I saw one of the guys here had shared this meme on Facebook the other day (when looking over my wife's shoulder, I don't use that website...), and I think this is a great time to illustrate how our emotions are used to steer us towards compliance. I'm not having a dig at the person who shared this, just using it as an illustration of a principle.
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Yes, socialism has problems, capitalism is better. But that's not what's happening here.
This is war propaganda.
This is how the "elite" who control the media and governments use your natural and often correct views and emotions, to steer you towards sending your sons and husbands off to die for someone else to earn money.
In this specific example, a truck with humanitarian aid attempted to enter Venezuela and ended up on fire. The aid was not requested by the legitimate, elected government of Venezuela (elected by a vast majority through an electoral system described by Jimmy Carter as "the best in the world", and with far less scandal than the last US election). The aid was rather being sent in a blatant attempt to support a sedition attempt by an unelected individual who has been declared president by several foreign governments including the USA.
And there is substantial video and eyewitness evidence to demonstrate that the truck was likely torched by the opposition, deliberately, simply in order to create the very photo in that meme and make everyone think Venezuela is evil enough to need "regime change".
Don't fall for it. Yes, socialism has problems. But don't let anyone use emotion to get you to jump from that fact to supporting their political games.
The Belgian historian Anne Morelli outlined in 2001 (before 9/11) ten principles of war propaganda, which she compiled from earlier historians:
1. We don't want war, we are only defending ourselves
2. The other guy is the sole responsible for this war
3. Our adversary's leader is evil and looks evil
4. We are defending a noble purpose, not special interest
5. The enemy is purposefully causing atrocities; we only commit mistakes
6. The enemy is using unlawful weapons
7. We have very little losses, the enemy is losing big
8. Intellectuals and artists support our cause
9. Our cause is sacred
10. Those who doubt our propaganda are traitors.
Remember them. Because when you're seeing several of those at once, you're not being told news, you're hearing war propaganda.
Right now, we're told (1) the USA doesn't want war in Venezuela, but (2) whatever happens it's all Maduro's fault, because (3) he is evil, and (4) we're just defending democracy (by trying to overturn a democratically elected leader, but let's just believe that doublethink anyway). (5) Maduro is deliberately shooting his people and even burning trucks. (8) We're even holding concerts with famous people to support our cause. (10) Anyone who doubts our propaganda is just a Maduro apologist.
That's 7 of the 10, and two of the others cannot be used yet because the shooting hasn't started. The only relevant one I haven't seen so far is "our cause is sacred", and I probably just missed it.
Don't fall for it. Instead of believing the "news", have a read of this classic book:
Falsehood in Wartime, by Lord Arthur Ponsonby, a politician in the UK before, during and after WW1. Here he goes through all the major lies that were told to get the war started, get the populace to sign up to die for the cause, and keep them deceived throughout it. It's incredibly enlightening, as many stories that have been reproduced in history books are shown to be completely fake.
Very interestingly, the fake atrocities described in WW1 bear enormous similarity to the claimed atrocities used to persuade soldiers that their cause is just in recent combats. For instance, Chapter 6, "The mutilated nurse", is an invented tale of German treatment of Belgian women spread among British troops. It is almost identical to tales told to German troops at the same time about Russian treatment of women (Chapter 30A). And, it is almost identical to the rumours spread through the US army about Saddam Hussein's alleged treatment of women a century later (as related in
Ballad for Baghdad). The same stories are recycled in every generation - whether they are completely true, deliberate lies, or somewhere in between, can be impossible to determine even in hindsight.
But we must remember that people do want to use our emotions to get us to sacrifice our lives for their political or financial aspirations, and be vigilant not to fall for it.
So please don't spread war propaganda, even if it ticks your political boxes. Your political preferences are being used by the propagandists to ensure their propaganda is spread.
I better finish on a humorous note, given I've poked a stick in a giant hornets nest and beaten it around. Though many a true word is spoken in jest:
If every debate about US interventionism was about Godzilla instead.
