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The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

worldbeyondwar.org

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Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#101

Post by serf »

dylan604 wrote: post #72
maerF0x0 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they archived somewhere for viewing? I wonder because I was too young to really understand it much and it'd actually help me sort out part of my childhood.

I will not be a part of willfully spreading that information. If you're that interested, it's not hard to find

I don't know your personal convictions, and I don't really care -- but I do want to say that the archival and preservation of such things is a wholly different thing than disseminating the materials for actual consumption and education; i'm glad that folks didn't take the same approach to saving the remnants of propaganda and materials from past wars otherwise we would have no solid examples by which to use in building an intellectual defense against this kind of strategy.

Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#102

Post by DesiLurker »

I remember listening to this on citations pod couple of years ago. https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/news-brief-hollywood-and-...

they also had a similar coverage of Copaganda in media: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/news-brief-the-growing-pu...

btw this has been going on for a while. I recently finished an excellent compilation of Vietnam war realities & lies in a book called 'kill anything that moves' & its basically the same propaganda machine reshaping public perception for its benefits.

Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#103

Post by DesiLurker »

mcpackieh wrote: post #36

This effects not only the movies we see, but also influences which movies get made in the first place. There's little telling what kind of anti-war movies we might have gotten, which withered on the vine because producers knew it wouldn't be possible to make the movie on a reasonable budget to the standard audiences have come to expect (e.g. real aircraft instead of mediocre scale models or CGI.) Try making an anti-N…

right, the shrinking of overton window is the real win here for 'them'.

Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#104

Post by serf »

the_optimist wrote: post #30
mikece wrote: post #3

I'm curious: for how many people is this news? For those more inquiring you should look into the Smith-Mundt Act, which makes it illegal for the US Government to directly propagandize the American people; it was effectively repealed in 2012.

Is there a difference between propaganda and false information? This is a practical question. If they say “propaganda” but in practice simply plant false information, is that still in scope?

my take: propaganda is engineered to distort a view, perhaps to advantage. 'false information' is used to throw others through a loop or get them to investigate false leads, thus slowing/tangling them.

most propaganda has an obvious assumption/take included with it; "China is taking our work, so hate China." "While our troops are fighting for freedom against Evil Dictator in Etcistan."

most false information has an open premise ; "could be aliens. how do you know the world isn't flat, have you seen it? she could be a lizard person.."

but to be clear : both are used by governments to enact methods of power and control.

Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#105

Post by thebruce87m »

thesaintlives wrote: post #51
ceejayoz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contagion got things pretty much spot-on. Conspiracy theorists with fake cures, political officials who fight mitigation measures, contact tracing, panic buying, at-home substitutes for school events, fairly rapid vaccine development and the initial scarcity of it. The major difference was the mortality rate; the movie's virus killed something like 25%. One of the odd difficulties with COVID is it's deadly enough (es…

[flagged]

Great impersonation, bang on the money.

Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#106

Post by serf »

CharlesW wrote: post #33
Julesman wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are three types of people circling around conspiracy theories. 1) Literate people who care about history and know that industry does what's best for profit at all costs. 2) People who don't read much looking for a hobby. 3) Liberals hoping to pass off their empty skepticism as allegiance to the mainstream.

> The term 'conspiracy theory' was itself a product on CIA influence operations in this country, specifically intended to squash interest in the assassination of JFK. The ol' "conspiracy theory conspiracy": https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-conspiracy-theory-jfk-...

that's such a silly conclusion though, and really a perfect AP piece. It discredits people while saying nothing.

It doesn't matter if the phrase existed before hand, it very obviously blew-up during the JFK event.[0]

It could entirely well be that the DoD didn't invent the phrase, but it's pretty obvious that it very quickly became a part of the public verbage during heavy interest in the JFK event -- that trend could have easily been the indicator of work towards the discrediting of both the term and those that had too much curiosity towards things they shouldn't question.

[0]: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=conspiracy+the...

Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#108

Post by xescure »

ceejayoz wrote: post #34
nsxwolf wrote: post #12

I wonder if "Contagion" was propaganda. It really made me believe that if a SARS pandemic ever happened, a bunch of incredibly competent scientists and government agents would swoop in and save us all. The "Olympus Has Fallen" series also made me believe that if a mob ever stepped foot on the White House lawn, a bunch of auto turrets would pop up and gun them all down. The last few years has shown that the world is r…

Contagion got things pretty much spot-on. Conspiracy theorists with fake cures, political officials who fight mitigation measures, contact tracing, panic buying, at-home substitutes for school events, fairly rapid vaccine development and the initial scarcity of it. The major difference was the mortality rate; the movie's virus killed something like 25%. One of the odd difficulties with COVID is it's deadly enough (es…

Not to mention the long term effects, such as increased risk of diabetes, heart problems and neurodegenerative conditions. Plus a bunch of other symptoms which get labeled as long covid.

These are not enough to make people afraid of catching the virus. The effects are not immediate and humans are bad at long-term risk assessment. See climate change or smoking as examples.

Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#109

Post by quacked »

lr1970 wrote: post #99
ajross wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you deliberately ignoring vaccination? I genuinely can't tell if I'm being trolled into a conspiracy argument or not. But just in case: The vaccines turned an extremely dangerous pandemic into a tolerable-if-still-worrisome endemic disease. This lancet paper represents a pretty good consensus belief that vaccines saved 14M lives. Our "willingness to accept a lost cause" was informed heavily by the justfied belief…

> The vaccines turned an extremely dangerous pandemic into a tolerable-if-still-worrisome endemic disease. Effective vaccinations were pretty much limited to the first world countries. Third world countries either did not have access to vaccines or used subpar ones like russia's sputnik. I would like to see a scientific study comparing the duration of pandemic in vaccinated vs non-vaccinated countries. It would be ap…

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/05/04/9925440...

Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#110

Post by free_glamorgan »

ajross wrote: post #66
nsxwolf wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inaccurate part of the movie is that all that stuff worked. In real life, what "ended" the pandemic was a combination of mother nature and the human willingness to accept a lost cause and move on.

Are you deliberately ignoring vaccination? I genuinely can't tell if I'm being trolled into a conspiracy argument or not. But just in case: The vaccines turned an extremely dangerous pandemic into a tolerable-if-still-worrisome endemic disease. This lancet paper represents a pretty good consensus belief that vaccines saved 14M lives. Our "willingness to accept a lost cause" was informed heavily by the justfied belief…

>This lancet paper represents a pretty good consensus belief

The paper represents an effort to support a particular hypothesis using curve-fitting. The Bible represents a "pretty good consensus belief".

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