In Stories Are Weapons, best-selling author Annalee Newitz traces the way disinformation, propaganda, and violent threats--the essential tool kit for psychological warfare--have evolved from military weapons deployed against foreign adversaries into tools in domestic culture wars. Newitz delves into America's deep-rooted history with psychological operations, beginning with Benjamin Franklin's Revolutionary War-era fake newspaper and nineteenth-century wars on Indigenous nations, and reaching its apotheosis with the Cold War and twenty-first-century influence campaigns online. America's secret weapon has long been coercive storytelling. And there's a reason for that: operatives who shaped modern psychological warfare drew on their experiences as science fiction writers and in the advertising industry.

Now, through a weapons-transfer program long unacknowledged, psyops have found their way into the hands of culture warriors, transforming democratic debates into toxic wars over American identity. Newitz zeroes in on conflicts over race and intelligence, school board fights over LGBT students, and campaigns against feminist viewpoints, revealing how, in each case, specific groups of Americans are singled out and treated as enemies of the state. Crucially, Newitz delivers a powerful counternarrative, speaking with the researchers and activists who are outlining a pathway to achieving psychological disarmament and cultural peace.

Incisive and essential, Stories are Weapons reveals how our minds have been turned into blood-soaked battlegrounds--and how we can put down our weapons to build something better.

Bernays' honest and practical manual provides much insight into some of the most powerful and influential institutions of contemporary industrial state capitalist democracies.--Noam Chomsky

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.--Edward Bernays

A seminal and controversial figure in the history of political thought and public relations, Edward Bernays (1891-1995), pioneered the scientific technique of shaping and manipulating public opinion, which he famously dubbed engineering of consent. During World War I, he was an integral part of the U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI), a powerful propaganda apparatus that was mobilized to package, advertise and sell the war to the American people as one that would Make the World Safe for Democracy. The CPI would become the blueprint in which marketing strategies for future wars would be based upon.

Bernays applied the techniques he had learned in the CPI and, incorporating some of the ideas of Walter Lipmann, as well as his uncle, Sigmund Freud, became an outspoken proponent of propaganda as a tool for democratic and corporate manipulation of the population. His 1928 bombshell Propaganda lays out his eerily prescient vision for using propaganda to regiment the collective mind in a variety of areas, including government, politics, art, science and education. To read this book today is to frightfully comprehend what our contemporary institutions of government and business have become in regards to organized manipulation of the masses.

From one of our leading experts on disinformation, this inventive biography of the rogue WWII propagandist Sefton Delmer confronts hard questions about the nature of information war: what if you can't fight lies with truth? Can a propaganda war ever be won?

In the summer of 1941, Hitler ruled Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Britain was struggling to combat his powerful propaganda machine, crowing victory and smearing his enemies as liars and manipulators over his frequent radio speeches, blasted out on loudspeakers and into homes. British claims that Hitler was dangerous had little impact against this wave of disinformation.

Except for the broadcasts of someone called Der Chef, a German who questioned Nazi doctrine. He had access to high-ranking German military secrets and spoke of internal rebellion. His listeners included German soldiers and citizens, as well as politicians in Washington DC who were debating getting into the war. And--most importantly--Der Chef was a fiction. He was a character created by the British propagandist Thomas Sefton Delmer, a unique weapon in the war.

Then, as author Peter Pomerantsev seeks to tell Delmer's story, he is called into a wartime propaganda effort of his own: the US response to the invasion of Ukraine. In flashes forward to the present day, Pomerantsev weaves in what he's learning from Delmer as he seeks to fight against Vladimir Putin's tyranny and lies. This book is the story of Delmer and his modern investigator, as they each embark on their own quest to manipulate the passions of supporters and enemies, and to turn the tide of an information war, an extraordinary history that is informing the present before our eyes.

