Propaganda Quotes

“We must invent our enemy. If he doesn't exist, we must create him.'

'But that's crazy,' said Radius. 'It'd be like choosing to have hallucinations--seeing something that doesn't exist and saying that it does.'

'Comrade Radius,' said Flight, 'listen. There's no such thing as a perfect enemy. A real enemy is always imperfect: never perfectly evil and never perfectly invincible. He has mild, even gentle characteristics. He's vulnerable. The perfect enemy is the one you create yourself.'

'But why can't we have an imperfect enemy?' Radius persisted. 'If evil is imperfect, if it's so weak and helpless, why should we force things and give it a perfection it doesn't possess?'

'Because *we* have to be perfect,' said Flight.”
― Giorgio Vasta, Il tempo materiale

“Mainstream media has become little more than a mouthpiece for officially approved rhetoric. Anything outside approved rhetoric is quickly quieted, taken out, vilified, and or discredited.”
― Jeffrey Hann, COVID19 – Short Path to 'You'll Own Nothing. And You'll Be Happy.': Welcome to the New Age of Tyranny

“Here we must ask a critical question: what does it mean when American media outlets deliberately censor and silence anything related to Palestine, the voices of war atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria, while at the same time glorifying the Ukraine war or presumably covering Black Lives Matter or police brutality against black people? Can we believe that such media has good intentions? Can we believe that they really care about Black people, or are they more interested in deepening the divide in the society? I personally find this suspicious and ill intentioned. I believe the purpose here is not to support any Black causes or push for meaningful changes, but rather, exploiting the already existing and strong structural racism and white supremacy weaved into the fabric of the entire society to make people even more alienated from each other. Mistaken are those who think that “divide and conquer” is only practiced in remote places and in so-called “third world” countries. There are many ways to divide and conquer, but we need to have the right critical tools to detect and fight against them, as is the case here.

[From “The Trump Age: Critical Questions” published on CounterPunch on June 23, 2023]”
― Louis Yako

“কমিউনিস্ট সত্তা, ফাসিস্ত সত্তা, হিন্দু সত্তা, খ্রিস্টিয়ান সত্তা বলে কোনও সত্তার অস্তিত্ব আছে বলে আমি বিশ্বাস করি না। ধর্মীয় গোঁড়ামির কোনও একটা শাসনে সসাগরা পৃথিবী সর্বকালে শাসিত হবে, এ অবাস্তব কল্পনা। হিন্দু পারেনি, বৌদ্ধ পারেনি, খ্রিস্টিয়ান পারেনি, মুসলমান পারেনি, ফাসিস্ত পারেনি, নাৎসি পারেনি। কমিউনিস্টই বুঝি এর ব্যতিক্রম হবে?”
― Gour Kishore Ghosh, মনের বাঘ

“The USA is the land of corporate controlled government propaganda.”
― Steven Magee

“They know that we know they are lying. We know that they know that we know they are lying. And still they continue to lie.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“When we aren’t aware of our biases, we can easily be fooled. Sometimes even when we are aware, we can be fooled. While our ignorance works against us, it can be profitable for those who wish to take advantage of us.”
― Bremer Acosta

“Too many men and governments the life of the human mind is a danger to be feared more than any other danger, and the Word which cannot be purchased, cannot be falsified, and cannot be killed is the enemy most hunted for and hated. It is not necessary to speak of the burning of the books in Germany, or of the victorious lie in Spain, or of the terror of the creative spirit in Russia, or of the hunting and hounding of those in this country who insist that certain truths be told and who will not be silent. These things are commonplace. They are commonplace to such a point that they no longer shock us into anger. Indeed it is the essential character of our time that the triumph of the lie, the mutilation of culture, and the persecution of the Word no longer shock us into anger.”
― Felix Frankfurter, Their Correspondence, 1928-45

“True or fake?”
― Steven Magee

“Whenever I see a news story, I ask the question “True or fake?”.”
― Steven Magee

“Culture of fakeness.”
― Steven Magee

“Preparing the population to embrace war with fake news stories.”
― Steven Magee

“Corrupted news stories are a feature of war.”
― Steven Magee

“During war, the news turns into a blatant war propaganda machine.”
― Steven Magee

“Are you being brainwashed into supporting the war?”
― Steven Magee

“Ich mußte mich teilweise regelrecht zwingen, mir den Schund anzusehen, um weiter über die Welt da draußen informiert zu bleiben. Was ihr heute ›Nachrichten‹ nennt, ist zu 80 Prozent Propaganda. Informationen muß man sich mühsam zusammenklauben. Und dann erst das übrige Programm!”
― Torn Chaines, Der zweite Bürgerkrieg

“It seems we will be waiting a really long time before we see transparency in government.”
― Steven Magee

“Seize the means of propaganda! Confiscate the central-planner’s ability to steer the collective as if it were livestock.”
― A.E. Samaan

