I have a longstanding fascination with the Soviet Union. There are a lot of different reasons for that: some political and some artistic and cultural.
So on twitter I follow “Soviet Visuals” which features old propaganda posters and other oddities from the Soviet era. Whoever runs it must have seen Spicer’s press conference because they had a great example of crowd manipulation today:
This is a photo of Lenin speaking to a crowd in Petrograd (which then became Leningrad and then became St. Petersburg) in 1920.
Here is crowd for the same speech in “Krasnaya Niva” journal, 1924:
Perhaps the most famous example, and one that inspired the notion of “unperson” in the book 1984 are the following two pictures of Stalin with Nikolai Yezhov, the notorious head of the KGB. It was Yezhov who staged the show trials in the 30’s.
It never occurred to Yezhov that Stalin wouldn’t want anyone alive who knew of the crimes of the 30’s and the lies upon which they were built. But Yezhov was himself executed, though ironically he was briefly made head of the Moscow waterworks after being deposed as head of the KGB.
After his execution the picture was changed – and poof – no Yezhov.
There is a comical aspect to all of this. To CNN’s headline White House press secretary attacks media for accurately reporting inauguration crowds
But it isn’t funny. Dictators obsess about crowd for a reason. Trump sent his Press Secretary to lie for a reason. Trump is having his press conferences take place in the midst of staffers who applaud and will ultimately shout down difficult questions.
So what happens when things go wrong, because the always do? What depths is Trump will to go to. One cannot by this point believe that Trump has any belief that what is true and what is not.
As Orwell wrote in 1984:
He accepted everything. The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford were guilty of the crimes they were charged with. He had never seen the photograph that disproved their guilt. It had never existed, he had invented it. He remembered remembering contrary things, but those were false memories, products of self-deception. How easy it all was! Only surrender, and everything else followed. It was like swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. Nothing had changed except your own attitude: the predestined thing happened in any case. He hardly knew why he had ever rebelled. Everything was easy, except–!
Anything could be true. The so-called laws of Nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. `If I wished,’ O’Brien had said, `I could float off this floor like a soap bubble.’ Winston worked it out. `If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens.’ Suddenly, like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought burst into his mind: `It doesn’t really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination.’ He pushed the thought under instantly. The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a `real’ world where `real’ things happened. But how could there be such a world? What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens.
I think we all know that Trump supporters don’t actually care if what Trump says is true or not – they are more than willing to believe the lie.
And that is what really scares me. In 1984 believers were created from torture.
But Trump doesn’t need any of that. His followers don’t resist his lies, they embrace them without prompting.
How large do you think the Trump core is? 13M or so?
Trump voters said they did not believe his gruff before the election. I think maybe 30% of voters are wired these days to back away and observe. They don’t like anybody’s policies very much.
If good jobs are not forthcoming, I don’t think he gets more than 2 yrs of a free hand unless Dems don’t get a clue. Trump press releases don’t add dollars to a person’s paycheck.
Saw this..Where lefties are stuck today, lol.
“Shorter Reich: The confrontation of the Irresistible Force of populism with the Immovable Object of donor control will result in the Oxymoron of “radical reform.”
I don’t know how big the core is.
Hedrick Smith wrote a good book years ago called the Power Game. In it he suggested the key to a President’s success is holding onto his base.
My guess is 80% of the GOP base is ready to go to War with him.
What I do not know is whether these lies a like a shiney toy that focuses attention from more important things, or whether the lies ARE the important thing.
The election has taught us all to be humble about predicting future outcomes, but the events of the last 48 hours give me some optimism.
The new Administration’s attempts to assert sole authority to determine facts and lies have been rolled out quite clumsily. Spicer’s angry presentation did not gain a broadly fearful and intimidated response from the media and the public; instead, he became the immediate subject of strong ridicule and uproarious laughter. Conway and Priebus also received rough treatment this morning when they attempted to reassert their Administration’s fantastical claims. Republican Congressmembers who can usually be counted on to forward every lie-filled talking point ran away from doing that today. In the end, there are bridges too far, and one seems to have been identified.
