'The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim." -Gustave Le Bon
“A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.” - Anthony Daniels
Falsehoods
By my reckoning, there are four main types of falsehoods, three of them existing on a continuum. An attempt to mislead without explicitly lying is at one end, then white lies and finally outright lies. The fourth category, divorced from straight line progression, is the noble lie. In this case, seeing as how you are lying for the 'greater good', anything goes.
Within these categories there are distinctions. If you seek to mislead but are squeamish about explicitly lying, you can do so by emphasizing parts of a story at the expense of other parts or by neglecting to mention certain elements at all. Even more fundamentally, you can just avoid the story altogether.
White lies are supposed to be small lies, minor in impact, utilized in order to spare the recipient embarrassment or pain – although the definition has widened somewhat in the recent past and it now seems to include lies that avoid discomfort in the teller also. Outright falsehoods ought to be easier to define and, for most of us, they are; except for those that believe in 'your reality and my reality'. A belief in relative moral values will inevitably blur the lines. As for the rest of us, we know at the time of telling untruths whether our motivation is for personal gain, to cover up a misdeed or to do someone else down.
You may think it harsh to include misdirection in a definition of falsehoods. However, in intent and in practice, it fits the mould. If someone intends you to be misled and you are in fact misled, the same ends are accomplished. In any event, it may well be that the teller would have done whatever was necessary to achieve their ends, including telling an outright lie, if necessary.
And, even in the modern age, there is still some degree of opprobrium directed at liars. However, in some circles there are no limits to dissembling, provided that the cause you are furthering is sufficiently pristine so as to pass muster. In these circumstances, the lie is a noble one and it can fit any category. As an overall concept, the noble lie serves a particular cause. However, the specific lies told in furthering that cause can range from mere bias to the most egregious lies possible.
The cause
But who decides which cause is sufficiently compelling to warrant the ends justifying the means? This may be easier to answer if we move from the private sphere to the public. After all, in private each person will have their own individual reasons, even if self interest is probably the most prevalent; whereas a public cause, something for the 'greater good', subsumes the individual into the collective. Nonetheless, somebody, somewhere still has to decide what it is and, having done so, then ensure that others are convinced of it, too. It is then that the noble lie is justified.
It's the same argument as the perennial debate concerning what best describes the proper limits on free speech. In that scenario, whichever way you cut it and whichever view you subscribe to, as soon as the state decides that there are some things that cannot be said, a subjective judgement has been made. It matters not that this judgement may be as a result of legislation and/or reflect majority opinion. It matters not whether whatever has been banned is, objectively, abhorrent. And it matters not that the administration banning whatever it may be is well intentioned and reasonable. The only thing that matters is that an exception has been made, a precedent set, and the absolute right to free speech has been circumscribed.
It may well be that, in order to create a perfect world (if such a thing was ever a possibility), some limits on what people are allowed to say would be necessary. However, as is often the case, better is the enemy of good and the particular has been prioritized at the expense of the general. Thus, when a future administration, not quite so wedded to the First Amendment, wishes to add to the list of words to be categorized as 'wrong-thought', the precedent already exists and what may have started as a laudable endeavor has given rise to one that emphatically isn't.
In the same way, even if you were to believe that lying to the people who elected you was acceptable in some circumstances - in order to serve the 'greater good', even if that good has been decided by you and not necessarily fully disclosed to the public – once you have embarked on that path, you have figuratively broken the seal. It becomes progressively easier to justify the next lie.
For the purposes of this article, the Covid narrative is the cause; by which I mean the assertion that Covid is dangerous, that the 'vaccines' are good, lock-downs and masks are instruments of salvation and so forth. I don't propose another deep dive exploring why Covid has become the weapon of choice for the Establishment – I have covered that extensively elsewhere. And picking apart individual motivation is always fraught with danger, unless intent is explicitly set out; even then though, there may well be obfuscation.
I have found that it's usually a straight choice between corrupt and stupid, with no way of being sure which of the two is most applicable. I tend towards the belief that, as a general rule of thumb, those higher up the food chain trend towards malign intent, whilst the facilitators breathing less rarefied air may generally suffer from a lack of grey matter. But there will be exceptions and it's difficult to be sure.
