Tobin Smith Spills Beans On How FOX Brain Jacks People - Converts Them To Zombies

In  the superb PBS documentary series, 'The Brain',  Neuroscientist Thomas Eagleman provides critical insights on how human brains are adversely affected by propaganda.  The origins of the latter are actually embodied in our desire to "seek out alliances" with friends, family and hopefully others who share our same interests, convictions and even political leanings. In Eagleman's words:

"It gives comfort to belong to a group"

This "group" could be an actual  social club,  a social media enclave (Facebook sub group) or political alliance. It could also be  an assembly of millions of viewers all watching the same cable channel at the same time who are led to believe they share a virtual alliance or core set of beliefs with other viewers. This is particularly cogent in the sphere of political agendas. Thus  the political agendas around us, can actually manipulate the brain activity inside us.

How to get around it and stop it? That usually must entail the victimized brain stepping outside its own 'box' to see the propaganda for what it is. The trouble is that most brains are not trained to do that so often need an outside interlocutor who is able to recognize the infection for what it is and 'unpack' it for the affected brain or brains. The goal of a propagandizing medium or broadcast is to discourage people from stepping outside their seemingly real and "truthful" cubbyholes, to see how their brains are being molded in the service of others.

Given this, FOX alumnus Tobin Smith has delivered one hell of a revealing look (in Daily Kos) of how FOX News was designed to grab the brains of the unwary, jack them - and convert them to zombies or zombie fodder for RIGHT Think.. We've known this at least since 2004 when multiple polls showed FOX viewers inhabited a different fact universe from the rest of us. Two thirds of them actually swallowed the hogswill that Saddam was an agent of al Qaeda and that justified Bush Junior's invasion of Iraq.

But the terrific thing about Tobin Smith spilling the goods is that the arch Conservatives cannot complain that he's an anonymous source or a "radical leftist".  Even better, they can  review old Fox News videos and see for ourselves the veracity of Smith’s claims.

The Kos piece begins with Smith asking FOX  über Brain jack maestro Roger Ailes:

“So Roger tell me…who is your Fox News target audience and what turns ’em on?”

Ailes reportedly replied:

“Toby . . . I created a TV network for people 55 to dead,” 

Smith then asked Ailes:

“What does our viewer look like?

To which Ailes replied:

“They look like me…white guys in mostly Red State counties who sit on their couch with the remote in their hand all day and night.”

Asked what they want to see, Ailes didn't miss a beat:

“They want to see YOU tear those smug condescending know-it-all East Coast liberals to pieces . . limb by limb . . . until they jump up out of their LaZ boy and scream “Way to go Toby…you KILLED that libtard!”

And there and then the epithet "libtard" was born, and then circulated as a meme because multiple FOX broadcasts by its paid Pied Pipers of Propaganda.  As Tobin Smith, one of FOX's long time stars acknowledges:

By careful design and staging Fox News manipulated (and ultimately addicted) the most vulnerable people in America to the most powerful drug cocktail ever: Visceral gut feelings of outrage relieved by the most powerful emotions of all . . . the thrill of your tribe’s victory over its enemy and the ultimate triumph of good over evil.

Thereby,  in effect, Fox  turned political opinion into hard core political propaganda delivered via the appearance of performance art.   Thus, we beheld cretins like O'Reilly literally getting red in the face onscreen as they bellowed a barrage of bombast over the air and into the ears (and fertile brains) of their captive audience. The captivity, of course, ensured by the performance.  Hence, the art of the performance and emphasis at the right time with the right trigger words ("liberals")  compounded the addictive process - which btw, is standard for all great propaganda.

