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Emotional blackmail (Demand, Resistance, Pressure Threats,
Compliance and Repetition) is not used exclusively in personal
relationships. It is used any time one group or person wants to
force its agenda, opinion or will on another. You’ve probably
witnessed it on the job and currently you can study the effects
simply by turning on the news.
Each of these tactics has been used extensively by the media and
the government in the United States since September 11, 2001 to
push the agenda and create agreement within the US population
and worldwide. Commentators like Bill O'Reilly and
Sean Hannity are masters with this tactic and provide
nightly opportunities to study it in action. Former President
Bill Clinton knew well how to use emotional blackmail to his
advantage. It is a persuasive tool. The purpose of emotional
blackmail is to control, redirect and ultimately create a state
of cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance is the state of confusion that occurs when
facts become twisted into half-truths, colliding with common
sense and suddenly you are convinced 2+2 = 5. Your instincts
tell you something isn’t right; yet the information you are fed
and exposed to counteracts your instincts causing you to doubt
yourself. Some refer to this as Orwellian speak, the act of
taking antonyms and presenting them as synonyms: War is Peace,
Consent is Patriotism, Disagreement is Anti-American or Rights
are Weaknesses. These are some of the Orwellian messages
Americans are currently sifting through.
Cognitive dissonance also occurs in the pairing of unrelated
facts to create correlation. The best of example of this is
President Bush’s speech in which he mentioned Iraq and the
September 11th attacks in the same sentence. The
close proximity of the mentions is designed to create a
correlation in peoples’ minds even when the reality is
different. By insinuating, people subconsciously take the idea
and turn it to a possibility. Through repetition, the
correlation becomes fact based upon misinformation. In time,
the reality is forgotten and the revision becomes the truth.
According to an ABC Poll only 19% of Americans know Iraq had
nothing to do with 9-11 nor were any of the hijackers Iraqi.
That means over 75% of Americans have bought into the confusion
and taken it as fact.
This is the power of cognitive dissonance: to revise history,
change facts and make fiction truth and the truth treason. Both
history and current politics include a wealth of examples.
Because of the emotions involved, the Middle East presents the
perfect case study in the use of public relations to create
cognitive dissonance through emotional blackmail on multiple
cultures, populations and countries.
Example: 80% of Americans believe the Christian and Muslim
Palestinians attacked Israel and this why the Occupied
Territories are a problem. The opposite is true, as documented
by the 1967 six day war, and more than 80 UN sanctions against
Israel (compared to Iraq’s less than 20) and numerous news
stories published around the world. But the misinformation,
through the omission of corrections becomes fact. Stories are
routinely run in the US with one headline then corrected
internationally a few days later. The correction, if it runs in
the US and in most cases it doesn't, it is buried in the back
pages with a small headline.
One example occurred on November 19, 2002, the Israeli Ministry
of Foreign Affairs (IMFA) re-manufactured a story about a
Palestinian suicide bombing on a military target. Twelve Israeli
soldiers and paramilitary fighting men were killed. No civilians
were killed.
The facts given in the US called the raid a "Massacre of
innocent (Israeli) civilians". Internationally the story was
corrected to state that this was in fact a military attack with
no civilian casualties. In the US, through omission of critical
facts the American public continues to believe this was yet
another attack on innocents. This form of propaganda is
emotional blackmail. It uses a combination of guilt and fear to
generate anger and manipulate a population toward compliance.
It is also very shrewd public relations, which is brilliantly
planned and executed.
All stories pertaining to Israeli military activity and the
Occupied Territories go through two censors, their military and
IMFA before they are allowed to be reported on. This insures
that only news favorable to the agenda is printed, broadcast and
distributed in the United States. Internationally additional
footage is smuggled out of the country and reported on
elsewhere. In the US, we rarely see uncensored stories.
