Thursday, January 31, 2008

THE HIDDEN PERSUADERS In 1957 Vance Packard wrote The Hidden Persuaders. "This book is an attempt to explore a strange and rather exotic new area of American life. It is about the large-scale efforts being made, often with impressive success, to channel our unthinking habits, our purchasing decisions, and our thought processes by the use of insights gleaned from psychiatry and the social sciences. Typically these efforts take place beneath our level of awareness; so that the appeals which move us are often, in a sense, 'hidden'. The result is that many of us are being influenced and manipulated, far more than we realize, in the patterns of our everyday lives. The use of mass psychoanalysis to guide campaigns of persuasion has become the basis of a multimillion-dollar industry. Professional persuaders have seized upon it in their groping for more effective ways to sell us their wares - whether products, ideas, attitudes, candidates, goals, or states of mind." At present this is even more so. We know that also wars are consciously prepared and people are being influenced by warmongering campaigns. Intelligence reports are sexed up, which means the reports are falsified. In this way our system of democracy is hollowed out to the bone. Everything depends on the correct information people get to make their objective choices. There is no freedom without reliable information. "'The American public deserves to know when someone is trying to persuade them.' - U.S. FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008 We strongly agree. That's why we created this site: to focus public attention on the people and organizations who function in our society as hidden persuaders. You'll find them at work posting to blogs, speaking before city councils, quoted in newspapers and published on the editorial page, even sponsoring presidential election debates. All this while pretending to represent the grassroots when in fact they are working against citizens' best interests. We call these organizations front groups. One of the best ways to put their agendas in proper perspective is to expose their work. That's what this website is for. We hope you'll use it, tell your friends about it, even contribute to it." 11:29:51 AM

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