Stochastic Terrorism - A game of rhetorical asymmetry

Stochastic Terrorism is a term used by the Left to accuse the Right of fomenting terrorism.  Here are a few of the techniques the Left uses and how they deflect when they foment terrorist acts.

 

The ‘Stochastic’ part of Stochastic Terrorism is a benefit to the experts. Because, as is essential to the idea, violence can be expected “stochastically,” they can rest assured something will occur eventually. The more they assert certain people are Stochastic Terrorists, the more those people are immediately to blame the moment any incident occurs, no matter if the violence was related to them in any way or not....

After the viral footage of the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, social media and establishment media immediately excitedly reported new police altercations as being examples of corrupt police, and all police actions possibly racist in nature. Riots became a regular event....

Describing riots as “mostly peaceful” allows for the rhetorical negation of any accusations of Stochastic Terrorism, and allows for the continued excited elevation of every police encounter as being corrupted by racism....

When a draft leak of a Supreme Court opinion striking down Roe v Wade surfaced, people posted the addresses of Supreme Court Justices’ homes. Instead of expressing concerns about rhetoric and posting of addresses being Stochastic Terrorism, the White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki said she was ok with the protests being at the Justice's homes but wanted them to be peaceful. The increased probability someone could try to commit an act of violence towards a Supreme Court Justice was not factored in — the random nature explicit in Stochastic Terrorism was a shield for Psaki because for now violence is just a hypothetical....

In the same time period, “pregnancy centers,” which are “pro-life” alternatives to Planned Parenthood, were being burned down or vandalized. Here again, the possible randomness of which center to burn down and when was contrasted to the universe, and the concept of Stochastic Terrorism disappeared and an accusation that being concerned about the arsons was just people being, I guess, too sensitive.

The New Kremlinology: Reading the New York Times

 

Matt Taibbi

On Monday, the New York Times ran a story pegged to a new poll, showing Joe Biden dragging a sub-Trumpish 33% approval rating into the midterms. The language was grave:

Widespread concerns about the economy and inflation have helped turn the national mood decidedly dark, both on Mr. Biden and the trajectory of the nation… a pervasive sense of pessimism that spans every corner of the country...

The article followed another from the weekend, “At 79, Biden Is Testing the Boundaries of Age and the Presidency.” That piece, about Biden’s age — code for “cognitive decline” — was full of doom as well:

Mr. Biden looks older than just a few years ago, a political liability that cannot be solved by traditional White House stratagems like staff shake-ups… Some aides quietly watch out for him. He often shuffles when he walks, and aides worry he will trip on a wire. He stumbles over words during public events, and they hold their breath to see if he makes it to the end without a gaffe.

Biden’s descent was obvious six years ago. Following the candidate in places like Nevada, Iowa, and New Hampshire, I listened to traveling press joke about his general lack of awareness and discuss new precautions his aides seemed to be taking to prevent him engaging audience members at events.

Biden, Ukraine, and Al Capone’s vault

 If you don't think that the same people who stole the last election and called the January 6th demonstrated an "insurrection" are feeding the American people a lot of lies about Russia and Ukraine, you're delusional. 

I’m fully aware that we are on the receiving end of massive amounts of propaganda. From the moment the Daily Mail first ran the story about the 13 Ukrainians who refused to surrender and ended up, instead, being murdered, I instantly thought “Belgian nuns and bayoneted babies.” In 1914, when Germany invaded France and Belgium, the British media immediately went into propaganda overdrive.

What was happening on the ground was real and bad, but it had the clinical feel of a war report. The media needed things that grabbed people emotionally. And so the British instantly learned that the Germans had raped Belgian nuns and bayoneted Belgian babies. I don’t believe any of those stories were ever proven to be true, but they didn’t need to be. They stirred up the British population, making them ready for war.

As we are inundated with heroic stories about Ukrainians, including President Zelensky, it feels like the same script from more than 100 years ago. And again, I’m not saying that Putin isn’t evil, the attack isn’t evil, the Ukrainians aren’t brave, or anything like that. I’m just saying that we’re being manipulated. The only other person I see making the same point is Sundance:

Aaron Rodgers: 'If Science Can't Be Questioned...It's Propaganda'

 

Aaron Rodgers, the star quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, decried the appeal to authority on the "Pat McAfee Show," those who say science shouldn't be questioned, equating that fallacy to propaganda.

"If science can't be questioned, it's not science anymore; it's propaganda," Rodgers told an excited McAffee.

"That's the truth," he added. "When did science become this blind agreement [about] not having any debate over what can actually heal people and work for people. That makes no sense to me."