Case in Point: Wednesday April 16th, 2003 ABC World News
Tonight reported that a major International methamphetamine
drug bust had been accomplished. In custody included
members from three nations, the United States, Canada and a
Middle East country. The Middle East country was never
named on by ABC, why? Within five minutes of perusing the
international press, the country behind the cloak was revealed.
This country is in fact one of the largest producers and
exporters of methamphetamine in the world. Its specialization is
ecstasy. The US press never misses a chance to slam Middle
Eastern countries of Arabic or Muslim decent.
Why is the US media shielding this country? Is it because
the country not named is Israel? Its drug problem is
well-known internationally, yet in the US it is given saintly
status and not even mentioned. Is the American public so
infantile that we cannot be given the straight facts? Can
we not separate the criminal behavior of a few from the rest of
a society? Is our own press and APAIC so afraid that if
Americans realize Israelis are humans with flaws and faults like
the rest of the world, no better and no worse, we will suddenly
turn our backs? Few American's will turn their backs on
flaws. Most will turn their backs on liars.
For myself, ABC News lost much of its credibility after
this story. It was like having a trusted friend show you
how shallow he or she really is by discovering rather than
having your best interests in mind, he/she's been manipulating
you all along. Of course there are more examples.
Take the suicide bombings. In
reality the majority of the suicide bombings have occurred in
locations frequented by military personnel and have targeted
military personnel. Rather than use troop transports, the
Israeli government uses public transportation, mixing civilians
with military to dissuade attacks on military troops. This is
why so many buses are attacked. These facts are kept at bay in
the US through public ridicule of opposing positions and the
vilification of dissention. Reporters are afraid to write the
real story lest they become the target. Even when direct
evidence exists proving the story wrong, the corrections often
do not run.
How can misinformation happen in a country with a free press?
How, is a classic illustration of emotional blackmail at
work. This scenario happens with politicians, public figures and
others, but is most common in the news media. Here's how it
works.
A
reporter writes a story,
which unearths the truth or exposes a cover-up. If this story
fits the agenda, he is labeled a hero. If this story exposes
information that is unflattering to the agenda, he is labeled
anti-patriotic, fanatical or anti-American. If the information
reflects poorly on Israeli policy or shows the conditions of
occupation, false flag operations or cover-ups, he is branded
anti-Semitic and anti-Israel and no longer considered part of
the team. The reporter is reassigned and in many cases his
career is ended. He is terrorized into submission through
emotional blackmail and professional reprisals. In most cases
the labels are not justified. Unfortunately for the reporter,
truth doesn't matter. The labels are so emotionally charged
that few will question them and most won't defend the reporter
for fear of the same consequences.
The threat of being branded as such and the personal loss of
career is enough to ignore the tenants of Edward R Morrow
and sacrifice the ethics code of the Associated Press by
and following the party line. This is how a country with a free
press perpetuates misinformation and goes from being the voice
of the people and purveyor of truth to the mouthpiece of
political agendas here and abroad.
Fear rules. The truth is the first casualty and the following
articles omit the information contrary to the agenda. Soon this
dry cleaned version becomes the accepted truth, minus the facts
that reveal the full story. It's in these omissions the
information critical to a sound decision exists. Through
ignorance, stories create complacency. Through complacency,
acceptance and by way of false information, omissions and actual
lies policy and public opinion are nurtured.
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Emotional blackmail plays upon the emotions we are most
motivated by: Fear, Guilt, Curiosity and Humor. Threats,
name-calling, vilification and public humiliation are
often used to squash opposition. Repetition of the
objectives continues louder to drown out resistance
until through unrelenting repetition; compliance becomes
the path of least resistance in ending the assault. The
result is similar to Chinese water torture. A single
drop of water dropping on the forehead over and over and
over again until this simple occurrence causes near
insanity. Emotional blackmail’s repetition of tactics
and messages works the same way to produce the desired
state of compliance. It is in this state of compliance
manifested within cognitive dissonance that people are
most vulnerable to manipulation and suggestion.
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