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle cited the study's findings as proof that the country has become the "United States of Dependency." She went on to say that the Obama administration "never met a dependent that they didn't like or didn't want to vote from," adding that "this isn't like helping Americans to strengthen themselves and build their families and to be able to provide, it's creating a weakness and dependency." [Fox News, The Five, 10/19/12]

In Fact, Federal Spending On TANF Is Less Than Two Tenths Of 1 Percent Of The Budget

Cash Assistance Under TANF Makes Up 0.18 Percent Of Federal Spending. According to the CRS study, the federal government spent an estimated $6.594 billion in fiscal year 2011 on cash assistance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. That year, total federal spending was $3.603 trillion. [OMB, accessed 10/19/12, Congressional Research Service, 10/16/12, via The Weekly Standard]

Salon: Welfare "Pretty Much Always" Refers "To TANF." In a post about the CRS analysis, Salon political writer Alex Pareene wrote:

In the context of political discussions, "welfare" traditionally (as in pretty much always) refers specifically to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, the federal program that was created in 1996 to replace the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program -- also known as "welfare" -- that had existed since the New Deal. This is what people refer to when they say "welfare caseloads" and "welfare rolls," and when conservatives accuse Obama of gutting "welfare reform" they are referring to TANF. [Salon, 10/18/12]

CNN Money: "Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF)" Is "What Welfare Turned Into In 1996." A CNNMoney article described how "the cash assistance portion of TANF has fallen to $9.6 billion in 2011, down from $20.4 billion" in 1996. The article stated that "advocates for low-income people contend that Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) which is what welfare turned into in 1996, does not adequately support the poor, particularly in tough times." [CNNMoney, 8/9/12]

But CRS Study Measured More Than 80 Federal Aid Programs -- Not Just TANF

Salon: Senate Republicans Counted "83 Separate (And Wildly Different) Programs As 'Welfare'" To Make Its Case. In his article criticizing the study and Senate Republicans for redefining welfare and making it sound more expensive than it really is, Parenee wrote:

The con is pretty easy to see when you read the actual CRS report. Senate Republicans are counting 83 separate (and wildly different) programs as "welfare" in order to make the case that the government is spending more on poor people than old people. The majority of this money is Medicaid and CHIP, which are healthcare spending, which is increasing for the same reason that Medicare spending is increasing, which is that healthcare costs are increasing. (And Medicaid is much less generous than Medicare, because it is a program for poor people, not old people.)

But so many other things now also count as welfare, including Pell Grants, public works spending, Head Start, child support enforcement, the Child Tax Credit, Foster Care assistance, housing for old people, and much more. They're also counting the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is, traditionally, the form of "welfare" that conservative Republicans actually support. Basically, all social spending (though specifically not spending on rich old people or on healthcare for veterans with service-related disabilities, which Republicans requested be excluded from the CRS report) now counts as "welfare." [Salon, 10/18/12]

CRS: Study Included All Social Benefit Programs Designed To Help Lower Income Americans. According to the CRS, "programs were selected for inclusion" in the original report if they based eligibility on "a measure (or proxy) of low or limited income" or "target resources in some way using a measure or proxy of low or limited income." Several "programs without an explicit low-income provision were included because either their target population is disproportionately poor or their purpose clearly indicates a presumption that participants will be low-income." [Congressional Research Service, 10/16/12, via The Weekly Standard]

CRS Study Excluded Programs Designed To Help Veterans. CRS specified in its study that "programs for veterans have been removed." [Congressional Research Service, 10/16/12, via The Weekly Standard]

CRS Included Social Benefit Programs Such As Pell Grants And The Earned Income Tax Credit In Study. In its analysis, CRS counted 83 social benefit programs like these:

The Consolidated Health Center Program: The Consolidated Health Centers "provide health services to underserved populations which include all residents in their catchment area, regardless of ability to pay." [United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, accessed 10/19/12]
Children's Health Insurance Program: The Children's Health Insurance Program "provides health coverage to nearly 8 million children in families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid, but can't afford private coverage." [Medicaid.gov, accessed 10/19/12]
The National Breast And Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. The National Breast And Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program "provides access to breast and cervical cancer screening services to underserved women in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, 5 U.S. territories, and 12 tribes." [Centers for Disease Control, accessed 10/19/12]
The Earned Income Tax Credit: The Earned Income Tax Credit "is a refundable federal income tax credit for low to moderate income working individuals and families". [Internal Revenue Service.gov, accessed 10/19/12]
The Federal Pell Grants Program: The Pell Grants Program "provides need-based grants to low-income undergraduate and certain postbaccalaureate students to promote access to postsecondary education." [Education.gov, accessed 10/19/12]
The Head Start Program: The Head Start program "is a federal program that promotes the school readiness of children ages birth to 5 from low-income families by enhancing their cognitive, social and emotional development." [Administration For Children & Families.gov, accessed 10/19/12]
Federal Government Spends 13 Percent Of Its Budget On "Safety Net Programs"

