Our Decline: Propaganda

Quotes

“It is an imperative duty that we owe to God, to angels, with whom we shall be brought to stand, and also to ourselves, to our wives and children…Therefore it is an imperative duty that we owe, not only to our own wives and children, but to the widows and fatherless, whose husbands and fathers have been murdered under its iron hand…And also it is an imperative duty that we owe to all the rising generation, and to all the pure in heart…Therefore, that we should waste and wear out our lives in bringing to light all the hidden things of darkness, wherein we know them; and they are truly manifest from heaven—These should then be attended to with great earnestness. Let no man count them as small things; for there is much which lieth in futurity, pertaining to the saints, which depends upon these things.” (Scriptural, The Lord used very strong language in relation to the libelous publications, magazines, encyclopedias, histories that were being published about the saints, which were causing “diabolical rascality and nefarious and murderous impositions upon the saints.” The quotes from the prophets on this site constitute “wherein we know them; and they are truly manifest from heaven.” Doctrine & Covenants, 123:7-15. March 1839.)

“Propaganda is to democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” (Noam Chomsky, 1993.)

“[Edward Bernays and Wilson's Creel Commission] succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical, war-mongering population which wanted to destroy everything German, tear the Germans limb from limb, go to war and save the world.” (Noam Chomsky, 1991.)

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.… We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.… In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” (Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928.)

“Because those whom we have studied thus far in this chapter specialized in restricting information, that lack of information became the frame of reference for the majority. Sadly, those accepting the skewed information unwittingly became tools of a satanic force. By blindly following the Pied Piper of German revulsion, millions lost their lives both at home and abroad and our nation began its plummet into bankruptcy.” (Dr. Jack Monnett, p. 215. 2006.)

“Goebbels… was using my book, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany.” (Edward Bernays)

“Among those who participated actively and enthusiastically were the progressive intellectuals, people of the John Dewey circle, who took great pride, as you can see from their own writings at the time, in having shown that what they called the ‘more intelligent members of the community,’ namely themselves, were able to drive a reluctant population into a war by terrifying them and eliciting jingoist fanaticism. The means that were used were extensive. For example, there was a good deal of fabrication of atrocities by the Huns, Belgian babies with their arms torn off, all sorts of awful things that you still read in history books. They were all invented by the British propaganda ministry, whose own committment at the time, as they put it in their secret deliberations, was ‘to control the thought of the world.’

“But more crucially they wanted to control the thought of the more intelligent members of the community in the U. S., who would then disseminate the propaganda that they were concocting and convert the pacifist country to wartime hysteria. That worked. It worked very well. And it taught a lesson: State propaganda, when supported by the educated classes and when no deviation is permitted from it, can have a big effect. It was a lesson learned by Hitler and many others, and it has been pursued to this day.” (Noam Chomsky, 1991.)

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (Scriptural, Hosea, 4:6.)

“The art of leadership…consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention.” (Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Volume 1, Chapter 10. 1925.)

“The great mass of people… will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.” (Adolf Hitler)

“We are in the midst of the greatest exhibition of propaganda that the world has ever seen.” (J. Reuben Clark, Conference Report, October 1941.)

“I myself was to experience how easily on is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state… a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one's mind and often mislet it.” (William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 247-248. 1959.)

“As people get their opinions so largely from the newspapers they read… But the Press is not free, the newspapers are owned by rich men.” (Fabian Socialist George Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, p. 64. 1949.)

“We must win the common people in every corner. This will be obtained chiefly by means of the schools, and by open hearty behaviour, show, condescension, popularity, and toleration of their prejudices which we shall at leisure root out and dispel.” (Professor Johann Adam Weishaupt, Proofs of a Conspriacy, p. 111. 1978.)