The video below is instructive in seeing how Josef Goebbels mastered the Nazi propaganda machine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E4gtnCUftw


Of course, both Trump and Hitler were also masters of performance art propaganda - especially at campaign rallies or general political rallies. See, for example, this video mix comparing the speeches of both here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGVBn_3EjmE


Each mastered emotional affect to reel in ever more supporters, spectators who then became integrated into the brain-jacked matrix. As a cable station the same performance art techniques have been perfected at FOX.   The redder Billo's face got as he got vexed at some liberal "pinhead" the more the peanut gallery felt compelled to watch. Thereby FOX became a pinnacle propaganda medium and  efficiently sold the soul of America to the highest bidder in return for 2 minute ad sequences aired during the performance intermissions.

Obviously, the fix was always in with  Facts and Truth given  the lowest priority.  But what the mostly older, trusting, small city/rural living Fox News fan never seem to understand about Fox’s partisan performance art programming was this, in Tobin Smith's words:

"The outcomes for Fox’s “panel debates” have ALWAYS been carefully fixed by the producers so that the home team (i.e, the conservative panelists like me) ALWAYS won."

In other words, the FOX producers always fixed the segments in advance to ensure the conservative side always bested the black-hearted libs. To that end, actual facts offered by the latter inevitably had short half lives  - maybe half of those proffered by conservatives (if they emerged at all).  Or, if one on one, the conservative always had been programmed to prevail over the putative liberal (such as the late Alan Colmes) who then served as the tackling dummy.

The shtick worked like a charm and convinced millions of rubes via the set piece propaganda that conservatives had the superior arguments on any topic, from health care to defense budgets, to welfare and  climate change.  Well, of course they did, if the facts and truth were carefully excised from the programs - whether O'Reilly's Factor, or Sean Hannity.  The design was intended to be one of addiction and it worked.  Fox practically guaranteed their consistent high ratings because they were feeding a blatant propaganda addiction.

How so? Since most FOX viewers from the demographic noted were already in a state of constant rage and grievance, e.g. against "the government", "welfare queens" and "the Left" - it merely required reinforcement.  Thus, FOX deliberately, according to Smith:  "fed the viewer’s rage to set their brain’s pleasure giving dopamine delivery system into high gear "    Smith completing the point started:

"Then when their conservative protagonist tribal hero (aka me 'the hitman') turned the liberal’s own words against them and vanquished the sniveling apostate into living hell on live TV…WOW…the pleasure chemical rushed through the Fox viewer's brain like a deep hit of crack cocaine (btw its the dopamine system in the brain that cocaine stimulates and makes it so addictive)."

How good does that get? Well, neuroscience has known for years that “news junkies” or “political junkies” were in fact addicts…junkies…who got their addictive dopamine hit from the emotional roller coaster of unbridled outrage followed by the dopamine releasing experience derived from the thrill of watching the victory/denouement of the ideological apostate, i.e. the "liberal" or "raical leftist".   This is exactly why FOX news and political junkies are the most brainwashed .

Smith observes that any contributor who suddenly acquired integrity in the FOX realm and discoursed objectively realized their error too late. One such example was Linda Chavez, a long time Fox conservative contributor. She  basically became a nonperson when she advocated for more legal immigration — even though her position had been consistent for 30+ years and is based on her belief in markets over central planning.  Alas, chief FOX porker Ailes didn't like it and showed his dissatisfaction with her veering off the propaganda train. According to Smith, quoted in the Daily Kos piece:

As Linda tells the story “One producer basically told me that it was “confusing” to have me on to discuss the subject because conservatives were supposed to be for less immigration and liberals for more.

What about "saving" one's family members from this brain poison? It's almost always hopeless because by the time you try an intervention it's like they've been on crack or opioids for years. As Smith related (ibid.):

"I tried to save my own mother,  but I could not break through.  She pooh-poohed my facts,and told me that Bill O’Reilly was the only person she trusted.  I was incredulous.  “Even more than me, Mom?”  Yes, because my “once excellent” critical thinking and judgement had been clouded by the media I chose to consume."

