Dragon Flood - Part 19

Manufacturing Consent

With the technological advances of the 20th century; radio, television, and the Internet, the global elite have found new methods of guiding the populace. By controlling the media, a relatively small number of unknown, and unseen, men and women are able to shape nationalistic views, deceive the masses, and manipulate mankind into embracing whatever actions they desire. Although violence and forceful coercion are still tools of an elite to gain the consent of men and women, to an increasing extent the puppet masters of mankind have found that the crowd can be controlled by controlling the “human climate.” Philip Lesly, a long time advocate of the use of propaganda by an elite to control the masses, began a bi-monthly publication years ago called Managing the Human Climate. It is of benefit to consider what is meant by this expression.

The word climate is defined as “the prevailing attitudes, standards, or environmental conditions of a group, period, or place.” A moneyed elite found it possible to control the climate in which attitudes are formed, and actions are birthed. By control of the media and the governments of nations, they are well positioned to not only set the agenda for public discussion, but to define the limits of that discussion. They dictate the conversation and choose the subjects of public debate.

In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. At the time, Ben Bagdikian was called “alarmist” for pointing this out in his book, The Media Monopoly. In his 4th edition, published in 1992, he wrote “in the U.S., fewer than two dozen of these extraordinary creatures own and operate 90% of the mass media” — controlling almost all of America’s newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies. He predicted then that eventually this number would fall to about half a dozen companies. This was greeted with skepticism at the time. When the 6th edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market.

In 2004, Bagdikian’s revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge corporations — Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) — now control most of the media industry in the U.S..
[Source: http://www.corporations.org/media/]

Oftentimes the chief actors in Satan’s plans resort to boasting about their plans and methods. They do not fear the outrage of the masses, nor the consequences of Christian’s discovering their methods, for they know that the world and a worldly church is sound asleep. The prophet Isaiah recorded God’s perspective of His people.

Isaiah 42:18-20
Hear, you deaf! And look, you blind, that you may see. Who is blind but My servant, or so deaf as My messenger whom I send? Who is so blind as he that is at peace with Me, or so blind as the servant of Yahweh? You have seen many things, but you do not observe them; Your ears are open, but none hears.

Satan has been so successful in mesmerizing the masses, in distracting the church with many vain pursuits, that he has little fear of the body of Christ waking up to discover the ways in which they have been controlled and manipulated. Satan is a master of deceit, and he has taught his disciples the principles by which they can control the mass of men and women.

One of the pioneers of modern propaganda in western culture was Edward Bernays. Bernays was greatly impressed by the teaching of his uncle Sigmund Freud and was responsible for having Freud’s writings published in America. Bernays saw in the subconscious psyche of mankind an opportunity to persuade, influence, and ultimately control the masses without their being aware of what was being done to them. Edward Bernays did not seek to hide this power over the people. Rather, he boasted about it. He was actively engaged in seeking corporate clients who would hire him to manipulate public opinion. Therefore, he did quite a job in selling his scientific wizardry to those who wished to cause people to act and think in specific ways. Bernays wrote a number of books on the use of propaganda.

If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible...
[Source: Propaganda, Edward Bernays]

The propagandist rules. The propagandized do whatever he would have them to do, exactly as he tells them to do, and without knowing it.
[Source: Introduction to Propaganda, Mark Crispin Miller]

Bernays as a young man was hired by the CPI, the government propaganda organization that was created by President Woodrow Wilson to persuade Americans to fully support the United State’s involvement in World War I. After the war he used the same principles during peace time to crystallize public opinion for corporate clients. Bernays did not describe his work as a propagandist, for the term had gained negative connotations during the War. Instead, he described himself as a “Public Relations” professional.

Bernays made it clear that Public Relations is not the same as advertising. Bernays seldom ever took out ads in the papers. One of his methods for altering public opinion was to fabricate a news event and tip off reporters as to when it would occur. The newspapers would write about the event as if it was a spontaneous occurrence, and Bernays would have key phrases and buzz words already prepared to guide the public’s perception of the event.

An example of how Bernay’s operated is observed in his work for the American Tobacco Company. In 1928 George Washington Hill, the president of ATC realized that there was a huge untapped segment of the public to whom cigarettes could potentially be sold. This segment was women. At the time it was considered taboo for women to smoke. This social stigma decreased the market potential for cigarettes in half. Hill hired Bernays to overcome this public censorship of women smoking.

Bernays consulted with an American psychoanalyst to discover what cigarettes actually represented to women. A.A. Brill was the man Bernays consulted. Brill told him that a woman saw cigarettes as a symbol of male prowess. Cigarettes were associated with masculine power and authority. Bernays was encouraged to play upon this association by enticing women to smoke by appealing to their innate desire to be equal to men.

