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The Guardian has an interesting article describing how Robert Mercer, Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage used techniques developed within the military to influence Britain's vote to exit the EU. Although it appears that the companies involved (AggregateIQ and Cambridge Analytics) are private companies, they have deep roots within the military.
The article describes Britain as a "managed democracy", with major decisions controlled by a US Billionaire.
[ n1: The article is an interesting read, including a reference to how in 2013, Google Founder Eric Schmidt's daughter Sophie suggested Cambridge Analytics get in touch with Palantir, Peter Thiel's data mining contractor for the GCHQ and many US military and intelligence agencies. Sophie currently works at Uber. According to a former employee, in 2013 Cambridge Analytics was just a "psychological warfare firm [...] before we became this dark, dystopian data company". ]
It was with AggregateIQ that Vote Leave (the official Leave campaign) chose to spend £3.9m, more than half its official £7m campaign budget. As did three other affiliated Leave campaigns: BeLeave, Veterans for Britain and the Democratic Unionist party, spending a further £757,750. “Coordination” between campaigns is prohibited under UK electoral law, unless campaign expenditure is declared, jointly. It wasn’t.
[...] The Electoral Commission has written to AggregateIQ. A source close to the investigation said that AggregateIQ responded by saying it had signed a non-disclosure agreement. And since it was outside British jurisdiction, that was the end of it. Vote Leave refers to this as the Electoral Commission giving it “a clean bill of health”.
[...] I asked David Banks, Veterans for Britain’s head of communications, why they spent the money with AggregateIQ. “I didn’t find AggegrateIQ. They found us. They rang us up and pitched us. There’s no conspiracy here. [...] Their targeting was based on a set of technologies that hadn’t reached the UK yet. A lot of it was proprietary, they’d found a way of targeting people based on behavioural insights."
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 15 2017, @09:00AM (7 children)
Tells how propaganda and advertising were married during WW2
https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297a/World%20War%20II%20and%20Propaganda.htm [stanford.edu]
More of the same, circa WW1
http://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/commercial-advertising-as-propaganda [www.bl.uk]
This one is peripheral to my main point - "brag ads"
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/269075 [jhu.edu]
Wiki discusses "psychological operations", or propaganda, and it's effects on the US public.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
A look at how propaganda and advertising along with rationing changed the American psyche, and people's expectations
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/03/wwii-food-america_n_1398132.html [huffingtonpost.com]
(I'm amused that the Roosevelt White House was known for it's poor food, and/or menus.)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 15 2017, @09:04AM (5 children)
Lest you think that you are somehow immune to propaganda, you should familiarize yourself with the Powell Memo:
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/ [reclaimdemocracy.org]
But what now concerns us is quite new in the history of America. We are not dealing with sporadic or isolated attacks from a relatively few extremists or even from the minority socialist cadre. Rather, the assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum and converts.
Sources of the Attack
The sources are varied and diffused. They include, not unexpectedly, the Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic. These extremists of the left are far more numerous, better financed, and increasingly are more welcomed and encouraged by other elements of society, than ever before in our history. But they remain a small minority, and are not yet the principal cause for concern.
The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians. In most of these groups the movement against the system is participated in only by minorities. Yet, these often are the most articulate, the most vocal, the most prolific in their writing and speaking.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 15 2017, @02:37PM (4 children)
It's interesting that someone modded you "troll" for an extended quotation from a future Supreme Court justice, from a memo that basically created an agenda for the modern conservative movement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @02:43PM
Do you hear that? It's the sound of snowflake melting:
"REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Monday May 15 2017, @05:37PM (2 children)
It's interesting that someone modded you "troll" for an extended quotation from a future Supreme Court justice, from a memo that basically created an agenda for the modern conservative movement.
I think the trollish bit is where he tries to blame the left for the actions of a Nixon appointee.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday May 16 2017, @12:15AM (1 child)
I think the trollish bit is where he tries to blame the left for the actions of a Nixon appointee.
??
Seriously, I'm confused by your post. I'd appreciate clarification. With the exception of the first sentence of the post (which talks about the effect of propaganda), the entire rest of the post is a quotation from Powell's memo from the link.
Exactly where does Mr. Runaway (with whom I very rarely agree) "blame the Left" for Justice Powell's actions? He quotes Justice Powell's own views, which blame the Left for various propaganda efforts -- and, frankly, while we can disagree with the extent to which Powell was correct, his viewpoint was very influential on the conservative movement. And there certainly is a lot of truth to the history of psychological propaganda used by both the Left and the Right. Powell was legitimately noting the appropriation of psychological techniques within leftist political ideology in the 1960s, which was subsequently appropriated by the Republicans in the 1970s (partly in response to things like Powell's memo), ultimately leading to things like the Reagan revolution.
It's a lesser-known part of history. But I still don't understand the "troll" mod for this particular post. Clearly other people do, since they have modded you "insightful." If I'm missing something, please explain it.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday May 16 2017, @02:04AM
It's a lesser-known part of history. But I still don't understand the "troll" mod for this particular post.
Athanasius! Do not try to understand the troll. That is impossible. Only try to understand the truth: there is no troll. There is just Runaway, who is a troll. Does it all make sense now? (Wasn't my mod, by the way.)
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 15 2017, @02:46PM
To this list, I might add the BBC documentary The Century of the Self [wikipedia.org]. While there's stuff in there that will likely be criticized by liberals and conservatives alike, it points to a fundamental shift in propaganda over the 20th century that has influenced consumerism, politics, concepts of "mental health," etc.