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“Repetition makes a fact seem more true, regardless of whether it is or not.” — this is a spiritual practice as well. If anyone’s read “Think and Grow Rich,” for someone to grow their faith, it helps to repeat positive affirmations, prayers, etc.

But this was a good read, thanks for this. I got an idea as I was reading this: just as they have their repetitious words and phrases (ie: anti-vaxxer or ‘safe and effective’), we should have our own phrases that can spread (eg; dangerous and faulty, or, media-follower). In a sense, fire w/ fire.

Curious in any thoughts here.

PS: as we see, the repetition is spiritual, and something else that was spiritual was the masks wearing. Here’s a topic on that: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/why-i-dont-wear-a-mask

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Apr 16Edited
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That has a term in psychology known as the "Asch conformity experiment" (or simply, Asch conformity). Long story short, people could be pressured into giving wrong answers if they were put in a room with a bunch of actors who themselves gave wrong answers (part of a 'false consensus').

The divide-and-conquer you refer to is also known as the "Robbers cave experiment" (or also spelled "Robber's"), of which The Daily Beagle did coverage on (https://thedailybeagle.substack.com/p/what-robbers-cave-can-teach-you-about).

Essentially if you create 'us versus them' you can create inter-group conflict and get one group to fight against another.

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There's a great many techniques exploited by the media, including false consensus (for 'Asch Conformity'), false authority (for 'Milgram experiment'), choice reduction (people are less likely to regret a choice if there's fewer of them, even if both are bad), lie by omission, first impressions effect (making their sites look flashy, making their presenters wear suits, Received Pronunciation, etc), selective reporting and more.

Appeal to repetition is still their bread and butter. It is why they brand things with oversimplified meaningless generic phrases, like "climate change", "war on terror", "far-right extremist", "sustainability", "Russian collusion", "transphobia", "Net Zero", "carbon neutral" and other nauseating oft-repeated labels with vague, undefined borders that could encompass anything.

They will swap out these repetitive phrases when they have negative connotations. For example "global warming" backfired when things got colder and didn't flood, so they switched to the vague, unfalsifiable and poorly defined "climate change" (climate always changes - it can never be untrue from a wishy-washy perspective).

As extensive as the topic in propaganda is, as the article notes, keeping topics simplified is key to learning and adoption. So one thing at a time (I should have referenced the Robbers cave experiment and I regret not doing so now).

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They abuse, essentially, cult tactics. Notice the framing of the word "denial" which falsely presumes their *belief* is true, even though it is an unfalsifiable hypothesis (they will claim there is no evidence that can ever prove it wrong, even if it is contradictory).

They also abuse a number of classic Nigerian email scam tactics, including:

1) False sense of urgency to pressure panicked decision making

2) Perpetual or constant alarm to 'switch off' critical thinking processes and activating the adrenaline

3) Appeals to a fake or falsified authority to make themselves either seem more important, knowledgeable, or richer than they are

4) Outright fabricating evidence (NASA October hockey stick graph, Anglia Ruskin climategate scandal, computer generated composite images of ice shelves, cherry picked photographic evidence, cherry picked CO2 temperature data, zombie weather recording station, false attribution of cause [E.G. blaming wildfires on climate when it is arson], starting wildfires as "proof")

5) Small-sell big-sell. Asking people to adopt small changes, getting them to accept the faulty premise of the lie, and then introducing the big changes if no-one complains or resists. Like how a scammer asks you for $10 to cover a fee, but then mysteriously has a car breakdown and demands $500 in order to travel, and then requires a $2000 advance to cover customs, etc.

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