Bernays hired ten New York debutantes to carry cigarettes hidden in their clothes during the Easter Parade in New York. At a predetermined moment they were all to pull out their cigarettes and light them as they marched along in the parade. Bernays notified some members of the press that this was going to occur, and they were ready with cameras to photograph the women as they lit and smoked their cigarettes in public. Bernays cunningly described the cigarettes as “torches of freedom,” playing on the woman’s desire to be equal to man, and able to do whatever man could do in public.

Woman with Torch of Freedom in Her Hand

This event received significant press, and instantly cigarettes became a symbol of liberation for women. The success of this public relations stunt is observed in the percentage of women who smoke.

The targeting of women in tobacco advertising led to higher rates of smoking among women. In 1923 women only purchased 5% of cigarettes sold, in 1929 it increased to 12%, in 1935 the percentage of cigarettes purchased by women was 18.1%, this percentage peaked in 1965 at 33.3% and remained at this level until 1977.
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom]

Observed in this example is the basic pattern used by a global elite today to shape the public opinion of the masses. News events are staged, and interpretations of the events are pre-planned in order to guide the populace to the conclusions that the invisible government desires. Bernays has noted in his books that Democracy requires the employment of propaganda that a ruling elite (who alone know what is best for mankind) might be able to rule without the masses understanding that they are being controlled and manipulated.

As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented...

The minority has discovered a powerful help in influencing majorities. It has been found possible so to mold the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction.
[Source: Propaganda, Edward Bernays]

Edward Bernays

The same process employed by Bernays on behalf of the American Tobacco Company is utilized thousands of times every week by the invisible government to guide the masses in the desired direction. In the previous chapter we read of the government inventing, or fostering, atrocities such as the sinking of the Lusitania and the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, in order to move the masses to support the schemes of the minority. There are very few who ever discern the invisible hand guiding their actions and shaping their opinions. To repeat a statement penned by Bernays,

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes are formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. These invisible governors are a heroic elite, who coolly keep it together, thereby “organizing chaos,” as God did in the Beginning. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.

Do you sense the pride in this statement? Bernays is comparing the actions of these unseen manipulators to those of God when He brought order out of chaos. Satan is the ultimate mastermind behind such policies and practices. His disciples have learned his ways and have no compunction about deliberately deceiving and misleading the masses. After all, they reason, they alone know what is really good and necessary for mankind.

Brothers and sisters, what I would have you to discern is that YOUR MIND has been molded, and YOUR ACTIONS guided, by this invisible government under the rule of Satan, and you have very often not perceived what was occurring. Only by becoming aware of the subtlety of the adversary can the Christian avoid the snare set before him.

In the year 1928 when Bernays wrote the book Propaganda, he wrote of the pervasiveness of “news” stories that were created to shape public perception of events.

Page one of the New York Times on the day these paragraphs are written contains eight important news stories. Four of them, one-half, are propaganda. The casual reader accepts them as accounts of spontaneous happenings. But are they?
[Source: Ibid]

Bernays proceeds to give four of the headlines from the nation’s leading newspaper, and he demonstrates that each story is propaganda. He details who originated the stories, and what effect each story was to produce upon public opinion. In the intervening years the percentage of canned news stories has only increased. America, and the world, is being inundated with a flood of fabricated news whose express aim is to shape public opinion and guide the masses.

Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create and shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea, or group...

The important thing is that it is universal and continuous; and in its sum total it is regimenting the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers.
[Source: Ibid]

Consider what is expressed in this last statement. Even as the military dictates the actions of soldiers, telling them when to go to bed, when to rise, when to eat, when to work, how to salute, how to march in formation, etc., controlling the minute details of a soldier’s life, so too the minds of men and women are being regimented with the same level of control. Like puppets on a string, the mass of mankind moves to the motions of an unseen hand.

Speaking of the success of the government CPI propaganda in World War I, Bernays states:

At the same time, the manipulators of patriotic opinion made use of the mental cliches and the emotional habits of the public to produce mass reactions against the alleged atrocities, the terror, and the tyranny of the enemy.

Edward Bernays is describing here the government’s manipulation of the people. This sets the whole scheme of Democracy on its head. Instead of “government of the people, for the people, by the people,” it has become a government of a small elite who fool the people into believing they are making autonomous decisions, never realizing that they are being manipulated. Bernays had a true “insider’s” perspective into the machinations of government. Stuart Ewen in his book PR! A Social History of Spin, describes a visit he paid to Bernays at his home.