What we can say with certainty is that, once an orthodoxy is established – for whatever reason – it will not be allowed to fail. No amount of evidence to the contrary will change the narrative as parroted by the powers that be. This is clearly the antithesis of proper decision making and a prime example of confirmation bias, driven by ideology lording it over reason. It leads to justifications and statements risible enough that anybody free of the grip of mass delusion can only observe with mouth agape.
This arrogance and absolute belief in their own rectitude and wisdom is characteristic of a group of people who also, unfortunately, have the means to influence others. This is to state the obvious and, to a certain degree, it must always have been thus. Certainly, if we are to place any store in literature, great wealth and hubris have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship for millennia. Nonetheless, there is a coordination of effort, both between oligarchs themselves and between this group and the state and supranational organisations, that is more threatening now than at any other time; the fruits of their labors are apparent over the past eighteen months, with power to add.
Terminology
And, as is usual in these matters, control of the narrative is of paramount importance. The terms of the debate need to be set, the language needs to be defined (or re-defined) from the outset. Thus we have words such as 'vaccine' and 'hesitant' and terms such as 'anti-vaxxer'. Those with longer memories will remember 'denier' in another realm and, of course, 'conspiracy theorist' has done sterling work anywhere a questioning of the official version of the truth has been attempted.
These terms have been coined presumptively, pejoratively. There is no attempt to justify their use with anything that resembles real evidence, because it's not necessary. The assumption is that if something is repeated often enough and widely enough, it will automatically be validated. The sheer weight of repetition will do the task and, over time, it will become more and more difficult to revisit the origins of a belief without appearing to be unhinged.
There is obvious high handedness in this methodology. For example, the inference is that if someone is 'hesitant' they are timid or unsure, but bound to come around in the end once they have fully understood what they need to do; they can then join those who were brave enough and intelligent enough to commit earlier. It doesn't occur to anybody on the other side of the debate that, whilst there are undoubtedly people who have been hesitant or unsure, this is almost entirely due to the lack of information about the 'vaccines', combined with overwhelming evidence that they are dangerous. In other words, these people have sensibly reserved judgement until more is known.
But there are also people who aren't hesitant at all; they are vehemently opposed and will likely continue to be so. No matter; there's a word for them, too. Anti-vaxxer. And once again, it doesn't adequately describe the group as the vast majority of these people will be as vaccinated as everybody else; it's just these 'vaccines' that they object to.
The hubris and presumption behind these labels is typical of a certain type of person and demonstrates a failure to make a case, for to call someone an anti-vaxxer, whether they are or not, is to presume that this is necessarily a negative. Any certainty that this is so needs to be evidenced, to be shown that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, anyone who is generally anti vaccine is indeed a Stone Age deplorable. After all, if it's that obvious, it shouldn't be difficult to prove.
But it's noticeable that serious attempts to justify the anti-vaxxer rhetoric are not generally made. I guess it's one those times when the science is 'settled', even though it's likely that very few laypeople have ever felt compelled to examine scientific papers on vaccine efficacy; the instant experts on news channels and White House briefings don't know either way. For the record, the evidence is very far from compelling, as it shows that improved nutrition and less exposure to micro-organisms, rather than inoculations, are the main reasons for the decline in mortality and increased life expectancy.
In all cases, endemic diseases were already virtually eliminated by the time various vaccines were introduced and those diseases still without effective vaccines (such as scarlet fever) or without a widespread vaccine (typhoid), have fared the same in human populations as those neutered by vaccines. (1)(2) To mention uncomfortable truths such as these will, of course, identify a person as a tin foil hatter. Even the word 'vaccine' itself has undergone a makeover, its meaning now extended to experimental gene therapies. To label them thus is not to do them a disservice; the drug companies themselves were referring to mRNA technology in these terms until it became necessary to call them vaccines instead, in order that they might receive Emergency Use Authorisation.
This seeming laziness and lack of rigour is a feature of the authoritarian narrative. Those that presume to instruct us in all aspects of Covid are not seized with any desire to prove any of their assertions to us. From masks, to asymptomatic spread, lock-downs, social distancing and curfews through to the 'vaccines' themselves, they have trotted out a biased statement or two, ignored the wealth of evidence which refutes their assertions and then repeated their lines ad infinitum. It is lazy and demonstrates a deep contempt for their audience; i.e., us.
