Showing posts with label Aggressive Persuasion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aggressive Persuasion. Show all posts

The Emotions of Politics

Emotions  are  a  set  of  physiological  and  psychological  changes  within  the  body  and  brain which  come  as  a response  to  external,  situational  stimuli  (Damasio,  1994;  Lazarus,  1991; LeDoux,  1996;  Marcus,  2002;  Marcus, Neuman, & MacKuen, 2000).

The impact of emotions on electoral behaviour has been shown in a number of studies (Abelson, Kinder, Peters, &  Fiske,  1982;  Conover  &  Feldman,  1986;  Kinder  &  Sears,  1985;  Simon,  1985),  but  a  systematic  theory  of  the political relevance of emotion has only recently been formulated by George Marcus and colleagues; it is referred to as the Theory of Affective Intelligence  (1993, 2000). The theory is based on the neuropsychological approach to  emotions developed by Damasio (1994) and LeDoux (1996).

The  disposition  system  is  responsible  for  “managing  reliance  on  habits  and  previously  learned  strategies” (Marcus, 2002, p. 46).  Relying on sensory information, it performs a comparison: is the plan going as usual? If it is the habit is continued and the emotional reaction is enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm has been shown to stimulate the increase of the turnout intention. 

When you want to quit playing around with sticks and balls, and get into the serious areas of Aggressive Persuasion, this is the area you start in. 

A Powerful Technique Rarely Recognized

If we're all in sales, as the old saying goes, then we're all in the persuasion business. And this is particularly true for entrepreneurs. Whether you're asking investors to hand over their money, potential customers to try your product, or employees to give their best, much of your day is probably spent persuading people. So how do you do it well?

PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUE:
SELF-EVIDENCE.

It's been a long time since I wrote anything on the technique and usage of propaganda. So let's drop down and talk about a common technique used in our media today which has been a standard due to its reliability.

The Self-Evidence Technique has the longest list of methods for use, it is also quite possibly the oldest technique in recorded history, dating back to Aristotle. A list of the commonly known methods for this technique are posted on a page here

In this article the questions and counter view points are to lead you through the methods of countering this technique and understanding the power it has to stop the victim from questioning facts which are likely not presented in clear terms, and often, while the article using this technique may not 'lie', the context and composition doesn't presentt the information in true form either.So whether you agree with the argument or question -- keep in mind that those are the points, not the simply there to be argumentative.

So, what is this technique, and how is it being used by our Government and current Media today?

Sometimes news articles assume US policy statements are true and treat such statements as matters of fact rather than political argument. We can call this self-evidence, as in "We hold these truths to be self -evident."

Military level Propaganda Campaigns

Propaganda is the communication of a point of view with the ultimate goal of having the recipient come to “voluntarily” accept the position as if it were his or her own. In addition to the pejorative flavor, propaganda has some essential and distinctive features:
• Propaganda has a strong ideological bent.
• Propaganda is institutional in nature.
• Propaganda involves mass persuasion.
• Propaganda tends to rely on ethically suspect methods of influence.
Current News Articles on the Military level Propaganda Campaigns currently engaged on the Internet

The Guardian
Russia's sprawling propaganda network may have failed to persuade much of the world that Ukraine is run by Nazis, that Crimea was annexed in a popular uprising and/or that Germany is a failed state. But the barrage of misinformation has convinced some ...

Propaganda and The Christian Enslavement

When you think about Propaganda, 
why do you think WWII?
We've had many military engagements since then (Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, The War on Drugs, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq), and each of them used propaganda against the enemy. Each campaign from one to the next learned from the last becoming stronger, more effective, complex, sophisticated. How many Propaganda Wars are going on right now, on Twitter, Facebook, in the News Media, and other Social Media sources? How many people died this week from the publication of words on the web?

THERE ARE TWELVE MILITARY LEVEL PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGNS currently active on the Internet. Associating Propaganda,  with military actions isn't a huge leap. There are many other campaigns out there as well. Such as the Campaign to turn Christians into enslaved machines.

Are You Legit?
What makes you Qualified to Write?

"What Qualifies you to be a writer?" is likely the most negative question I've experienced since I began writing at 17.

I use to answer, "I passed 9th Grade English" or "Because English is my First Language"  In my 30s I was a little meaner -- "What qualifies you to breathe?"

Now that I'm 50 I don't answer at all.

Doubts plague every writer, as fierce as the Furies, as terrible as the Harpies. This particular doubt should never bother you.

