WOKE: Down the Rabbit Hole

Preface

No-one is more hopelessly enslaved than those who

falsely believe they are free³

Johann Wolfgang Goethe

The common man of the 21st century, lives in the belief that everything that happened in history is available for public knowledge. This political Odyssey is written to dispel this delusion and open up a wider perspective, as the book's author goes back to the very origins of where it began.

The aim is not only to question and criticise prevailing political layers. For a long time, people in the West have been shaped by a hidden political agenda, the structures of which need to be publicised, analyzed and brought to the surface. Totalitarianism is usually attributed to the Soviet regime, China or North Korea. This book will reveal how such totalitarianism is also widespread in the West; not an open totalitarianism, ruling through dictatorships, but a covert one. This is why this book must confront the Marxist/socialist ideology that has ruled West and other parts of the world for over a hundred years, as well as the new WOKE generation coloured by Marxism. This raises important questions about gender dysphoria and sex operations on young people, Marxist feminism, anti-racism and identity politics. At the same time, the aim is to question the reputation of right-wing politics and to cleanse conservative politics of its involuntary association with Nazism, racism and fascism.

Among other things, the reader will learn how overconsumption and big business corporations, through socialist policies and specialised public relations techniques, have been holding a spell on humanity for over a century. The book aims to enable the reader to simply wash the image of society and history as it has been taught through the educational system, and the authors want the new conclusions drawn to be closer to the authentic truth.

Authors and other individuals have indeed touched on these pieces in the past; in this book we try to make a summarising overview, a narrative anthology, a kind of ABC-book for all those who fight for truth and freedom - old and new - and reveal cognitive illusions and patterns behind corrupt political systems. The book concludes with proposals for reforming outdated political structures, enabling a new people-friendly development. The book endeavours to reveal how political power games have limited human development, but does not outline all the options that can replace the old, outdated, corrupt political system, and leaves it partially open, with the hope that through human potential, new political paths can be found.

3 Die Wahlverwandtschaften - Hamburger Ausgabe, Volume 6, dtv, Munich 1982, p. 397 (II,5)

What are the state of things - really?

In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost⁴

Dante Alighieri

Let's imagine in a thought experiment that all government officials and politicians are trustworthy and do their work honestly, honestly and openly. No agenda is kept secret from the people – ever; all political decisions are completely transparent, even in war and military operations. The western world is a perfect democracy where people have a say in shaping society - at every stage. People can affect political decisions through democratic referendums and be involved in making new decisions through democratic votes. All big businesses and large corporations have honest intentions, and only want the best for people thus offering products that consumers themselves want to buy. Newspapers, media and journalists clearly report all world events in a neutral, factual and unbiased way - they never - ever - hide the truth.

Throughout all the centuries of human history, there have been rulers - the priesthood or pope, a government or a parliament, a king or emperor; also associated officials who exercised power on behalf of others. One can say that the power has been held by the elite, whose shape and name has varied from century to century. But one thing that has remained constant is the unequal relationship between the power apparatus and the rest of the population. If you think that this inequality has diminished with the passage of history, and that kings were only cruel and domineering in the past, you are mistaken.

However, throughout the thousands of years that power has been in the hands of the elite, there have also been different types of resistance movements. One of the very first protest movements was the 'Protestants', who gave Protestantism its name. Another movement was the Peasants' Revolt, which gave rise to the right to vote for an entire peasant class. Or the Chartism movement in England in 1838-1848, whose sufferings led to the concept of 'suffrage'. These protest or resistance movements have declined significantly in the 21st century.

If you look at how democracy in the West has been conducted in recent years, you can ask the question - what decisions have I, personally, as an individual made, when it comes to my surroundings, the large society, or my small neighbourhood? How does the democratic society we live in function, where everyone should be able to be asked about the governance of society and vote? And how powerful are politicians really? This book will try to answer these important questions.

All decision-making processes pushed through by those in power are based on the premise that the decisions are necessary or that they must be taken - progress cannot be stopped. Perhaps an expert or consultant is hired to confirm a proposal. It may be that politicians encounter protests where people oppose this proposal - usually the protest is left unanswered and thus does not influence decision-making. Then, of course, there are people who are not so interested in what politicians do - as long as everything works.

What position of power does this put the 'ordinary' citizen in? Do they even have time to reflect on their position in society, time to opt out of the consumer society, or do they have to work several days a week, several hours a day, only to be swamped by gadgets, technology and clothes, with their attention always diverted elsewhere? We have this idea, especially in the West, that we live in a democracy. And we have an idea that we as individuals can choose how power is exercised. So we are not particularly worried. Instead, we can spend the time that is left, on entertainment, sport and consumption.

And how much power does the consumer society really have over us? To answer the question, you only need to observe your fellow human beings for a short while, perhaps on the subway or in the street, and if you try to estimate the price tag for all the clothes each person is wearing, you can easily reach several hundred dollars.