CBPP: Majority Of Federal Spending Was Evenly Split Between Health Care, Social Security, And Defense In 2011. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained in August that in fiscal 2011, 20 percent of the budget went to defense and security-related international activities, 20 percent went to Social Security, and 21 percent was for three health insurance programs: Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program. [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 8/13/12]

CBPP: About 13 Percent Of Budget Goes To Non-Health Related "Safety Net Programs" That "Keep Millions Of People Out Of Poverty Each Year." From CBPP:

Safety net programs: About 13 percent of the federal budget in 2011, or $466 billion, went to support programs that provide aid (other than health insurance or Social Security benefits) to individuals and families facing hardship. Spending on safety net programs declined in both nominal and real terms between 2010 and 2011 as the economy continued to improve and initiatives funded by the 2009 Recovery Act began to expire.

[...]

Such programs keep millions of people out of poverty each year. A Center analysis shows that government safety net programs kept some 25 million people out of poverty in 2010. Without any government income assistance, either from safety net programs or other income supports like Social Security, the poverty rate would have been nearly double in 2010 (28.6 rather than 15.5 percent).

CBPP published this chart outlining the actual breakdown of how federal dollars are spent:



[Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 8/13/12]

From
http://mediamatters.org/research/201...on-of-w/190792

Mockingbird's Nest : http://mbnest.blogspot.com/search?up...08:00&max-resu

Fox News

 

 

 

 

 

Fox News

I found the following article on Fox news online and decided to post it here. When I was studying propaganda and logical fallacies while looking at how Ron Hubbard influences people with rhetoric I quite quickly realized Fox news quite consistently and routinely uses unethical propaganda techniques including outright lying. And I don't mean saying things that disagree with my ideology or a more trusted source. I mean saying one thing on Fox then saying THEY never said it. But video can and does easily prove they outright knowingly lie. If the following article hadn't been written I would probably have written a less complete one myself.

Propaganda Cycle
Posted by Heather Hogan
2016 presidential primary season is in full swing, which means, among other things, that Fox News’ ratings are skyrocketing. Fox News has been the most watched cable news network in the country for 12 straight years, regularly pulling in more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined. During the first Republican primary debate of this season, Fox clocked its most-ever (24 million) viewers, making the two-hour show the highest-rated non-sports cable telecast of all time.

Over the last ten years, everyone I know has lost a friend or family member or mentor to Fox News. Like me, they have watched helplessly as people they love have become part of the conservative punditry herd and, over time, traded their compassion for paranoia; their thoughtful opinions for manufactured outrage; and their empathy for hateful rhetoric. These people — these moms and dads and aunts and uncles and grandparents and brothers and sisters and pastors and politicians and friends — have been deceived into believing that Fox News and Fox-approved talk radio hosts provide the only commentary they can trust.

What these people so dear to us fail to understand is that Fox News is not only uninterested in being fair and balanced; it is also uninterested in being a reliable source of news. That’s because Fox News is playing a zero-sum political game in which every major news story is an opportunity to use their viewers as pawns to advance the power and agenda of the most extremist ideology of the Republican Party.

Consider Trayvon Martin. After he was murdered by George Zimmerman, multiple journalists pointed out that Fox News had been oddly silent on the subject. Until they had a firm grasp on how to mold the story to their benefit, they refused to report on it. Then, as Media Matters senior fellow Eric Boehlert explains: “Obama addressed it, and once Obama enters the conversation about race, you know, [Fox News] went from zero to a hundred … they decided that the story was partisan, and that supporting Trayvon Martin was the Democratic position, supporting the guy who killed an unarmed teen was the Republican conservative position, and so they set up the markers, and went for it.”