Communist Stooges: WashPost Propaganda Cheers Chinese Regime

The leftist rag’s Beijing bureau chief Anna Fifield excitedly described how indoctrinated Chinese youth flocked to “the giant statue of a young Mao — China’s equivalent of Mount Rushmore — staring out over the Xiangjiang River.” 

She marveled at how one young university student “jostled on a recent day for the perfect selfie with the Great Helmsman.”

 Deciding that being an apologist for China’s brutal Communist regime was more important that being an actual journalist, Fiffield completely ignored the fact Zedong was responsible for the deaths of 65 million people as his heinous Great Cultural Revolution brought about widespread famine, imprisonment, and executions. 

 Showing what a true embarrassment she is to her profession, Fifield actually touted benefits of toeing the Communist Party line: “Party membership means better education prospects and better jobs, more politically advantageous marriages and nicer apartments. For many, it is a ticket to a brighter future.”

 It’s really no surprise that the Post would publish this drivel, since for years it has included propaganda inserts in the paper titled ChinaWatch, prepared by state-run media, China Daily. Those publications routinely deliver rambling from the Communist regime and cheer “Comrade Mao.” 

 In December, The Washington Free Beacon uncovered that China Daily repeatedly violated federal law by not disclosing to U.S. government the millions of dollars it has spent on such propaganda inserts in major American newspapers. Sadly, the Post’s Tuesday article was just the latest chapter in the long, pathetic history of American media outlets serving as cheerleaders for Communism.

Is CNN Putin's Puppet?

If Vladimir Putin wanted to delegitimize the American election system and set American against American - and CNN didn't exit - he would have to create it.

As it is, CNN is doing Putin's work to destabilize the United States.

Here's an interesting excerpt from a Medium column written in 2017 about a Fareed Zakaria "special" tying Putin to Trump:

Major props to CNN — all of this is very clever and slickly produced, just like a propaganda film should be. It’s easy to see how the average American, watching on TV, would conclude that Russia is a sad, cold place where only power-hungry madmen like Putin can survive and prosper. CNN desperately wants you to think there’s a link between Putin and Trump, and this is their news-entertainment-scripted TV show to bring that idea into your living room (if you actually still get cable TV, that is).

Unfortunately, this approach to winning hearts and minds using TV is exactly what Peter Pomerantsev wrote about in his book about Russian propaganda television— “Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible.” Ironic, eh? CNN has taken the tactics of what Pomerantsev and the whole anti-Russia crew (Ioffe, Gessen, Remnick) call “Russian propaganda” and used it to create its own Russophobia-influenced TV special. This is what slick propaganda for the masses looks like in the digital era, and it’s all coming from the mainstream media elites in New York who are willing to say outrageous things on TV.

What made my stomach turn was how this CNN special really tried to de-legitimize the views of two people — Stephen Cohen and Henry Kissinger — who have been basically the only two high-profile people who have tried to provide an intellectual (not ideological) justification for Russia’s actions over the past three years. And former President George Bush (“43”) is basically characterized as a guileless dupe for believing he could read into Putin’s soul.

But here’s what the CNN show didn’t include:

1 — The fact that Fareed Zakaria is COMPLICIT in his own way. He’s been a host at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, where Russia cozies up to the West for investment capital. And that was when Russia was under sanctions! (Just Google “Putin crushes CNN smart ass Fareed Zakaria”)

2 — The fact that Hillary Clinton was a supporter of the “reset” with Russia back in 2008. That was after eight years of Putin in power, so you can’t say that she didn’t know better. If Bush and Trump were duped, then so was Hillary.

3 — Any evidence of collusion between Putin and Trump. Not a scrap. Plenty of hearsay. Plenty of rumors. But no evidence. C’mon, CNN, at least go out and interview someone from Cozy Bear if you’re going to implicate them in a hacker attack.

4 — Any evidence that Russia is anything more than a “regional power,” as Barack Obama famously described Russia. Yes, Russia can have its way with a neighbor like Ukraine, but the U.S.? Really? At one point, Dmitry Peskov basically tells Zakaria, “Look, you’re embarrassing yourself. How could we have interfered in the election of the world’s only superpower?” ....

CNN is now in the business of being a mixed entertainment/news provider. When it comes to Russia, it’s job is to take opinions, rumors and innuendos and repackage it in a middlebrow way for the mass market. So we get these “the U.S. president is a sleeper agent of the Kremlin” stories.

The more that CNN clings to the Putin-Trump story — a story that it touts every day of the week, in both the morning and evening talks shows, the closer CNN is to becoming a true propaganda network, along the lines of Russia’s RT. That’s literally what propaganda organs do — repeat the same message over and over again, pounding it into people’s heads.