A brief glossary of other terms which have been recently suborned:
Pandemic – flu season
Herd Immunity – six month grace period until your booster shot
Case – false positive test
Surge – sudden increase in false positive tests
Vaccinated – just as likely to get sick and spread disease, if not more so
Safe and effective – dangerous and pointless
Fact Checker – Facebook subsidiary
These are, in fact, examples of outright lies. There is nothing subtle about it. It's not a question of emphasis. They are simply untrue. And the only way to ensure that these lies are repeated ad nauseam is to control the setting of the narrative and the means of communicating it.
In practice
What I am describing is, of course, propaganda, which is very far from being a 'novel' phenomenon. Whilst the word itself does have negative connotations it is still preferable, in the eyes of its practitioners, to using the word 'lies'. But, as I've set out, any change in emphasis, an incomplete account, omission or attempt to denigrate a person or thing unjustly (in the absence of evidence) is lying and that is exactly what propaganda sets out to do.
It is not enough just to misstate your own position, either. It is also necessary to trash the opposition, marginalize them, perhaps deny their existence to limit their influence. It is important to crush dissent, not just because it dilutes the impact of the narrative, but also because it demoralizes the opposition and misleads them into thinking that they are fewer in number than they really are.
So, the familiar litany of tactics is deployed. Keep your message simple, never deviate from it, ensure that it is repeated endlessly and widely circulated, whilst at the same time de-platforming and deriding those that disagree. This plan of attack is familiar but effective nonetheless and I don't intend to spend time listing examples; others have done that already.
And whilst it is clear that there is some co-ordination between media outlets and government officials, due to the shared talking points and specific phrases that they treat us to, there is a lot more to it than that. The effect of Covid propaganda has been to frighten people into compliance, but it might be tempting to think that this has been a side effect, rather than a primary aim. Tempting, but completely wrong. We have been manipulated deliberately and systematically by officials and departments who knew exactly what they were doing. Further, government and Big Tech are officially in bed together. The likes of Twitter and Facebook work for the US government. Don't believe me? Read on.
Nudge Units
The term Nudge Units is shorthand, a generic designation for teams of people whose job it is to change our behavior. This is accomplished by not only defining the desired end state, but in actively pursuing the policies that will achieve it. There is, of course, a difference between a government using its powers of persuasion in an attempt to do whatever it considers to be 'the right thing' and a government lying to us to accomplish aims that couldn't be justified if they told us the truth. Clearly, it would be nice if the state had done due diligence and what they wanted us to do was actually the right thing, but that would likely become clear in due course. Persuasion, as defined here, would have to include the marshaling of indisputable facts.
But these units are not constrained by truth, if that's not what's going to get it done. Their job is to achieve the desired outcome by manipulating the population, using methods that go well beyond what most people would find acceptable. Technically, they are utilizing behavioral science, a field of study that has achieved increasing prominence in the past decade. Understanding how people may react to a crisis and then tailoring your response would seem to be sensible and that's where these units may have started. However, it doesn't take much imagination to spot that there might also be opportunities to use people's fears to get them to accept measures that aren't necessary, as well.
“Nudge Theory is about denying certain choices or making other choices harder. It is used to avoid having arguments and instead to manipulate people without them realizing.”(3)
It's a fair bet that nearly every Western country has them. In fact, some countries have several although, as might be imagined, they generally don't seek the limelight.
These teams don't need much in the way of raw material. The play-book is well thumbed. Ideally, you need an organisation that has credibility, at least in the eyes of the uninformed, to act as an authority to be replied upon. Worldwide, step forward the WHO, the head of which served on the politburo of a Marxist-Leninist party in Ethiopia; who isn't even a medical doctor.(4) In the US, the CDC carries the torch. Other countries either rely on their own experts or the WHO, also. As long as the source is of sufficient stature, the content of their output matters not. The overwhelmingly important thing is that the petty tyrants and manipulators can point to the source as their catch all justification for everything they do.
UK
At least ten government departments have behavioral insight teams. The eponymous original, Behavioural Insight Team (BIT), which was set up in 2010, is now a profit making enterprise with offices around the world. Then there is a unit called RICU, whose mandate is to fake grassroots campaigns using Non Governmental Organisations (NGO) which, in practice, means social media companies for the most part.