This edition has sold over 2000 copies!
This is the only authorized and official English translation of the Green Book which was distributed globally by the Gaddafi regime. The Green Book is a short book setting out the political philosophy of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The book was first published in 1975. It is said to have been inspired in part by The Little Red Book (Quotations from Chairman Mao). Both were widely distributed both inside and outside their country of origin, and written in a simple, understandable style with many memorable slogans. During the Libyan Civil War, copies of the book were burned by anti-Gaddafi demonstrators.

How propaganda undermines democracy and why we need to pay attention

Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us--not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy--particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality--and how it has damaged democracies of the past.

Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States.

How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere.

In Canary in a (Post) Covid World: Money, Fear, and Power (Volume 2 of the Canary series), Thirty seven courageous voices-doctors, researchers, scientists, lawyers, journalists, ethicists, and creatives-reveal how powerful interests used the COVID-19 crisis as a tool to reshape our world. This is a rich, varied, and deeply disturbing story, told by some of the world's bravest and most qualified voices, of how our health care, information, and financial systems have been compromised in the name of profit and control.

Volume 1, Canary in a Covid World: How Censorship and Propaganda Changed Our (My) World-an Amazon #1 Best Seller-closely examined the pandemic and how we were fed a diet of propaganda while media blocked diverse perspectives. Now, Volume 2 takes us further, exploring the greater plays at hand. These Canaries offer fascinating insights and stories that will educate, shock, and anger many.

37 Contributors include: (see back cover of the book for more details)

Contributors include Dr. Julie Ponesse, Dr. Joel Wallskog, Scott W. Atlas MD, Dr. Byram Bridle, Dr. Ramesh Thakur, Dr. Charles Hoffe, Professor Mattias Desmet, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Andrew Bridgen, Seamus Bruner, Dr. Michael Nevradakis, Meredith Miller, Dr. Regina Watteel, Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Angus Dalgleish, Dr. Sam Dubé, Dr. James Thorp, Dr. Roger Hodkinson, Professor James Allan, Dr. Mike Yeadon, Dr. David Bell, Jeffrey Tucker, Dr. Meryl Nass, Margaret Anna Alice, Tamara Lich, Paul Thacker, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, Catherine Austin Fitts, Dr. Peter Parry, Professor Ian Brighthope, Dr. Kat Lindley, Shawn Buckley, Ivor Cummins, Joshua Walkos, CJ Hopkins, Robin Monotti, and Jason Christoff.

This is a must-read for anyone questioning the power structures reshaping our world.

Bernays' honest and practical manual provides much insight into some of the most powerful and influential institutions of contemporary industrial state capitalist democracies.-Noam Chomsky

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.-Edward Bernays

Edward Bernays, a significant and controversial figure in political thought and public relations, pioneered a scientific method called engineering of consent. During World War I, he played a crucial role in the U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI), a powerful propaganda machine that packaged and sold the war to Americans as a way to Make the World Safe for Democracy. The CPI's strategies became the blueprint for future war marketing.

Bernays later applied these techniques, influenced by Walter Lipmann and his uncle Sigmund Freud, advocating for propaganda as a tool to manipulate both democracy and corporate interests. His 1928 book, *Propaganda*, eerily predicted how propaganda could shape collective thinking across government, politics, art, science, and education. Reading it today reveals how our contemporary institutions use organized manipulation to influence the masses. In this influential work, Bernays explored the psychology behind mass manipulation, including the use of symbolic action and propaganda, which we now refer to as branding.

Learn how the perception of truth has been weaponized in modern politics with this insightful account of propaganda in Russia and beyond during the age of disinformation (New York Times).

When information is a weapon, every opinion is an act of war.

We live in a world of influence operations run amok, where dark ads, psyops, hacks, bots, soft facts, ISIS, Putin, trolls, and Trump seek to shape our very reality. In this surreal atmosphere created to disorient us and undermine our sense of truth, we've lost not only our grip on peace and democracy -- but our very notion of what those words even mean.

