Thread by @BroStreetJoy

1/ I saw a recommendation to read “Trust Us, We’re Experts!”, an exposé on how powers manipulate public opinion

22 pages into a 300+ book my mind is already blown

especially for a book written in 2001

Things have definitely gotten worse since then

Let’s take a walk, shall we?

2/ The 1st rule *real* PR people operate under is

The public must never know they’re being influenced

Example: Big Tobacco wanted women to start smoking, which was “unfeminine”

The “Father of PR” achieved this by reframing it as a feminist right

The “torches of liberty”; wow.

3/ The 1st *method* of this 1st rule is

Make Your Words Come Out Of Other People’s Mouths

If EvilCo wants to get legislation passed

or

Politician Psycho has a scandal

how credible is it if they argue their own case?

You need credibility

which needs

Appearance of Authority

4/ The appearance of authority is someone who excudes credibility someone

- In Uniform

(doctor/cop/soldier)

- Successful

(billionaire/politician/artist)

- “Unbiased”

(researcher/institute/journalist)

If you hit 2+, bingo!

The other part of gaining credibility is...

5/ ... Relatability

which you get from The Everyday Man... Joe The Plumber types

Marching “Moms Against...”

Remember all the Feminists that were convinced that smoking was a political issue? 👆

But those are just your Foot Soldiers & Props, &

(almost always)

The Suckers

6/ Can you think of any political ad that doesn’t include one of the above?

More than likely (if it’s not a pure attack ad) it has all of these. Various comments from people

in uniform
+
prominent
+
relatable
&
some news quotes/samples

Sound like every one you’ve seen, right?

7/ This is why President Trump shocked the shit out of them

Not just because [they]’d rigged the system

He gamed that fucker

&

it

friggin

WORKED!

Precisely b/c it was different from the tired shit they always play

& that excited people.

(Also HiIIary was clearly eviI)

8/ Anyway, back to the PR methods

Here’s a fact you’ll want to read

It’s normal for a PR firm to put out Press Releases

It’s also normal for the news to literally copy their releases word-for-word

40% of journalists

But that’s just print, right?

NOPE. They make VIDEOS too.

9/ So, the news literally takes what PR people give them

& are too busy (*cough* lazy) to check/research in a timely fashion

So the PR report often goes in the newspaper as

“by [Newspaper] staff”

& the same for the videos in TV news

*without any disclaimer*

Grotesque, eh?

10/ I’ll continue this more as I go along

or you can beat me to the point punch & buy the book

22 pages in, & I already know this is gonna be a fucking mind-blower

11/ Here’s a fun fact: PR people *know* they’re wildly untrusted

In a survey conducted BY a PR co

they measured 45 types of people on a “National Credibility Index”

& “PR people” ranked 43RD on that list

People KNOW they’re full of shit

But smart PR people don’t care.

Why?

12/ If you’ve been paying attention, you remember Rule #1:

People shouldn’t even KNOW they’re being manipulated

One guy even noted he was happy with the results

*b/c “National Experts” were 3rd of 45*

& PR people get “Experts” to deliver the message

...Experts, like Doctors:

13/ A good PR man is Neither Seen, Nor Heard

like Buster Bluth

14/ Or as the authors point out

they’re the ultimate Wizard of Oz

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

15/ Questions

Do you think [they] forgot how to do this?

Do you think [they] would instaII & puppet & surround him with idiots who (also) can barely speak?

Why would Buyden get pre-approved questions... & she wouldn’t?

Why does she never have an answer?

“Use logic”

16/ Back to Bernays, the 2x over nephew of Freud, who was all about psychology to manipulate the masses

You may remember him from above as the guy who made smoking a Feminist issue in order to pitch cigarettes to women

https://t.co/uv5au7qPhJ

17/ “The conscious & intelligent manipulation of the masses is an important element in democratic society.

Those who manipulate this... constitute an *invisible government* which is the true ruling power of our country.”

E. Bernays, “Propaganda”

THEY DON’T HIDE IT

18/ “We are governed, our minds molded... our ideas suggested,

largely by men we have never heard of.”

He’s describing The CabaI

almost a full century ago.

[They] publish all [their] Playbooks in full sight

Because no one has been paying attention & the media partook in it

19/ I suspect once I’m done summarizing this book (as I read it)

It’ll be a Top 3 thread

This 👇 will always be my #1 and the only reason I’ll be sad when this account vanishes

https://t.co/SM0Ds5PB3U

20/ Talking about food & the infallibility of things considered “science”

An excellent statement:

“The difference between a science & a pseudoscience is that scientific statements can be proven wrong & pseudoscientific statements cannot.”

- Robert Youngson

21/ The authors then point out that almost all “social sciences” - by this definition - fall into pseudoscience

Compare psychoanalytic theories of Freud to physics & chemistry.

The latter are Hard Sciences that (theoretically) deal in Hard Truths

Wait! I can see your hands up.

22/ Yes, The Hard Sciences are manipulates all the time. I suspect we’ll get to that later.