When a grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson for the murder of Michael Brown, Sean Hannity proved Boehlert’s claim. Hannity was practically giddy when he announced to his audience: “Zero for three, a three-time loser! President Obama on high-profile race cases.”

Study after study after study after study has shown that Fox News viewers are the most uninformed and misinformed people in America. One recent study even found that people who didn’t watch any news programs at all had a firmer grasp on the reality of current events than those who only watched Fox News.



Rather than adhering to any kind of journalistic standard when reporting the news, or — as is the case with liberal-leaning MSNBC — reporting truthfully on the news and offering ideological commentary grounded in facts, Fox News starts with their end goal in mind and works backwards. How can a news story be used to damage their viewers’ perceptions of President Obama or the Democratic Party? How can a news story be used to bolster Republican politicians, or advance the causes of Republican-leaning policy influencers like the National Rifle Association or evangelical Christians? How can a news story be used to vilify causes championed by progressive Americans?

Once they’ve settled on the outcome they want, Fox News shapes its narrative and sets in motion its brainwashing cycle.

Fox News’ use of propaganda to isolate and indoctrinate its viewers is deliberate and terrifyingly effective. It thrives off of fear-based sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and dogmatic intolerance toward anyone who is not a straight, white Christian.

The Fox News Propaganda Cycle

I’ve been studying Fox News’ methodology since 2004, when I saw someone I love get pulled into their orbit and transformed for the first time. This article is the culmination of all my research. Below you’ll see a chart I made outlining the way Fox News and their talk radio counterparts use classic propaganda techniques to isolate and indoctrinate their viewers/listeners. And below that, you’ll find an explanation of each technique, along with examples of what these methods look like in action. There are thousands of examples to choose from. I only picked a handful.



Isolate Viewers

“When you’ve got the national liberal media working compulsively on your behalf, it is very difficult to break through the noise to the reality.” – Lou Dobbs, November 2012

fox-isolate-viewers

“The liberal elite” is a concept created by Richard Nixon’s campaign during his bid for presidency in 1960. Feminists who were advocating for workplace equality; black people who were working to end racist violence, segregation, and laws against interracial marriage; and anti-war demonstrators who were weary of the war in Vietnam were making white men uneasy, so the Nixon campaign began branding those activists and their sympathizers as “the liberal elite.” Good old hardworking white men like Nixon were the real Americans, and the “liberal elite” were a threat to a traditional, God-approved, Founding Fathers-sanctioned way of life.

Fox News has piggybacked off Nixon’s strategy and expanded it with wild success.

False Dichotomies

Creating a false dichotomy is a propaganda technique used to oversimplify complicated issues and force people to believe they have an either/or choice. The group creating the false dichotomy knows many choices are available, but for their message to be successful, they must convince listeners that their choices are limited. Fox News and its talk radio counterparts don’t simply position themselves against MSNBC; they position themselves against literally every other source of information. You can choose the good guy, or you can choose the bad guy. You can get your news from Fox and Fox-approved talk radio hosts (true patriots who are trying to save the country) or you can get your news from the liberal media (deceitful or delusional people who are trying to destroy the country).

Maintaining a false dichotomy is essential for Fox News. If their viewers receive information or analysis from any other group, no matter how apolitical or nonpartisan that group is, viewers will be forced to confront the misinformation that is pressed onto them by Fox News.

Ad Nauseam

Ad nauseam is a propaganda tactic that involves repeating a phrase or an idea over and over and over until an audience begins to accept it as fact. Fox News uses the ad nauseam technique in every step of their propaganda cycle, but it’s most crucial in the isolation phase because it’s most effective when a viewer/listener’s media sources are limited. After creating the false dichotomy between Fox and every other news source, Fox pundits scorn the “liberal media” or “mainstream media” with relentless fervor. Political wins that don’t line up with conservative ideology are caused by the evil liberal media. Anyone who questions Fox News is part of the lying liberal media. If you read something on the internet that made you doubt Fox News, it’s because the internet is controlled by the manipulative liberal media.

Hour after hour, day after day, Fox uses the phrases “liberal media” and “mainstream media” to perpetually reinforce the false dichotomy that isolates Fox viewers from reality.



Confirmation Bias and Cognitive Dissonance

Once a person has settled on a core belief, they are likely to seek out information that validates that belief and avoid information that challenges it. They are also more likely to bend evidence to fit inside the paradigm of their belief than they are to alter their belief to align with evidence suggesting their belief is incorrect. The practice of accepting only information that confirms something you already believe while rejecting any information that challenges that belief is called confirmation bias. Having core beliefs challenged causes cognitive dissonance.

