So sayeth the Alinskyite – “make them live up to their own rules.”

“…Would YOU want someone to behave this way toward you?”

This is a “shaming” statement. Hence the “make them live up to their own rules”. No pacifist/warmonger connection. Strictly Alinsky.

I value propaganda because it is an amazingly useful tool. It does not depend upon politics, for it works on Republicans or Democrats. Propaganda targets humans, and all you need to be is to be human to be vulnerable to propaganda. Thus it is insane and amazingly lackadaisical for anyone, Left or RIght, to claim that the study and use of propaganda is not something they need concern themselves with. This is as important, if not more important, than keeping enhanced interrogation methods open and progressive with respect to captured terrorist operatives.

For anyone that is even slightly interested in understanding where Book is coming from or just want more background on the topic, I simply recommend to you to do one thing. Study Petraeus’ COIN and how it worked in Al Anbar. That’s it. That’s all you need, assuming you know how to think for yourself and don’t need somebody else (like me) to tell you what to think, how to think, and when to think it.

The Left are full of people that require just that, and I am not against giving them what they need so long as it serves my own purposes and not their national suicide and binge drinking.

I do not agree with all the tactics Book or even Neo has engendered and described. There is no reason why I should. If any two operators or propaganda students ever agreed on ANY set of tactics, they had better check to see if they are being mind controlled. And I am being deliberately non-vulgar in the terminology.

If anybody had ever agreed completely with my own personal set of standards and proposals, the same would also be true ; )

There is also my own attempt to educate the general population on the methodologies and philosophy of propaganda and psychological warfare. But it is rather long and is more of a detailed technical work than a work of persuasion and argument.

Link

One of the funniest parts of the comment section is when a former therapist replied to you, Book, and started writing about how your methodology (not your specific tactics necessarily) were used by therapists to create a therapeutic solution via the exposure of the patient’s own inner problems through self-revelation and introspection. The therapist made a point that it wasn’t to hurt people or attack them, but to help them.

Well, that wasn’t why I studied psychology or listened aptly to Neo or Shrink or Dr. Sanity as they described their therapy patients. I say it is funny because it is an incredibly ironic counter-point to my own post titled “Therapists and non-Therapist”. Here is a therapist, and here I stand as the non-therapist.
And perhaps here you stand as well, Book, given your methodology, which categorically recognizes the basic nature of human nature and utilizes that knowledge to produce wisdom and social behavioral modifications.

If more people gave as much thought as you and Neo have given to human thoughts and emotions, how they can be manipulated for good or ill, the Republican party would have a much better image in the eyes of America. And that would only be the least of such benefits.

You gave a lot of help to those Classical Liberals that have defected from the fake side to the true side of human rights and dignity. Don’t let anyone else ever tell you different, Book.

My comment is in moderation over at the AT site, but I’ll reproduce it here.

I mock and ridicule them every chance I get, and I insult their favored politicians, too, with such comments as “Crypt Keeper Pelosi” ,”President Pantywaist”, “Hairplug”, etc. Their hypocritical indignation amuses me.-Even Steven

You forget that it was not their insults that won the vote for Obama. It was Saul Alinsky’s tactics, Mao’s guerrilla warfare manual, and the basic Frankfurt School of social destabilizaton and cultural deconstruction that converted entire generations of Americans into Leftists, fake liberals, and Obama voters.

The insults were simply the inevitable result of the cultural infusion of Marxist social revolutionary rhetoric and principles. You cannot adopt their means without understanding what those means were designed to strategically accomplish. That is not going to win against the Left.

That which you would not have done to yourself, do not do to another. Can anyone honestly claim to believe that they themselves would want a close friend or family member of differing views to be stalking them with the disguised intent of influencing their thinking? Would YOU want someone to behave this way toward you? -Teleo

So sayeth the pacifist to the warmonger, the serial rapist, the child molestor, the mass murderer. It did not work then, it will not work now here under a different guise.

Your theological underpinings are watery and devoid of soulful consideration. Their logic inevitably results in Mao’s purges and Stalin’s expansionist escalations.

People are exposed to propaganda and deception the moment they hear a commercial, a sales pitch, or a slightly slanted news report that focused one aspect while defocusing another. They see and are exposed to it in their daily memos, email correspondences, and snail mail when they are sent material that bolsters the sender’s goals while not particularly being mindful about bolstering the competition’s views.

The message here, the suggestion even, that the best way would be to ignore such aspects of psychological warfare in hopes that it will go away because “you don’t want it done to you” is not a mature perspective on the modern world.

