The Bum ⏳ End All Wars

Feral grandparent, ditherer and critic. #BumcrackersForAll Art by Chris Lieb

[The Bum ⏳ End All Wars @TheBum15]

https://t.co/4QsmKyWI20

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

It’s cute how the Zionists think they’ll be able to manipulate and propagandize the world into liking Israel again.

Yeah, saturate all online platforms with weird-faced influencers telling us Israel is awesome. That’ll make us forget those years of genocidal atrocities.

Sure, buy up the social media platforms that young people are using so you can censor criticism of Israel. That’ll convince them that Zionism is cool.

Go on, take control of CBS and make Bari Weiss the boss. That’ll make us forget all those videos of mutilated Palestinian children.

Right, use Zionist oligarchs and influence operations to manipulate governments and institutions into crushing free speech which opposes a genocidal apartheid state. That’ll get everyone supporting the genocidal apartheid state.

Propaganda is an effective tool of mass-scale psychological manipulation, but it isn’t magic. It isn’t going to miraculously erase what people know in their bones to be true.

In order to successfully propagandize people you need to first get them to trust you, and then you need to feed them narratives which appeal to the cognitive biases they already hold. Nobody trusts Israel apologia anymore, and people’s biases are now stacked squarely against the Zionist entity. They’ve got nothing to work with and nowhere to start from.

If a coworker you hate came up to you and started stealing stuff off your desk while telling you he’s your friend and that he would never steal from you, you’re not going to believe him no matter how many words he says to you. No matter how skillful a manipulator he is, no matter how eloquent his words are, nothing he says will trump your first hand observations of your material reality.

That’s what it’s like at this point. They’re trying to throw a bunch of language at us in order to convince us that we haven’t seen what we’ve seen, haven’t experienced what we’ve experienced, and don’t know what we know. And they assume it will work because the language they’re throwing at us is being circulated in high volumes and costs a lot of money.

It won’t work, though. Even if propaganda could convince us that we haven’t seen what we’ve seen and don’t know what we know, propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. These past two years have made even relatively apolitical members of the public acutely aware that there is an aggressive campaign to manipulate their perception of the state of Israel, and that anyone pushing them to support that state is untrustworthy. Nobody’s going to buy into the propaganda if they don’t trust the source.

Now that everyone’s aware that Israel is paying influencers $7,000 per post to churn out propaganda on its behalf, whenever you see a video online of some young social media-savvy personality promoting pro-Israel narratives you see their replies flooded with memes and jokes about their $7k jackpot. From now on whenever some sunglasses-wearing zillennial shows up going “Israel is surrounded on all sides by Islamofascists and you think JEWS are the problem? Uhh, no babe. Walk with me,” everyone’s going to go “Found one of those $7k posts.”

It just doesn’t work. Psychological manipulation only goes so far. There’s only so much that clever language can do to decouple someone’s mind from their direct experience of material reality.

This is where Israel went wrong in alienating the liberal Zionists. They needed people at the table who understood how normal human beings think, who could help the Israel project walk the delicate line between apartheid abuses papered over with propaganda and full-scale atrocities which would alienate the world. Instead they decided to go all in with the Smotriches and Ben-Gvirs, trusting that the propaganda machine which had served them so well all those decades would continue to carry them through any international upset they might cause.

It hasn’t turned out that way. The world’s eyes are open to what Israel is, and they are never going to close again. You can’t take off the Mickey Mouse mask, show the kids the snarling Freddy Krueger face underneath it, and then put the mask on and hope they start calling you Mickey again. Nobody’s going to forget what you showed them.

[Attorney General Dan Rayfield @AGDanRayfield]

Late tonight, a federal judge issued a sweeping new order prohibiting the president from deploying National Guard forces—from any state or DC—to Oregon.

The president can’t keep playing whack-a-mole w/ different states’ Guard units to get around court orders & the rule of law.