Number 10 Downing Street has the Rapid Response Unit, also targeted at social media, whose mission is to combat 'misinformation' and to ensure that public health campaigns are promoted. The Counter Disinformation Cell also targets social media and 'fake news', because clearly two other departments doing the same isn't enough. Of course, spending our tax dollars attempting to censor lawful speech by getting videos posted by doctors and medical experts removed from YouTube is justifiable, somehow.
The Government Communications HQ (GCHQ) has a remit limited to targeting state actors who post 'misinformation' and the army's 77th Brigade works with the Rapid Response Unit to target online Brits who don't share the views of organisations such as the World Health Organisation.
SAGE is a body that coordinates scientific advice to the government and SPI-B (the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour, a team of behavioral scientists) reports to them. Their Orwellian mission is to provide expertise
“aimed at anticipating and helping people adhere to interventions that are recommended by medical or epidemiological experts.”(5)
Helping people to adhere? Really? SPI-B are the team who openly discussed ways to weaponize fear. There are other such teams; seemingly most big government departments need to keep abreast of the best ways to manipulate their target audience. SPI-B advised the government to message in the following way.
“Anyone can get it. Anyone can spread it”
“Don't put your family and friends in danger.”
“Stay home for your family.”
“If you go out, you can spread it. People will die.”
There is no attempt to be constructive or balanced. It's scare-mongering, pure and simple.
US
The American system utilizes an infrastructure established after the disastrous 2016 Presidential election, to ensure that the 2018 mid term elections were a return to the correct script. Whilst it was initially purely targeted at elections (and was used in the 2020 election, too), it is clear that the same template has been used during the 'pandemic'.
In another prime example of doublespeak, a group called the Defending Digital Democracy Project (D3P), established in July 2017, dedicated itself to ensuring that any 'misinformation' out there that may benefit the Republicans was identified and neutralized. They also concerned themselves with unauthorized hacking and had they limited themselves to providing solutions to that problem alone, their credibility may have survived scrutiny. But the cyber security sections of their writings are regurgitations of other writings and, almost certainly, a duplication of existing guidance; they are, though, an effective distraction from the real purpose of D3P's work.
Their publication, the Cyber Security Campaign Playbook contains the following passage, concerning aims:
(to) “establish contact with key social media platforms and notify them if you find false of misleading information” and to “think in advance how to handle fake or slanted news.”(6)
Neither of those stated aims has anything to do with hacking. Additionally, the group helpfully produced another three playbooks for all parts of the election process. In the State Local Playbook, we find this gem; their definition of 'misinformation'.
“The dissemination of information, true or false, to manipulate public opinion and/or influence behavior.”(7)
So, there seems to be a problem with facts being shared provided they offend somebody's sense of propriety; the tortured logic behind the whole enterprise is laid bare. Nobody ostensibly non partisan would consider the act of telling somebody a fact manipulative and, additionally, why would anybody be writing a guide to assist state election officials in attempting to nullify stories containing the truth?
There are other Orwellian statements, such as:
“Maintaining public trust is most effectively accomplished when election officials – across parties and jurisdictions – speak with one co-ordinated voice.”(8)
Another group of academics (inevitably) published a document called the Long Fuse Report in June 2021. This serves as an after action report on the 2020 election and the continuing fallout. It provides copious detail as to what is considered 'misinformation' and who is guilty of disseminating it, but for our purposes the introduction stands out, containing a statement on 'misinformation' that goes far wider that any focus on elections.
This report acknowledges that there is no federal agency whose job it is to combat said 'misinformation', but does so in order to draw attention to this omission and then to correct it. What isn't mentioned is that the federal government has not thought it wise to set up a department whose express purpose would be to censor free speech. That activity needs to be conducted under the radar, not in plain sight.
In all of this literature, there is one assumption that is never questioned and it is this lack of curiosity that gives the lie to the whole endeavor.; it is also the same foundational flaw that we see in the Covid narrative. At no point is any evidence provided or even alluded to that actually proves that US elections actually are secure and worthy of public trust. Had these documents formed the final parts of a comprehensive review which had found that elections in the US were overwhelmingly free of fraud and manipulation, there may have been some virtue in providing a guide enabling officials to communicate that truth in the most effective way.
However, as public records indicate, America has comprehensive problems with the security of elections, especially in big cities, and any number of (usually Democrat) officials have been convicted of election fraud. Any playbook that ignores this truth reads like an instruction manual for how best to lie, manipulate and silence dissent and, given that they were written two years before the 2020 election, points to a well established plan to gaslight the public about the result of an election that wouldn't take place for another two years, but which the authors were already keen to define as authentic. It makes you wonder what they knew that the rest of us didn't.