He led me through a dark room off the landing. Its walls were covered with scores of framed black and white photographs, many of them inscribed. Wordlessly, yet eloquently, the pictures placed my ancient host close to the heartbeat of a century. Bernays on his way to the Paris Peace Conference, 1919. Bernays standing with Enrico Caruso. Bernays and Henry Ford. Bernays and Thomas Edison. Bernays and Dwight David Eisenhower. An inscribed photo portrait of his uncle, Freud, was also conspicuous. Bernays with the “great men” at the “gre at events” of the twentieth century.

Bernays and Eisenhower

Bernays wrote of the power a small group has in selecting even those candidates who will become President of the United States.

A presidential candidate may be “drafted” in response to “overwhelming popular demand,” but it is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room.
[Source: Propaganda, Edward Bernays]

Things have not changed much since the day in which the above statement was written. Much has been written about the Bilderberger Group in recent years. This group of extremely wealthy and powerful global persons derives their name from the hotel they met at for their first annual meeting. It is true that a small number of men and women still meet today in hotel rooms to determine who will be given the rule of the nations. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were whisked away during the midst of campaigning for the Presidential nomination of their party in 2008. Their sudden absence was the subject of much speculation. It became known that they were taken to attend the annual Bilderberger conference, at which it was determined that Obama would become President and Hillary Clinton Secretary of State. Those elected to public positions are acting as the pawns of the true powers that have placed them there.

There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.
[Source: Ibid]

As one reads the writings of men like Edward Bernays, Walter Lippman, Ivy Lee, and other pioneers of modern propaganda, it becomes evident just how pervasive the practice of manipulating public opinion has become. The following statement of Bernays, written in 1928, could have been written as a commentary on America’s current President.

Again, the objection is raised that propaganda is utilized to manufacture our leading political personalities. It is asked whether, in fact, the leader makes the propaganda, or whether propaganda makes the leader. There is a widespread impression that a good press agent can puff up a nobody into a great man.
[Source: Ibid]

Truly, there has seldom been a less accomplished man who was portrayed as a great statesman, than the current President. Many were astonished when after his election to the Presidency he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. There was no basis for the award. He had not brokered any peace agreements. He had no political history of accomplishment. All the awards and popular press he was receiving were part of a massive, organized plan to manufacture an image of a great man out of a nobody. The ruling elite chose Obama as a figurehead to accomplish their purposes. They manufactured a false history for his life, and the public by and large has accepted it due to the universal and continuous flood of propaganda that has attended his ascension to public office.

Although Obama is a willing instrument of men in carrying out the destruction of America as a wealthy nation of great liberty, he is not the one making decisions. Those who created his public image and arranged his election to the Presidency are the true powers behind the throne. As far back as 1928 Edward Bernays wrote:

The public actions of America’s chief executive are, if one chooses to put it that way, stage-managed.
[Source: Ibid]

Edward Bernays did not apologize for his views. He believed that it was right and necessary for an enlightened minority to guide the masses.

Ours must be a leadership democracy administered by the intelligent minority who know how to regiment and guide the masses. Is this government by propaganda?... It must be enlightened, expert propaganda through the creation of circumstances, through the high-spotting of significant events, and the dramatization of important issues.
[Source: Ibid]

Consider carefully what is declared here. An “intelligent minority,” a global elite, believe it is their right and duty to regiment human behavior. They accomplish this control of mankind through creating events and circumstances that will provide a context to move the masses in a particular direction. That which passes for spontaneous news events today are seldom spontaneous, or news. They are dramatizations played out on a world stage with the intent of manipulating mankind. The global elite need the masses to consent to their schemes leading to a one world government. They refer to the work of propagandizing the masses as “manufacturing consent.” By deceiving and manipulating the people, the consent of the nations is gained.

Do you perceive this deception all around you? Are your eyes opened to perceive the hidden hand that guides events? Or do you still believe that America is a nation where the government serves the people? Are you so blinded by propaganda that you believe America can be changed by electing a Republican instead of a Democrat for President? Do you perceive that the candidates of both parties have been hand picked, and they are equally servants of an invisible government?

At this time of year with a national election looming, one can perceive the massive influence of the propaganda machine. Debates are held; candidates spar with one another; it is made to appear that they truly are antagonistic to one another and hold greatly divergent views on government. Yet all is subterfuge. All is deceit and lies created to keep the masses deceived, to persuade them that they actually have a choice, that the common man has the power to influence the course of the nation.

Tragically, Christians are giving their strength, thought, time, and money to a vain effort to effect political change. Christians are joining Tea Party movements, or are aligning themselves with a particular candidate or party. They believe they will make a difference. They wage war with carnal weapons. They do not perceive that the game is rigged. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity.

Satan’s power is great. He has the ability to deceive the nations. Nevertheless, the disciple of Christ need not be deceived. Christ admonished His disciples with the following words:

Matthew 10:16-17
"Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. But beware of men...”

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