[Dr. Jill Stein🌻 @DrJillStein]

Voters should be clear on where every candidate for president stands.

More than two months into Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said that Palestinians are “the most pampered people by international aid organizations on the planet." Since then @RobertKennedyJr has continued his unrepentant, reflexive praise and support for Israel as the death toll has climbed to more than 30K.

I am challenging Kennedy on his assertion that Palestinians are “pampered” and that Gaza should be “leveled.” Sign now and tell Kennedy to debate me on Palestine: https://t.co/niHXPsncYh

[Whitney Webb @_whitneywebb]

The only way i could see the US 2024 election being a "win" is if a significant amt of Americans wake up to the fact that the govt and both political parties are organized crime and do not even try to represent the public. They don't even try to hide it now.

[Aaron Maté @aaronjmate]

Every word you and your aides pronounce is driven by racist contempt for Palestinians. That’s why you only offer them empty platitudes while arming and enabling Israel’s mass murder in Gaza.

[Pepper Oceanna Lewis 🇸🇩 @PepperOceanna38]

How to justify genocide:

"Trump will bring back the Muslim ban."
"Trump is worse."
"Trump is a fascist."
"Biden is the lesser evil."
"Vote blue to save democracy."
"Vote blue no matter who"

I got news for y'all, Biden is a fascist, too & has no consideration for your democracy!

[Aaron Maté @aaronjmate]

Biden refers to "our military operation in Rafah." He corrects himself to say "the major military operation in Rafah", but this is yet another occasion where his flubs reveal the truth. Every Israeli massacre in Gaza is a joint Genocide Joe production.

[Alon Mizrahi @alon_mizrahi]

People are saying that they're feeling like they're going crazy. I want to congratulate you on displaying great courage and conviction. And I will tell you why: because in the past few months you have been mostly successfully withstanding a psychological warfare campaign of a massive, massive scale.

(Keep reading, it's going to be fascinating. And if you're not following me here yet, follow).

I am not talking about trolls and bots and the obvious complicity of mass media. I am talking about something entirely different: a well planned, well executed and heavily budgeted campaign by US and Israeli organs of government responsible entirely for fooling great numbers of people into believing all kinds of nonsense (and not believing the simple truth).

This may sound shady (not to the radicals among us: they're aware), but I'll tell you that in Israel "Management of Consciousness" is a formal activity and department of the IDF. And I guarantee you the US is no different.

And throughout this campaign I have been noticing certain tactics used by Israel for "management of consciousness" being employed, massively, by American representatives (the Europeans are usually just useful idiots: no one needs to even lie to them smartly. And I'm talking about the "leaders").
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I am by no means saying you have not been lied to before as Americans (or as citizens f another country). But I bet many of you feel you have never been lied to this blatantly, this brazenly, to an actually disorienting effect.

So I'm going to very briefly run through 3 such tactics, and then tell you why they're using them (nothing is ever coincidental about how power speaks). I promise you it's going to make a lot of sense. And you're going to recognize them immediately.

Tactic #1: denying what you know is true, and they know you know they know is true (or seriously claiming what they know you know is a lie). Examples: we did not, or are not attacking, so and so hospital, while people are there filming themselves being bombarded. Also: The IDF claims only militants were targeted in X incident, when you're looking at images of dead women and children. This can be called: lying to your face. repeatedly, even though it is obvious for everybody they're doing it, and you're seeing it.

Tactic #2: claiming, or doing, two things that are mutually exclusive. Examples: claiming to care about people and providing the means to kill them. Talking about the importance of aid while not using any kind of public message to warn Israel it cannot withhold it. Talking about values and democracy while defending and justifying a genocide. There are a million examples of this, I'm sure you'll come up with plenty more.

