'A war for our minds': Journalists warn of vast propaganda, censorship network unlike any before in human history
By newseditors // 2024-03-01
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Government, mainstream media and nonprofits are part of a “vast censorship network” that suppresses non-establishment perspectives on COVID-19 and a wide range of other topics, according to participants at Monday’s Senate roundtable discussion on “Federal Health Agencies and the COVID Cartel.” (Article by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. republished from ChildrensHealthDefense.org) The roundtable, hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson, also focused on vaccine safety and corruption of public health agencies. Other experts who participated in the roundtable discussed how the news media have become propagandized and warned that media-supported propaganda will lead to a totalitarian society. ‘Vast censorship network’ includes government, nonprofits Journalist Lara Logan, formerly of CBS News, told the panel of experts, “These are the worst of times for the media in this country” and warned that we are engaged in a “war for our minds.” “We live in the age of information warfare, where propaganda is not simply a weapon, it is the entire field of battle,” she said. “This is a war for our minds that is aided by advanced technology, and we have never been here, not in all of human history.” Logan said: “The media is collaborating with government agencies and operatives to censor and shape the information battlefield to justify certain actions. For example, when the president of the United States threatens the unvaccinated, saying ‘Our patience is wearing thin,’ and accuses them of putting communities at risk, his words are designed to justify hatred, censorship and intimidation.” According to Logan, a network of nonprofit organizations whose purpose is to stifle free speech is contributing to information warfare: “For too long we have allowed nonprofit organizations to masquerade as nonpartisan media watchdogs, when in fact they are a little more than highly paid political propagandists and assassins whose entire reason for being is to crush anyone who stands in their way and along with them, the long-held and cherished ideas of free speech, free thinking and free minds.” These groups “are part of a vast censorship network that includes government agencies,” Logan said. “They use deception to mask their actions with lofty goals like ‘preventing the spread of misinformation, disinformation [and] hate speech.’ They use phrases like ‘protecting democracy.’” Logan cited “Defeat Disinfo,” a nonprofit that “claims to be a PAC [political action committee]” and was established to target alleged “misinformation” related to COVID-19 and to support Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020. According to a May 2020 report by The Washington Post, Defeat Disinfo was headed by retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who formerly led U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Defeat Disinfo “is planning to deploy technology originally developed to counter Islamic State propaganda in service of a domestic political goal — to combat online efforts to promote President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic,” the Post reported. “It’s not a secret that these organizations exist,” Logan said, addressing Johnson. “What is not widely known and talked about is that it’s paid for by us. It’s paid for by the taxpayers in your omnibus spending bills that get shoved through the House and the Senate, against the will of the people.” Logan said these congressional spending bills contain “cutouts for these NGOs,” (nongovernmental organizations) which “launder this money, they pass it from one NGO to the next, and in the name of ‘preventing the spread of disinformation,’ they censor, silence, intimidate and punish.” Logan called such initiatives “a death sentence for journalists.” “It’s how you murder a journalist without killing them,” she said. “It’s how you murder a scientist without killing them. It’s how you murder a doctor without killing them. It’s how you murder the vaccine injured when they haven’t died yet.” She added: “This is a blood sport for them, their political allies and their puppetmasters. They know how to kill a journalist without murdering them. We call it ‘cancel culture’ … They get away with it because they have information dominance.” Reporters ‘colluding with their sponsors’ to violate drug advertising laws Journalist Rodney Palmer was a journalist with Canadian mainstream media, including the Canadian Broadcasting Company and CTV News, for 20 years, but as the COVID-19 pandemic progressed, he increasingly began to question the narrative promoted by the network and other mainstream news outlets. Palmer filmed the Canadian Freedom Convoy in February 2022 for a documentary film called “Unacceptable?” Speaking at the roundtable, Palmer focused on censorship in television news, which he called “a new super weapon aimed at the citizens of this country.” Referring to COVID-19 vaccine deaths and injuries, Palmer said, “Censorship is what actually caused these deaths. It was the lie that assured us it was ‘safe’ when it wasn’t … The lie killed them as much as the vaccine because it tricked [people] into taking it.” Palmer said that this situation is further exacerbated in the U.S., which is one of a small number of countries that allows Big Pharma advertising on television. “The vaccine companies are allowed to sponsor the news directly,” he said. “It appears that the reporters are actually colluding with their sponsors to break FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] advertising laws. FDA law requires them to conspicuously describe the known risks of any pharmaceutical product.” Palmer proposed the prohibition of Big Pharma advertising. He said: “I respectfully recommend that the Senate investigate the role of American television news networks in colluding with pharmaceutical advertisers to skirt the FDA laws that require them to declare the known risks of a pharmaceutical product. This investigation should extend to any reporters, news anchors, editors and executives who lied to their audience about the safety of the COVID vaccines. “I also recommend investigating the total prohibition of pharmaceutical advertising on television in alignment with almost every country in the world.” Modern censorship ‘weaponized’ to ‘hijack’ the human mind Jason Christoff is a self-sabotage coach who produces and hosts “The Psychology of Freedom” podcast. During Monday’s roundtable, he said that “what looks like censorship is the documented hijacking of the subconscious mind pathway.” This is one of the primary objectives of modern