I believe that many Americans who participated in yesterday’s Women’s Marches have been made all the more angrier and informed, and more determined to stay in the game, organize and help others transcend misinformation campaigns. The President and Administration officials are now ignoring us and openly insulting us. That has a way of galvanizing a more durable movement.
And we start from a better place than we were with the W. Bush Adminstration. Trump is markedly less popular than W. was, he is doing nothing to grow his relatively small and shrinking base, and the President and Congress are almost certain to be less cohesive than they were in 2001. Finally, we have fewer moderate Congressional Democratic Caucusmembers, and our Movement has gotten better in holding the Dem Caucus accountable. If we do the work and do not surrender to cynicism and despair, I am confident we can hold 41 Senate votes against cloture on many of the unpopular and repellent priorities of the new President and Congressional leaders.
The Johnson and Nixon Adminstrations went from electoral landslides to public abandonment within two years of their historically dominant re-elections. We have been shown how promptly and thoroughly the tide can turn. And Trump enters with extremely shabby public support compared to the support enjoyed by those two Presidents at the onset of their last terms.
I’ve become persuaded by Josh Marshall’s perspectives in response to the new reality:
“…I’ve been surprised at the extent to which right-thinking people are all but threatening themselves with what Trump might do to, collapsing into their own sense of powerlessness. Maybe he’ll jail his opponents! Maybe he’ll call off the 2018 election! Here it is worth remembering things we learned from the campaign. Trump’s one true gift is his ability to get his critics to surrender up their own dignity somehow of their own free will. That is just what he is trying to do to the press at this moment. It’s no different from the dominance politics he played on his opponents in the GOP primaries.
Trump wants to bully the press and profit off the presidency. He’s told us this clearly in his own words. We need to accept the reality of both. The press should cover him on that basis, as a coward and a crook. The big corporate media organizations may not be able to use those words, I understand, but they should employ that prism. The truth is that his threats against the press to date are ones it is best to laugh at. If Trump should take some un- or extra-constitutional actions, we will deal with that when it happens. I doubt he will or can. But I won’t obsess about it in advance. Journalists should be unbowed and aggressive and with a sense of humor until something happens to prevent them from doing so. Trump is a punk and a bully. People who don’t surrender up their dignity to him unhinge him.
Much the same applies to the endless chatter about ‘conflicts of interest’ and the insufficiency of his plan to separate himself from his businesses. Why are we still saying Trump isn’t doing enough to avoid conflicts of interest? He’s made clear he wants to profit off his presidency. Let’s accept that. That is what he wants to do. If you’re a journalist, start documenting the details. If you’re an activist or politician start mobilizing against his corruption.
Trump is the most unpopular incoming President in American history. We only have data on this going back a few decades. But there’s little reason to think any President in previous decades or centuries has been this unpopular. Indeed, he’s getting less popular as he approaches his inauguration. People need to have a bit more confidence in themselves, their values and their country. As soon as you realize that Trump wants to profit from the presidency and that the Republicans are focused and helping him do so, all the questions become easier to answer and the path forward more clear. His threats against the press are the same. He’s threatening to take away things the press doesn’t truly need in order to instill a relationship of dominance…”.
Besides painting a persuasive picture, this frame of view also has the benefit of being more enjoyable and bearable for us. If we’re running around pulling our hair out about the new reality, we’ll be too angry and fearful to be nimble in our thoughts and actions.
How does this factor in? Has distrust of media made propaganda’s job harder?
https:/www.emptywheel.net/2017/01/21/buzzfeed-discovers-were-not-the-rubes-it-has-claimed-but-insis
ts-we-still-have-a-fake-news-problem
I think you underestimate the depth, breadth and endurance of white supremacism in America. They have been fighting from the shadows for a century or more. It will take more than an economic setback to shake their determination; it fact it may swell their ranks.