Furthermore, imagine that the same person has several sets of similar clothes at home and a wardrobe worth 3 to 5 thousand dollars. If you look out into the crowd and add up these figures, you start to get a staggering idea of the massive amounts of money flowing from consumers into the big corporations, and it doesn't stop with clothes. There is a huge stream of consumption going on daily, that most people are not aware of. Clothes have to be replaced a few of times a year, and the same goes for household goods, phones, technology, appliances, furniture. Has it always been like this? Mobile phones lasted for decades in the early 1990s, without breaking. The same durability was found in the hi-fi gadgets of the 1980s. When Apple produced an iPhone that broke down after a few years, became outdated and needed to be updated, the hightech company created a new trend. Suddenly, people needed to replace their mobile phones after just a few years. This pattern grew strong, so strong that no one would question it anymore.

Has mankind always been so dependent on gadgets and stuff, one might ask? And were gadgets and clothes made in the past, in the same way as they are now - clothes that only last a year, gadgets that break - for the benefit of big business and just in time for the next trend? The same 'throwaway culture' has also moved into politics: progressivism is partly based on politicians pushing through an idea that changes as soon as the next idea comes along. The sustainable thinking that is so much talked about is missing here as well.

4 Dante Alighieri, Inferno Canto I:1-60 The Dark Wood and the Hill

The Father of PR-relations

Thou speak'st like him's untutor'd to repeat: Who makes the fairest show means most deceit. But bring they what they will and what they can, What need we fear?⁵

William Shakespeare – Merchant of Venice

It all started at the beginning of the last century - with a man called Edward Bernays who, despite the enormous impact he left on the world, is relatively unknown. Linking people's subconscious desires to products they don't need, Bernays simultaniously created an entirely new revolutionary political method - by satisfying people's inner selves with products and consumption, you make them more compliant. These theories were conceived a century ago and are still alive in society today.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud discovered that people's emotions are located in the unconscious and his ideas were epoch-making. Examining the human psyche and civilisation from a psychological perspective had previously been unthinkable. Freud linked emotions such as aggression and sexuality to external behaviour and gave rise to other major groundbreaking theories. His nephew Edward Bernays, an educated journalist, works as a marketing consultant for successful entertainers in Vienna but the First World War forces him to move to America. During the war, all major political powers use war propaganda to influence the population and the US government hires Bernays as a propaganda consultant. Because of his dedication, he is quickly recognised as a force to count on.

At the end of the war, he is invited to the Paris Conference, aged just 26. He is stunned by the hero's welcome given to President Woodrow Wilson and the way people worshiped him. An idea is born - is it possible to create similar 'mass persuasion' in times of peace?

After the war, Bernays finds the word 'propaganda' too cumbersome and changes the name to 'Public Relations'. Unbeknownst to him, he invents the term that will be used for an entire era to come. His theory is that if you can use propaganda in war - you can use it in peace. Back home, he finds a peacetime America and wants to understand how the masses think. He contacts his uncle, Sigmund Freud, and receives a copy of 'Psychoanalysis' in exchange for a packet of Havana cigars. Edward realises that in order to influence individuals, you have to work with people's irrational emotions. In other words, you can control people's choices. This is groundbreaking. Before Bernays' theory had taken hold, advertising and information had been intended to describe the actual product and invoke its quality characteristics. Now it was realised that it should appeal to buyers' emotions instead - to make them spend more money.

Deception may give us what we want for the present, but it will always take it away in the end.⁶ - Rachel Hawthorne

Bernays gets a number of jobs and assignments from major companies. One of the assignments is from the tobacco company Lucky Strike, which wants to get women to start smoking. In this context, the first PR campaign is born. Bernays organises a happening and persuades a group of women to smoke during a festival parade. At the same time, Bernays tells the press that a group of suffragettes he calls the Torches of Freedom are planning a revolution through smoking, comparing them to the statue of the American Statue of Liberty and her torch. In this way, feminists are persuaded to support smoking and the news spreads like wildfire in the New York Times and other newspapers around the world. Bernays' campaign implies that smoking makes a woman stronger and more independent. He realises that people can be persuaded if you connect the product to their inner desires and feelings. Women are not freed by the ctual smoking, but feel freer because of Bernays' manipulation of emotions. Cigarette sales increased significantly. And it was not the last time that Bernays would involve politics in a PR campaign.

Businesses would no longer sell products to buyers' intellect and reason, but to their emotions. The most important thing is not how good the car actually is - but how well the buyer would feel about owning it. Consumers would not just buy a product, they would become emotionally and personally involved in it. In the past, before the war, people had only shopped because they needed to - now they shopped because they wanted to. Shoppers began to believe that the products they bought helped them develop their personality and identity. As a result, after the First World War, companies' production had increased significantly and sales figures were high. All sales were previously based on the principle of need and products were marketed in their functionality. Sustainability was important. Advertising was all about how good a product was. Now, companies started to rework their ideas by any means possible.