One of the main reasons Fox News is so effective at using cognitive dissonance to keep people away from other news sources is that Fox has strategically aligned itself with evangelical Christianity. So, if one of Fox News’ teachings is called into question, Fox itself is called into question; and if Fox is synonymous with God’s politics, God’s politics are called into question; and if God’s politics are called into question, God is called into question. Therefore, any challenge to Fox is framed as an attack on God himself.

Creating cognitive dissonance by framing oneself as God’s true ally and spokesperson is one of the most powerful propaganda techniques of all time. It has worked for fascists on a national scale and it has worked for cult leaders operating out of barns. It is especially compelling in the United States, where our belief that we are God’s chosen people has been methodically woven into our national identity since John Winthrop gave his “City on a Hill” speech in 1630, before ever setting foot on this continent.

+ Fox News radio host Todd Starnes calls notoriously anti-LGBT restaurant Chick-Fil-A “the official chicken of Jesus.”
+ Bill O’Reilly fights an imaginary war to preserve the celebration of Christmas.
+ When Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson went on his now-infamous homophobic tirade in GQ, Sean Hannity called Robertson’s remarks “old fashioned traditional Christian sentiment and values.” Erick Erickson said Robertson “spoke openly of his Christian faith. Because he offended a secular left at war with orthodox Christianity, he must be punished.” And Jim Pinkerton called his suspension from the show “a purge of Southern white Christian patriotic culture out of TV.”
Create Enemy

“The days of [minorities] not having any power are over, and they are angry. And they want to use their power as a means of retribution.” – Rush Limbaugh, June 2009

“This is the new America; this ain’t your father’s America.” – Dick Morris, November 2012

fox-war

The most important component of maintaining a world built on propaganda is creating an enemy who is excluded from an in-group. Bouncing off of Nixon’s concept of traditional Americans, Fox has cultivated an image of its in-group (for its in-group) as people who love God, who love their families, and who love their country. Once the parameters of the in-group have been established, the process of othering begins. By exploiting pre-existing beliefs, images, and negative stereotypes, an out-group is formed. In the case of Fox, this out-group, again, aligns with Nixon’s definition of the “liberal elite”: people who challenge the oppression of the established power structure.

Once the enemy has been created, there’s no need to appeal to logic. In her fantastic book Enemy Images in War Propaganda, Marja Vuorinen explains that humans tend to think of themselves and their in-groups as possessing all the qualities of good virtue (“honesty, righteousness, purity, proper manners, hard work, right religion”), and in an attempt to preserve that fragile self-image, humans project the opposite attributes (“evil, untruthful, cooked, lazy, superstitious, barbaric”) onto groups of people who are not like them. Fox is addictive not only because it feeds a specific ideology, but also because it provides daily reassurance that Fox viewers are God’s chosen Good Guys by reiterating that the “liberal elite” are the Bad Guys.

Projection/Flipping

Projection/flipping is simply falsely accusing someone else of the doing/being the thing you’re responsible for doing/being. These techniques are Fox News favorites. They are used in every step of Fox’s propaganda cycle, but they’re especially effective at creating enemies.

+ On a November 2012 episode of The O’Reilly Factor, notorious bully Bill O’Reilly lambasted dishonest media culture and “vicious” people from the far-left, saying: “There are entire media operations that exist solely to promote ideology; it’s obviously a bad situation that is getting worse.” He is describing himself and Fox news with alarming clarity, but accusing the “liberal media” of his crimes instead.
+ In May 2012, President Obama was asked on The View whether or not he expected the presidential election to be close. He replied, “When your name is Barack Obama, it’s always tight.” President Obama was referring to the tactics conservative pundits have used paint him as a non-American with sympathies and ties to radical Middle Eastern terrorist groups. That afternoon, however, Fox News regular Monica Crowley called the president “bigoted” for suggesting many Americans view him through a racist lens. This is flipping in a nutshell: When a victim calls you out on your bigotry and your suggest that they are the bigot and you are the victim.
+ Glenn Beck — who has a long history of spewing racist rhetoric against black people, Muslims, and undocumented workers — accused President Obama of having “a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture.”
Character Assassination

Character assassination is a propaganda technique used to attack a person, rather than an idea, by discrediting, defaming, demonizing, or dehumanizing them. Fox News does not only use character assassination against liberal politicians and organizations; it also uses character assassination against innocent people involved in tragedies that could be catalysts for progressive changes, like greater equality for racial minorities or gun control. For example, Fox News has made it a common practice to create heroes out of the racist white men who kill innocent black teenagers.

