| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
22 Aug 2005 01:06:11 PM |
| Object: |
KRP's 16 Rules for Truth Suppression |
1. Dummy up. If it's not reported, if it's not news, it didn't happen.
2. Wax indignant. This is also known as the "how dare you?" gambit.
3. Characterize the charges as "rumors" or, better yet, "wild
rumors." If, in spite of the news blackout, the public is still able to
learn about the suspicious facts, it can only be through "rumors." (If
they tend to believe the "rumors" it must be because they are simply
"paranoid" or "hysterical.")
4. Knock down straw men. Deal only with the weakest aspect of the
weakest charges. Even better, create your own straw men. Make up wild
rumors and give them lead play when you appear to debunk all the
charges, real and fanciful alike.
5. Call the skeptics names like "conspiracy theorist," "nut,"
"ranter," "kook," "crackpot," and of course, "rumor monger." Be sure,
too, to use heavily loaded verbs and adjectives when characterizing
their charges and defending the "more reasonable" government and its
defenders. You must then carefully avoid fair and open debate with any
of the people you have thus maligned. For insurance, set up your own
"skeptics" to shoot down.
6. Impugn motives. Attempt to marginalize the critics by suggesting
strongly that they are not really interested in the truth but are simply
pursuing a partisan political agenda or are out to make money (compared
to over-compensated adherents to the government line who, presumably,
are not).
7. Invoke authority. Here the controlled press and the sham
opposition can be very useful.
8. Dismiss the charges as "old news."
9. Come half-clean. This is also known as "confession and avoidance"
or "taking the limited hangout route." This way, you create the
impression of candor and honesty while you admit only to relatively
harmless, less-than-criminal "mistakes." This stratagem often requires
the embrace of a fall-back position quite different from the one
originally taken. With effective damage control, the fall-back position
need only be peddled by stooge skeptics to carefully limited markets.
10. Characterize the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as
ultimately unknowable.
11. Reason backward, using the deductive method with a vengeance. With
thoroughly rigorous deduction, troublesome evidence is irrelevant. For
example: We have a completely free press. If they know of evidence that
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) had prior knowledge
of the Oklahoma City bombing they would have reported it. They haven't
reported it, so there was no prior knowledge by the BATF. Another
variation on this theme involves the likelihood of a conspiracy leaker
and a press that would report the leak.
12. Require the skeptics to solve the crime completely. For example:
If Vince Foster was murdered, who did it and why?
13. Change the subject. This technique includes creating and/or
publicizing distractions.
14. Scantly report incriminating facts, and then make nothing of them.
This is sometimes referred to as "bump and run" reporting.
15. Baldly and brazenly lie. A favorite way of doing this is to
attribute the "facts" furnished the public to a plausible-sounding, but
anonymous, source.
16. Expanding further on numbers 4 and 5, have your own stooges
"expose" scandals and champion popular causes. Their job is to pre-empt
real opponents and to play 99-yard football. A variation is to pay rich
people for the job who will pretend to spend their own money.
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