Paul Mazur of Lehman Brothers, who worked with Bernays, commented: "We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture.⁷

Consumers simply had to be 'trained' to ask for and want new things - before the old was consumed. People's wants must overshadow their needs. Before the war, there were no consumers, only workers and owners, and all products were created for them. They saved money and ate what they needed and bought what they needed. Businesses hired Bernays to change this and during the 1920s, banks and businessmen opened more shops and large department store chains where Bernays' ideas were developed.

It based modern Western civilisation on the dangerous trend to worship man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any superior sense.⁸

Bernays believes that good profits for big business are good for people and the economy. But he doesn't believe this connection can be rationally explained to people - he doesn't trust their ability to understand it. That's why he calls his theories 'the engineering of consent' - the art of getting people to agree to things they hadn't originally intended. Bernays' ideas are disseminated by psychologists and an institute is opened to research techniques for influencing consumers. Motivational Research is about advertising influence and buying influence and sales. It seeks to 'uncover' consumers' inner secret feelings and get inside their psyche, to unravel their unconscious motivation. The reasons for consumption are many - sexual, psychological, social, status-giving and self-fulfilling - things that people consider intimate and private. At the Institute, studies are conducted to understand purchasing behaviour. People are observed and their reactions when using a product are recorded. Statistics and surveys are used to find out which target groups buys the least of a product. The adverts are then created, based on the data.

The authority that psychologists and doctors had built up is also being used to promote products such as medicine. The adverts are then published as scientifically independent research, even though the campaign is sponsored by the same company - the one behind the medicine.

The changes brought about by Bernays' ideas do not go unnoticed by everyone. In 1927, an American journalist wrote that a change for the worse had taken place in democratic society, and its name was 'consumerism'. The status of the citizen in relation to his country is no longer just 'citizen' but now also 'consumer'. This is only one of several articles that criticised this new form of society. Today, there are fewer open debates and a culture of silence has emerged.

Yet Bernays was criticised by journalists in the 1920s, who saw propaganda as corrosive to their ability to seek truth (St. John 2009). Editor and Publisher called Bernays a young Machiavelli.⁹

In his private life, Mr Bernays is anything but popular; he has a peculiar appearance and is not interested in holding conversations. He never experiences people in their individuality but always thinks of them in thousands. Nevertheless, he is approached again by the government in 1924. President Calvin Cooligde is not known as a popular president in the media and is constantly portrayed as 'boring' by journalists. Cooligde wants to increase his popularity and expand his electorate. Bernays is hired for the job and persuades 34 Hollywood film stars to visit the White House. The results are outstanding and after this, more and more politicians resort to election campaigning.

With the help of Bernays' efforts, Freudian psychology becomes popular and all politicians and socialites are undergoing psychotherapy. And as psychoanalysis takes hold in America, a new elite begins to form among politicians and big businessmen on Wall Street. Business owners and politicians establish a partnership in a way that never existed before. Bernays himself is labelled 'The Father of PR relations'. His ideas conquered the UK, Europe and the Nordic countries - for many years to come. Advertising and public relations changed the way people see themselves forever - a phenomenon that carries over into modern society. Bernyas himself is aware of its impact:

Propaganda is everywhere and it changes the way we see the world. ¹⁰

In the contemporary society, advertising and commercials have proliferated and are everywhere - on trains, street signs, mobile phones and television. Advertising affects the psyche on a subconscious level - people suddenly start to recognise certain brands. Advertisers use loaded value words and an advertising slogan can look like this: "what really matters". Advertising affects the senses through the eyes with text or images, and through the ears with music or words. It is not something you can escape unless you are blind or deaf. It is therefore not a voluntary influence.

Modern mass culture, aimed at the 'consumer', the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being.¹¹ - Andrei Tarkovsky

The key ingredient in all advertising and propaganda is not that the information is true, but that the advert is repeated - over and over again. The wires in our nervous system are connected when we hear information often. Eventually, learning takes place - you recognise a new brand and can connect your deepest, most intimate feelings to it. Different company brands stick in your mind when the advert has been shown hundreds or thousands of times. Bernays already knew this in the 1920s:

We are ruled by people whose names we have never heard. They influence our opinions, our tastes and our thoughts. ¹²

Nerves work the same way in all physical brains; if you hear something 50 times, it leaves a mark. Advertising can be summarised as a cognitive illusion hidden in plain sight. Another important PR-technique involves the manipulation of language; for example, a certain noun activates imagery in our minds, almost immediately. The same applies to symbolism. Different symbols influence emotions in different directions. Many people believe that this is true for all other people, but that they themselves are not affected, because most people want to believe that they can think independently.