A question that often arises and which Smith also addressed is why we basically have two distinct nations accepting different facts, on terror threats, climate change, the Trump -Russia associations etc. to the extent each calls the other a "fake news" source.  As Smith informs us:

"...one part of the Fox News strategy is the tried and true conservative media narrative to insulate their audiences from opposing views — in part, by continually denouncing the mainstream media(i.e., other news sources) 24/7/365 as “liberal, biased, and not to be trusted.”

To Smith's point, I have only succeeded in turning one family member, relative away from FOX. That was my brother-in-law,  Anthony. This was after I discovered he'd been hooked in by O'Reilly in Trinidad (watching via his subscription TV).  After Janice and I gave him the lowdown on Billo and his past exploits, and showed him real news sources - like CNN - he broke the habit cold turkey. But let's be honest, that was an exception to the rule and Anthony is a retired mechanical and electrical engineer who could be reached. That is, via cogent reasoning you could actually get past his programmed lizard brain and replace the degenerate, false FOX memes.

If it were only that easy for the rest of the FOX-Trumpy lot!

Another Reckless "Free Speech" Episode: GOOPr Compares Obama to Hitler For Not Going to Paris

Where does it end? The crass stupidity and ignorance afoot in this country like a mutant  swine flu virus run amuck. How many brains are already infected we don't know, but on the conservo side it looks like most of them - from the evidence: denying global warming imps, to the subset seeking to make it 100 times worse with the Keystone XL pipeline, to the degenerates who removed a key banking regulation that could bring on another financial crisis. And now, some mutant asshole comparing Obama to Hitler, for god's sakes!

Republican Congressman Randy Weber (R-TX) on Tuesday  took the debate to reprehensibly  offensive levels when he tweeted that "Even Adolph [sic] Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong reasons.) Obama couldn't do it for right reasons."

 

 

Are you kidding me? Turning Obama into Hitler (who had his storm troops INVADE Paris)  because he didn't join the security nightmare mob scene in Paris to selectively mourn the Charlie Hebdo satirists who consistently poked the hornet's nest because they could?  (And let's bear in mind even Pope Francis declared that while using violence in the name of religion is wrong, so is insulting others' religions.)  Aren't people thinking? Haven't they seen the news of problems in the Secret Service - with four major security breaches - and the overhaul just yesterday by Assistant Director Joseph Clancy in replacing four high officials? Imagine the nightmare scene had Obama stood with freakin'  millions in gay Paree with these security vulnerabilities. See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/chris-floyd/60420/the-lash-and-the-sword-hebdo-hypocrisy-and-the-mob-mind

 

 

Let's get this clear:  whatever your take is on the Charlie Hebdo incident and attack, the jaw-dropping insult from a sitting member of Congress was unconscionable. Further, it can only really be understood when you realize that the conservative media in America have been wallowing in that kind of mindless garbage for most of Obama's time in office. (UPDATED: Weber has since apologized as he should)

 

 

Freely engaging in the kind of rhetorical bomb-throwing that had previously been seen and heard on the far fringes of American politics, mainstream conservative commentators have embraced the Obama-is-just-like-Hitler narrative and have proudly paraded it around for years, either oblivious to, or unconcerned with, the offensive implications. In previous blog posts I have noted many outbursts of this Hitler - malarkey, including some clueless folks posting repugnant images such as:

 

 

 

As Media Matters noted last year:

Wallowing in self-pity and convinced of the dark forces moving against them, conservatives launch attack after attack, insisting they're fighting forces at home akin to Hitler's Nazi storm troops. They complain louder and louder that America has become like Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler when 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.