censorship, according to Christoff. “Humans are proven to copy, mimic, emulate and mirror the most repetitive content of their environment as a way to find safety with the bigger group and to achieve increased security,” Christoff said. Modern censorship targets this human trait. “Modern censorship isn’t just about hiding the truth or creating spin for one political agenda or another,” he said. “Modern censorship is part and parcel of hijacking the genetic group pressure mechanisms and group affiliation software which all humans hold within each cell in their bodies.” He added: “He who controls the environment in which a human resides controls the perceptions, beliefs and behaviors of that human. Modern censorship today is clearly about upregulating disempowering negative content and turning down empowering positive content. “Today’s censorship is weaponized to define and create an inverted and extremely dark reality inside which no human can ever be happy, healthy or prosperous.” Responding to Johnson’s question about who is responsible for “pulling the strings on this,” Christoff said he “couldn’t say for sure, but they’re well above government.” Censorship leading to a ‘fully-fledged totalitarian system’ Mattias Desmet, Ph.D., is a lecturer of psychoanalytic psychotherapy at Ghent University in Belgium, who became widely known for popularizing the phrase “mass formation” to describe the public’s response to COVID-19 restrictions and countermeasures early during the pandemic. During Monday’s roundtable, he said his focus was not so much on “what they [governments] were hiding” but “how it was possible that so many people refuse to see what they were hiding.” Desmet cited widely used narratives in 2020 and 2021 that overstated COVID-19 mortality rates “by a factor of 10” and that continued to be employed even after it became evident mortality rates were being inflated. “The story continued as if the models had been right,” Desmet said. “That, for me, was the moment when I decided to take the perspective of a mass psychologist and to try to show the people what psychological mechanisms could explain how an entire society was in the grip of a narrative which was utterly absurd.” Desmet said his research led him to conclude that “we were witnessing … the emergence of a fully-fledged totalitarian system in our society” and said its effects on the population were akin to a “hypnotic state.” He said: “You need two things for a totalitarian system. On the one hand, you need an elite that excessively and relentlessly uses propaganda to keep control over the population. And then you need a part of the population, 20-30% usually, to go along with that propaganda and to buy fanatically into the narrative.” “We’ve seen, I think, both components of a totalitarian system in this crisis,” he added. Desmet said society’s emphasis on “rationalism” rather than ethical principles, which he said is “conveyed by people like [author] Yuval Noah Harari,” has paved the way for transhumanism, technocracy and totalitarianism. “It always starts from the idea that on the basis of rational knowledge, a new paradise will be created,” he said. “Such rationalism in the end always lapses into radical irrationality, and that’s what we are seeing now.” ‘Appealing to the mob’s fear’ seen as ‘politically beneficial’ Several participants at Monday’s roundtable shared examples of censorship and propaganda that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. Del Bigtree, CEO of the Informed Consent Action Network, referred to a recent study published in the journal Vaccine, claiming that there were increased risks of several serious adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination, but that these conditions are very rare and the benefits of vaccination still outweigh the risks. According to Bigtree, mainstream media jumped on this narrative. “But what does rare actually mean?” Bigtree asked. Citing the study’s findings, he said this includes a 378% increased risk of brain and spinal cord swelling, a 286% increased risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome and sixfold increases in myocarditis and pericarditis. “The question no one in the media seems to be asking is, if each of these potential injuries is rare, is it still rare [when] you add them all together?” Bigtree asked. “Further still, how high is the risk when you multiply all of these risks by five doses of the COVID vaccine? Are we still in the ballpark of ‘rare’?” Randy Hillier, formerly a member of the provincial parliament of Ontario, said his first-hand experience during the COVID-19 pandemic revealed that politicians “knew from extensive daily polling that appealing to the mob’s fear was politically beneficial.” However, he said that four staffers close to Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford privately confided in him that they “feared the long-term damage would be horrendous to themselves, to their families and the province.” Yet, they rejected his advice to be truthful with the public, claiming that “the truth could not be told.” Gastroenterologist Dr. Sabine Hazan told the panel that her research on hydroxychloroquine was censored, because “the media created fear.” “It was impossible to recruit [to clinical trials],” she said, adding that her clinical trial companies were “banned and censored from advertising” on social media. “It is nearly impossible to publish data that goes against the national public health narrative,” she said. “If doctors cannot publish the data, they cannot find solutions.” Journalists also were targeted, Logan said. “For almost a decade, I have been targeted and falsely branded and accused of many things that I did not do. They have attacked my work, my character, my sanity, and my marriage, and I am not alone.” Swiss lawyer Philipp Kruse told the panel the World Health Organization’s (WHO) proposed “pandemic agreement” and amendments to the International Health Regulations will scale up such censorship globally. According to Kruse, these proposals will grant the WHO “the global supreme authority to define truth and science and to eliminate free speech and free exchange of information under the title of ‘misinformation.’” Christoff said, “The solution will revolve around each and every citizen taking their own personal power back within their own home, becoming ethical, becoming moral.” Logan said the same is true for journalists. “We as journalists should stand together united and regardless of politics,” Logan said. “We should fight for the truth [and] for freedom … We are many and we will not give up and we will not give in to those who wish to censor the idea of free speech.” Watch the Senate roundtable here: Read more at: ChildrensHealthDefense.org
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