In any event, the mechanism for monitoring and reporting infractions is something called the Cyber-Security Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), created during Trump's term. This agency and its divisions are the middleman between government and the social media companies. Election officials complain to CISA, CISA complains to Twitter, YouTube or any of the other companies. In this manner, the government gets around the First Amendment; by pretending that it's all the doing of private companies and there is nothing they can do about it.
It's plain to see that the same sort of censorship that exists against anyone questioning election integrity also exists against the 'anti-vaxxers'. The same playbook is being used and, whilst it won't be state election officials calling up an NGO acting as a middleman, it will be other government entities in the CDC, NIH and so forth. The exact same process is being used to silence opposing views about Covid. And the fact that the fig leaf of plausible deniability can be stripped away; that the collusion between government entities and private business is so easily proven just doesn't matter, because the people that would allow reporting on the subject are the very ones who would suffer from it, so they de-platform and censor to their hearts content.
Recently, another actor entered the fray. It can be amusing to note the self aggrandizing titles of some of these groups; in this case, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, a one man operation whose actual role is diametrically opposed to that which is inferred by its name. It was this group that issued a report, which the media reflexively labelled a 'bombshell', identifying the 'Disinformation Dozen'(9), otherwise known as people exercising their First Amendment right to disagree with the state, whilst referencing evidence to back up their assertions. Strangely, this tiny operation (funded by the usual anonymous donors) possesses enough clout to have its report forwarded to the White House and immediately quoted as a source.
There are good reasons for the social media companies to do as they're told, which revolve around their status as platforms, rather than publishers and the vast difference in market capitalization of those categories of stocks. Platforms are valued at about 50 times earnings, publishers at 3 times earnings. In holding the power of Section 230 over them, which carries the threat of removal of platform status, the state has them over a barrel, provided the companies view their duty to their shareholders as the number one priority. In this way, it can be seen that the social media companies are effectively an extension of the state, whether they like it or not.
Germany
The Germans have demonstrated a ruthlessness which tops even the British government's use of fear and intimidation. Two leaked papers have, in combination, revealed the moral vacuum in state leadership and, particularly, at the Ministry of the Interior.. The first one, which came to light in June 2020, states that the panic over Covid is costing more lives than it is saving; that it is not as bad as the flu season of 2017/18, that the people dying are at the end of their lives and are, in any case, vulnerable to any circulating virus. Naturally, the standard governmental response has been to attack the messenger rather than address any of the points raised.(10)
The next body blow came when a paper “How to get Covid-19 under control”, the so-called Panic Paper, was leaked from the Ministry of the Interior, once more. There, the government was recommended to use a shock strategy to motivate people to comply with hygiene rules. In particular, the fear of an agonizing death by suffocation of beloved relatives should be invoked, for which one could be responsible oneself if, for example, one does not wash one’s hands thoroughly enough.
“Children are unlikely to suffer from the epidemic”: Wrong. Children are easily infected, even with exit restrictions, e.g. from the neighbours’ children. When they infect their parents and one of them dies in agony at home and they feel they are to blame for forgetting to wash their hands after playing, for example, it is the most terrible thing a child will ever experience.”(11)
In an entirely predictable development,the press downplayed it, fell back on the well worn narrative of far right conspiracy theorists and generally memory holed it. I would be surprised if a majority of Germans even know about it now and the paper was leaked in February 2021.
WHO
Even the World Health Organisation is getting in on the act. Not content with dishing out alarmist rhetoric – such as their infamous assertion that the death rate from Covid was 3.4% and flip flopping on mask advice and lock-downs, to name but two issues – the supranational organisation now deems it necessary to call for the use of “digital health” and AI to fight 'misinformation' about Covid.