A Look at Propaganda in the Ukraine

The New York Times has an interview with Mr. Pomerantsev  which is certainly worth looking into if you are interested in the use of Propaganda on the Cable News. The differences between the use of aggressive persuasion on the TV and in Text are of course different via the medium constraints. For example Guilt as a means of motivation can be evoked 17 ways (that I know of) through video, and only 4 ways through text. Text trumps in other directions.



Mr. Pomerantsev’s book, “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible,” has particular resonance, describing a world where laws change at the whim of the powerful and where television provides an ever-present, entertaining and emotionally charged distortion of reality.

Mr. Pomerantsev’s area of study is propaganda, and he believes he saw many classic techniques at work in Moscow. He says one favorite trick was to put a credible expert next to a neo-Nazi, juxtaposing fact with fiction so as to encourage so much cynicism that viewers believed very little. Another was to give credence to conspiracy theories — by definition difficult to rebut because their proponents are immune to reasoned debate.



Republican Propaganda
Editing the State of the Nation Speech

Republicans Post Doctored Version Of State Of The Union, Censor Facts On Climate Change
BY EMILY ATKIN POSTED ON JANUARY 21, 2015 AT 10:42 AM



The official website for House Republicans has posted on YouTube a version of President Obama’s State of the Union address which cuts out comments where the President was critical of Republican rhetoric on climate change, ThinkProgress has learned.

Some thoughts on Political Details

Details, they say, are the dwellings of devils.

I'm always a little amazed at the "vital" particle -- and its slight stature compared to the body of work it brings to life. I have spent days in furious and obsessive search for that "detail" -- which once turned out to be a date:
It was 1987 when Eric discovered the nation was insane. 

and once, a flowering herb:
"Hemlock water dropwort" (Oenanthe crocata) the plant responsible for producing the sardonic grin. The candidate for the "sardonic herb," a neurotoxic plant used for the ritual killing of elderly people in pre-Roman Sardinia. When these people were unable to support themselves, the herb was given to them as an intoxicant and once in the grip of the poison, they were dropped from a high rock or beaten to death. It was also said to cause rictus laughter from the victim before death.
-- that was such a cool find though.

Details. It is so little we need, but what we need is absolute.

ALEC wants our Schools


I discovered a copy of ALEC's Report Card book v18

The general academic feeling is the report card fails.  I think they missed the point of the publication. That happens when you are an academic and still believe order and reason are viable goals.

It is fitting that ALEC begins the v17 version with this paragraph:
In World War II, Great Britain suffered a series of crushing defeats. From the conquest of her continental allies and an ignominious evacuation at Dunkirk to the loss of Singapore in the east, Great Britain was under attack. Germany stood as a colossus with its boot on the throat of Europe. Under the assumption there was no way to win, “realistic” members of the British aristocracy advised reaching an accommodation with Germany. Winston Churchill refused to surrender while the Royal Air Force successfully fought off the German Luftwaffe over the skies of England, deterring a German invasion.
Yeah, WWII, the days of Hitler and the Big Lie. Perfect.
"All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying."
—Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X[1]
All too true. It never occurs to us regular folk that someone would actually -- and on purpose -- tell moutain size lies which fabricate whole political systems. Not only tell them. but then go to the trouble of making several web sites and then writing a full book on the subject. It boggles the mind.

And then we see what Larry Krieger did last year with AP History. The whole thing was a swindle -- so he could get his book business back. Not a single thing he said had an ounce of truth to it, except when he would admit that there was nothing wrong with the AP History course.

As I went through the pages of this ALEC "report card", I found myself making little notes in the margins about the Aggressive Persuasion tactics that were both being described, and being used by the manual. It is a marvelous example of how to acquire people to spread your propaganda, and train them at the same time. It is poetry in motion to be honest.

ALEC has an Education Task Force. They have nine of these "task forces" that are staffed with Think Tanks, such as the American Principles Project, and the Heartland Institute (both highly recommended propaganda outfits by the way. The cigarette companies give them great reviews) who hire people like James Milgram, Sandra Stotsky and Jane Robbins. You'll recall the three of them from the Math Wars days and also how the created the turmoil around Larry Krieger's  AP History swindle last year. They didn't really care about Larry, or the AP. They were after David Coleman, the main guy with Common Core. ALEC doesn't like Common Core. It stands in the way of taking apart the Education System and then making a profit off the parents.

