Caitlin Johnstone's "psy war" — a good way to resist propaganda

© 2019 Peter Free

 

12 September 2019

 

 

Propaganda enslaves us

 

Caitlin Johnstone, writing about generating effective resistance to Oligarchic tyranny, said this:

 

 

What I do advocate, over and over and over again . . . is a decentralized guerrilla psywar against the institutions which enable the powerful to manipulate the way ordinary people think, act and vote.

 

I talk about narrative and propaganda all the time because they are the root of all our problems.

 

As long as the plutocrat-controlled media are able to manufacture consent for the status quo upon which those plutocrats built their respective empires, there will never be the possibility of a successful revolution.

 

People will never rebel against a system while they’re being successfully propagandized not to. It will never, ever happen.

 

By psywar I mean a grassroots psychological war against the establishment propaganda machine with the goal of weakening public trust in pro-empire narratives.

 

By decentralized I mean we should each take responsibility for weakening public trust in the propaganda machine in our own way, rather than depending on centralized groups and organizations.

 

By guerrilla I mean constantly attacking different fronts in different ways, never staying with the same line of attack for long enough to allow the propagandists to develop a counter-narrative.

 

The only consistency should be in attacking the propaganda machine as visibly as possible.

 

Without an effective propaganda machine, the empire cannot rule.

 

Once we’ve crippled public trust in that machine, we’ll exist in a very different world already, and the next step will present itself from there. Until then, the attack on establishment propaganda should be our foremost priority.

 

© 2019 Caitlin Johnstone, How to Defeat The Empire, CaitlinJohnstone.com (10 September 2019)

 

 

Johnstone's psy war idea parallels Chris Hedges' — regarding "prophets"

 

See that one explained, here.

 

 

I agree with Johnstone and Hedges

 

You cannot go anywhere "real" — if your mind has been captured by lies.

 

This idea emulates the Eastern Hemisphere's meditatively spiritual one — which indicates that we have to examine the operations of our own mind, so as to understand where it leads us astray. Taking out the trash, so to speak.

 

The process requires attentive work. Which unfortunately means that few people do it.

 

Ergo, Hedges' emphasis on the utility of prophets — who are, we recognize, a vanishingly rare species.

 

 

The moral? — We are shackled by our constantly propagandized minds

 

Those with energy and integrity, ethically speaking, "should" break free.

 

Breathe freedom.

 

Recruit others to the same air.