If you pay attention to what is going on around the world and I with some confidence believe a lot of people here on steemit do then there are patterns that seem to be occurring all over the place and are not confined to just one nation. These patterns to some degree have popped up and existed throughout human history. I do believe there is a distinct change in these patterns though. This change really began around the time of World War II and has accelerated since that time.
Around the time of World War II the true realization, and codification of the term Propaganda arose. It was realized as an effective weapon, and force. Careful crafting of narrative, media, news, etc could elicit behavior from your own people to make them rally towards desired causes, to make the populace decide that some person or group is the enemy whether they in fact were or were not an enemy, and in general it was about political manipulation. It was not about actual truth. It also was not something that appeared just then. You can see it throughout history. The difference was the true understanding of a systematic shaping of perceived "truth". It became not about FACTS. It completely decoupled TRUTH from actual facts and replaced it with a TRUTH that was intentionally shaped to be whatever they wanted to be. They found that if they blasted people with this constructed TRUTH frequently enough and perhaps backed it with celebrities (people admired or envied) or authority figures then soon the mass population accepted it as TRUTH. Even if when looking at facts it wasn't the truth at all.
Perhaps this is why we hear phrases such as "Just the facts maam" as the TRUTH of something ends up being very subjective in a great deal of cases. FACTS are not. "I saw the man come out of the building and he appeared to be covered in blood" would be an example of a fact. An example of someone instead trying to relay a truth would be "A man came out of the building and must have killed someone because he was covered in blood.".
The first example doesn't state definitively that it was blood. IT could have been paint, it could have been ketchup, jelly, or any number of things. IT also could have been blood. What they didn't try to pass off was that he killed someone from this scant observation.
Propaganda tries really hard to set what those TRUTHS about a scene are in the minds of the masses. It will only touch upon facts when they are convenient to the desired narrative. The desired TRUTH they want the masses to believe is real.
Propaganda was really only one aspect of the insidious war that we are now immersed in. Most of the tools are from Psychology and it's study or the offspring of Psychology.
Psychology is often pinned as studying the mind and in generally we think of the Psychologist, and the Psychotherapist as being people to help people who have psychological problems. We frame is as a positive.
Yet that isn't even close to the only way it is used. There have been and still are extensive studies about how to manipulate people, how mass psychology works, etc. These are generally framed in the positive way of helping society resist these things, yet there is also the flip side that isn't generally discussed of how to intentionally put these findings into use to manipulate and control society.
This also I believe revealed a new battlefield, and a brand new huge territory to be fought over.
That territory is our minds. If they can control the minds of the people would that not also give them control over whatever property, assets, and organizations those people control.
So why send people to fight on a true battlefield when all you have to do is win the battle in their mind?
There are signs that this is what is going on all over the world. We all see them. I just don't believe we truly recognize them for what they are.
They are a clear war for control of our minds.
Political Correctness is one such tool. Politics and politicians deciding what is correct behavior and correct belief. At first there may not be laws passed around such things, but if society accepts and embraces the shaping of reality towards and agenda then the laws will come. This is already happening. Any so-called "hate speech" related law is being born from this type of thought, and this kind of manipulation. The micro-aggression concept which is fairly recent is an amazingly effective tool in this arena, and is one of the first tools we as a people should thoroughly eliminate.
Ridicule as a form of propaganda is also often popular. Ridicule something and if enough people do it, or it comes from celebrities or authorities then it often SWAYS the masses that indeed that thing is ridiculous without a SHRED of evidence to support that claim. All it needed was to be implied. Nothing factual there, pure emotion, and psychological tapping into people's desire to fit in and not be viewed as weird, crazy, or stupid. When in reality if we simply accept something as ridiculous without evidence we are kind of being stupid. This is also known as an Appeal To The Stone Fallacy. It was also one of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.
The reality is we have been losing this world war III. You can see this loss from the outcomes and events occurring around the world. You can begin to see the tools used to manipulate, and direct the masses.
Another tool they use is division. "Divide and conguer". The historical tools that seem to work for this are to fan the flames of bigotry. If you can't find the bigotry. Plant the seeds for that fire yourself and then fan them to life. If you do it well enough they will take on a life of their own and you'll no longer need to fan the fire, unless you see it faltering. In the meantime you can plan the next fire for when that one has consumed its fuel and seems to be likely to die even with the fanning. What are some of the best things to use as a seed? Race, Religion, Political Affiliation, Conspiracy Theorists, Drugs, Non-Believers, Deniers, etc.
Those can typically be fueled very similarly to the same way calling something ridiculous without evidence can be fueled. You don't need evidence you just need to tap into the emotion and use psychology and soon you have a raging fire. A fire that didn't require evidence. Though sometimes anecdotal occurrences that back the desired fire can help bring it to life more rapidly. Back it up by some claims about statistics without an actual study to back them, or by referring to a poll. Appeal to Authority, and Appeal to Popularity fallacies at their best (or worst).
So what can we do to end this war, or perhaps win it? For the people of the world to win it we need to regain control of our own minds and be a society of rational free thinkers who don't believe what we are told without at least giving it some rational thought, and without requiring evidence.
The first step for that is to see that it is going on. Once you can see it is going on many of the tools, their application, and the intended manipulation and outcomes begin to get clearer and clearer.
There are quite a few battle fields you can observe to see this in effect.
Sweden. It is well and fully oppressing people there. They are so afraid of offending people now that many people fear leaving their house simply because they might encounter and offend someone. Rape Gangs, and how it is viewed as just part of the culture of the migrants and thus not prosecuted. Speaking up against the migrants is also prosecuted.
U.K. where their Democracy seems not to matter. I mean didn't they vote for Brexit awhile ago, yet their vote is essentially being ignored and overturned. They also have a lot of the same problems that have overwhelmed Sweden. They just have not progressed as far YET in the U.K.
EU is dealing with aspects of what Sweden and U.K. are dealing with. It is not just the migrant issues and the crazy laws, double standards, and hypocrisy around those things. There are other things going on.
United States. It is all over the place in the United States and coming from many directions. The most overt (out in the open) battle is over Democracy much like Brexit in the U.K. The fight over the legitamacy of the presidential election. The witch hunt type approach. Can't find the evidence, then look for the evidence of something else, and keep looking and looking and looking. This is guilty until proven innocent which is the opposite of the laws and Constitution of the United States. IT is becoming normal. We also see many cases around the country where people are denied due process and their constitutional rights. We see people prosecuted under statutes that do not apply to them. We see people being denied a jury trial when they request one. We extreme secrecy everywhere in the government when most of those things should be very transparent. That secrecy is not for national security. IT is for political scumbag security.
Anyway, this is a huge subject. I do want to say that I believe we are in World War III and have been for awhile.
The battlefield is simply for control of our minds. If they can control that then technically they control everything else without needing to send troops, and annex it.