The Poor-Man's Guide to Modernity - Independent Media Center

making heroes of the whistleblowers and demonizing them, is a giveaway to the circus show
being enacted for plebeian consumption. For, it matters not which side one takes, as both
sides are patently false, crafted of calculated omissions and half-truths that retain core-lies,
right out of the text book of the Technique of Infamy : invent two lies and keep the public
busy debating which of them is true!
The role of crafty omissions in fabricating propaganda was best captured by Aldous Huxley in
his Preface to Brave New World thusly:
‘The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing
something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a
practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning
certain subjects, by lowering what Mr. Churchill calls an “iron curtain”
between the masses and such facts or arguments as the local political bosses
regard as undesirable, totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much
more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent denunciations,
the most compelling of logical rebuttals. But silence is not enough. If
persecution, liquidation and the other symptoms of social friction are to be
avoided, the positive sides of propaganda must be made as effective as the
negative.’ — Aldous Huxley, Preface (circa 1946) to Brave New World, 1931,
Harper, pg. 11
To uncover omissions in a discourse is very difficult for the public who do not often have
command over the domain in which the falsehoods are being perpetuated. As the
psychological insight already quoted above from the Terrorism Study Group betrays, “'Public
Assumptions' Shape Views of History. Such presumptions are beliefs (1) thought to be
true (although not necessarily known to be true with certainty), and (2) shared in
common within the relevant political community.” Which is why inculcating ignorance,
especially political-historical ignorance pertaining to international relations, and being trusting
of authority figures and the state, are the pre-requisites for any vile propaganda to succeed! A
well-bred lack of skepticism to authority figures, whether to mainstream leaders in politics and
to experts in scientific disciplines, or to dissenting chiefs playing controlled opposition, thus
becomes the heart of social engineering.
This surfeit of blind trust in authority is what is ultimately harvested by the Mighty Wurlitzer. For
a skeptical public, the tunes of the Mighty Wurlitzer would fall on very deaf ears and public
The Poor-Man's Guide to Modernity 16 / 334 Zahir Ebrahim