A Known Fact: ™ How Propaganda Works

Some casual brilliance from Redstate.org, revived recently after a bit of a hiatus. Here we have some received and observed wisdom on Gramsicanism in action in public discourse:

As a general rule of thumb, liberals ... try to win arguments by repeating the same thing over and over again, regardless of its veracity. Eventually, through sheer exasperation, you concede what you consider to be a very minor point so that they will just! shut! up! and hopefully you can move the discussion forward. Sooner or later, however, you learn that any concession whatsoever is unwise, because that only tends to make them fixate on that issue even more, and thus a Known Fact™ is born.

There are two horrible things about Known Facts™. The first is that, in the mind of a liberal, they can never be killed. The second is that they have a tendency to rise uninvited to plague discussions with which they are wholly unrelated. You could be talking, for instance, about a Victims of Communism memorial, only to have the "Bush bungled the response to Katrina because he hates black people" Known Fact™ rear its ugly head.

Read the rest here. Norman Podhoretz brilliantly dissects the issue here.

It is extraordinarily important for right thinking people to gain a thorough understanding of the indirect, convoluted yet highly sophisticated propaganda tactics of the hard left in political and cultural discourse. Only when there are enough people who are wise this game will we be able to overcome the extensive anti-US, anti-Judaeo-Christian mythology the left has meticulously put in place to substitute for our own religion, traditions, and culture. The left habitually trumpets a lie, tirelessly denies or even prevents rebuttals to that lie in the media it controls (most of it), and thus creates a "new truth" which gains wide acceptance even though it is a lie.

For example, former Senator Joseph McCarthy is relentlessly cited as the Great Satan in order to smear anyone who dares to voice dissent against leftist orthodoxy. But is this mythical characterter really the true one? McCarthy, as is now well known, was a drunk and a thug, frequently embellishing known or provable facts with smears and innuendo designed to keep the pressure on. (You can frequently see McCarthy successors like Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy employing similar tactics today against Republican nominees to the executive and judicial branches of government. But since they're Democrats, no one calls them on this.)

But McCarthy's vile public persona is not sufficient to obscure the very reason he initially possessed a high level of credibility with the average American. Marxists had indeed infiltrated government, trade unions, the entertainment industry, journalism, and the arts — quite obviously — during and after the Second World War. If they had not, and if this were not eminently provable (which it was and is), McCarthy would have self-destructed from the start and his hearings might never have materialized.

By incessantly trumpeting inflammatory rhetoric about McCarthy's "blacklists" and his alleged abuse of "first amendment freedoms" not to mention Tail-Gunner Joe's well-documented boorish behavior and its bitter aftermath, the left deftly draws attention away from its demonstrable guilt in subverting the United States in word and deed. What is now called McCarthyism has evolved a highly useful, meticulously constructed, proven mythology whose aim is to obscure, and perhaps erase, the left's provable, active, ongoing involvement in supporting individuals engaged in the constitutionally enumerated crimes of sedition and treason.

Today, the McCarthy Mythology provides quasi-religious cover for the leftist hate-mongers who toil tirelessly, 24/7, to discredit the superior intelligence and logic of those on the right. And yet, they never fail to engage in "McCarthyite" practices themselves, tossing out random Known Facts and smearing opponents with abandon to provide cover for their overt propaganda and pristine lack of erudition.

Witness this vicious, spluttering tirade — a response to Red State's observations, cited above — which blisters McCarthy while simultaneously employing the Senator's legendary tactics:

You no good SOB Hiatt [the Red State blogger]. You have been irresponsible, grossly negligent, ingenuous and a Bush lackey on Iraq for 4 years now and you have the gall to write those words. You despicable McCarthyite cretin. We're not supposed to say this anymore - but eff you. How dare you question the patriotism of people who are doing what YOU have failed to do - hold the Bush Administration to account? How dare you? Your editorial page has always "clapped louder" at the behest of the Bush Administration. Now you dare to SMEAR Dems at the whistle of the worst President in history? How dare you sir?

While scarcely requiring comment, this is typical of the juvenile, hyperventilating, virtually illiterate response of the rabid left to anything deemed out of orthodoxy. It is a delicious irony that, while accusing Hiatt of McCarthyite tactics, the respondent indulges a vulgar display of distilled ignorance that might even have embarrassed the late Senator.

In a similar vein today, we are forced to witness the continuing spectacle of the MSM's uncritical worship of hate-America leftist propagandists like Cindy Sheehan. "Mother Sheehan" is characterized as one of the many Hate-Bush American "patriots" of the left who really love this country and adore our troops. This is transparent nonsense. Sheehan's efforts, funded in large part by organizations with known ties to the North Koreans and others of their ilk, are — true of Jane Fonda's infamous Vietnam antics a generation ago — indirectly at least, responsible for the deaths of countless additional American sons and daughters serving with the US military in Iraq, as they encourage our enemies to keep picking off our people one by one to provide fodder for the MSM in their continuing effort to "Vietnamize" Iraq and relive Woodstock one final time.

Promulgated by the MSM, this bizarre notion of leftist "patriotism" (read "subversion") is not of recent vintage. It was first put in place decades ago in defense of the Rosenbergs, who were cynically characterized as "innocent" and perhaps "misguided patriots" who did in fact sell nuclear secrets to the Soviets and were "wrongly" executed (read "martyred") for doing so. They were in fact, "sincere" (another code word, used somehow to disconnect extremists from provable guilt) in their "beliefs" (Marxist dogma), and should have been praised for loving their country rather than being brutally executed based on a "misunderstanding."

Using this line of propaganda, Communists, Marxists, and other collectivists exploit constitutional language by hiding under the mantra of "free speech," which provides the perfect cover for them (since, being Marxists and situation ethicists, they also get to define what "free speech" is). US democracy protects free speech and dissent, which is what makes our country different from and better than so many others. So Marxists, in opposing, say, Bush administration policies, are only exercising their God-given rights (if there is a god) of freedom of speech and dissent. Right?

Unfortunately, what the left doesn't tell people is that it doesn't regard the US as a legitimate governmental entity. Instead, it has historically paid allegiance to Soviet Moscow as the seat of a legitimate world government for "the people" which would ultimately swallow the imperialists and capitalists in the US. (Note: Since the inconvenient toppling of the Berlin Wall, this allegiance to a socialist world order is seemingly being transferred to the pathologically corrupt and largely far-left UN.)

It is for this reason that the hard-left's not-for-public-consumption re-definition of "free speech" constitutes sedition, and their devious notion of "patriotism" is simply treason. Their real allegiance, which they never admit, is not to the US but to a socialistic world ideal. Hence, they are guilty of sedition and treason. More fundamentally, they are simply dishonest when they bleat piously about exercising their constitutional right to "free speech" to promote "patriotism" since they mean, dialectically, quite the opposite of what they say. They are always and everywhere in active opposition to the constitutional US Government, although this is usually obvious only when there is a conservative in the White House.

This kind of dialectical "reasoning" has gone on long enough, however. You can't be a "exercising constitutionally protected "free speech" if your actual intention (always unstated) is to topple the legitimate American government, culture, and system with the help and allegiance of outside forces, replacing it with a hostile socialist power. Like "free speech," this topic is further addressed in the Constitution. But you will never hear about this from the hard left.