Lynne Stevens
A while back, I published a newsletter in an effort to teach my real estate agents how to do real estate “farming” to get home listings. I wanted to make the letter relevant and even a bit unorthodox to get reader attention.
I included an article that appeared in the New York Times in the 1950s. This was during the Cold War years with Russia, which lasted decades – as I would hope our high school students already know.
The Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev proclaimed “We will destroy you from within,” referencing the United States. The article was titled “Communist Rules for Revolution.”
Here are a few excerpts:
* Destroy peoples faith in their natural leaders by holding the latter up to contempt, ridicule and disgrace.
* Get control of all means of publicity.
* Get peoples minds off their government focusing their attention on athletics, sexy books and other trivialities.
* Divide people into hostile groups by constantly harping on controversial matters of no importance.
* Always preach true democracy but seize power as fast and ruthlessly as possible.
* By specious argument cause the breakdown of the old moral virtues, honesty, sobriety, self restraint, faith in the pledged word, ruggedness.
It ended up in a local newspaper and letters to the editor poured in, mostly stating that this country would never be susceptible to such nonsense. Yet, here we are.
The Russians were relentless with infiltration of propaganda to influence American minds, but we were stronger: boasting an education system that was the envy of the world.
As we know, an educated population is better able to assess and identify truth. If we are honest with each other, the mirror of the above reflects a lot back – all of it not good. The lack of respect for government decorum and institutions – and lack of any desire to fix inevitable short comings by mediation and compromise – is a sad testament to how a democracy should not be run.
The above appears to be a recipe to soften a population, to prepare them for the entry of authoritarian regimes. Each item assumes that the people will not be able to resist the manipulation of the propagandist. Make no mistake who ever wrote the “Rules” was fully engaged in attempting to manipulate the minds of those who could not take the time or effort to determine what was really going on.
In the context of today, “going on” equates to we – the people – taking the time to educate on each side of an issue, whether it be at a county commissioner, school board or Robbinsville town meeting. The Graham Star reports and we decide how we feel about this or any other article.
A high school graduate should be able to use critical-thinking skills to gain greater knowledge of any situation and come to a reasoned conclusion. The type of misinformation that must concern us most is that which deliberately attempts to mislead us to come to false conclusions.
That is clearly manipulation.
Lynne Stevens writes a bi-weekly column for The Graham Star. She can be reached via email, geminga@mailfence.com.