John Swinton: There is not one of you who dares to writes (sic) his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid one hundred and fifty dollars a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with --others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things-- and any of you who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9191
John Swinton: The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9192
(for those unfamiliar: Framework makes a modular upgradable open laptop design, their laptops have expansion bays that accept these cards which all use standard USB-C ports as their basis, so their USB-A expansion card can technically be used as a C-A adapter on other computers)
David Edwards: The modern susceptibility to conformity and obedience to authority indicates that the truth endorsed by authority is likely to be accepted as such by a majority of people, who are innately obedient to authority. This obedience-truth will then become a consensus-truth accepted by many individuals unable to stand alone against the majority. In this way, the truth promulgated by the propaganda system - however irrational - stands a good chance of becoming the consensus, and may come to seem self-evident common sense. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9194
Michelle Stoddard: In the media, the world is turned upside down. The contras and the KLA are "democratizers"; the lethal sanctions against Iraq exist to deliver its people from their dictator; the destruction of Yugoslavia through aerial bombardment of civilians and their infrastructure is a "humanitarian intervention. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9195
Mark Twain: The loud little handful will shout for war. The pulpit will warily and cautiously protest at first...The great mass of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes, and will try to make out why there should be a war, and they will say earnestly and indignantly: "It is unjust and dishonorable and there is no need for war." Then the few will shout even louder...Before long you will see a curious thing: anti-war speakers will be stoned from the platform, and free speech will be strangled by hordes of furious men who still agree with the speakers but dare not admit it ... Next, statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9198
Danny Schechter: Like blackbirds in flight, packs of reporters darken the sky, moving in swarms at the same speed and in predictable trajectory. When one lands, they all land. When one leaves, they all leave. The programmers and channel controllers from all the stations are part of the same well-paid elite, steeped in the same values, committed to the mission of maximizing audience share and profits. They are chosen for their ability to play the game and not challenge the audience with too many controversial ideas or critical perspectives. It's no surprise that they circulate easily within the commanding heights of media power, moving from company to company and job to job. A kind of group think corporate consensus, steeped in market logic and deeply inbred by an un-brave news culture, breeds conscience-free conformity and self-censorship. This makes frightening sense in a globalized economy where consumerism is more desired than active citizenship, where power is increasingly concentrated and the public is increasingly unwelcome in a public discourse defined by the powerful. If your goal is to numb people and drive them away from active participation, then TV as"weapon of mass distraction"and wall to wall entertainment makes sense. Shut up and shop is the now the message, one that makes sense to advertiser dominated media outlets... https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9200
Malcolm X: Twenty million so-called Negroes, second-class citizens, seeking nothing but human dignity and human rights, the right to live in dignity as a human being. And rather than give genuine sincere respect to your cry for human rights, the American white man answers your nonviolence with violence. He answers your prayers and freedom songs with false promises, deceitful maneuvers, and outright bloodshed. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9201
Angela Davis: The U.S. is a prison nation....if we call the U.S. a prison nation Palestine under Israeli occupation is certainly the worst possible example of a carceral society. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9204
Malcolm X: In short the Zionist argument to justify Israel's present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history … not even in their own religion. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9206
Herbert Aptheker: A Ruling class, often subjected to periods of panic arising from doubt of its ability to maintain its power, may be expected to develop very complex and thorough systems of control. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9207
Paulo Freire: One of the methods of manipulation is to inoculate individuals with the bourgeois appetite for personal success. This manipulation is sometimes carried out directly by the elites and sometimes indirectly, through populist leaders. As Weffert points out, these leaders serve as intermediaries between the oligarchical elites and the people. The emergence of populism as a style of political action thus coincides causally with the emergence of the oppressed. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9212
Stalin: The fight against Zionism has nothing in common with anti-Semitism. Zionism is an enemy of workers around the world, both of those who are Jewish and those who are not. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9213
Ghassan Kanafani: The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever he is, as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9214
Hitler: The whole art consists in doing this so skillfully that everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct, etc. But since propaganda is not and cannot be the necessity in itself, since its function, like the poster, consists in attracting the attention of the crowd, and not in educating those who are already educated or who are striving after education and knowledge, its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9215
Hitler: All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be. But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be exerted in this direction. The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more effective it will be. And this is the best proof of the soundness or unsoundness of a propaganda campaign, and not success in pleasing a few scholars or young aesthetes. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9216
Hitler: The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. The fact that our bright boys do not understand this merely shows how mentally lazy and conceited they are. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9217
Hitler: The magnitude of a lie always contains a certain factor of credibility, since the great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil, and that, therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big. Such a falsehood will never enter their heads and they will not be able to believe in the possibility of such monstrous effrontery and infamous misrepresentation in others; yes, even when enlightened on the subject, they will long doubt and waver, and continue to accept at least one of these causes as true. Therefore, something of even the most insolent lie will always remain and stick-a fact which all the great lie-virtuosi and lying-clubs in this world know only too well and also make the most treacherous use of. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9218
Leila Khaled: Who planted terrorism in our area? Some came and took our land, forced us to leave, forced us to live in camps. I think this is terrorism. Using means to resist this terrorism and stop its effects - this is called struggle. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9220
Lenin: Every revolution means a sharp turn in the lives of a vast number of people. Unless the time is ripe for such a turn, no real revolution can take place. And just as any turn in the life of an individual teaches him a great deal and brings rich experience and great emotional stress, so a revolution teaches an entire people very rich and valuable lessons in a short space of time. https://wordsmith.social/protestation/quotes#quote9221
