By Ernst Wolff
“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” Josef Goebbels’ advice dates back to the 1930s and has since been followed by many governments. However, time has not stood still and the mechanisms of mass manipulation have evolved and become much more sophisticated.
As we can see in the wake of the current pandemic, a principle is being applied in our days which could be described as follows: “A lie, once it has been accepted, must be hidden under the table and never mentioned again”.
How else can we explain the fact that in recent weeks we have not heard a single word from the mainstream media or from politicians about the fact that all the predictions about the danger of the current pandemic were completely exaggerated? That no excess mortality has occurred and that horror stories such as those about the high infectivity of symptom-free infected people have not come true?
Why is the public repeatedly panicked by rising infection figures, pretending that the horror of the pandemic, with millions of deaths, predicted by the now refuted scientists, is still to be expected?
What we are currently experiencing is a new quality of mass manipulation, which apparently aims to anchor widespread misinformation in the recipients by means of short-term, continuous media bombardment so deeply that it is no longer questioned and in the long run accepted as a universally valid truth.
This method is paired with an abuse of everyday language already described by George Orwell. This manipulation, which he describes as “new speech”, is used to conceal facts and disguise base intentions. This is exactly what we experience with the term “loosening up”, currently the most used term in the public discussion besides “second wave”.
A closer look at “loosening” reveals that in many cases it does not lead back to the situation before the pandemic, but rather to a new reality characterized by restrictions and constraints, and that in its slipstream, even tighter regulations are being implemented – for example in Berlin, where the obligation to wear masks on public transport has not been loosened, but has even been tightened by the threat of higher fines.
But what is the essence of the manipulation described and where is it taking us?
The common core of both methods is that the use of reason and all rational thinking are eliminated here and we are obviously supposed to become accustomed to a system of domination determined by pure arbitrariness.
Anyone who wonders why this project is being systematically pursued in our time should take a look at the economic and financial situation in which we find ourselves at present: After two bailouts of the global financial system, central banks and governments are facing the recession, which has been made immensely worse by the lockdown, largely unarmed – and this despite the fact that in late summer and autumn we will be faced with conditions which we have not seen since the Second World War.
We are facing a drastic increase in unemployment, poverty and homelessness, a further expansion of the low-wage sector, thousands of collapses of small and medium-sized enterprises and the ruin of tens of thousands of small businesses. At the same time, we will see a continuation of the raid by the ultra-rich, who will continue to plunder the financial markets for their own benefit and instruct the policies they control to pass on the consequences of the looming economic and financial catastrophe to the working population with austerity programmes of unprecedented severity.
The most important feature of the change that lies ahead will be a worldwide explosion of social inequality, which will undoubtedly lead to social unrest, as has already been seen in America. And against this – as the last two thousand years of human history have taught us – those who sit at the levers of power know only one antidote: the use of force and violence, which always begins with the establishment of arbitrary rule.
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Thanks to the author for the right to publish.
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Image source: Robert Kneschke / shutterstock
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