{"id":20919,"date":"2016-09-11T17:28:12","date_gmt":"2016-09-11T15:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/?p=20919"},"modified":"2020-09-26T22:12:15","modified_gmt":"2020-09-26T20:12:15","slug":"dalrymple-on-the-the-purpose-of-absurd-propaganda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/dalrymple-on-the-the-purpose-of-absurd-propaganda\/","title":{"rendered":"Dalrymple on the the purpose of absurd propaganda"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"user-select: auto;\">\u201cIn my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is&#8230;in some small way to become evil oneself. One&#8217;s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.\u201d \u00a0\u2015 <a style=\"user-select: auto;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikiquote.org\/wiki\/Anthony_Daniels_(psychiatrist)\">Theodore Dalrymple<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIn my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, &#8230; <a title=\"Dalrymple on the the purpose of absurd propaganda\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/dalrymple-on-the-the-purpose-of-absurd-propaganda\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Dalrymple on the the purpose of absurd propaganda\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[139,11,14],"tags":[300,296],"class_list":["post-20919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-critical-thinking","category-miscellaneous","category-philosophy","tag-processed","tag-published"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prY0k-5rp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":25121,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/generosity-towards-the-future\/","url_meta":{"origin":20919,"position":0},"title":"Generosity towards the future","author":"Limbic","date":"April 13, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"'Real generosity\u00a0towards the\u00a0future lies in giving all to the present' \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Contemporary Culture&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Contemporary Culture","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/humanities\/contemporary-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":16848,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/on-bullshit\/","url_meta":{"origin":20919,"position":1},"title":"On Bullshit","author":"Limbic","date":"November 21, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"[Update: After I posted this I came across a great study -\u00a0 \"On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit\" [PDF] - freshly published in November 2015. Well worth a read.\u00a0I also recently came across this old but great post from Scott Berkun \"How to Detect Bullshit\"] Because I see\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Anthropology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Anthropology","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/science\/anthropology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"on-bullshit2","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/on-bullshit2.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":16724,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/obscurantism\/","url_meta":{"origin":20919,"position":2},"title":"Obscurantism","author":"Limbic","date":"June 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Obscurantism (\/\u0275b\u02c8skj\u028a\u0259r\u0259nt\u026asm\/) is the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or the full details of some matter from becoming known. There are two common historical and intellectual denotations to Obscurantism: (1) deliberately restricting knowledge\u2014opposition to the spread of knowledge, a policy of withholding knowledge from the public; and, (2) deliberate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Philosophy &amp; Critical Thinking&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy &amp; Critical Thinking","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/humanities\/philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8190,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/lies-about-lying\/","url_meta":{"origin":20919,"position":3},"title":"Lies about lying","author":"Limbic","date":"November 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"On a recent series of flights to Las Vegas (18 hours in the air!) I finished Sam Harris's new book \"Lying\". The book is a manifesto for truth-telling and as such reminds me of Brad Blandon's classic \"Radical Honesty\". Both books argue persuasively that lying (\"to intentionally mislead others when\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Anthropology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Anthropology","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/science\/anthropology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/9780440507543_RH.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5535,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/agnotology-study-of-disinformation-propagation\/","url_meta":{"origin":20919,"position":4},"title":"Agnotology: study of disinformation propagation","author":"Limbic","date":"February 9, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a cracker! Clive Thompson on How More Info Leads to Less Knowledge Is global warming caused by humans? Is Barack Obama a Christian? Is evolution a well-supported theory? You might think these questions have been incontrovertibly answered in the affirmative, proven by settled facts. But for a lot\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Contemporary Culture&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Contemporary Culture","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/humanities\/contemporary-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5734,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/anacyclosis-and-ooda-loops\/","url_meta":{"origin":20919,"position":5},"title":"Anacyclosis and OODA Loops","author":"Limbic","date":"December 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"[Continuing on the purge of my drafts folder, here are the notes for another post whose point and purpose are long forgotten, from June 2009] # Monarchy \u2013 tribal rule based on brute force # Kingship \u2013 virtuous rule by one man # Tyranny \u2013 wicked rule by one man\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;History&quot;","block_context":{"text":"History","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/humanities\/history\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}