+ When Trayvon Martin was murdered by George Zimmerman, Fox News guest Doug Burns said, “I know everybody keeps sarcastically saying about the Skittles. You could probably kill somebody with Skittles. The thing is, yeah, you’re spinning a lot of hypotheticals. And you could break a bottle of iced tea, right, with the jagged edge, and you could kill somebody with it.” Geraldo Rivera insisted that Martin’s “hoodie is as much responsible for [his] death as George Zimmerman was.” After which he continued to paint a menacing picture of the unarmed teenager and defend Zimmerman’s decision to kill him.
+ After Eric Garner was killed by New York City police who used an illegal chokehold on him, Fox News went to great lengths to blame his murder on Garner himself. The coroner’s report stated that Garner died of “compression of neck (chokehold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.” However, Fox News sought commentary from pundits who blamed Garner’s other health issues for his death, believed Garner had it coming because he was selling cigarettes illegally, or denied that he was even placed in a chokehold at all.
+ After unarmed black teenager Michael Brown was shot multiple times by Officer Darren Wilson, Fox News hosts repeatedly asserted that Brown was a “bad guy,” a narrative that included the perpetual presentation of false information.
+ When Freddie Gray was killed in the back of a police van in Baltimore, Fox News contributor Bo Dietel said, “I’m just hoping they did toxicology [on Gray]. Possibly he was on drugs.” When Geraldo Rivera arrived on the scene in Baltimore to cover the protests, he said residents seemed to be “looking for trouble.”
Scapegoating

Scapegoating is a propaganda technique used to place blame on an innocent group or individual to move blame away from the group or individual responsible for the problem, or to make sweeping generalizations about a group of people based on the actions of a few.

+ On The View in 2010, Bill O’Reilly said the reason he opposed a mosque being built near Ground Zero was because: “Muslims killed us on 9-11.”
+ The idea for an international cultural center in Manhattan was derided by Bill Hemmer as “the first stop for a radical jihadist who comes to America who wants to go pray.”
+ On The O’Reilly Factor, Ann Coulter said if all Muslims would boycott airlines we could dispense with airport security altogether.”
+ Megyn Kelly: “Jesus was a white man, too.”
Appeal to Fear

“I have to pick on the ACLU because they’re the most dangerous organization in the United States of America right now. Theirs by far. There’s nobody even close to that. They’re, like, second next to Al Qaeda.” – Bill O’Reilly, June 2004

“Why has the Black Lives Matter movement not been classified yet as a hate group? I mean, how much more has to go in this direction before someone actually labels it as such?” – Elizabeth Hasselbeck, August 2015

fox-enemy

Creating a climate of fear is essential to all propagandists, and Fox News is no exception. Fear is a primitive and often irrational emotion, so messages that appeal to fear bypass the brain’s logic center and land right in the hypothalamus, which controls a person’s fight-or-flight response. Like I mentioned above, Fox News’ out-group includes anyone who is not a straight white Christian, so it’s very easy for the network to exploit their viewers’ irrational fears of every minority group in America. The white victimization narrative is a cornerstone of Fox News’ (and Fox-adjacent talk radio hosts) programming. The idea they perpetuate is that the way of life treasured by hard-working, G0d-fearing, America-loving, family-first Conservatives is under constant threat by minority groups.

Media scholar/sociologist David L. Altheide’s book, Creating Fear: News and the Construction of Crisis, points out that “the poor, dispossessed, and most recently franchised segments of society are disproportionately associated with the largest fear application.”

The people who consume Fox News’ messages do so in a state of perpetual state of fear; reason is replaced by anxiety, and the ability to think logically is lost.

Minority-Baiting/Coded Language

Minority-baiting is a propaganda technique used to prey on fear that is based in otherness. Fox News accomplishes this by reaffirming the bigoted, ignorant beliefs their viewers have ingested throughout the course of their lives from TV, movies, books, advertising, political campaigns, and American foreign policy propaganda; then, they create a false narrative in which the stereotyped minority is threatening the American way of life.

