Below is an excerpt from Adolf Hitler's idiotic book Mein Kampf, vol. 1, ch. 6. If you read this chapter you can not help but see the similarties with the Bush Admin. propaganda. I edited it a bit to highlight the strongest points. The parts I edited out were mostly Hitler writing about how good the U.S. & U.K. propaganda was during WWI and how poor German propaganda was during this time. I have also placed in BOLD the most obvious Bush strategies. I know you Bush supporters are going to have a fit but I hope you do realize that if you had been born in Germany in 1900 you would have more than likely supported Hitler as well since most Hitler supporters had the same mentality of modern day Bush supporters.
Read and make up your own minds:
EVER since I have been scrutinizing political events, I have taken a tremendous interest in propagandist activity….And I soon realized that the correct use of propaganda is a true art….But it was not until the War that it became evident what immense results could be obtained by a correct application of propaganda….The second really decisive question was this: To whom should propaganda be addressed? To the scientifically trained intelligentsia or to the less educated masses?.... Once we understand how necessary it is for propaganda to be adjusted to the broad mass, the following rule results: It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific instruction, for instance….The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out….The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly….The purpose of propaganda is not to provide interesting distraction for blasé young gentlemen, but to convince, and what I mean is to convince the masses. But the masses are slow moving, and they always require a certain time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are repeated thousands of times will the masses finally remember them….All advertising, whether in the field of business or politics, achieves success through the continuity and sustained uniformity of its application….Here, too, the example of enemy war propaganda was typical; limited to a few points, devised exclusively for the masses, carried on with indefatigable persistence. Once the basic ideas and methods of execution were recognized as correct, they were applied throughout the whole War without the slightest change. At first the claims of the propaganda were so impudent that people thought it insane; later, it got on people's nerves; and in the end, it was believed.
[This message was edited by mjaytee on March 22, 2004 at 09:20 PM.]
Read and make up your own minds:
EVER since I have been scrutinizing political events, I have taken a tremendous interest in propagandist activity….And I soon realized that the correct use of propaganda is a true art….But it was not until the War that it became evident what immense results could be obtained by a correct application of propaganda….The second really decisive question was this: To whom should propaganda be addressed? To the scientifically trained intelligentsia or to the less educated masses?.... Once we understand how necessary it is for propaganda to be adjusted to the broad mass, the following rule results: It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific instruction, for instance….The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out….The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly….The purpose of propaganda is not to provide interesting distraction for blasé young gentlemen, but to convince, and what I mean is to convince the masses. But the masses are slow moving, and they always require a certain time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are repeated thousands of times will the masses finally remember them….All advertising, whether in the field of business or politics, achieves success through the continuity and sustained uniformity of its application….Here, too, the example of enemy war propaganda was typical; limited to a few points, devised exclusively for the masses, carried on with indefatigable persistence. Once the basic ideas and methods of execution were recognized as correct, they were applied throughout the whole War without the slightest change. At first the claims of the propaganda were so impudent that people thought it insane; later, it got on people's nerves; and in the end, it was believed.
[This message was edited by mjaytee on March 22, 2004 at 09:20 PM.]
