propaganda – Page 2 – Nina's Homepage

February 24, 2020February 28, 2020

Neo-Nazis, Politics, Media – and Responsibility!

Again, someone has gone and done it: Hanau, Germany, 19.02.2020: a crazed man kills 9 people who seemed ‘foreign’ and then his mother and himself.
And now, wailing and crying and gnashing of teeth can be heard everywhere, online…

It is important to loudly and clearly state: such deeds are criminal!

But at the same time all the politicians that now stand pompously or even truly sorrowful in front of cameras in Germany, have to ask themselves, as well as the media broadcasting these images and speeches:
why so late?
Why did the discussion go on publicly for years on end without any foresight of possible consequences?

Is it even the bible, book of lots of wisdom, if nothing else, where it says:
“Sow wind and you will reap storm”?

The problems visible now and for almost two decades now are European, and home made:

A public discussion for years on all available ‘channels’ of information, newspapers, TV shows, news, fora and talk shows, which spills over into the so-called ‘social media’.
This discussion started by a politician in the south of Germany who in the fall of 2016 called the refugees a ‘problem’ for the first time, this time around – and then gleefully taken on by the abovementioned channels, because:
News are goods to be sold as well!
The discussion continued endlessly, for more than 4 years! Again, on all public channels, trying to ‘find ways out of the crisis’, when there really was none!
On and and on droned the specialists and scientists and activists and journalists and political consultants and … everyone who hoped to make something out of this:
Over and over and over: ‘a problem, an issue, a crisis’.
Then the right wing politicians and other charlatans and up-starts and power-thirsty elements: they are just as bad as any of those that go and do the shooting as such!
Because without properly thinking twice, thinking it through, taking care of possible consequences, they take up the yarn and go on spinning it to make a good sound rope – to ultimately ‘hang’ people by?
For centuries, sensations, drama, is what draws crowds. For some reason or another.

Learn from history! Learn, learn, learn…!

Some of the lessons are hilariously easy if you care:

Condemning the ‘other’ is easy!
Send fear into humans with less insight by making them aware of imagined ‘strangeness’ is easy.
People, like the AfD in Germany these days – or people like Trump and his party and followers, ‘feed’ on the fact:
In ancient Rome the ‘recipe’ worked the same way: make it public – and the crowd, the sheep will go ‘baaahhh’.

So, do not condemn!
Do not call anything a problem, especially about other human beings, if it is not!
And, last but not at all least, also look for that most striking similarity:
the hungry masses, that feel abandoned by the few wealthy who abuse them for the sake of more power and more money:
they are the first to strike out at someone apparently weaker – because to have someone below oneself in the social strata provides some kind of pride to those that have lost even that.

But do not repeat those phrases! Do not pretend to listen to them for the sake of making them feel heard! And then abuse them again…

That was one of the most foolish – and damnable in its consequences – of tendencies a couple of years ago, in Germany, among others. That’s how the AfD got started.

That’s how political parties similar to it can gain power and ultimately throw us into the abyss of another world war, if we and you do not look out.

Because as the smart ones among my readers will know: those abusing wealth and power are not out for the good of the masses, even if they pretend to do so.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

Regardless of gender, creed and colour!

October 21, 2018August 3, 2019

Trump, Contracts, World Peace and the Principle of Cover-Up

History can teach us: what’s happening at the moment in US foreign affairs is really an ignominious yet often used method to cover up what goes wrong ‘at home’.

From ancient kings in the past to Hitler during the Third Reich this procedure has been apparently easy to use and quickly leads to the desired effects. On the surface hatred and abuse are called out, even screamed sometimes, from the speaker’s desk, and Hitler and Trump show uncanny similarities in their rhetoric.

But the underlying schemes and patterns are even more important to realize in order to get a grip on the recent US foreign policies, with apparently no consideration for anything but the immediate, even if pretended, hatred…?

It is quite clear that the Trump government hasn’t so far even come close to the promises made to its voters. The book recently published by an author as prominent and well-known, not to say famous, as Bob Woodward makes the situation even more poignant.

The incompetence and almost insane quality of the present government stand out like a boil. The promised thousands of jobs cannot be found, which for most people are the main reason for voting for one candidate or another, in many parts of the country.