The one thing you should know about a propaganda TV network is that it looks largely like a regular TV network. You can’t really tell it’s a propaganda network until you watch enough of it. If you want to know what RT looks like, there’s an app for that — download RT to your smartphone. Or check out one of their 33,000 YouTube videos. It’s pretty slick, and the set and anchors look a lot like what you’ll find on CNN these days.

What you won't learn in the press: the Nazis were Socialists and hated capitalism

The Big Lie Press would have you believe that the Nazis were right wing.  It's a great example of the Big Lie.  They were Socialist, lie Bernie Sanders and so many in academia, the press and the media.

Here are a few things they believed:

England is a capitalist democracy. Germany is a socialist people's state. And it is not the case that we think England is the richest land on earth. There are lords and City men in England who are in fact the richest men on earth. The broad masses, however, see little of this wealth. We see in England an army of millions of impoverished, socially enslaved, and oppressed people. Child labor is still a matter of course there. They have only heard about social welfare programs. Parliament occasionally discusses social legislation. Nowhere else is there such terrible and horrifying inequality as in the English slums.

“Englands Schuld” (“England’s Guilt”), Illustrierter Beobachter, Sondernummer, p. 14. Goebbels' article is not dated, but is from the early months of the war, likely late fall of 1939.

We are against the political bourgeoisie, and for genuine nationalism! We are against Marxism, but for true socialism! We are for the first German national state of a socialist nature! We are for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party!

Written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher, 1932). Translated as “Those Damned Nazis,” (propaganda pamphlet).

The best propaganda is that which, as it were, works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative.

Claudia Koonz , The Nazi Conscience, London and Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University (2004) p. 13. Quote from March, 1933.

Lenin is the greatest man, second only to Hitler, and that the difference between Communism and the Hitler faith is very slight.

As quoted in The New York Times, “Hitlerite Riot in Berlin: Beer Glasses Fly When Speaker Compares Hitler to Lenin,” November 28, 1925 (Goebbels' speech Nov. 27, 1925)

How the MSM became Joseph Goebbels

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Joseph Goebbels: On the "Big Lie"

EVERY REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IS HITLER

 

In the Iran-Contra trial, Oliver North was accused of “following Adolf Hitler’s official strategy”. What did one have to do with the other? Nothing. But this sort of lazy accusation had become typical and routine. William Shirer, who had also compared Nixon’s bombing of Hanoi to the Holocaust and called Nixon an “apt pupil” of Hitler (Pentagon spokesman Jerry Friedheim was Goebbels), compared Reagan to Hitler for intervening in Grenada. Then Shirer compared Bush I to Hitler for trying to outlaw flag burning.

By the Reagan years, the left had achieved a banality of Hitler analogies. Everything Reagan did was just like Hitler. All of Reagan’s associates were just like Hitler. It was Hitlers all the way down.

President George W. Bush inherited this banality of Hitlers. To left-wing Truthers, open and covert, 9/11 was the Reichstag fire, the Patriot Act was the beginning of a national dictatorship and Bush was a dictator. As Kurt Vonnegut quipped, “The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected.” Hitler wasn’t elected, Bush was, but you can’t expect a left-wing loudmouth to know history.

Congressman Charles Rangel compared the Iraq War to the Holocaust. “This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed." (Rangel had also claimed that the Contract with America was worse than Hitler.) Senator Durbin compared Gitmo to Nazi concentration camps. Senator John Glenn compared Republican arguments to Nazi propaganda. “It’s the old Hitler business… if you hear something repeated, repeated, you start to believe it.” Like repeatedly accusing Republicans of Nazism.

What do we know for sure?

And so the only thing we can truly be certain of is that any Republican nominee will be Hitler. It doesn’t matter what he believes. It doesn’t matter if Democrats considered him a moderate 5 minutes ago. Accusations of Nazism remain the default argument for a Democratic Party turned far to the left.

Republicans aren’t progressive. Therefore they’re Hitler. It’s really that simple.

Optimists thought that the Democrats had reached “Peak Hitler” under Bush. But for the left there is no Peak Hitler. The same tired line of attack has been trotted out for fifty years. It will go on limping around the liberal corral for another fifty years or a hundred years. The Big Lie will continue being repeated to indoctrinate each new politically active progressive with the conviction that anyone to the right is Hitler and that every election is a brand new battle to stop Hitler 2.0 from taking over America.

