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Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

ottawacitizen.com

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Re: Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

#71

Post by CyanBird »

ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #35
djmips wrote: post #17

What's the difference between propaganda and good PR?

The term Public Relations was coined by Edward Bernays, whom wrote the incredibly influential book quite literally called 'Propaganda' in 1928. That should make it clear enough.

Propaganda 1928 is just my favorite book ever, it is written in such a tone as to both be a perfect introductory and a hard authoritative first hand source and compilation of Bernays experiences

Excerpt > “Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man's rubber stamps are the duplicates of millions of others, so that when those millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints. It may seem an exaggeration to say that the American public gets most of its ideas in this wholesale fashion. The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda, in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine.”- Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda

Re: Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

#72

Post by ogma »

vnchr wrote: post #18
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #5

The Wolves of Nova Scotia!

For those that don’t know the reference, the Canadian military was caught a year ago in a slip up while conducting another domestic propaganda mission, a training mission reporting a loose pack of wolves in Nova Scotia.[1] — [1] https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/forged...

Also sent a bunch of money to that guy who shot like 20 people. Sounds like they figured out the American playbook.

Re: Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

#74

Post by otikik »

lithium_throw wrote: post #70
archsurface wrote: post #55

If the UK hasn't been doing the same thing I'll eat my hat.

It absolutely has. I maintain that without social media, which simultaneously provided a way into everyone's thoughts, and also contented people with a feeling of connectedness while living under house arrest conditions of historic proportions, people would have simply rejected the whole campaign of Covid restrictions.

And Brexit

Re: Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

#75

Post by imwillofficial »

mewse-hn wrote: post #65
neom wrote: post #36

I couldn't find the actual report, but in the news reports I looked through, it seems they somehow tried to amplify "good" social media messages about covid (wear a mask, covid is dangerous, etc etc), and bolster the government's messages about covid?

Canadian here: if that's all they were doing, they were damaging the cause. The linked article also mentions suppression of military critics which is quite troubling. The military meddling with propaganda/info war on the population they are sworn to defend is just a giant breach of trust. It's like the NSA monitoring domestic comms in the States, that's not why they exist - leave it to the FBI.

That’s not the FBIs job either.

Re: Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

#77

Post by bawolff »

arcticbull wrote: post #30
chuckee wrote: post #4

> A military investigation determined what the Canadian Forces public affairs leadership was doing was “incompatible with Government of Canada Communications Policy (and the) mission and principles of Public Affairs.” I would hope that deploying the military against your own citizens is against more than just an executive branch policy that can be changed at any moment.

It's not, in Canada. The government may elect to invoke the War Measures Act [1]. Pierre Trudeau did this when he drove tanks into Montreal to quash the Québécois nationalist terrorist organization, the FLQ in the October Crisis of 1962 [2]. [edit] Posse Comitatus is more of an American thing - for the record the War Measures Act was subsequently replaced with the Emergencies Act [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

> Pierre Trudeau did this when he drove tanks into Montreal to quash the Québécois nationalist terrorist organization, the FLQ in the October Crisis of 1962 [2].

Its been a while since my high school history class, but i don't think that's correct. If i remember correctly, the military troops involved in the flq crisis were at the request and under control of the province of quebec, not the federal government (under the constitution of canada, law and order is a provincial responsibility). Trudeau did temporarily suspend some civil liberties, in particular the right to habeaus corpus. However the tanks were entirely provincial not federal, so had nothing to do with trudeau and their deployment did not involve the war measures act. In fact, as far as i know, the prime minister isn't even allowed to prevent the province from requistioning military help, at most they can charge them money for it afterwards.

IANAhistorian.

Re: Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

#78

Post by mcrae »

dang wrote: post #46
mcrae wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. The War Measures Act [0] is a law that grants government powers in times of war or insurrection. There was, you guess it, an insurrection in the 70s [1] and the it was appropriately triggered. Also the whole article describes an operation that even senior military commanders were unaware of — what possible connection could there be to the PM? Pure dumb speculation.…

Please don't reply to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it looks like you've been doing this repeatedly lately. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart? We'd be grateful.

You’re right, sorry!

Re: Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

#79

Post by bawolff »

busymom0 wrote: post #58
arcticbull wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, it was replaced with the Emergenices Act as I mentioned. In fact Justin Trudeau considered invoking it for the first time since the replacement in the COVID situation. [edit] Between that and the Notwithstanding Clause [1] there's a lot of latitude here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Cha...

Just want to mention that notwithstanding clause doesn’t apply to mobility rights for what it’s worth. Section 1 of the charter also allows a lot of latitude.

There's already been a ruling on this https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/nl-trav...

Re: Canadian military saw pandemic as opportunity to test propaganda techniques

#80

Post by busymom0 »

bawolff wrote: post #79
busymom0 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just want to mention that notwithstanding clause doesn’t apply to mobility rights for what it’s worth. Section 1 of the charter also allows a lot of latitude.

There's already been a ruling on this https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/nl-trav...

The court used the section 1 of the charter in that case, not the notwithstanding clause. Also CCLA is appealing that case if I remember reading right.
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