What remains to be done, is what Trump is preparing now: he cancels armament contracts, partly long-standing ones that were made to protect the world from complete destruction, by mad and greedy dictators or any heads of government, kings or otherwise.

That way he paves the way for what is this procedure, this easy to use and fast working ‘medicine’ for all that need to make their people devotees and believers in their cause again: cover up your problems in home affairs by focusing on foreign ones.
Tell them that dreadful enemies are everywhere and therefore arms are necessities of the first order.
Start arming the country with lots and lots of tanks, guns and other even more destructive weapons, not to say ‘weapons of mass-destruction’ (term may ring a bell….), and the following goals will be reached:

Get a lot of government money into a dormant industry sector, producing those weapons on a large scale.
Create thousands of new jobs and a content population, who may one day soon then even swallow the more bitter medicine that war has to follow, again.

This way, no one will care to look twice at what was there before: high numbers of unemployed and disgruntled people. People with apparently no future who even now use the weapons already in the streets – while others are clamouring for stricter gun laws, potentially reducing profits of that industry sector even more.

Let’s not be fooled!
Let’s be aware – and say ‘No’ – to war – and to rearmament!

June 27, 2018August 3, 2019

Human Rights, Extremists and Rudyard Kipling – Can the ‘Twain’ Ever Meet?

Rudyard Kipling in his poem ‘The Ballad of East and West’ put it in his famous phrase: ‘East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.’
His idea was that the differences were too great to ever be fully reconcilable. The term reconcilable in turn stems from ‘reconciliation’, something two or more parties at war would do…

These modern times see the discussion going on just as forcefully, opinionated and to some extent just as wrongly prejudiced as Kipling was. He also was the poet laureate who coined the phrase of the ‘white man’s burden’. It’s another way of saying that ‘the West’ actually has an obligation and a duty to go elsewhere into the world and teach ‘them’ there what life should be like and how to think and feel.

The prejudice this idea is based on of course means: here (in Europe, the West, US) ‘we’ know all about it, are always right and could not accept another point of view because the truth is to be found here.

The ‘devil’ in such ideas lies in two things:

That there exists one real truth only.
That there are whole countries or regions filled with tribes or people who have to be taught what is right. In former times: to be religiously converted in a ‘mission’.

This is actually the same principle ‘the other side’ employs when influencing simpler minds into attacking and killing people, or go to war.
The propaganda for centuries has been the same:
Find an image in the ‘other’ that is harmful, problematic or even dangerous, paste it up, make it look shiny and ‘red’, present ‘the enemy’ in the most gruesome colours and then take up the weapons and march.

A very simple and core argument today is in judging Islamic terrorists by the fact that allegedly ‘they’ have the fierceness written into their religion, namely the Koran contains suras that explicitly ask its followers to go to war or kill. Although this is true – here comes the interesting and even more simple fact:
Terrorism sanctioned by the government is called just – war.

More importantly, if we take the human rights act and lay it beside the allegedly worthy, because peaceful bible, that is taken as proof that the West is worthier still, we may be astonished: the bible has many parts in it that are just as fierce, ‘bloody’ and dangerous to simple minds than any possible counterpart in the Koran. I just like to bring up the ‘eye for an eye’ phrase as an example.

If you want to understand and truthfully judge, how people think and live in a majority of a culture, you do not just take up their religious book and make an equation.

You start to understand this:

Living, breathing and caring people are all around the world. They very often have very similar dreams about a peaceful life that contain love and reasonable wealth.
The propaganda is the same – in basic fact – around the world, in words as well as in deeds. Using simple concepts and even simpler wording to ‘drive people crazy’ – and into torture or killing.
Putting your own view of the world ‘up there’ as the only truth that has value and should be adhered to, namely be self-righteous, is the starting point of any narrow-mindedness and ultimately may lead to war just as easily.

If we want to really change the world, let’s start at our own door: open it to let different point-of-views in and thus different kinds of people from around the globe and try and understand, that many things can be differentiated and sometimes difficult – but they are certain to be exciting and fruitful, not to say beneficial too. Because variety is what makes life colourful!