Perhaps in a bid to lead the way, its European director has established a unit that uses behavioral insights to understand 'vaccine hesitancy' and then to use that knowledge to overcome it, which all sounds remarkably familiar. The AI tool is called EARS (for the snappily titled Early AI Supported Response and Social Listening Tool, which doesn't fit the acronym at all) and it just so happens to fully formed already, the better to check blogs, news articles and online forums in twenty countries.(12)
Given that it wishes to act as well as monitor, it would not be in the least bit surprising to find the WHO doing its civic duty and reporting people it disagrees with to hosting platforms and also taking steps to promote its own narrative. It is likely that bot farms will feature in this effort. At some level. It is known that even blue check-mark accounts, those allegedly verified and, in Twitter's opinion, worthy of public interest are often automated bots. It's impossible to know how many social media accounts, which are supportive of the Covid narrative, are actually genuine accounts.
It is vital to understand the importance of volume. If it appears to both the true believers and to the skeptics that the overwhelming majority of people are in favor of the official version of events, it is invigorating for the faithful and demoralizing for the unbelievers. Big numbers also allow the state to augment its own legitimacy by once more quoting dubious sources and unverified information as if they are Biblical texts.
Mass Psychosis
“It is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer, but man himself who is man's greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics,which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes.”(13)
Mass Psychosis occurs when a large portion of society loses touch with reality and descends into delusions. An extreme example would be the witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which were clearly bereft of logic; totalitarianism in the twentieth century would also be apposite. It progresses via psychogenic triggers, whereby a flood of negative emotions drives an individual into a state of panic, which is necessarily in need of relief. However, rather than facing up to whatever is causing the panic and defeating it, there is instead a tendency to lapse into a psychotic break where reality is reordered rather than tackled and this new reality must, perforce, encompass delusions.
This state of affairs can come about under its own steam, but is much more likely to be deliberately induced, by manipulating events so that successive waves of terror are interspersed with periods of calm and relative normality, but this normality isn't a reversion to the mean, but rather a progressive diminution of rights and privileges. Confusion, contradiction and clear fabrications are all tactics that are used to create panic and despair.
The idea is that, when in the depths of despondency, people will accept any solution that is proffered, even if it is sub-optimal, on the basis that something is better than nothing. They then rationalize this new normal as a necessary state of affairs because of whatever the scare was that precipitated it. If the scare was a lie, a delusion, but it has been accepted without question, they have incorporated delusions into their new version of reality.
Social isolation is an important prerequisite, if the intention is to maximize effectiveness; conditioned reflexes are more easily instilled in isolation and the power of positive examples is diminished, as those who can warn against what they see unfolding are also isolated and less able to spread the word.
“There is much that is comparable between the strange reaction of the citizens of (totalitarianism) and their culture on the one hand and the reactions of the sick schizophrenic on the other.”(14)
Some states have been better at hiding their propaganda activities; the US apparatus, while apparent to anybody interested in seeking it out, seems more benign than those of the UK or Germany, although I suspect that this is due to a lack of information becoming public, rather than an absence of very similar units. But that hasn't stopped them being successful in their mission as even as late as June 2021, 71% of Democrats still thought people should stay home as much as possible, as against 13% of Republicans.
Interestingly, 64% of independents also think life should be returning to normal.(15) While this may be encouraging on the one hand, it also demonstrates how susceptible certain groups of people are. Indeed, the Brits have been even more prone to collective delusion; the Telegraph reported that the British public at one stage believed that the death rate from Covid was between 6% and 7%.(16)
Conclusion
At some point, you might think, self reflective people might start to ask themselves why, if the cause is just, so many lies need to be told. Regrettably, the totalitarians of the Left have never been troubled by lies and, if we are at all concerned about facts, at the heart of all this is an intention to deceive. We have been conditioned to have such low standards that lying is accepted without question as long as it for a worthy cause, as defined by the ruling class. If doesn't always have to be this way, but it will be if the Left or their surrogates are in charge as there is a greater acceptance of propaganda as a weapon of choice.
The first falsehood is the important one; once you're committed, it may very well be necessary to lie again in order to protect the narrative and what may have started out as a 'white lie' can transform into a something grotesque, step by step. If we are feeling charitable, we might posit that the propaganda effort was more successful than intended, that the end state wasn't supposed to be paralysing fear. However, it that were truly the case, we should have seen an effort to dial it back a bit and utilise persuasion rather than fear. Which we haven't.
The lies keep coming and even the very recent past becomes a foreign country. The rhetoric about 'flattening the curve', the false description of 'vaccines' which are, in reality, so ineffective that they require a booster after eight months are just two casualties of this war on truth, but the state has calculated (correctly, so far) that they won't be held to account provided they keep the vast majority of people fearful and compliant.
