The Soviet Communist Paradigm
The full introduction of the television would also be used for more sinister methods, arriving just in time to see the emergence of the elite’s control of the masses through fear and xenophobia, using the manufacture and marketing of enemies, such as the dreaded Soviet Communist, to better control the direction of the nation and the population. The Establishment became fully aware of a grave and growing danger to its power and control that if allowed to foment in the minds of the masses could spell a deep threat to the system. This fear by the elite was not of Soviet communism, which was a product of human greed, corruption and debauchery by the Russian government, but of the principles of socialism, which were gathering steam throughout the world in the years after World War II. The Establishment, both government and corporate, would use the television, and the newspapers and magazines it controlled, to preempt the principles of socialism, many of which espouse the teachings of Christ, conditioning in the population fears, lies, manipulations and hatreds regarding human socialism, thus assuring itself that such a threat to its existence would be squashed in America.

Through television and mass media Soviet Communism and socialism were fused together, fear of “Red Soviets” was made all-encompassing and the introduction of the Cold War, thanks to an easily-manipulated and fear-gripped populace, became a prosperous era for war profiteers, defense contractors and corrupt politicians. The Cold War established with the population the idea of America as benevolent and inherently good, always right and never wrong, fighting for the freedom of the free world, doing battle against the dreaded “Evil Empire.” Americans with social democrat tendencies were persecuted, anything anti-corporation was chastised, those pointing out the debased faults of the American system were ostracized and an entire nation was brought under the noose of fear.

An enemy had been created, and hundreds of millions of Russians were made subhuman monsters, all innocent and as decent as you and me, all fighting to survive a totalitarian regime. The brainwashing of Americans was so overwhelming, so successful, that for decades the Cold War raged on, living off the fumes of illusion and charades, creating bogey men lurking behind dark corners and making the principles of socialism a taboo subject to those whose unenlightenment is a cornerstone of the keepers of the gate.

Television and mass media were used to conjure up an enemy that was designed and marketed to last into perpetuity, granting perpetual war for perpetual profit, giving sustenance to the military-industrial complex. Fear oozed out the pores of average Americans as we were made to believe in mushroom clouds, told to build concrete bunkers, ‘educated’ in the inherent evil of communists, of evildoers hating us for our freedoms. We were spoon-fed the lies and manipulations and charades through sitcoms, movies, advertisements, newscasts and even cartoons. The conditioning was as pervasive as it was successful. It was corporate mass media, from newspapers to magazines to television, that transformed an entire nation into enemies, allies into rivals, millions of humans into communist monsters and a Cold War into tense periods of mutually assured destruction.

So invasive was the idea of Soviets and of communism as enemies, in fact, that to this day those brainwashed decades ago still see an enemy behind every progressive and left leaning American, still calling us “communists” when the new, hip, in vogue term is “terrorist.” Only with the fall of the Berlin Wall were we allowed to see the fallacy behind our lunacy, the façade finally evaporating, finally opening our eyes to a cold war that was designed for the salvation of the elite, not that of the masses, so that a perceived threat to the Establishment’s crony capitalism, profit, greed, wealth and power could be retained, so that the American people would be taught and conditioned to despise the principles of socialism, for the elite saw in it, and still do, a severe threat to their way of life.

For the salvation of the elite Americans were conditioned into hysteria; for our continued ignorance the Cold War subsisted, empowering itself and living off our programmed fears and hatreds, calculated to keep us on the path to crony capitalism and debauched democracy and away from other, possibly better mechanisms of human society. Our fears and hatreds made it easier for the elite to control us; our blind faith in the propaganda they spewed further degraded our lives. We were negated from seeing the beauty of Russia and Eastern Europe; their cultures and peoples were marginalized and denied us. A threat was over hyped on purpose, creating an enemy for geopolitical and power hungry goals.

Along with a cursory semblance of greater freedom, as well as the illusions of democracy, Americans were made to believe in the sanctity of the nation. America could do no wrong; jingoism and nationalism flourished, we were conditioned to believe in an America the righteous, defender of human rights, protector of democracy, cherished beholder of justice and equality, an upholder of all things good. All the while America’s government was unleashing hell on Earth upon the peoples of the south, creating wars, supporting dictators and despots, arming militaries, training soldiers of death, promoting murder, assassinations, torture, coup d’etats, death squads, creating slave labor, impoverishing millions, exploiting billions and condemning to limbo countless human beings whose only crime was being born in lands coveted by American corporate interests.

It was the mass media, using all tools at its disposal, that created good versus evil, cowboy versus Indian, American versus Soviet, masquerading the interests of the few for those of the many, spawning fear and hatreds, altering culture and opinion to the tunes of the Establishment, controlling the fate of an entire nation. The same exact thing has occurred in this fictional war on terror, simply the latest resurrected marketing ploy from the dusty bins of history.

What the Cold War shows us is that the population of a wealthy nation can be, through the corporate media, easily cajoled into doing the bidding of the elite, standing proudly by, and in furtherance of, the beliefs and goals created by the system. A nation can in the span of a few years or months be made to hate, fear and seek war, its collective emotions and psychology and passions exploited and manipulated by mass media, particularly television.

Reality is anything the corporate mass media wants it to be and, with a nation addicted to television, subservient to its hypnotizing glare, ready to absorb its opinions and visions, unquestioning and sedentary, kneeling in reverential attention at the images it generates and the sounds it emanates, the real danger becomes when the concocted reality of corporatists becomes the reality of the masses, when fiction and lies and deceptions become forgotten or ignored, and when fear, hatred, jingoism and xenophobia are birthed through the careful manipulation of our animal emotions and passions.

As has been seen during the Cold War, and now the fictional war on terror, it seems entire populations, no matter how civilized or comfortable their lives are, no matter how advanced or sophisticated they might claim to be, are impotent to the captivating powers of television and mass media, the weapons of choice for corporatists, creating citizens ready to do the bidding and dying for the interests of the elite, ready to sacrifice their freedoms, human rights, democracy and nation’s Constitution in furtherance of the growing plague of fascism.

End Part II