Noam Chomsky - "10 strategies of manipulation" by the media

Noam Chomsky - "10 strategies of manipulation" by the media

Renowned critic and always MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, one of the classic voices of
intellectual dissent in the last decade, has compiled a list of the ten most common and
effective strategies resorted to by the agendas “hidden” to establish a manipulation of the
population through the media.

Historically the media have proven highly efficient to mold public opinion. Thanks to the media
paraphernalia and propaganda, have been created or destroyed social movements, justified
wars, tempered financial crisis, spurred on some other ideological currents, and even given
the phenomenon of media as producers of reality within the collective psyche.

But how to detect the most common strategies for understanding these psychosocial tools
which, surely, we participate? Fortunately Chomsky has been given the task of synthesizing
and expose these practices, some more obvious and more sophisticated, but apparently all
equally effective and, from a certain point of view, demeaning. Encourage stupidity, promote a
sense of guilt, promote distraction, or construct artificial problems and then magically, solve
them, are just some of these tactics.

1. The strategy of distraction

The primary element of social control is the strategy of distraction which is to divert public
attention from important issues and changes determined by the political and economic elites,
by the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.
distraction strategy is also essential to prevent the public interest in the essential knowledge
in the area of the science, economics, psychology, neurobiology and cybernetics.

“Maintaining public attention diverted away from the real social problems, captivated by
matters of no real importance. Keep the public busy, busy, busy, no time to think, back to
farm and other animals (quote from text Silent Weapons for Quiet War ).”

2. Create problems, then offer solutions

This method is also called “problem -reaction- solution. “It creates a problem, a “situation”
referred to cause some reaction in the audience, so this is the principal of the steps that you
want to accept. For example: let it unfold and intensify urban violence, or arrange for bloody
attacks in order that the public is the applicant’s security laws and policies to the detriment of
freedom. Or: create an economic crisis to accept as a necessary evil retreat of social rights
and the dismantling of public services.

3. The gradual strategy

acceptance to an unacceptable degree, just apply it gradually, dropper, for consecutive years.
That is how they radically new socioeconomic conditions ( neoliberalism ) were imposed
during the 1980s and 1990s: the minimal state, privatization, precariousness, flexibility,
massive unemployment, wages, and do not guarantee a decent income, so many changes
that have brought about a revolution if they had been applied once.

4. The strategy of deferring

Another way to accept an unpopular decision is to present it as “painful and necessary”,
gaining public acceptance, at the time for future application. It is easier to accept that a future
sacrifice of immediate slaughter. First, because the effort is not used immediately. Then,
because the public, masses, is always the tendency to expect naively that “everything will be
better tomorrow” and that the sacrifice required may be avoided. This gives the public more
time to get used to the idea of change and accept it with resignation when the time comes.

5. Go to the public as a little child

Most of the advertising to the general public uses speech, argument, people and particularly children’s intonation, often close to the weakness, as if the viewer were a little child or a
mentally deficient. The harder one tries to deceive the viewer look, the more it tends to adopt
a tone infantilising. Why? “If one goes to a person as if she had the age of 12 years or less,
then, because of suggestion, she tends with a certain probability that a response or reaction
also devoid of a critical sense as a person 12 years or younger (see Silent Weapons for Quiet
War ).”

6. Use the emotional side more than the reflection

Making use of the emotional aspect is a classic technique for causing a short circuit on
rational analysis , and finally to the critical sense of the individual. Furthermore, the use of
emotional register to open the door to the unconscious for implantation or grafting ideas ,
desires, fears and anxieties , compulsions, or induce behaviors…

7. Keep the public in ignorance and mediocrity

Making the public incapable of understanding the technologies and methods used to control
and enslavement. “The quality of education given to the lower social classes must be the poor
and mediocre as possible so that the gap of ignorance it plans among the lower classes and
upper classes is and remains impossible to attain for the lower classes (See ‘ Silent Weapons
for Quiet War ).”

8. To encourage the public to be complacent with mediocrity

Promote the public to believe that the fact is fashionable to be stupid, vulgar and
uneducated…

9. Self-blame Strengthen

To let individual blame for their misfortune, because of the failure of their intelligence, their
abilities, or their efforts. So, instead of rebelling against the economic system, the individual
autodesvalida and guilt, which creates a depression, one of whose effects is to inhibit its
action. And, without action, there is no revolution!

10. Getting to know the individuals better than they know themselves

Over the past 50 years, advances of accelerated science has generated a growing gap
between public knowledge and those owned and operated by dominant elites. Thanks to
biology, neurobiology and applied psychology, the “system” has enjoyed a sophisticated
understanding of human beings, both physically and psychologically. The system has gotten
better acquainted with the common man more than he knows himself. This means that, in
most cases, the system exerts greater control and great power over individuals, greater than
that of individuals about themselves.