In Ian Haney López’s masterwork on the language of race, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class, he describes coded language as words or phrases that “trigger racial anxiety and allow plausible deniability by crafting language that lets the speaker deny that he’s even thinking about race.” One of Fox News’ most successful and despicable propaganda tactics is perpetually suggesting that people who talk about race are the real racists, while methodically weaving coded racial messages into their programming. Here are just a few examples:

+ When Fox News talks about “State Rights,” they’re invoking the language used as a coded racial appeal during the Civil Rights Movement that gave states the right to ignore federally mandated racial integration.
+ The phrase “illegal alien” triggers fears about immigrants being criminals who want to undermine the American way of life.
+ Phrases like “Defender of marriage” or “defender of faith” are used to position advocates of LGBT equality as people determined to destroy marriage or destroy faith.
+ Words like “thug,” “ghetto,” and “hood” are used to other black people and their cultural expressions while drawing to mind violent images from pop culture.
Stereotyping

Stereotyping is a propaganda technique in which pre-existing ideas about a racial, ethnic, or cultural group are exaggerated and used to make generalizations that usually perpetuate discrimination and inequality. Fox News stereotypes by using coded language, yes, but they also stereotype by presenting “dramatic anecdotes in place of scientific evidence, promoting isolated events as trends, [and] depicting categories of people as dangerous.”

+ When Fox News talks about “welfare” and “food stamps,” they do so with the unspoken suggestion that these programs are about lazy minorities taking wealth from hard-working white people. Same with “entitlement society.”
+ The phrase “black-on-black crime” suggests that black people are inherently criminal, and that all violent actions taken against them are justified because white people are defending themselves/their family against someone who is, or likely will be, a criminal.
+ Following O’Reilly’s The View appearance during which he said “Muslims killed us on 9-11,” Brian Kilmeade defended him on Fox & Friends by saying: “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.”
Create Alternate Reality

“By the way, who ended slavery and Jim Crow? Christians. The Rev. Martin Luther King. Christians. Christianity is the reason we don’t have slavery in the world today.” – Tucker Carlson, February 2015

fox-alternate-reality

Misinformation

Misinformation is simply spreading false information that is intended to deceive. Fox News constantly, purposefully misinforms its viewers. I’m going to list a handful of examples below with an annotation about which of the aforementioned propaganda techniques the misinformation is used to play into. There are entire websites dedicated to correcting Fox News’ lies on a daily basis. Remember that Fox News viewers overwhelmingly accept these lies as irrefutable facts.

+ In March 2010, Fox & Friends co-anchor Gretchen Carlson said the Texas Board of Education is was considering new history textbooks that would “eliminate references to certain holidays, Founding Fathers, the Constitution! I mean, no surprise that Christmas, they want to get rid of that because they’ve been doing that for the last couple of years, but c’mon, the Constitution?” Untrue. (Isolate viewers: ad nauseam, cognitive dissonance.)
+ In January 2014, on Fox & Friends, Brian Kilmeade said Colorado welfare recipients can turn their benefits into cash at ATMS, which they will do to buy marijuana. Untrue. (Appeal to fear: minority-baiting, coded language, stereotyping.)
+ In April 2014 Todd Starnes said that liberals had figured out a Facebook algorithm and “all the people getting banned from Facebook are somehow conservatives.” Untrue. (Isolate viewers: false dichotomies, ad nauseam. Create an enemy: character assassination.)
+ In February The Five co-host Dana Perions said about climate change: “The temperature readings have been fabricated, and it’s all blowing up in their (scientists’) faces.” On the same panel, Kimberly Guilfoyle called climate change research “fraud science.” Obviously untrue. (Just pure misinformation, as are 72% of Fox News claims about climate change.)
+ In September 2014, Britt Hume said that President Obama was sending a much larger force to deal with Ebola in West African countries than with ISIS. Super untrue. (Appeal to fear: minority-baiting, coded language.)
+ And let’s not forget Birtherism. In 2013, 64 percent of Republicans still believed President Obama was not born in the United States. (Appeal to fear: minority-baiting, coded language, stereotyping.)
Confuse

The propaganda technique of purposefully confusing people is different than misinforming. Instead of presenting outright lies as facts, confusion is implemented by presenting deliberately vague generalities so the audience can fill in the blank with the messages they’ve already received about people who have already been othered. It’s talking around an idea with willful ambiguousness for the purpose of obscuring facts.