The Review of 2013's Version had this to say:
The 18th edition of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress, and Reform draws on ratings from market-oriented advocacy groups to grade states in areas such as support for charter schools, availability of vouchers, and permissiveness for homeschooling. The authors contend that these grades are based on “high quality” research demonstrating that the policies for which they award high grades will improve education for all students. This review finds that, contrary to these claims, ALEC’s grades draw selectively from these advocacy groups to make claims that are not supported in the wider, peer-reviewed literature. In fact, the research ALEC highlights is quite shoddy and is unsuitable for supporting its recommendations. The authors’ claims of “a growing body of research” lacks citations; their grading system contradicts the testing data that they report; and their data on alternative teacher research is simply wrong. Overall, ALEC’s Report Card is grounded less in research than in ideological tenets, as reflected in the high grades it assigns to states with unproven and even disproven market-based policies. The report’s purpose appears to be more about shifting control of education to private interests than in improving education.
Sigh. Of course it is moving control over to the private interests. There is money to be made there, and we got to get rid of Common Core as well. A system that will give any lame, poor, backwater school system better educational materials than private schools can afford has to go.

Also, the teachers have to actually be teachers if the CCSS is in place and ALEC wants anyone "who feels the calling" to be able to be a teacher -- at minimum wage -- with no union of course.

I've been looking for versions 19 and 20. The propaganda resources alone are worth any purchase price. This is a whole National level disinformation and confusion campaign -- all planned and explained for you. I have some good tactics myself but ... I guess when you have a team of "think tanks" and a million to put into the effort, you can get more done.




Selling compliance to the unwilling requires Inovation

You might believe that that Corporate use of Aggressive Persuasion is something you don't need to be concerned about -- and that belief might be yours, or painstakingly inserted into your decision matrix for you. After all, you do want to be compliant, right? So you were eventually going arrive at that belief anyway, right? So, no problem then.
Corporations -- All about Convenience

From the strategy page of a Corporate Marketing Agency:
Compliant behaviour is associated with conformity to institutional rules, and so, when people choose not to comply they stand answerable to consequences, which in an institutional or legal framework, could result in penalties such as fines, community service or legal action  (cf. Harvey and McCrohan, 1988; May, 2005). Thus, the word voluntary must be used with some caution in the context of social marketing frameworks. 
Social marketers should encourage compliance by using message appeals (in this context not simply message framing) to link the socially desired behaviour to something that is of value to the individual. These appeals must be packaged or presented in a way that enables the individual to see the direct benefit (value) of their action.  
This value could be something which avoids negative consequences or which are positive incentives to behave in a certain way (Staub, 1997; Atkin, 2001). It could also be an empathetic motive rather than a personal one (Taute and McQuitty, 2004; Sturmer, Snyder and Omoto, 2005). Message appeals can be either positive or negative in nature, and they can additionally be divided into informational (or rational) appeals versus emotional appeals.   

These are not unique strategy descriptions, but I was a little surprised to find them stated with such brazen openness.


Never as New as You Think



Special Message to the Congress Proposing a Comprehensive Health Insurance PlanFebruary 6, 1974
To the Congress of the United States:One of the most cherished goals of our democracy is to assure every American an equal opportunity to lead a full and productive life.
In the last quarter century, we have made remarkable progress toward that goal, opening the doors to millions of our fellow countrymen who were seeking equal opportunities in education, jobs and voting.
Now it is time that we move forward again in still another critical area: health care.
Without adequate health care, no one can make full use of his or her talents and opportunities. It is thus just as important that economic, racial and social barriers not stand in the way of good health care as it is to eliminate those barriers to a good education and a good job.
Three years ago, I proposed a major health insurance program to the Congress, seeking to guarantee adequate financing of health care on a nationwide basis. That proposal generated widespread discussion and useful debate. But no legisla ...read full document
.....today is still the 6th, yes?

The good ideas are never original, but this explains why no one wanted to get behind this idea. Anything from Nixon, couldn't be good -- right? 

A Brief but Relevant  History of Propaganda 

Moments to Cherish
Where is The Line?

It was Oct 30th, 1938, and young Orson Wells came through the doors of his studio with a grin on his face. It wasn't exactly a grin born of humor, or good will. It wasn't the kind of grin you would reciprocate. In fact, anyone could tell just by looking at him he was up to no good. Unfortunately, this was radio, and none of his listeners would be able to see that grin.