Goldwater was Hitler. Nixon was Hitler. Reagan was Hitler. Bush was Hitler. None of the latter three men declared the Fourth Reich, made themselves dictators for life and ran concentration camps. But the Big Lie retroactively rewrites the past by claiming that last decade’s Hitler was a decent moderate while the latest Republican Hitler is a terrifying monster. Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan were all resurrected as moderate contrasts to each other and then to Bush. The process of recreating Bush as a moderate has already begun. And so each Republican makes the electoral journey from Hitler to a political moderate whom a latter generation of liberals mourns while complaining that this latest Republican really is Hitler.

Read the whole thing.

How the German Press lies to its readers

From Politico:

More thoughtful observers see a problem deeper than political bias behind the coverage of Cologne and the broader refugee crisis: a press corps that has shifted from dispassionate observer to political actor. Instead of just reporting and analyzing events, some influential journalists, especially those who work for the public broadcasting networks, consider it their professional duty to serve as a counterweight to the populist rhetoric fueling the country’s right-wing revival, critics say.

“Cologne has helped blow the top off,” said Roland Tichy, a veteran German editor who now runs an eponymous opinion site of conservative commentary.

...

Even before Cologne, many Germans worried the media weren’t telling them everything. In a poll conducted by the respected Allensbach institute in December, 53 percent of respondents said they didn’t believe the media presented an accurate picture of the refugees’ qualifications for employment or other details.

A majority of Germans still trust the media, but more than 40 percent described the reporting on refugees as “one-sided.”

“There’s suspicion that they believe they don’t have to report on such assaults, especially involving migrants and foreigners, for fear of unsettling the public” — Hans-Peter Friedrich.

The most virulent strain of that distrust can be seen on Germany’s streets, during the regular marches by the anti-foreigner Pegida group. Even before the recent wave of refugees began arriving, right-wing marchers revived a slur popular during the Nazi-era – Lügenpresse, or lying press. A number of journalists have even been assaulted at the rallies.

While Germany’s printed press offers a multitude of opinions and views, the public broadcasting sector, once similarly diverse, has veered left in recent years, critics say.

“The public stations have evolved into Social Democratic/Green mainstream broadcasters,” Tichy said. “There’s no denying it.”

Hans-Peter Friedrich, a former interior minister under Angela Merkel, accused the public broadcasters of operating a “cartel of silence.”

“There’s suspicion that they believe they don’t have to report on such assaults, especially involving migrants and foreigners, for fear of unsettling the public,” he said.

Following Friedrich’s critique, a freelance reporter for German public broadcaster WDR told a Dutch radio program that she and her colleagues were obliged to toe the government’s line on the refugee crisis. “We’re a public broadcaster and are therefore expected to approach the problem in a more positive way,” Claudia Zimmermann, the reporter, said.

WDR, the local broadcaster in the Cologne region, vigorously denied Zimmermann’s characterization. The station said it “follows the highest journalistic standards,” including on the refugees.

Zimmermann has since retracted, saying she was nervous during the interview and had spoken “nonsense.”

The cautious approach to news, what one commentator recently called “nanny journalism,” is a vestige of the effort to reprogram Germans after World War II from Nazi sympathizers into peace-loving democrats.

This is how they view their job; they'll tell you what to think and how to think it.

“The public broadcasting contract remains and remains intact: to impart values, promote opinion- and decision-making in society and to ensure the functioning of democracy,” she said.

For the broadcasters’ detractors, Cologne represents the latest example of months of tendentious coverage. One common complaint is news reports on the refugees often picture families and women, even though single young men make up the vast majority of those arriving.

Another is that the broadcasters downplay or conceal events that might rouse the public’s emotions. The alleged gang rape of two teenage girls in southwest Germany on New Year’s Eve by four Syrian refugees was not reported by any of the main news programs, for example, despite the parallels to the attacks in Cologne and other cities.

SWR, the regional public channel, reported on the rapes but was quick to add: “The nationality of the suspects played an ‘insignificant role’ in the crime, investigators and prosecutors said.”

Such reporting has fueled criticism that the broadcasters soft pedal any hint of criminal behavior among refugees. It also earned them a new moniker: “Willkommens Broadcaster” — a play on the so-called “Willkommenskultur,” or culture of welcome that swept Germany in the early days of the refugee crisis.

This kind of censorship and propaganda will not work well in an era when news gets disseminated by the Internet. They are exposed as liars. But the "lying press" is aided by an educational establishment that indoctrinates children so that the press and the schools reinforce each other. It's the primary reason that so many people still believe the propaganda put out by the media.

Glenn Reynolds remarks (sarcastically):  

Good thing we never see anything like that from our own press.