Sheryl Attkisson’s, The Smear, gives insight to
how news is made today. It goes a
long way in convincing readers that they should believe only a small portion of
what is released by the government and reported by the press. This leads to a very cynical view of
the news and confirms Otto von Bismarck’s claim that "Nothing is proven
until it is officially denied."
Attkinsson gives an account of how massive the smear industry is. My only criticism of the book is her
contention that, “the organized political smear entered the contemporary
marketplace circe 1987.” Some of
these smear techniques can probably be found in a study of politics in the
ancient Sumerian city of Ur. The
“scientific" smear might be traced back to George Creel’s World War I
Committee on Public Information or Edward Bernays 1920s book Propaganda. She also appears to attribute the
advice “Admit nothing” to the CIA.
This is a classic Communist technique. Dozens of Communist spies had denied their connection to the
Communist party and have been believed by the gullible for decades. She mentions the “infamous senator Joseph
McCarthy.” who was the victim of an extremely effective smear campaign. She might benefit from reading M.
Stanton Evans’ Blacklisted by History.
Few people could survive the scrutiny and smear campaign Senator
McCarthy was subjected to.
Her account of Larry Flynt’s reward for
information on Congressional extramarital affairs was revealing. Just how many Congressmen have nothing
to hide and cannot be blackmailed?
The government undoubtedly has an incredible amount of information on
every American. Representative
Maxine Waters revealed that President Obama had a database “that no one has
ever seen before.” Presumably he
took this with him when he left the White House. We know the FRI spied on Martin Luther King. With the power of modern computers
virtually everything can be recorded and stored in a database that is on a 1.5
million square foot facility in Utah.
Data collection is only one area that government officials have lied to
Congress and the public about.
James Clapper, James Comey and John Brennan have all perjured themselves
in Congressional testimony.
Smears are promoted by both the left and
right. However, considering the
left has almost total control of the “commanding heights” of our society, they
have an distinct advantage. It is
truly amazing that Donald Trump was elected president in the face of opposition
from the media, academia, government bureaucracy, the Democratic Party and a
large portion of the Republican Party.
Attkinsson reveals the role of “non-profit” organizations in the smear
industry. She specifically
mentions David Brock’s compensation which numbers in the millions.
Donald Trump’s victory has increased the need of
the left to limit the amount of information available to the public. The effort to eliminate “fake news” is
a project led by people like Barack Obama, David Brock, Mark Zuckerberg, Angela
Merkel and countless other members if the establishment. Attkisson points out the problem with
restricting news: “it relies on some of the very organizations that have gotten
caught in compromising situations.”
Some of the people responsible for determining what is “fake news” might
have a problem. Anita Kahane, a
former Stasi agent and social activist, may have a problem with being
objective. As Attkisson says, “those who most loudly denounce Fake News are
typically those most aggressively disseminating it.
The internet has made it extremely difficult to
spread fake news. Dan Rather
learned this when he attempted to pass off a memo that he claimed was created in
the 1970s. It was immediately
recognized as a fake because it was created with a computer font that did not
exist at the time. The “dossier”
claiming to show Trump connection with the Russians is similarly an obvious
fake. It is amazing that people in
the intelligence community can get away with claiming that it might be
accurate. The first page of the
dossier is classified “Sensitive Source - Confidential.” You do not have to be an intelligence
expert to know that sensitive sources are never classified confidential. A school teacher might try an
experiment with a class of 6th graders.
After a brief lesson on classification have them produce a document
containing a “sensitive source.”
It is unlikely that any of these children would label the document
“Confidential.”
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