You don’t like war, but war will like you very much. You don’t like poverty, but the have nots and the rich exploitive classes like Gore and Kennedy will like keeping you in poverty very much. You don’t like violence, crime, and being made into a tax slave and serf, but violent criminals and thugish oligarchs will love to make you into their slaves.

The defense of one’s morality, spirit, loved ones, and basic ethical principles standing this nation on its two legs are not conducted by the well wishes of the ignorant, the foolish, or the blind.

Those who refuse to learn propaganda will not be resistant to enemy Leftist propaganda. Those who refuse to learn the religion and beliefs of the Islamic enemies of America will not be able to devise stratagems able to defeating Islam. Those that are proud of their ignorance on matters of Leftist social revolutionary theory and hateful Alinsky rhetorical styles are doing their fellow citizens and tax payers no good at all.

Anyone who thought that they can continue in the “intellectual debate” matter of facts and “logic” with the Left are under the delusion the Bush administration was under when they went to the UN and trusted in Democrats and State Department operatives to make Iraq into a democracy by working Hand in Hand with the Bush Administration. This is not a debate. This is a war and it is a war declared upon one side of America by another side of America. It is not about winning points, it is about winning hearts and minds, by controlling the loyalties of the people. Classical counter-insurgency and guerrilla warfare.

If people on the conservative side have refused to learn the lessons of Iraq, be assured that the Leftists certainly know how to terrorize an indigenous population from their dear leaders, Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Saddam, Hitler, Mussolini, Castro, and so forth even if you do not know how. They will do so, as you turn your head blindly against the obvious and they will thank you for your consideration for their sadistic enjoyment in the slaughter of innocents.

Bookworm– I thought this was a terrrific article and am amazed at how few people who have commented here got it. In fact, I wonder if I have been wrong to attribute the vulgar, hateful tone of so much of our public discourse mainly to liberals.-Lily

I am, perhaps, not quite as amazed. I have studied the enemies and targets of the Left at the same time I studied the Left’s machinations both over the years on Iraq and in the centuries before. What I saw was a pretty downright incomprehension and lack of utilization of basic psychological warfare tools by the Right, both its base and its political leaders and spokesmen (Coulter included). They still think it is an “intellectual debate” and that it is about “changing people’s minds with facts”. It is not a debate. It is about loyalty and directed manipulation/control of the behaviors and thoughts of others.

In the hands of a mass murder, such tools and goals can be used to create a totalitarian system that creates cruelty unbridled. In the hands of something like the United States Marine Corp and under the Bush Administration, such tools could have been used to alleviate the greatest suffering of the Iraqis, from both domestic insecurity, foreign terrorist attacks, and internal tribal and political strife. As it was, the US military came upon such tools late in the game, by the hand and mind of Petraeus, and it worked miracles precisely because it had not been used before. It had not been considered even.

I’ve repeatedly cited wqhat SHOULD be “non-threatening sources” in that I have had to respond to liberal-cited sources such as Daily Kos, Anderson Cooper, Bill Maher and the like with actual sources such as newspapers, magazines, news agencies and other EMPIRICALLY-based sources, and the response of the liberal true-believer is a deaf ear and more citings from the left-wing blogosphere. -Gary

Propaganda and psychological warfare is not about “empirical” sources. You are still treating this as if it was some sort of intellectual debate. To change the beliefs and behaviors of targets, you must find their levers and use them. This differs from individual to individual, movement to movement, and it has nothing to do with the “truth” although the truth can often ostensibly be the most powerful weapon around, if only becaues it requires less complexity than deception and misinformation.

The commenters who object to these techniques are the reason why conservatives are unable to preach to anyone but the choir-Another Crypto Conservative

Of course this is so. The refusal to see how Arabs think from their view is a blind spot on the anti-American side who believe you can treat with Arabs the way you treat with civilized folks. But that’s not really true, for Arabs have an entirely different cultural template that you must first understand before you can start talking or dealing with them. The fact that only a small percentage of conservatives were Leftist or fake liberal originally, is why the conservative party is so weak in terms of convincing certain segments of the American public on key philosophical and policy platforms. You cannot defeat an enemy until you understand an enemy. People have opened their mouths and let their sources pour in soup containing the dangers or non-dangers of Islam, but what I see here is that conservatives and independents continue to ignore the study of social revolutionary authors such as Mao and Saul Alinsky.

People ignore such leaders of the Left at the peril of the entire American experiment. Do you think simply refusing to study the enemy will make them into a friend? That this will cause them to stop their destruction, theft, and rape of America’s treasure and the centuries old patriotic sacrifices of ancient Americans? Of course not.