The Mercury Theater on The Air began right on time. Yes it did. A time when families would gather around the radio in the evening to enjoy their favorite shows. And they were gathering, They were getting popcorn and drinks. They were getting pillows and hushing each other because the show was starting. And even though they were all aware that the show was beginning, many people (a few hundred thousand), didn't hear, the little tag line at the end of the announcer's introduction. "H.G. Wells, the War Of The Worlds"


Apart from his admittedly imperfect methods of estimating the audience and assessing the authenticity of their response, Pooley and Socolow found, Cantril made another error in typing audience reaction. Respondents had indicated a variety of reactions to the program, among them "excited", "disturbed," and "frightened". Yet he included all of them with "panicked," failing to account for the possibility that despite their reaction they were still aware the broadcast was staged. "Those who did hear it, looked at it as a prank and accepted the performance in that manner," recalled researcher Frank Stanton.
… In order to take advantage of the accepted convention, we had to slide swiftly and imperceptibly out of the 'real' time of a news report into the 'dramatic' time of a fictional broadcast. Once that was achieved — without losing the audience's attention or arousing their skepticism — once they were sufficiently absorbed and bewitched not to notice the transitions any more, there was no extreme of fantasy through which they would not follow us.

Bartholomew grants that hundreds of thousands were frightened but calls evidence of people taking action based on their fear "scant" and "anecdotal". Indeed, contemporary news articles indicate that police were swamped with hundreds of calls in numerous locations, but stories of people doing anything more than calling authorities mostly involve only small groups. Such stories were often reported by people who were panicking themselves.

Later investigations found much of the alleged panicked responses to have been exaggerated or mistaken. Cantril's researchers found that, contrary to what had been claimed, there were no admissions for shock at a Newark hospital during the broadcast; hospitals in New York City similarly reported no spike in admissions that night. A few suicide attempts seem to have been prevented when friends or family intervened, but there was no record of a successful one. A Washington Post claim that a man died of a heart attack brought on by listening to the program could not be verified. One woman filed a lawsuit against CBS, but it was soon dismissed.



What You Know
And the Pain It Causes
Cognitive dissonance

"Before we try to explain something, we should be sure it actually happened."--Ray Hyman


My son mentioned today that everyone dies of the same thing, a  loss of homeostasis. Which is true. Our bodies rely on many variables to remain within strict parameters, which maintain our homeostasis. Any one of them: body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, breathing capacity and activity -- any of them losing their required value and we are dead. The rest is merely details.

Cognitive dissonance arises when external information contradicts an already held belief.

The way all of us normally deal with this is NOT to rationally compare two competing theses and resolve conflicts using reason and available evidence. Rather, we react in the same way we react to a physical threat. We instinctively fight against information that threatens our beliefs, inventing any means of defense possible.

Aggressive Persuasion
Time Distortion. Technique

Name: Time Distortion. / Engage the Future

Type:  Perception Alteration
Medium: In Person or Voice Call - Text is possible but challenging
Chance of Encounter: Med/Low
Typical Target: One-to-One though Mass Media is Possible -- Challenging though
Setup, Conditions, or Environment: Framing highly suggested prior to engagement. 
If campaign requires text, framing requirement becomes even more advised. 
Description of Handling: The handling means an act of influencing public opinion through specific action so manipulated people will have the impression that they are acting according to their own ideas and interests. In fact, they take an idea, or an opinion that does not belong to them, but has been induced by various means. .One of the simplest is the technique of Time Distortion. Researchers today, call this False Memory or Memory Distortion. This technique refers to a decision that the client is trying to take. Speaking (Communicating) to them as if the decision is already made and that it was a pleasant experience and now everything is going to work out, adds to the experience. Also combining the session with pleasing images made with the use of "past tense" makes the new belief seat into memory with less disturbance, and begin to inscribe into the long term memory.  

I've also heard this one referred to as, "It's Just Tense, that's All"
But that was described as more of a Trope than an engagement.
I remember when it happened. I remember when we got the news. The news that 913 people killed themselves in Jonestown. It was so stunning. The anchor man said it deadpan. Nine hundred men, and women, with their children, in a mass suicide during a church service. It really didn't hit. I don't think anyone who heard it that day, got the message. I don't believe we process after a certain degree of atrocity. It's not a shock, really. It's a dumbing. What you hear -- it just doesn't make any sense to you. The words, individually, as each was said, were recognized as words, sure, but they weren't recognizable in that order. I guess, when that sort of limitation is breached, you focus on the banal. So, yeah, this guy who is condemning the jokes about the Kool-aid, this college kid. Sure, I understand the rebuke, but i don't accept it. Even now, it is difficult to grasp - -and there are so many living people who are crushed by tragedy to focus on. I do not accept the reproach of the dead while the living cry out.
Was there something that could have been done about Jonestown?

So, like Bullshit, OK?