Anyone that was old enough to experience and comprehend where this country was on this in the 1930s and compare that with today, could point out how you overestimate the now. The difference from the 1960s to now is less but still a huge step. A step forward without some partial or even full step backwards doesn’t change the long term direction (or arc as MLJ, Jr. said).
From a much smaller base, the alt-right and racists are also operating with societal and economic conditions that can begin to compare to that of the 1930s. They didn’t succeed then and will only succeed now if masses of “good Americans” join them. That could happen, and they’ll be very sorry if they go there. Paranoia with no agency hurts the self and helps nobody.
I think you are badly underestimating them.
These are far too generic PR and well known tactics to point to the Soviet Union was the progenitor. How many kids (and professionals) that make use of photoshop know anything about the USSR?
Anyway, team Trump used words and not photoshopped images in their attempt to resize the inaugural crowd. Something they did throughout the campaign with little push-back from reporters. Dave Eggers was one of the few that put in the time required to do so.
All these Putin/Russia OMG! attacks on Trump are falling flat — and Soviet Union (a country that ceased to exist over twenty-five years ago) references are even more obscure. (Although the much older Potemkin Village reference has some currency but probably none with those that need awakening.)
My take on pitfalls to avoid in the task ahead.
Fabius Maximus made an apt observation in today’s piece…
“the similarity are not between the candidates so much as with how we relate to our presidents (i.e., dysfuncationally).
And brother, are we seeing that. All of a sudden the CIA is a bastion of truth-tellers for establishment Dems and Republicans. Sheesh.
And the opposition (Democrats and the Democratic Party) continues mindlessly feeding Mr. Hyde.
For some, every thread and every comment provides an irresistible urge to Party punch thru the liberal use of ad hominems, no matter how off topic.
It’s an alternative to taking personal responsibility to lead in the real world. It doesn’t appear to me that it’s an alternative which helps us move forward in ways which improve our governance, but it is an alternative.
For some in every thread there’s an opportunity to claim that Democrats and the Democratic Party are doing just fine and no need to acknowledge the facts that it’s now firmly in the rump party position at the federal executive and legislative level, only sixteen governors are Democrats, and have a “trifecta” (legislature and governor) in six states compared to the twenty-five states that the GOP controls (plus two more states with a GOP veto proof legislature and a Dem governor).
Speaking the truth may have little potential for positive change, but clapping louder has none.
(Okay, I’m done and will now ignore all your predictable attempts to extend a debate of your beliefs versus reality.)
These attempts of yours to control the behavior of individual members of the community will continue to fail.
I’m disinterested in exposing every thread to a flame war, so I largely avoid taking up discussions with you. But the other reason I let many of your criticisms of Party practices and legislative policies go is that I agree and find no significant quarrel with many of them, as I find sympathy with the heated criticisms from others here and in my daily conversations. Your claim that I find no flaw with the Democratic Party is untrue.
I take up quarrels here when the descriptions of policies and their outcomes are false, incomplete or slanted, and when the claims against the moralities and motivations of politicians and institutions are made in such bad faith that it becomes impossible for us to conduct a rational, productive discussion without pushing back against some of the claims.
There are extremely practical and urgent applications to this. If people here and elsewhere believe the extraordinarily slanted summaries of the Affordable Care Act which are often provided here, then those people will not be motivated to do the work we should do to preserve policies which have literally saved the lives and financial futures of many, many Americans. The well-run single payer future we all wish for will be irreparably damaged if Trump, Ryan and McConnell succeed in shattering Medicare, Medicaid, and greater regulations of providers and insurers, all of which the ACA has provided and strengthened.
I accept that we will continue to dislike each other; I accept that we will not persuade each other in the areas where we disagree. But I’m not attempting to control your behavior. You’ll continue to throw rhetorical kerosene around, but you’ll have to share this community with others.
Speaking the truth has unlimited potential for positive change; it might be worthwhile for you to consider why you believe otherwise.
Might profit one to actually read the FM piece, no?
Since the Josh Marshall piece is quite similar. LOL
Perhaps.