The Coca Cola advert is an example. Businesses want consumers' thoughts and feelings to work in such a way that they already think of Coca Cola when they plan what to drink. And ideally consumers should drink the same thing every day. The advert shows people involved in social activities while drinking soft drinks - over and over again. When you see Coca Cola, you automatically think of social situations and experience warm feelings. And once you start drinking Coca Cola, you keep drinking it - it becomes a habit. In this way, Coca Cola sells 1.9 billion cans - per day, generating huge financial capital.¹³

In a thought experiment, you can try to remove the product and instead do the things you need to do from the advert - for example, meet friends, drive a car far away, and so on - without buying the product. Another thought experiment to get away from the artificial feelings is to imagine that you have 20 mobile phones. Or 50 cans of Coca Cola.

The things you really need are few and easy to come buy; but the things you can imagine you need are infinite and you will never be satisfied.¹⁴

Happiness is one of the self-realisation goals, which is considered worth pursuing. Other goals that people strive for are: family, friends, freedom, and an organised life. Advertisers know what people want and therefore know what they want to sell. In one advert, the name of the product is written together with the text "... in the company of good friends". This gives the impression that you cannot be happy without this product and blurs the line between what individuals want and the manipulation of artificially induced emotions and an artificial need for the product.¹⁵ Ancient Greece warned that consumption does not lead to happiness. In Greek markets, there were signs saying that shopping would not make you happy.¹⁶ The philosopher Epicurus himself lived simply with simple means, and there were whole communities in ancient Greece that lived according to Epicurus' motto - for centuries.

5 William Shakespeare Merchant of Venice Pericles, Act I, Scene 4

6 Rachel Hawthorne Dark of the Moon novel - August 25, 2009

7 What's Wrong with Democracy at the Moment, and Why It Matters for Research and Education https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2304/power.2012.4.3.257

8 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart, 8 June 1978, Harvard University

9 Feminist Media Studies. Publication details, including inst ruct ions for authors and subscription information: It's up to the women by Jane Marcellus, Olasky 1987, p. 91

10 Edward L Bernays, Propaganda, page 12, 1928

11 Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 1985

12 Edward L Bernays, Propaganda, page 14, 1928

13 https://www.wallstreetzen.com/stocks/us/nyse/ko/statistic s

14 Epicurus (born 341 BC in Samos, died 270 BC in Athens)

15 Documentary: Alain de Botton Philosophy: A Guide To Happiness - Epicurus on Happiness, Channel Four, 2000

16 Diogenes Laertus, philosopher of ancient Greece.

The best kept secrets are those hidden in plain sight

In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a

revolutionary act¹⁷

George Orwell

The above chapter describes cognitive illusions in public relations related to consumption. But how does it work with political propaganda? Is it more neutrally presented or do cognitive illusions also exist on TV and in the news, hidden in plain sight, and if so, how accurate is the information we get from the social media? To find out, we need to go back to some examples in history - where journalists and politicians have failed to present the real, true story - time after time.

1932. The Tuskeege Experiment: In Alabama in 1932, the United States Public Health Service begins a study on the effects of untreated syphilis - on humans. The study is conducted on approximately 600 African-American men and women - without consent, full knowledge or personal authorisation. The description of the experiment for the subjects reads as such: only to take samples and examine the general state of health. 40 years later, in 1972, the New York Times writes about the study for the first time. It was revealed that a large number of the subjects had been living with untreated syphilis and suffering for several years - without receiving the medication required for the disease - and without realising it. A large proportion of these patients are dead; many have unknowingly spread the disease to relatives, especially their children. This leads to changes in medical consent laws, and survivors receive compensation - but it's too late: the vast majority have died before this happens. The so-called Tuskeege experiment contributes to the deterioration of the relationship between the African-American population and the US government.

1935. Medical experiments and concentration camps. Throughout the Second World War the countless medical experiments that took place, from forced sterilisation and lobotomy to the Germans' experiments in Auschwitz - most of which ended in death – are initially not acknowlegded by the goverments. Even the German concentration camps are kept in secret until the very end and are only revealed during the liberation in 1945; the Gulag and the other prison camps in the Soviet Union remain unknown until long after the end of the Second World War. During the 1930s and early 1940s, Western newspapers instead wrote about the exceptional progress of the Germans and the new Socialist human.

1940. The Vipeholm experiment with sugar. 1,000 people with various medical diagnoses meaning a constant dependance on the care and supervision of health professionals are subjected by the same staff to a government-funded research project in which they are force-fed large amounts of sugar every day until their teeth rot. The experiment is kept secret and the research results are used as a basis for the new Swedish dental care reform. The experiments continued for several decades and were only really recognised in the 2000s.

1944. Operation Paperclip. The Nazis develop a rocket of the highest calibre in terms