No Need to Deny What Can be Hidden

One of the lessons learned by propagandists over the past years is that there's no need to deny the truth. Hiding it works just as well. Other people will then come up with lies to fill in the blanks.

There is for instance a change in the marine fauna off the north coast of Norway. Marine scientists have looked into this and found the cause to be a drop in water temperatures. This is then reported by journalists as being due to climate change. Greta reads this, and fills in the blanks. Our planet is reaching its boiling point. We're all going to die. This again, leads to public concern. Something must be done. There are demonstrations and petitions for the politicians to impose restrictions and regulations on every conceivable thing. After much deliberation, politicians go along with this. It may seem draconian, but the alternative would be to jeopardize future generations. A free and honest press is then credited for excellent journalism and awarded with much needed public funding.

At no point does anyone but a small number of people read the actual reports. Everybody is reacting instinctively without any more insight into the matter than what Greta comes up with.

The same is happening with the plague. Nobody cares about mortality rates. Journalists focus on total number of dead, implying that even one dead person is one too many. People like my twin brother knows someone who died. That one dead person is then tied up to the big number and suddenly it's as if the world is ending. Everybody is going to die unless we take the vaccine. After much deliberation, politicians see no other way than to impose draconian rules onto the public. Vaccine-makers and journalists are credited with saving the world.

Then there's the delta variant that isn't very dangerous, but more dangerous for the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. Journalists see that there are more cases registered among the heavily tested unvaccinated group than the less tested vaccinated group. The fact that the vaccinated are the ones ending up in hospitals with serious illnesses is ignored. The story presented is that of an alarming rise in cases among the unvaccinated. Pedro and Claude read this and demand action. They petition the government to do something, and we get confiscation, slavery and mandatory vaccination programs.

The beauty of this is that the propagandists never need to deny anything. The politicians respond to popular demand, and journalists never lie. Politicians can in retrospect claim to have been misinformed, and most people will sympathise with them since they themselves did no due diligence. Journalists can justly claim that they are not scientists, and that their job is to tell compelling stories. It's the public that failed by not taking the time to read up on the facts themselves. Nothing was ever denied. The scientific reports were sometimes even linked to by the journalists. All that was required was for people to read it for themselves. But that never happened.

Reeve and serfs

By anonymous (Queen Mary Master) - this file: scan dated 2009, uploaded (without identification of the source) 12 May 2010 by Ann Scott (medievalminds.comReeve-and-Serfs.original1.jpg), Public Domain, Link