+ Looking at the way Fox News and its viewers bumbled around in various states of bewilderment after the 2012 election is the perfect way to illustrate that point. In the build-up to election day, the math that lead multiple long-respected, nonpartisan polling organizations to forecast a win for President Obama was condemned by Fox News as “scientific gobbledygook,” “liberal media noise,” and “numbers that parrot the mainstream media.”


Rewrite History

Rewriting history is simply lying about events that have already happened. It’s a type of misinformation in which the propagandists’ current opinions are justified by presenting an inaccurate view of the past.

+ After the 2012 presidential election, Fox News blamed President Obama’s campaign for many of the public perceptions about Mitt Romney that led to his defeat. However, it was Republican candidates who crafted those messages during the primary campaign season. Fox told its viewers President Obama was responsible for Americans believing the narrative that Romney “was a vulture, that he was a vampire,” a “Vulture Capitalist.” In fact, it was Rick Perry who coined the phrase and Newt Gingrich who continued to promote it. Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire who ultimately became one of Romney’s chief financial supporters, is the one who financed Gingrich’s now-infamous “King of Bain” attack documentary.
+ In an attempt to paint President Obama as soft on terrorism, Eric Bolling, co-host of the Fox News program The Five, said there were no terrorist attacks in America during President Bush’s time as president: “America was certainly safe between 2000 and 2008. I don’t remember any terrorist attacks on American soil during that period of time.” Not a single person on the panel pointed out that Bolling had either forgotten or was deliberately excluding 9/11, the most devastating terrorist attack in United States history. When Bolling was called out by basically every non-Fox new organization in the country, he said that he misspoke, but that the “radical liberal left” was “being petty” for expressing outrage over his lie.
+ In January 2013, Sean Hannity told Fox News viewers that there were 8.3 million fewer Americans working than when President Bush left office in 2008, which was completely untrue.
What kind of effects do we see when large numbers of people are consuming baseless propaganda under the impression that it’s news journalism? Well, a study conducted by Cambridge’s Journal of Politics found that all Americans — not just evangelical Christians or diehard Republicans — are susceptible to Fox News’ message. Democratic members of Congress became more sympathetic to Republican causes after being exposed to Fox News. Their hostility toward Mexican immigration increased, for example, as did their belief in inaccuracies about climate change and the Iraq war. Fox News deliberately misinforms its viewers about things like climate change to score political capital, and most scientists now believe the earth is on the brink of its sixth mass extinction. Fox News not only fosters a culture of terror and hate; it also purposefully contributes to the destruction of the literal planet.

Though Fox News will deny it, one of the reasons Donald Trump has been so successful in Republican Primary polls is that he’s explicitly saying what Fox News has been using coded messages to say for the last decade. Fox has convinced their viewership that brown people are inherently criminal, and black people are inherently lazy, and gay people are in opposition to God, and women don’t deserve the same rights as men or control over their own bodies. It’s not surprising that when Trump bluntly gives voice to these opinions, many Republicans — the majority of whom consume Fox News at least weekly — support him. He is doing nothing more than parroting the message of Fox News with more directness. When two white dudes attack a homeless Latino man and pee on him, citing Donald Trump as their inspiration, that is a direct effect of Fox News propaganda cycle.

My goal with this article isn’t to ridicule people who watch Fox News; my goal is to to make plain this deliberate, manipulative cycle Fox traps its viewers inside, so we can use our knowledge to begin to set our friends and family free.

Armed with these truths, maybe we won’t all feel so helpless during this election season.

From:
http://www.autostraddle.com/this-is-...-cycle-297107/

In the original story several charts that help to support the author's positions appear. I recommend using the link to examine them if possible.

The point that other media also use propaganda is true, but should never be used to dismiss or not examine the claim specifically against Fox news. I have found other information that shows specific important examples of misrepresentation by Fox which I may elaborate on over time.

Here's a link to a video that shows reporters for Fox news clearly lying about their own actions.

Jon Stewart: Fox News' Poor-Shaming Is "Easily Provable And Decidedly True"
Stewart On Fox's Denial: How "Removed From Reality Is Fox's Perception Of Their Own Coverage On Poverty?"

http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/0...ily-pro/203647Last edited by mockingbird; 4th January 2016 at 04:09 AM.

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