Paul Siegel is a man I've been learning quite a bit about and in doing so I've been distracted into far reaching areas of examination probing references from his fantastic book on the First Amendment of the Constitution and Communication in the US. These are points of interest for me right now, with everything I'm doing with the FTC, and my Law proposal, as well as my book on aggressive persuasion. 

This next bit isn't actually in the book, but he writes on his website that it probably should have been.  And this excerpt is from one of his pages on his web site on the acceptance of a policy which made it mandatory to teach Creationism in public schools. 

Aggressive Persuasion - Technical Authority technique

Today's Aggressive Persuasion Spotlight falls on the technique known as: Technical Authority

Name: Technical Authority
Type:  An Automatic Behavior
Medium: Text, Internet, News, In Person, Video, Voice Recording
Chance of Encounter: High
Typical Target: Large Groups, Mass Media
Setup, Conditions, or Environment:  This technique is best used in an environment of multi-level confliction, without overbearing conflict. For example, a problem is perceived through the latest results of a report, that the math standards of the state of California are not providing a needed element. Opinions have been given suggesting, clarity of requirements, limited or vague instruction, low level of expectation, expectations are too high, and fosters an environment which allows too many methods. However, none of these are clear enough to take a stand on at this point.

Automatic Behaviors are frequently underestimated, not recognized when engaged, and commonly attributed to some other origin.[1] The name however is descriptive and accurate. These are behaviors that are 1) triggered by an event. 2) Responsive to the event in predictable ways, 3) The response requires no forethought, planning or conscious agreement. Most people are completely unaware that this behavior is ... a behavior and not a conscious decision on their part.

This particular behaviour however is very strong especially the environment is as described above -- a problem exists, there appear to be several possible areas of exploration, many voices with opinions, and an escalating atmosphere as more people buy into the discussion.

At this point, the introduction of a Technical Authority, someone who establishes credibility in a recognizable, and easily acceptable manner, and then begins to instruct steps and goals -- will be followed and given a great deal of power without question -- such questions might have been "What are you an authority on, exactly?" would have undoubtedly been asked at any other time, but are dismissed by the momentum of the moment.

Once the Technical Authority is accepted by this group, newcomers will also fall in line and an establishment of loyalty by precedent comes in to being -- meaning, any questioning of credentials will be looked down on with derision by the existing members of the core group.

Even on discovery later that the Technical Authority is not qualified, it will take a major abuse of position and power to break the spell.

[1]Bar-Anan, Yoav, Timothy D. Wilson, and Ran R. Hassin. "Inaccurate self-knowledge formation as a result of automatic behavior." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46.6 (2010): 884-894.


A look at Aggressive Persuasion on the Internet

The Condition is well known and implicit.The Indoctrinated will fight to defend their conditioning -- Jane Robbins on Using Social Engineering on the Internet to Maintain Party Loyalty, Jan 24th 2013


She's right of course. It is a fool's errand to fight against those who have accepted a conditioning -- expecting to win. And, I want to be upfront on this -- the conditioning, it is not a sign of weakness, any more than having a bleeding hole in your chest is a sign of weakness after you've been shot.

The human brain, in evolutionary terms, is still fairly young -- with the frontal lobes and upper hemispheres being even younger than that. Language is also more powerful than we give it credit.

I was first introduced to indoctrinated minds when I was 20. I took the position as the personal security of a man named Ted Patrick.

The Open Letter to
James Milgram The Inciter


Professor James Milgram has been around for some time. In 1996 he left his place at Stanford and without invitation came to California, introduced himself as a expert of Education and began making claims, which had no basis, and he didn't have any real experience with the education of K-12. He strode in on reputation as a mathematician alone. Now... that reputation was fairly solid at that time, and as he was sure would happen, the people he approached endowed reputation with more than it warranted.

The Math Wars had begun several years later, and this was his next target. On reputation he could only do so much. Very soon other tactics were introduced to the traditionalists side -- tactics no one would expect academics to use on each other.


September 20, 2002

Professor James Milgram
Department of Mathematics
Stanford University
Stanford, CA

Jim

I am replying to you with an open letter. Events of this past week or so have dismayed me and brought me to ask if my views on democracy in America are out of line with those of my peers. Though I feel that people have the legal right to express even extreme forms of dissent, I also believe that there is a slow decrease in our civility to one another, making it much more difficult to bring about consensus and accomplish common goals. In the range between civility and the extremity of legal expression is a gray area where all of us react negatively or positively. I need to ask if many people would react as I have. First I'd like to outline as objectively as I can the events to which I am reacting.

Where the Wild Things Are...

Chess is a Wild game I've only been playing for a short time, but I've gained enough understanding to realize that the angles of ...