One trait I find common among liberals I know is that they are incredibly misinformed on nearly every subject. The MSM is powerful in their lives. They’re also easily influenced. A couple of incisive statements and questions about global warming, fiscal policy, or health insurance and you can have them nodding in total agreement. Economics, especially, is counter-intuitive and requires common-sense rationale. They too can ‘get it.’ They respond to the truth. Problem is, they will be re-programmed the following week by media headlines. -Paul from SA

Another person that gets it, because he has personal experience with reality. Rather than the internet “theory” of our fellow Republicans concerning how to “convince” or “debate” Democrats. The Republican argument methods have worked well from 2003 to 2008, if I may say so with sarcasm de jure. It wasn’t just Bush that was the problem, you know.

I call them the Squishy Middles whose political leanings agree with the last person with whom they spoke.-Pam C

An apt description, although many people of the Democrat persuasion are only Democrats because the only people they have known in their life have been Democrats. Black families are one example. People in Berkley, another.

This primer will not work on Left-Wingers, but is entirely perfect for Liberals. Liberals are always short of accurate facts. - political hack

That is because in any ideology or organization, there will be the leaders, intellectual or spiritual, and then there will be the foot soldiers, the cannon fodder or expendable tools. Liberals in this sense, are the tools and cannon fodder, while the media pundits like Jesse Jackson and political leaders like Obama or PillowC are the ones calling the shots, mostly. And then there are those in the shadows, the puppet masters, like george Soros.

Study the Jonestown episode in detail, not just with references to the “Kool Aide” and you will understand that convincing Jones of anything would be futile. Convincing his cult members, however, is another thing entirely. Convincing them and actually getting them out alive from the Leftist con man trap, however, is even more difficult.

This is applied Socratic method and is a proven way of getting your audience to think. -Thoughtful

First you got to get conservatives to think, and not just knee jerk react to the Obama demoralization campaign, or the Shock and Theft campaign, or the Fake Liberal “redistribution” of wealth and personal assassination crusade. You got to get conservatives to start thinking like their enemies, but conservatives don’t want to think like their enemies because they don’t want to become their enemies. Conservatives are too nice, or they are too tired, or they are too focused on Islam. This is very simple and easy for Classical Liberals, for they were often in the Democrat party to begin with. Not so for conservatives that never voted Democrat, were never part of the Leftist social revolution of the 60s, or had never had a personal revelation and ephiphany concerning the emotional and psychological manipulation successes of the Left.

The most fervent anti-Communist you will ever see, someone who knows exactly how the Communists works, are ex-Communists. Which is why the Soviet Union had orders to execute all Liberal, Leftist, agent provocateurs, or other such members once the Union had taken power after the destabilization caused by such Lunny Left Activists. Why? Because they knew that these social malcontents, once they truly understood what Communism was going to do to them, would rebel and use all that they had learned about Communism, against the Communists. That could not be tolerated, so they were scheduled to be the first ones put up against the wall and shot, after the ruling status quo had been eliminated, of course.

If Americans want their country and their rule of law back, they had better start paying attention to the lessons of the successful counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy employed in Iraq by Petraeus, on the orders and authorization of Bush and Cheney. Bush was wrong for a long time, until he got hammered straight by those who knew how to actually get things done. The question is, who is going to do this for the multitude of conservatives, Republicans, and independents? Petraeus isn’t going to come knocking on your door and teach you COIN personally. You are going to have to learn for yourself. That should not be a problem, should it.

I hope I don’t have to remind conservatives or those that call themselves Republicans that General Petraeus and the Bush Administration was able to successfully convince wannabe American killers in the Sunni Triangle to become our allies, not our enemies. If that can be done, and it was done with the Sons of Iraq, who are you to say that the Americans in LaLaland can be ignored? Republicans and conservatives need to get their head out of the sand if they want to adapt to the new war on wealth and liberty marching on their door steps.

Then again, you can always disarm yourselves and surrender, if the alternative is too “hard”.

(*) http://maxentropy.squarespace.com/blog/2009/4/6/politics-and-the-bicameral-brain.html

On the other hand, I remember the wise advice given to the apostles in the New Testament. When you meet somebody who is caught up in invincible ignorance, call it a day—”shake the dust off your feet and move on.”

At that point you are in Ymarsakar territory. It’s best to quietly arm and supply yourself, and always be prepared for the breakdown or moral and mental order that the left is so intent on bringing about.

How about “Pelosi lied”?