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Americans still unaware they are victims of US gov’t propaganda, manipulation – expert

May 12, 2014   ·   0 Comments

 

Most Americans do not realize that they are victims of propaganda and manipulation, according to Lawrence Davidson, a professor of history at West Chester University in Pennsylvania.

Americans are culturally conditioned to believe that their country is the foundation of freedom and truth and they have neither knowledge nor interest to fact-check what their leaders and media tell them, deems the professor.

“Perhaps the grossest ongoing censorship of all is the culturally conditioned, narrow range of opinion fed to the vast majority of Americans by their own media. The narrow range of views offered creates a uniform background noise hiding most of what is at variance with the standard message. In other words, media practices constitute de facto censorship,” notes Lawrence Davidson in his article ‘How the US Propaganda System Works.’

An exception, according to the author, is the popular “Daily Show with Jon Stewart” on the Comedy Central TV channel, which presents the only critique of US leadership, its domestic and foreign policy. However, the critical remarks may be expressed only in the form of comical political satire.

Those who oppose the mainstream are being toughly suppressed by Obama’s administration through “attacking sources, conducting surveillance, creating a climate of fear, and prosecuting double the amount of cases for alleged leaks of classified information as all previous administrations combined,”, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists report issued at the end of 2013.

In its turn the conservative Freedom House states that in 2014 the US “suffered a sharp erosion of press freedom and the right of the citizen to know what his or her country is doing,” stresses Professor Davidson.

“At the same time, President Obama makes speeches critiquing foreign governments, such as that in Egypt, for limiting freedom of the press and speech. There is no doubt that the governments he targets are guilty of gross violations of these rights and many more besides. But what is equally true is that the vast majority of Americans can listen to the President castigate these governments with no sense of cognitive dissonance,” writes Lawrence Davidson with bitter irony, “They do not know that they too are victims of propaganda and manipulation.”
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