I suspect they realize that they are not playing to the entire audience; that there is a significant minority who can clearly see the joins and are able to unscramble truth from fiction. Ordinarily, you might think that this would be a terminal problem for a false narrative, but if it is supported by the Fourth Estate, it seems that nobody has the reach to expose such malfeasance to the masses. But is does leave us with a curious dichotomy; whilst there are a large number of people who seem to believe whatever they are told, day to day interactions also reveal a substantial cohort who know that they are being lied to and, in a number of cases, why.
It's impossible to know whether the Establishment realises that its version of ongoing events is as widely compromised as it is, or whether they do know it and don't care. If recent form is any guide, I suspect that there is a large measure of ignorance involved. After all, these are the same people who didn't see Brexit or Trump coming. But whilst they may not think that we can see through their lies, they must be acutely aware of the weakness of their narrative, which is why they are putting so much effort into making people fearful – frightened people don't think clearly.
Those people that aren't fearful, who have necessarily retained the ability to think critically are the obvious enemies of the regime, as they haven't been captured at all, but they can be picked off one by one provided that the silent majority, the ones who know there is a problem but who don't want to rock the boat, remains quiescent.
Propaganda isn't subtle and, no matter who is using it, it really isn't difficult to spot. It's always light on verifiable facts, heavy on rhetoric, overstated and oversimplified and designed to appeal to emotion rather than reason. Any state that utilities it is clearly lying to you and it seems that Western 'democracies' have institutionalized this practice. How else to describe the creation of specific units that help them to lie more convincingly?
States have colluded with mass media companies to ensure that their lies are consistent and widespread and to silence dissent. This partnership isn't unspoken and it's not telepathic. It's organised and there are manuals. Retrospectively, it should have been obvious that formal coalitions exist and that strategies have been coordinated. The propaganda effort, across media and across geographical boundaries, has been remarkably consistent.
In conclusion, it's entirely possible to be appalled at the lengths to which the Establishment has gone, while still endorsing the intent behind it; to realize that they have overdone it, but the cause is so important that being a little overzealous is preferable to not being zealous enough. If that is your position, if you buy into the noble lie, you haven't been paying attention. It isn't just a moral question of whether lying is ever excusable. It's more fundamental than that. The state needs to lie to the people because it doesn't have a case. It's not propagandizing us because it has our best interests at heart; it's lying to us because it doesn't.
It's really not that difficult to work out once panic and fear recede. At the heart of all this is the conceit that fundamental rights need to be set aside in order to deal with a pandemic which is the biggest challenge to humanity's existence for the past hundred years or so (I know, it was climate change until January 2020). And yet those rights were enshrined centuries ago and have proved to be robust enough to have survived far worse pandemics than this. Are we arrogant enough to believe that the US Constitution and common law have been crafted by people who lacked foresight, who were naïve?
Look at the evidence around you in your everyday lives, not at what you are being told by your TV and then compare it to the narrative. In reality, the emperor has no clothes, but the state is spending our tax dollars on functionaries who job it is to deceive us into believing that he does. If that doesn't anger you, nothing will.
Citations
Claire Fox, Director, Institute of Ideas. Dodsworth, Laura. A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, pg 62. Pinter & Martin. Kindle Edition.
https://rairfoundation.com/blinded-by-beijing-world-health-organization-chief-is-a-china-funded-marxist-revolutionary/
Cyber Security Campaign Playbook, D3P.
State Local Playbook, D3P.
State Local Playbook, D3P.
https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ugd/f4d9b9_b7cedc0553604720b7137f8663366ee5.pdf
https://fort-russ.com/2020/06/german-official-leaks-report-denouncing-corona-as-a-global-false-alarm/
Dodsworth, Laura. A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic (p. 68). Pinter & Martin. Kindle Edition.
https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/11/covid19-pandemic-misinformation-technology-vaccines/?utm_source=STAT+Newsletters&utm_campaign=7814cedc6a-health_tech_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8cab1d7961-7814cedc6a-124972617
The Symbolic Life, Carl Jung
The Rape of the Mind, Joost Meerlo
https://news.gallup.com/poll/350480/life-becomes-quasi-normal-virus-fears-fade.aspx
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/05/britons-scaredcoronavirus-infection-rest-world/