This country's  perception of "free speech" has now been so badly fucked that something as innocuous as a debate over Obama's scheduling is met with a Republican Hitler-based denunciation.  This is a mark of insanity and intemperance - which would be bad enough among the bigot punditry like Limbaugh and Hannity - but is inexcusable coming from a lawmaker. (In Germany such comparisons would earn the guy 3 years at hard labor)

 

 

But sad to say,  this kind of rhetorical bomb throwing  has been a mark of conservative shame throughout the president's tenure.  Let's also recall that Fox News chief Roger Ailes accused the management of National Public Radio of having "a kind of Nazi attitude" when it fired commentator Juan Williams. Then we beheld how the former Fox host Glenn Beck immersed himself in odious Hitler rhetoric during Obama's first years in office, while the then-burgeoning Tea Party movement did the same, and so did Rush Limbaugh. The latter pig obsessed over Obama-Nazi comparisons in 2009:

 

 

"Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate." Limbaugh thought it was "fabulous and fantastic and hilarious that a women shows up at a Barney Frank town hall meeting with an Obama-as-Hitler poster and the Nazi stuff."
 

Note that none of these assholes have likely ever been to Germany or actually spoken to real Germans that fought in WWII - including in the Wehrmacht under Hitler - as I have. So they don't have a damned clue what  they are yapping about, other than from comic books. See e.g.
 

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/07/want-to-know-about-nazi-germanys-real.html

 

 

Then, last year, billionaire venture capitalist Tom Perkins submitted a Wall Street Journal letter to the editor hyping an alleged "progressive war on the American one percent" and compared it to Nazi Germany's anti-Jewish riots. (WSJeditors, a Fox analyst, and Michelle Malkin all defended Perkins from the criticism he received following the distasteful

 

And I've already bashed this fool elitist for that outburst, e.g

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/01/tom-perkins-another-whiny-rich-asshole.html

Then there was cornpone moron Mike Huckabee who  likened abortion to the methodical extermination of the Jewish population in Germany under Hitler. This jerk not even conscious that one mandate under the Reich laws of Hitler was forced abortions, mainly of Jewish women and forced births demanded of "Aryan" women - or dispatch to the camps.

 

 

More recently, the latter day Fox News contributing numbskull Dr. Ben Carson claimed America is "very much like Nazi Germany" in that it has a government "using its tools to intimidate the population."  Clearly this jerkoff who calls himself a doctor has no clue - not one - of the level of intimidation in Nazi Germany in the late 30s, early 40s, when neighbor regularly spied on neighbor and people's doors were broken down in the middle of the night by Gestapo agents - taken to hidden locations - and forced to endure rectal rehydration, genital mutilation and whipping until they expired. Those that didn't were dispatched to Nazi concentration camps. Don't take my word! DO your own research, including getting hold of the book, 'The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During The Second World War', by Martin Gilbert.

 

 

Carson, who was actually expected to mount a presidential campaign, recently defended his ignorant comments:

 

 

"I know you're not supposed to say 'Nazi Germany.' But I don't care about political correctness," suggesting additional Hitler rhetoric could be a cornerstone of Carson's upcoming campaign.

 

 

But it isn't a case of "political correctness" as this imbecile claims, but of getting historical facts correct. Sadly, assholes like Carson, Beck, Huckabee,  Limbaugh and others get away with their BS because for too many 'Muricans the 2nd World War is like ancient history - and most haven't read one single serious monograph on the Nazis, the Third Reich, Hitler himself -  far less actually gone to Germany and spoken to the people who lived at the time.

 

 

For years, the Anti-Defamation League(ADL) has been grappling with the mainstreaming of Hitler rhetoric especially in the punditry and the political class (namely American conservatives)  - which ought to know better.

 

 

Last year the ADL again tried to raise a red flag, declaring, "The six million Jewish victims and millions of other victims of Hitler deserve better. Their deaths should not be used for political points or sloganeering. This type of comparison diminishes and trivializes the Holocaust."

 

 

But do these toads care? Hell no! They will continue to spout their ignorance and rhetorical bombs against Obama so long as they know their main audience is woefully ignorant of the facts of history. This is why they can exploit it!

 

 

See the Pope's take on the limits to free expression here:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/19f31342-9cb6-11e4-a730-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3OuY6oOIM



See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/shamus-cooke/60462/the-spectacular-media-failure-on-charlie-hebdo