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Starskeet t1_ja3pd51 wrote

Just read Manufacturing Consent. I always laugh at how right and left meet in the middle. All these conservative friends talking about media conspiracies, and i say it isn't a conspiracy. It has been documented and discussed for decades by none other than your friends on the left.

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McGauth925 t1_ja49vmm wrote

Also, check out Inventing Reality, something something something, by Michael Parenti.

People don't like to think this, in a culture that touts individualism, but we really are sheep - AND THAT'S A GOOD THING. We survive because of other people. There is next-to-nothing that we don't get because of other people. We are social beings, and that is one of our major assets.

But, it can so easily be used against us.

In fact, we are INFLUENCED to prize our individuality - by other people. It's a value that we got from other people, along with all our other beliefs and values. If everybody thinks they're an individual, how individualistic is that, actually?

So, we are highly susceptible to the social engineering conducted by the people who want us to act in ways that benefit them. Media is one of the main ways in which that engineering is accomplished. Thus, what we think of as reality was presented to us, and continually corroborated by much that we see around us. Nothing that doesn't support that version of reality is presented in the MSM that serves its owners and advertisers, along with the people who they share interlocking corporate board memberships with, but is relegated to low-traffic, alternative news sources few read, and many doubt.

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flanderdalton t1_ja6szjp wrote

Piggy backing to say, people need to watch Michael Parenti's lecture in 1986 (commonly known as yellow parenti).

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Throwmedownthewell0 t1_ja7jced wrote

Adding to this and u/Starskeet people should watch all of Adam Curtis' documentaries like Century of the Self.

Through in Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, Antonio Gramsci collected works, Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism and the granddaddy of it all Edward Bernays' Propaganda.

It's freeing in a nihilist sort of way.

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free_billstickers t1_ja3yapr wrote

This. I keep seeing social media posts saying things that are covered in MC and posting it like it's some secert mind blowing conspiracy. Like nah fam, this shit was sorted out some 50+ years ago

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LatentCC t1_ja5a020 wrote

I bring up Manufacturing Consent all the time in conversations about how bad the corporate news media is. It's not just the news spreading propaganda either. During the most recent Superbowl, an ad or something was played in remembrance of Pat Tillman - the NFL player turned Army Ranger shortly after 9/11. During his deployment, he heavily questioned the US involvement in the region and died of friendly fire - a 3-round burst to the head from short range.

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Marina_Maybe t1_ja4ssed wrote

Century of the Self is also a good watch regarding the birth of advertising in the west.

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speaks_truth_2_kiwis t1_ja40v1w wrote

I'm confused.

> I always laugh at how right and left meet in the middle.

Don't the US right and "left" meet somewhere on the right?

There still is a very small true left, I guess you could be referring to us?

> All these conservative friends talking about media conspiracies, and i say it isn't a conspiracy. It has been documented and discussed for decades by none other than your friends on the left.

Does something stop being a conspiracy when it's documented and discussed?

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McGauth925 t1_ja4a8xo wrote

Does something stop being a conspiracy when it's documented and discussed?

No, but it might stop being seen in the same way that a "conspiracy theory" is often seen - that is, not really believed by many people, but actually the overwrought imaginings of a mind that sees conspiracies behind every door.

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GlitchSurfer t1_ja782gu wrote

> Does something stop being a conspiracy when it's documented and discussed?

When it's being done in the open from the beginning? Yes, because the key component of a conspiracy is that it's designed to be secret.

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GodoftheGodcreators t1_ja74hzn wrote

Conspiracy involves at least some level of secrecy, otherwise it's just a pact

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speaks_truth_2_kiwis t1_ja7c9lp wrote

If it starts with some Ievel of secrecy, does it stop being a conspiracy when it's documented and discussed?

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GodoftheGodcreators t1_ja7ner1 wrote

Well yes. If everyone knows about your secret plans then they're not very secret anymore

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speaks_truth_2_kiwis t1_ja9elgd wrote

>Well yes. If everyone knows about your secret plans then they're not very secret anymore

source re: it stops being a conspiracy.

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GodoftheGodcreators t1_jadcqnk wrote

agreed. it's just that often people confuse conspiracy with conspiracy theory and people are led to believe that all of the latter is some ridicilous tin foil lunacy when in fact conspiracies are very real.

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Starsuponstars t1_ja49utp wrote

Agreed. And Manfacturing Consent at least doesn't cry because a pedophile wasn't treated with "dignity."

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