“The few journalists attempting to report on the atomic cities in the weeks immediately following the bombings were threatened with expulsion from Japan, harassed by U.S. officials, and accused of spreading Japanese propaganda…”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“Dispel the lips of Gossip with a sip of the Gospel.”
― Criss Jami

“What looks to be the cleanest political party, for a period, will often prove to be the filthiest in the end. Just like any form of corruption, this one plays dirty. It drags its enemies through the mud and scrubs itself clean before morning. It throws rocks and hides its hands. It gains power by all methods but the Truth: on the one hand, by pandering, flattery, and appeasement (quite like Satan, 'the father of lies'); and on the other, by deception and ruthlessness, constantly slinging accusations and smearing its opponents - posing as an angel of light (quite like Satan, 'the accuser') - and doing it hypocritically. It projects, gaslights, intimidates, manipulates, and confuses its subjects into adopting the narrative that it is the intellectually and morally superior party. Believing itself the greater good, and the ends justifying the means, it is able to persist in these things and sleep well doing them. Therefore in the rags of politics, because of this party, it is often the case that individuals painted as villains by the media are heroes in reality.”
― Criss Jami

“An inspired lie could be preferred to a malignant truth.”
― Sven Holm, Termush

“You obviously know that art has power,” he said. “It can be freeing, but it can also be a weapon, especially when combined with something equally powerful, like war. Art’s been used to inspire all sorts of things. Public statues of brave soldiers. Paintings of heroic sacrifice. But it’s also been used to put the fear of God into enemies.”
― Louise Penny, The Nature of the Beast

“We must be suspicious of the fact that we are still hearing about Trump and his trial, while more important cases, like that of Assange, are shrouded with secrecy and no time was wasted to throw him in jail. The reason for that is that Assange did in fact expose the lies, manipulation, and corruption of the U.S. and world elites, whereas Trump has been doing nothing but serving their interests. Same can be applied to Snowden who is still in exile. The key point here is that it’s time for Trump supporters themselves to begin questioning how they, too, are being co-opted and exploited to keep the nation divided and to crush any possibility of wider resistance in which people see each other as allies fighting for similar causes not divided enemies fighting each other like sardines trapped in a can, while the unlimited wealth and power of the few at the top remain unchecked.

[From “The Trump Age: Critical Questions” published on CounterPunch on June 23, 2023]”
― Louis Yako

“[T]he American ruling class has been deliberately capitalizing on and exploiting the history and wounds of racism and white supremacy for the sake of producing more divide, keeping potential and existing Trump supporters feeling ever more agitated and disenfranchised. The age-old racism and white supremacy are being exploited here without any intention to fix, let alone end, either. This is done to ensure that people in the U.S. remain distracted from the real conversation, which should be about the frighteningly small ruling class that often pretends to be anti-Trump but has been using every social and psychological tool to ensure that what Trump embodies and represents continue to serve their interests.

[From “The Trump Age: Critical Questions” published on CounterPunch on June 23, 2023]”
― Louis Yako

“The fact that Fox news condones or glorifies Trump’s deeds or those of his supporters, while CNN supposedly bashes him or his supporters doesn’t necessarily indicate that these two channels, both controlled by the wealthy, are divided on Trump. It is more an indication that their coverage of him and his supporters is for the purpose of keeping the American people fighting with each other instead of together against the wealthy and the powerful.

[From “The Trump Age: Critical Questions” published on CounterPunch on June 23, 2023]”
― Louis Yako

“[T]he mainstream media is not interested in creating understanding or complicating our understanding about legitimate problems like white supremacy or racism, wars and violence, gender and sexuality, refugees, and so on. Rather, the mainstream media is more interested in maintaining the level of misunderstanding that ensures that all of us, including white people, don’t ask the right questions that will lead us to discover a very simple, yet troubling fact which is this: our real enemy is not the poor marginalized white people, including many who were misled into supporting Trump. Our enemy is not the immigrants, the Blacks, the LGBTQ2+ communities, the Muslims, and so on. The most dangerous enemy is the very small percentage of the extremely rich and powerful individuals that are using every social and psychological tool at their disposal to make everyone think that everyone else is their enemy. The main purpose of the ruling class, then, is to govern all these different bodies through various narratives that make each group an enemy of one or more groups in the same society. This is precisely what it means to ruin the fabric of society to maintain full control over it.

[From “The Trump Age: Critical Questions” published on CounterPunch on June 23, 2023]”
― Louis Yako

“CNN and Fox news are not divided over Trump. They are united in dividing the American people through him.

[From “The Trump Age: Critical Questions” published on CounterPunch on June 23, 2023]”
― Louis Yako

“A rant is the attempt to overcome an opposing position through anger because the individual hasn’t been able to defeat it through fact. Therefore, to engage in a rant is to admit defeat.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“To redefine something to make it more acceptable means that it wasn’t and the definition isn’t.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough