When propaganda attacks..

Do you know your propaganda?

Can you tell when someone is trying to manipulate you?

Do you trust everything that the government - bless their black little hearts - tells you?

Or maybe you've heard these before :

• "Iraq has Weapons of Mass Destruction"
• "Saddam Hussein helped fund and trained Al Quaeda"
• "the government is winning"
• "The LTTE are the sole representatives of the tamil people"

The problem is that people don't understand how prevalent and insidious propaganda is.. The fact that we are constantly being manipulated from all sides.

So, in the interests of helping people understand propaganda, here's Goebbels Principles of Propaganda

1. Propagandist must have access to intelligence concerning events and public opinion.
2. Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority.
   1. It must issue all the propaganda directives.
   2. It must explain propaganda directives to important officials and maintain their morale.
   3. It must oversee other agencies' activities which have propaganda consequences
3. The propaganda consequences of an action must be considered in planning that action.
4. Propaganda must affect the enemy's policy and action.
   1. By suppressing propagandistically desirable material which can provide the enemy with useful intelligence
   2. By openly disseminating propaganda whose content or tone causes the enemy to draw the desired conclusions
   3. By goading the enemy into revealing vital information about himself
   4. By making no reference to a desired enemy activity when any reference would discredit that activity
5. Declassified, operational information must be available to implement a propaganda campaign
6. To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium.
7. Credibility alone must determine whether propaganda output should be true or false.
8. The purpose, content and effectiveness of enemy propaganda; the strength and effects of an expose; and the nature of current propaganda campaigns determine whether enemy propaganda should be ignored or refuted.
9. Credibility, intelligence, and the possible effects of communicating determine whether propaganda materials should be censored.
10. Material from enemy propaganda may be utilized in operations when it helps diminish that enemy's prestige or lends support to the propagandist's own objective.
11. Black rather than white propaganda may be employed when the latter is less credible or produces undesirable effects.
12. Propaganda may be facilitated by leaders with prestige.
13. Propaganda must be carefully timed.
    1. The communication must reach the audience ahead of competing propaganda.
    2. A propaganda campaign must begin at the optimum moment
    3. A propaganda theme must be repeated, but not beyond some point of diminishing effectiveness
14. Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.
    1. They must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses
    2. They must be capable of being easily learned
    3. They must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate situations
    4. They must be boomerang-proof
15. Propaganda to the home front must prevent the raising of false hopes which can be blasted by future events.
16. Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level.
    1. Propaganda must reinforce anxiety concerning the consequences of defeat
    2. Propaganda must diminish anxiety (other than concerning the consequences of defeat) which is too high and which cannot be reduced by people themselves
17. Propaganda to the home front must diminish the impact of frustration.
    1. Inevitable frustrations must be anticipated
    2. Inevitable frustrations must be placed in perspective
18. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.
19. Propaganda cannot immediately affect strong counter-tendencies; instead it must offer some form of action or diversion, or both.

From a propaganda/manipulative point of view Hitler and Goebbels were geniuses. They excelled at making the people dance to their tune. Although nowadays the system is more subtle and therefore more dangerous, the system still exists. When you next look around you, when you read the news and the posters on the wall. The advertisements and the rumours, see if you can spot Goebbels' handiword on them.