Not seeing the quote your included in your prior comment in any of the latest at Fabius Maximus. Perhaps it was posted somewhere else?
Assume you were referencing this from Marshall (who I stopped reading sometime in ’04. Guess this comes close:
Agree with the “buck up” message. Marshall, Duncan Black and I had no patience with the “it’s all Nader’s fault” whiners (and it went on for many years). By 2003, many liberals and Democrats did “buck up,” but that’s where Marshall split off to preach “more Democrats” as if the party hadn’t sold off critical components of its franchise to high bidders.
The FM quote is one FM posted down in the comments section.
Basically, the JM piece was scolding Dems for losing their shit over threats they were manufacturing for themselves. Iow, losing the plot and disarming themselves.
The JM quotes were posted upthread by center…
Other than a short and direct attack on my by center… (and which I rarely respond to), don’t nor will I read anything she/he posts.
What “plot” or narrative? If it’s the old Democrats are good and Republican are bad and Trump is the worst, then JM is only criticizing some tactics in this round. But he’s clinging to the BS about Putin/Russia which were tactics used by Clinton, Obama, and DP during the campaign and afterwards. An incredibly dangerous tactic that seems to escape many employing it. So, he sees half the lunacy on the left side of the aisle when all of it has to go. And doing it sequentially — Trump, then Pence before getting around to the left side lunacy — will not succeed to step three any better than it did in the aughts (and if I’m honest, the 1970s either).
Lambert over at NC puts it most clearly…”However, there’s a difference between setting your own hair on fire and screaming “The [insert demon figure here]s are coming!” and working out the enemy’s order of battle. Either the liberals with flaming hair don’t know this, or they’re gaslighting. I’m not sure which is worse.”
I think it is becoming clear the gaslighting is a BIG factor.
What IF those women had marched on the Capital and run ALL those Congresscritters out of the building? Hmm.
There is another history out there…A path from protest to power
Wasn’t on the agenda. And they left themselves wide open for yet another Trump tweet: Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression that we just had an election! Why didn’t these people vote? Celebs hurt cause badly,’
That Trump tweet will galvanize his opposition. I’m happy to be “wide open” for Trump tweets which help our organizing.
Compared to any former dictator, Trump is just an … apprentice.
Stalin’s dictatorship was based on the fallacies of communism, purges, censorship and propaganda. Hitler and Goebbels took it much further with the rise of the Nazis and fascism … same for Italy’s Benito Mussolini, Spain’s Francisco Franco and Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito.
Stalinism and fascist dictatorial regimes maked use of these tools. Stalin used the censor to falsify photographs and manipulate history. We see this today in Poland, Baltic states and the Ukraine. Hint! Even George Bush manipulated the photos of the troops who were gathered for his photo-ops. In present day politics, it’s not just state control that worries me but the media and propagation of fallacies, fake news reports and another branch of false info and lies.
And my question to you fladem, what is the message of your diary to link Trump to the Stalin era of communism?
During any war effort, the first victim is the truth. The Obama administration has been at war with Putin for the last 5-6 years and used all forms of censorship and propaganda. Trump was chosen in a democracy, so I fear the masses behind him more than I do this fake person working as an apprentice in the White House. In Russia, Putin is a dictator and in theory doesn’t represent the Russian people. Which nation should Europe fear more?
And btw, Saddam Hussein was a student of Stalinism as we witnessed live as US troops entered Baghdad and Saddam’s minister of information told the television audience otherwise. In the US and in Europe there are calls to censor social media and specific international press media … wrong attitude and quite dangerous to place this in government control … see communist East Germany, etc., etc.
In my opinion, I do not see any clear comparison of the Trump presidency to the Communist era under mass murderer Stalin.
The populism of Trump is based on nationalism, racism, xenophobia and misogyny. These are elemets of right-wing fascism as was seen in the 1930s in the USA. One could compare Trump with Israel’s Netanyahu… much more realistic. A con man if there ever was one.