But for now, stick with my by the broad distinction of “Hard” vs “social” sciences

Here comes a disturbing POV from a PR person (referred to as a “spinmeister”):

23/

Reporter: Do you serve your client, or the truth?

John Scanlon: You always try- you always serve the truth...but the truth is not necessarily a solid. It can be a liquid...whose truth are we talking abou, your truth or my truth?

How post-modernist.

His answer is so meta😂

24/ Unexpected twist: while taking these pics to show what a scumbag he is, the last example was him attacking none other than POTUS (this book was 2001)

As the authors point out, having “a position” is NOT the same as telling the truth

Just ask any NYT / WaPo reporter - ZING!

25/ Other PR magnates go even farther:

“There is no truth except the truth you create for yourself.” - R. EdeIman

“Marketing is a battle of perception... the truth has no bearing on the issue.” - Jack Trout

But they know enough not to lie with something *demonstrably* false

26/ “To lie is to respect reality enough to falsify it. [PR practitioners] do not falsify the truth because they do not believe that it even exists.”

Review above where the M$M doesn’t even investigate, just parrots what PR people give them

Is it any wonder we’re in such shit?

27/ And speaking of shit

They engage in gaslighting to such a HUGE degree

that *even if they dump toxic sludge in people’s neighborhoods which made kids sick*

that they consider people phobic or mentally ill if they resist or complain

Because there’s no such thing as “Truth”

28/ Because We The People are so dumb & irrational

[They] have to have Experts do the thinking for us

How often have we heard THIS:

29/ This is largely why I think we’re seeing things unfold the way they are

So many people think they’re “thinking” when they’re regurgitating

The PIan isn’t just for smart/responsible people

As I laid out in this mini-thread: Define “Awakening”

https://t.co/RmxaL2z7zi

30/ Step back a second here

of the kind of brass baIIs it takes to

A) Say publicly (& repeatedly) that there’s no such thing as Truth

B) Assure your customers & viewers that you are telling/selling them the Truth

It’d be damned laughable if it weren’t in the name of Pure EviI

31/ Also, time for me to tip where I got the recommendation for this book

It was from this mind-bending interview that I tweeted out snippets of

The interviewer who claims to be a former Propaganda Master cites it

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it

https://t.co/oDGYoqKTks

32/ & again, it shows why Trump hammered on the F/ake News more than any basically other point

Waking up means seeing the truth

If you’ve read the above, you can see [They] deliberately & openly create a false “truth” for us to live in, aka

A Matrix

https://t.co/01IdaTnNdU

33/ Wow, the timing of this tweet by @drefanzor could not have been more perfect

Synchronicity

Define “Awakening”

34/ Interestingly, some PR people actually consider the ethics side of their work

& promptly go ahead defending EvilCo or whatever anyway

Main point: there is a multi-million dollar industry to convince us evil shit is ok

Jim Lukaszewski posted some past jobs by his spin firm:

35/ People like Jim must either be delusional or purely psychopathic

B/C they claim “unconditional honesty” is the only way his firm will work

which is achieved not by answering the concerns of the complainants

but by teaching clients how to redirect the conversation

36/ Literallt, his guidance is

-Write down the Questions you’re afraid of

-When they ask those questions, here’s how you change the subject & avoid answering altogether

This is considered “open & unconditional honesty”

Back to postmodernism: there is no Truth

Which=No morals

37/ Their methodologies are all about studying psychological impact of words

& creating a new lexicon to reinforce/manipulate public perception

Example: the creation of “sweetspeak” to get people to accept Aspertame/Nutrasweet

Again: people are too dumb to know what’s good

38/ The above “battle” of various foods became a Behind-The-Scenes war of puppet “think tanks” attacking each other

The Olestra/Nutrasweet team got Conservative Think Tanks to attack the “nanny state” when health organizations showed the food was disgustingly unhealthy

39/ They used classic “3rd Party” techniques (make it come from some one else’s mouth)

to suggest that anyone pointing out certain foods were unhealthy were infringing on our freedoms

trying to decide for us what to eat

Like the cigarette/“torches of freedom” method

40/ They use the same playbooks over & over for a simple reason:

It almost always works

& as we’ve learned

they’re really just fighting for market share

None of them actually gives a fuck about our well-being

41/ The important thing here is not to say “So what, I already know that these people are assholes”

The point is to recognize their tactics in both large & small ways when they happen in your life

Because once you can see HOW people manipulate, you’re unlikely to forget it.

42/ The next chapter gets very fucking savage

& points out how the above Simple Steps are used to not only avoid responsibility for deaths

but to continue practices that result in horrific, lingering sicknesses & death for the Trusting Populace

SiIicitis & Lead, specifically

43/ The authors start out with a story of more people dying in a single mining town

than died on the Titanic

from an illness that not only was ignored by the bosses

but fortunes were spent on trying to discredit & gaslight the families of the sick & dead workers

44/ These miners were drilling through basically pure glass in tight spaces

no precautions taken, not even masks

& if they said they had trouble breathing,

doctors lied, purposely misdiagnosed them, & gave them sugar pills

The below sentence w/ a blacked out word...no words