How Smear Campaigns are done, Co-Opting the message

When a message becomes to loud for the 'powers that be' to tolerate they have a few ways to smear the messenger.

We have all heard the slander campaign, when they attack the messenger, but they have other methods.

Imagine a group has a symbol of a grey volkswagen bug. Or lets say waving a purple shirt in the air. I pick them randomly they have no meaning. But imagine if a group had them on their lectures or in their rallies. This is what is done to discredit them. A situation that is really bad in the world is created or just viewed, and a few seemingly not important details are added. Clips of people wearing purple shirts, or conversations about grey volkswagen bugs are added.

Now when you see the original good group, your mind automatically pattern matches and wham, you are brought to a visceral memory of darkness. That memory gets emotionally imprinted on the good group sheerly by this connection, not by any logical deduction.


Words are used with the same technique. Imagine a candidate saying, "we all need to work together." Wham! a Osama tape is released with him saying the same thing. People can not separate the words from the emotion of the person saying them so now the good American politician who says something very true, "we must all work together" gets the emotions of the evil person imprinted on his slogan or speech. This one was actually done a few months ago on last release of Osama tape.

People have a hard times separating words spoken from who speaks them. If the Iranian leader says "we should love our friends and treat our children with respect". The fact he says it does not make it wrong. Do any of you think right now I am supporting an Iranian leader? I am not! This is my point. His words are correct, the history of him and his actions I disagree with. And his words may even be disingenuous, but they are still true.

When I hear a speaker, or news clips I try to do these things first hear the words, do I agree with what they say regardless of the source based on my experiences. Then ask is the person being genuine? Do his words match what I have seen of his actions? Finally I can make a decision to agree or disagree with the sentiment, without attaching it to a person.

I can fight people moving my emotion from one person to another by symbols and trickery, through thinking and understanding

[edit on 10-11-2007 by Redge777]

Here is another way to influence people on forums.

If a person post a comment the powers that be, or anyone really who has the finances to do this, does not like.

They immediately post in other threads where the title has a 'meme' or subliminal context.

So anyone returning from the thread they call 'bad' or 'not tolerated' will after selecting 'most recent post' will see a bunch of sentences that subconsciously will imprint on their mind that is still thinking of the last thread they wrote.

Lets say someone post Boston Red Sox are cool. A hired person goes and post in the following threads.
Big dig project over budget.
Professional sports corrupt.
New socks have holes in them.
Now your mind will actually subliminally assign meaning to these seemingly random sentences based on what you currently just read the past unacceptable thread. They can also over post to push the thread out of sight to the back of the room.


[edit on 10-11-2007 by Redge777]

Has anyone else seen this happen before?

Shameless bump, and avoiding the one liner?

I agree with you, I've noticed these sort of things from time to time. I tell you one that is truly nonsense that I really hate, (whether it's intentional conspiracy or not) is when people talk about how Barack Obama went to a Muslim school and how that discredits him. I'm not a big fan of Obama, but come on. That is entirely backwards thinking. He's not going to be a terrorist or small-minded just because he went to Muslim school. First of all, he is an individual capable of making decisions for himself, and second of all there is nothing wrong with a school just because it is Muslim.

I don't think the subliminal stuff is needed to manipulate the general public. The manipulation is much more direct and in their face now, whether it's news or advertising - it is getting more and more direct. Just convince the masses that you are on their side and the other guy is not. And if you can't do that, then say at least he sort of has a few things in common with someone who isn't, and you've already got them. Maybe the subliminal stuff is used for people like us though, who don't just fall for the simple minded us vs. them mentality.

Flagged and Starred.


I think you are correct. The Soviets did a lot of research into propaganda. One of the biggest aspects of propaganda they used was Classical Conditioning. They Present two stimuli, one being the positive and the other neutral. Lets say for the sake of this forum, they present a piece of candy to an 8-year-old, and a speech from Lenin. The unconditioned response the kid gets from the candy is of joy, so repeated over time, the CONDITIONED response the kid gets when the speech is given is joy.
Basically...
If one juxtaposed a nice warm buttered piece of toast with a pile of dog crap, the response would be negative, despite the fact that toast is wonderful. If one had this toast/crap juxtaposition every day for no apparent reason, one would begin to dislike toast. (this is a far out example but it explains Classical Conditioning)

This is exactly what the news does.

"Southern California is Ablaze"
"tune in later for Climate Crisis"

Ron Paul is smeared daily and it is done through misinformation.....I think the war mongers are scared of him they have now called him a terrorist a facist and a racist wonder what is next.....A bit more of this he may get the same attention that Hillery has had on her campaign......