My logic of dealing with propaganda

06 04 2012

Any particular judgment is legitimate only as an act of deduction from generally accepted values.

There are many particular statements (that speak about a particular object, e.g. thing, person or country, as opposite to general statements that speak about groups or categories of objects) that are presented as unquestionable truths. For example, ‘the USA is the champion of democracy,’ or ‘Hitler was the worst criminal in the human history,’ or ‘Muammar Qaddafi had to be killed because NATO was obliged to make Libya democratic,’ etc.

question

A Christian Yankee and a non-Western Muslim – whose moral right to kill the other is greater?

Yankee’s

Muslim’s

equal

I cannot understand anyway how can Yankees, who have killed so many Muslims round the world recently, make such a fuss about the strike by Mohammad Ata and his team and pretend not being racists?

Some of such statements sound more convincing, some, less, however, it is always suggested that they rely on some universally recognised values. For instance, when NATO’s leaders stated that their aggression against Libya in 2011 was justified because of nature of Qaddafi’s rule, they supposed that Qaddafi’s government did not observe some universally approved obligatory standards; simple statement that Qaddafi ‘was a criminal’ or that he did not permit NATO’s countries to steal Libyan oil would have sounded less impressing.

You cannot successfully advocate the killing of Qaddafi without arguing that it was not an arbitrary decision by NATO’s leaders, but a case of enforcement of some general norms., for example, — all who violate human rights must be killed — or — every state leader who has not called general elections for many years must be toppled— or some similar general statement.

Thus, to sound legitimate, a particular statement or judgment has at least to seem to be derived of some unquestionable general statement. This is the weak point of every propaganda; and often can be used to prove the deceitfulness of the latter.

For example, if we do not approve of NATO’s assault on Libya in 2011, we can absolutely logically prove its illegality by simply asking, Why Qaddafi?

While it is difficult to disprove the straightforward statement that Qaddafi was bad, we can prove that many other world leaders, e.g. some Arab kings, US presidents, etc., have committed the same crimes as Qaddafi did (or even worse), therefore, those kings, presidents, etc. must be dealt with as harsh or harsher than Qaddafi was. Then you must admit either that some Arab monarchies, the USA, etc. should be occupied, their kings, presidents, etc. killed and Libyan-like (at the end of 2011) regimes installed or that Libya and Qaddafi were treated unlawfully and unjustly by NATO, Qatar and all the other countries that participated in its (in fact) occupation.

This simple logic clearly shows the injustice of the increasingly popular ban of swastika (I usually call it fire-cross), the main symbol of the most venerated Lithuanian god Perkūnas.

Christians have forbidden swastika in Germany, Austria, and many other countries despite it being a sacred religious symbol for many other religions. Christians argue that they are entitled to ban swastika because it is the principal symbol of Nazis .

However, the prohibition of swastika cannot be justified logically just by the argument that German Christians do not like Nazis. To look legitimate, It must resort to some general rule. German Christians are in fact arguing that 1) the symbols of criminal organisations have to be banned; 2) Nazis were horrible criminals; therefore, 3) their symbols must be forbidden.

However, many Christian Churches have committed more crimes in their history than even Nazis themselves. In Germany, Christians started pogroms against Jews centuries before Hitler’s birth.

If you look at all the historical facts, you will certainly see that the Christian cross has served as the main symbol to so many clearly criminal organisations in and outside Germany that logically you cannot simultaneously ban swastika and not ban the Christian cross.

German Christians are notorious for their bloody history of genocide, hatred, and murder. They think that by persecuting the sacred symbol of Hinduism, the Baltic faith (Lietuvietybė), and some other religions they show themselves as sort of cleaned from their bloody past.

Quite the opposite! Simple analysis of their propaganda shows that the true nature of German Christians has not changed at all. You do not even need to resort to the ill-famed personality of Joseph Ratzinger.

Anyway, if you are not a millionaire and do not feel like constructing a bomb, deductive analysis is the only way you are left with to calm down your consciousness if not actually defend your attitudes, your morality, your faith, religion, and country from the ever pervasive propaganda of the 21^st century.

What do you think about it?