Tactic #3: saying things like "we'll investigate", "we'll look into it", or "we're waiting for confirmation". Two brothers shot by a sniper a month ago? A man waving a white flag shot in front of a camera? 3 Israeli hostages killed by IDF while waving white flags? A command center under a hospital? 100 People killed in one attack? 400? Who remembers? And by the way: we're still looking into it.
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Now if you'll notice, these 3 tactics have one very prominent element in common. Because these 3 tactics are used not to convince you of one reality or another. They are not trying to tell Israel is either good or bad, or that civilians die unjustifiably or not. This is not the point of all this, and this is why it feels like a break from previous traditions of political deceit.

The real purpose of these tactics is not to convince or dissuade you of anything in particular. They are meant to destabilize you psychologically. This is the disorientation I was referring to earlier. It is not coincidental, it is the desired effect of this strategy.

Yes, it is strategic.

This is what you do when you want a population confused and disarmed from any psychological certainty, which is the basis for all political motivation and action. But if you don't know what's happening, and not sure what your government does or stands for, what are you going to fight? How will you convince other to join you?
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They have been doing it to Israelis for decades: always talking from both sides of their mouth at the same time, denying what everybody watching knows is a complete lie and saying they'll investigate when it is clear it there is never any intention behind it.
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By always maintaining two opposites in your consciousness, they are always giving you false hope, and always denying it, thus slowly breaking you (after 100 instances of this you stop hoping, and after 200 you forget hope ever lived in you). By always providing a grain of simulated recognition of your fears, they're letting you think that maybe you're heard and maybe not everything is a lie, but only to disappoint you a minute later. And again. Again.

My brothers and sisters, it is intentional. They are not sloppy or confused, but very methodical.
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This is the very. very short and condensed version of what they're trying to do to us psychologically, which is really to disintegrate us not only as a society, but as individuals as well.

The trick to resisting this strategy is to always trust your instincts (because you are good and they work beautifully), and to always remember that they are using duplicity intentionally, strategically, to destabilize you. So your answer is, as always, clarity and resolve.

[99% Johnny Graz @jvgraz]

Well, which is it?

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

Refugees didn't cause the NHS crisis.

Refugees didn't decimate our social housing.

Refugees didn't sell off our railways, water and energy.

That was the Tories — and their attempts to scapegoat desperate people in search of safety is an utter disgrace.

[Edward Snowden @Snowden]

Free Julian Assange.

[Sarah Leah Whitson @sarahleah1]

While the Biden admin has been posturing its visit as a "bear hug" to temper worst of Israeli excesses, Blinken's all day pow-wow w Israeli war cabinet followed by Biden's today will eviscerate any remaining doubt that the US is actively taking part in Israel's assault on Gaza.

[Prof Zenkus @anthonyzenkus]

Janet Yellen: "We can certainly afford two wars".

Ghoul.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

If you find yourself constantly saying this - "oh my god I used to love this great leftist but then he overnight turned into a far right fascist" - maybe it's worth reflecting on whether you are stuck in archaic left/right frameworks with no relevance to neoliberal global power:

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

There is no free press without a free Julian Assange.

Watch my speech at the Belmarsh Tribunal here: https://t.co/QZfz9Ob0Ba

It's time for others to break their silence over this travesty of justice.

[The Bum ⏳ End All Wars @TheBum15]

Oregon governor commutes all 17 of state's death sentences https://t.co/PqFMsdvNhp via @Yahoo

[Al Jazeera English @AJEnglish]

“The only winner is the Brazilian people.”

Lula da Silva narrowly defeats far-right Jair Bolsonaro to win Brazil's presidency again https://t.co/rsJkXp5iIM

[Black in the Empire @blackintheempir]

Hillary laughing at being responsible for the murder of Gaddafi, Albright saying killing 500,000 children in Iraq was worth it, Obama flippantly saying, "Ok, we tortured some folks", Bush making a joke about there being no WMD's after killing a million people

That's the U.S.

[Black in the Empire @blackintheempir]

I'm not a fan of Trump, I'm just tired of the Dems acting like he's worse than they are