NY Times: The New Dictators Rule by Velvet Fist
- Thread starter Marshal Jim Duncan
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Ha, talk about not seeing the forrest for the trees. The guy is completely oblivious to what's been occurring for decades.
Lesson of leadership (even if you don't like the leadership): "Soaring approval ratings are a more cost-effective path to dominance than terror."
Keeping everybody pacified with plenty of bread and circus has been the path to power for a long time.
Keeping everybody pacified with plenty of bread and circus has been the path to power for a long time.
- The new autocrats use propaganda, censorship and other information-based tricks to inflate their ratings and to convince citizens of their superiority over available alternatives.
- When their economies do well, such leaders co-opt potential critics with material rewards. In harder times, they use censorship. The new autocrats bribe media owners with advertising contracts, threaten libel suits, and encourage pro-regime investors to purchase critical publications.
- They dominate the Internet by blocking access to independent websites, hiring “trolls” to flood comments pages with pro-regime spam.
- Advertising technology that was devised to sell Fords and cans of Pepsi gets reapplied.
- The new autocrats are not squeamish — they can viciously repress separatists or club unarmed protesters. But violence reveals the regime’s true nature and turns supporters into opponents.
- And violence is not just costly — it’s unnecessary. Instead, the new authoritarians immobilize political rivals with endless court proceedings, interrogations and other legal formalities. No need to create martyrs when one can defeat opponents by wasting their time.
- Besides propaganda, citizens get information by their paychecks — in the Russian idiom, they can choose either “the television or the refrigerator.”
See what great stimulation and wide ranging thought is triggered by reading thoughtful publications like the NY Times?
I read it quite often. Also the Washington Post. A very old friend of mine is an award-winning investigative journalist for the WaPo. I also listen to npr regularly.
Shocking isn't it?
Shocking isn't it?
No, it's Obama's wet dream. He has an army of apologists just hanging on his nuts for his next speech.