Subtitle to your Lenin photo:
Lenin speaking in Palace Square, Petrograd, 1920,
The crowd was added in 1924 by picture editors who felt
that the original photograph (taken by Viktor Bulla in 1920)
showed too few people in the audience.
The resulting photo-montage was given a fake date: 1917
© State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
Info: The Hermitage Museum Amsterdam website
○ The Life and Death of Nikolai Yezhov, nicknamed the Poison Dwarf
I saw this a few days ago and thought it was so very true of Americans vs Europeans. And I wondered if “fascist” and “marxist” might be equally true for us?
“According to Marxist theory, socialist revolution is led by the radicalized intelligentsia, but it gets the muscle it needs to overthrow the capitalist system from the working classes. This is the rock on which wave after wave of Marxist activism has broken and gone streaming back out to sea, because the American working classes are serenely uninterested in taking up the world-historical role that Marxist theory assigns to them.
All they want is plenty of full time jobs at a living wage. Give them that, and revolutionary activists can bellow themselves hoarse without getting the least flicker of interest out of them.
Every so often, the affluent classes lose track of this, and try to force the working classes to put up with extensive joblessness and low pay, so that affluent Americans can pocket the proceeds. This never ends well.
After an interval, the working classes pick up whatever implement is handy–Andrew Jackson, the Grange, the Populist movement, the New Deal, Donald Trump–and beat the affluent classes about the head and shoulders with it until the latter finally get a clue…. Marxist revolutionaries inevitably rush in saying, in effect, “No, no, you shouldn’t settle for plenty of full time jobs at a living wage, you should die by the tens of thousands in an orgy of revolutionary violence so that we can seize power in your name.” My readers are welcome to imagine the response of the American working class to this sort of rhetoric. (Archdruid Report…http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.nl/…/the-hate-that-dare-...)
We have had plenty of opportunity to go that route and have not quite succumbed.
That’s true of the working class everywhere, that is why Bismarck started the German social security to avoid revolution and why revolutions only get going when the elite puts the population in unbearable conditions and cuts of ways to create reforms.
Now, Marx thought that the ongoing accumulation would lead to such concentration of wealth and power that the only way to change things becomes a revolution. During the post war era he looked just plain wrong, but nowadays? Maybe he was right, just on a different time-scale.
I do not think you get it.
Trump doesn’t need to threaten people to make his lies believed.
People of their own free will chose to believe them.
Stalin and Hitler need a vast state apparatus with secret police and state run media.
Trump needs access to Twitter.
Trump needs no security force or propaganda network.
What all have in common is all proceed from a common starting point: what is true is irrelevant.
No, they don’t.
Minimal (smallest ever?) post election approval bounce. Doesn’t look as if any post-inaugural “honeymoon period” and approval bounce is forming either.
He’ll be down in Cheney approval number territory (20%) faster than the Dick got there. How soon before DT will have to begin boasting that he’s more popular than Cheney? OTOH, he and his team aren’t shy about making up their own facts, but his war on the media is barely working at this point and even Tricky Dicky and his sidekick were able to ride that bronco successfully for over five years.
civil disobedience retweet @ Carne Ross, do not RT b/c upsets T
https://twitter.com/carneross
Thinking of Groucho! 🙂
in spirit or aspiration once were:
Adams couldn’t have conceived that this country wouldn’t search for monsters to destroy but create the monsters to destroy later.
As I recall I mentioned once a place (a town/ city of 5500 in IA) where some ppl turned an historic building into a restaurant in a discussion of strategy. I was traveling through and stopped there, obviously there were regulars at all times of day. it means ppl get together and talk often. comes to mind these days, with the full scale assault not so much on reality but on the importance of reality, that is what is being assaulted imo.
Apropos and in case you don’t see my comment in another thread, you may enjoy Huxley vs. Orwell: The Webcomic.
yes, I saw it and enjoyed it. alas, too true.
I mentioned the restaurant, because one antidote to the “messaging” “alternate facts” is actual face to face contact and conversation.