Propaganda
It is often very difficult to sort out what is propaganda and misinformation/disinformation and what is the truth. For instance stories related to North Korea now repeated because of the death of the ‘Dear Leader’ Kim Jong-Il.
Clearly Western disinformation is the lie that the building on the North Korean side of the border at Panmunjeom in the Joint Security Area is just a false facade. In fact it is a real building, and Western visitors have been inside it.
Horrific stories came out of North Korea some years ago about whole families being executed in gas chambers at Camp 22, women being forced to eat poisoned cabbage and other macabre executions and experiments reminiscent of Nazi Germany. These were largely spread by defectors to the West, so disinformation cannot be completely discounted. If true, however, it means the Stalinist North Korean regime must be as brutal, corrupt and fascist, rather than Socialist, as the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia/former Kampuchea.
Other reports by Western visitors to North Korea say things are not nearly as bad as Western propaganda would make out, with modern homes, fairly well-stocked supermarkets and shops, etc. Though recurring famines have proved a problem in some areas.
North Korean propaganda, on the other hand, makes out everything is rosy in that land, and the people all love their leaders, hence the hysterical display of weeping on the streets when Kim Jong-Il’s death was announced. Since information is strictly controlled and loyalty to the regime is the best guarantee of an easier life in such dictatorships, these public displays of grief are, perhaps, not that surprising.
In Britain there might be similar public displays, though not quite as exaggerated, of people weeping on hearing the news of the death of the monarch, despite the fact that she or he lives in splendid affluent isolation from the rest of the country and has little idea how the poorest sections of the realm live.
Jingoism is another symptom of propaganda, and the current ‘Help for Heroes’ campaign is typical. ‘Clap for Cannon Fodder’ might be more appropriate as young men, largely from poor areas of mass unemployment, are encouraged to join the military and sent abroad to places Britain has no business to be to conduct wars for oil supplies and to prop up the arms industry which in turn props up the crumbling international capitalist system. ‘Fighting for democracy’ is pure propaganda since there are plenty of dictators Britain and the West support, and only when there is something in it for American or British interests is there any attempt to depose them.
Young men have been persuaded to kill each other for hundreds of years, while their elders (generals, politicans, etc.) sit back in safety and preside over this carnage. Wars will cease when men refuse to fight and either desert, refuse to join up in the first place, or perhaps when handed guns turn round and shoot their own officers. Unfortunately too many are brainwashed into believing they must fight for their country, for freedom, democracy, our way of life, etc. when the real motives are usually quite different.
Even when some form of action is necessary to target a particularly cruel dictator or prevent atrocities it is not up to individual countries like Britain and America to act as the world’s policemen, not least because they have ulterior motives for getting involved (oil, boosting the profit-making arms industry, etc.). They also cannot be trusted – witness the Second World War where Britain ostensibly got involved because Hitler invaded first Czechoslovakia then Poland, but then happily handed both countries over to their wartime ally Stalin at the end of the War. Exchanging Hitler for Stalin was not exactly what most Poles expected and hoped for at the end of that conflict, but it suited both the Soviet Union and the West to divide Europe up between their respective ‘spheres of influence’.
Propaganda rules our lives daily. The press and media are all controlled even in the so-called ‘free’ West. D notices are sent out in Britain, for instance, to stop papers and the media publishing anything the government doesn’t want published. Fortunately we now have the uncensored Internet where information can be obtained, though this too is full of propaganda, so sorting out the truth from the lies is also problematic.
The Internet is full of conspiracy theories, the most bizarre of which claims a race of alien lizards is taking over the world under human guise. Conspiracy theories about secret powerful organizations such as the Illuminati are all over the Internet.
However if you use common sense to sort out the exaggerations and propaganda from what is likely to be the truth, you can obtain a lot of very useful information from the Internet not freely available elsewhere.
Not least in the areas of science and religion. Both these disciplines spread false propaganda, but YouTube and the Internet generally is the place to find the facts if you search for them. For instance, our orthodox science is atheistic and follows the official line of propaganda that everything happened by pure chance starting with the Big Bang, prior to which nothing existed. As unlikely as this may seem, this is the official line and any deviance from this is regarded as heresy.
However Quantum Physics sits very uneasily with such theories, since basic experiments in the sub-atomic quantum world prove that no matter at all can exist without consciousness. Therefore some form of non-material consciousness must have preceded the formation of all matter. In other words, Quantum Physics proves that something akin to ‘God’ or a non-material intelligence preceded the formation of matter, and the logical conclusion is clearly that intelligence and consciousness is at the heart of the multi-verse and separate from matter. Therefore animal and human brains are NOT the origin of consciousness which must be non-material and, as all the evidence proves, survives death of the physical body.
Only in time can propaganda be publicly revealed as such and can the truth filter out. Hopefully, with the Internet, this process will be speeded up. More and more people are becoming enlightened and not swallowing the lies put out by governments, by official scientific propaganda and by the organized religions based on ancient and outdated texts and myths.
The 21st Century is surely the one where a lot of these misconceptions, lies and propaganda will be exposed and the truth in all areas will finally become widely known.
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