Don't be easily manipulated: 10 basic strategies of political manipulation
By Paulo Marini
Noam Chomsky, one of the most brilliant intellectuals in life today, has drawn up the list of the 10 strategies of manipulation through mass media...
1 - The strategy of distraction – Weapon: Mainstream media hysteria
The earliest element of social control is the distraction strategy that consists of diverting the public's attention from major problems and the changes decided by political and economic elites, through flooding of continuous distractions and insignificant information.
Distraction strategy is also essential to prevent the public from becoming interested in essential knowledge in the area of science, economics, psychology, neurobiology and cybernetics. Keeping the audience's attention deviated from real social problems, imprisoned by themes without real importance.
Keeping the public busy, busy, busy, with no time to think, back to the farm like other animals (quoted in the text ′′Silent weapons for quiet wars ′′).
2-Creating problems and then pretending to offer solutions. E.g Ramaphosa’s government in South Africa
This method is also called the ′′problem-reaction-solution ". It creates a problem (e.g the so called a Covid pandemic), or a ′′situation′′ planned to cause certain reaction from the public, with the aim to introduce a mandate of the measures they want people to accept.
For example: letting urban violence intensify, or organize bloody attacks (eg, by imprisoning a prominent politician for no apparent reason), with the aim of whipping public emotions so that in the midst of the chaos arises the need for strict security laws and policies to the detriment of the people’s freedom.
Also: Create an economic crisis to make social rights diminish and cripple public services so that people can accept the dire consequences as a necessary evil.
3-The Strategy of Graduation:
[Side Note: Weapon in South Africa – The illusion of a ‘free market” system, whose real meaning is to take financial power away from the state and put in the hands of private individuals called businesspeople through a tender system, via (PFM Act in South Africa).
You take huge amounts of money from the state treasury or from a State Owned Enterprise, place it in the bank account of an individual who have won a tender and wait for him/her to steal some or irregularly spend it before you scream “corruption!!!” all over the place.
You outsource a service that under a socialist government regular workers doing a 9-5 job on permanent basis would easily execute for an affordable single day salary after every 30 days and give it to a private company/individual who is going to charge the government an arm and a leg on contractual basis so that employees (paid on hourly basis) can be easily exploited (underpaid) by a tenderpreneur. Under the circumstances shoddy work becomes inevitable. Now it is easy to fire and hire workers as you please almost on a daily basis as a tenderpreneur, especially if the job done does not require scarce skills, eg. Road paving.
Outsourced casual workers are always unhappy because they are hired through labour brokers. They have no rights and no medical benefits. So they are bound to steal from work because their jobs are insecure.]
To make an unacceptable measure accepted, you only need to apply it gradually, to dropper here and dropper there, for consecutive years. This is how radically new socioeconomic conditions (neoliberism) were imposed during the decades of the 80s and 90s: minimum state, privatisation, precariousness, flexibility, mass unemployment, wages that no longer guarantee dignified incomes, so many day to day changes that would have brought about a revolution if they were implemented at once.
4-The Strategy of Deferring. Weapon: Covid scare and Lockdowns
Another way to get an unpopular decision to be accepted is to present it as ′′painful decision that is necessary ", gaining public acceptance, in the moment, for future application. It is easier to accept a future sacrifice than an immediate sacrifice. First, because effort isn't that taken immediately. Secondly, because the public, the mass, always tends to naively hope that ′′everything will be better tomorrow ′′ and that the required sacrifice could be avoided. This gives the audience am illusion of “let’s accept this suffering for a moment for the sake of a possible future relief” that will never take place for the oppressor to buy more time and let people get used to constant pain and finally accept it as normal when the time comes.
5 - Reach out to the public like little children 
Most publicity advertising uses speeches, topics, characters and a particularly childish intonation, many times close to weakness, as if the viewer was a few years old creature or a mental slow head. When you try to deceive the viewer you tend to use a childish tone. “Why?”,“Why? ′′If someone addresses a person as if they are 12 or under, then based on suggestion ability, they will probably tend to respond or react even without a critical sense like that of a 12 year old person or less ′′ - (see ′′Silent Weapons for quiet wars ′′).
6 - Using emotional aspect much more than reflection
Take advantage of emotion. It's a classic technique to provoke a short circuit on a rational analysis and, finally, the critical sense of the individual. Additionally, the use of emotional register allows the unconscious access door to implant or inject ideas, desires and fears, compulsions, or induced behaviors.
7-Keeping the public in ignorance and mediocrity. E.g. Bantu Education
Making the public incapable of understanding the technologies and methods used for their control and slavery.
′′The quality of education given to lower social classes must be as poor and mediocre as possible, so that the gap of ignorance that exists between lower classes and upper classes is or remains impossible to fill from the lower class standpoint ".
[Side Note: Ask yourself where is the Second World between the First and the Third World, and you will understand this concept.]
8-Stimulating the public to be complacent with mediocre: Weapon: Radio and TV programs
Pushing the audience to think it's fashionable to be stupid, vulgar and ignorant...You turn most stupid artists/radio presenters into superstars and deprive of airplay real artists who speak sense to the people
9 Strengthening self-guilt – Weapon: A trusted politician, false prophet or Church leader
Making the individual believe that he is only the culprit of his disgrace, because of his insufficient intelligence, skills or efforts. So, instead of rebelling against the economic system, the individual devalues himself and blames himself, which in turn creates a depressive state, one of whose effects is the inhibition of his action. And without action there is no revolution!
10-Knowing individuals better than they know themselves Weapon - Analysts
Over the past 50 years, science's rapid progress has generated a growing gap between public knowledge and those possessed and used by dominant elites.
Thanks to biology, neurobiology, and applied psychology, the ′′system′′ has enjoyed advanced knowledge of the human being, both in its physical and psychological form. The system has managed to learn better about the common individual than he knows himself.
This means that, in most cases, the system exercises greater control and greater power over individuals, greater than that which the same individual exercises over himself.