Peter Pomerantsev takes us to the front lines of the disinformation age--from Kiev to Manilla--where he meets Twitter revolutionaries and pop-up populists, behavioral change salesmen, Jihadi fanboys, Identitarians, truth cops, and many others. Forty years after his Ukranian dissident parents were pursued by the KGB, Pomerantsev finds the Kremlin re-emerging as a great propaganda power. His research takes him back to Russia -- but the answers he finds there are not what he expected.

Blending reportage, family history, and intellectual adventure, This Is Not Propaganda explores how we can reimagine our politics and ourselves when reality seems to be coming apart.

In 1933 Meerloo began to study the methods by which systematic mental pressure brings people to abject submission, and by which totalitarians imprint their subjective truth on their victims' minds. In The Rape of the Mind he goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurizing people's minds. He presents a systematic analysis of the methods of brainwashing and mental torture and coercion, and shows how totalitarian strategy, with its use of mass psychology, leads to systematized rape of the mind. He describes the new age of cold war with its mental terror, verbocracy, and semantic fog, the use of fear as a tool of mass submission and the problem of treason and loyalty, so loaded with dangerous confusion. The Rape of the Mind is written for the interested layman, not only for experts and scientists.

Nicknamed the father of public relations, Edward Bernays (1891-1995) was a pioneer in the fields of propaganda and PR. Combining theories on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, Bernays elucidated how corporations and politicians could manipulate public opinion. His seminal 1928 book, Propaganda laid out how propaganda could be used to regiment the collective mind in a variety of areas, including government, politics, art, science and education, while his 1923 classic, Crystallizing Public Opinion, set down the principles that business and government have used to influence public attitudes over the past century.

The Edward Bernays Reader: From Propaganda to the Engineering of Consent, is the first comprehensive volume of the writings of this influential and controversial figure. In addition to featuring extended excerpts from Crystallizing Public Opinion and Propaganda, this book also includes the full text of Bernays' classic 1947 essay, The Engineering of Consent, on the application of scientific principles and practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs, as well as extensive selections of his other writings on subjects including education, war propaganda, and polling. Taken together, the material in this book offers the most complete look to date at the work of a man whose ideas are considered the single most important influence on modern propaganda, public relations, and spin.

This is the only authorized and official English translation of the Green Book which was distributed globally by the Gaddafi regime. The Green Book is a short book setting out the political philosophy of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The book was first published in 1975. It is said to have been inspired in part by The Little Red Book (Quotations from Chairman Mao). Both were widely distributed both inside and outside their country of origin, and written in a simple, understandable style with many memorable slogans. During the Libyan Civil War, copies of the book were burned by anti-Gaddafi demonstrators.

An insider's view of the truth and mythology of Information Operations.

2015 Reprint of 1961 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition. Not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. In 1933 Meerloo began to study the methods by which systematic mental pressure brings people to abject submission, and by which totalitarians imprint their subjective truth on their victims' minds. In The Rape of the Mind he goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurizing people's minds. He presents a systematic analysis of the methods of brainwashing and mental torture and coercion, and shows how totalitarian strategy, with its use of mass psychology, leads to systematized rape of the mind. He describes the new age of cold war with its mental terror, verbocracy, and semantic fog, the use of fear as a tool of mass submission and the problem of treason and loyalty, so loaded with dangerous confusion. The Rape of the Mind is written for the interested layman, not only for experts and scientists. Contents: Part One: The Techniques of Individual Submission. 1. You Too Would Confess. 2. Pavlov's Students as Circus Tamers. 3. Medication into Submission. 4. Why Do They Yield? The Psychodynamics of False Confession. Part Two: The Techniques of Mass Submission. 5. The Cold War against the Mind. 6. Totalitaria and its Dictatorship. 7. The Intrusion by Totalitarian Thinking. 8. Trial by Trial. 9. Fear as a Tool of Terror. Part Three: Unobtrusive Coercion. 10. The Child is Father to the Man. 11. Mental Contagion and Mass Delusion. 12. Technology Invades Our Minds. 13. Intrusion by the Administrative Mind. 14. The Turncoat in Each of Us. Part Four: In Search of Defenses. 15. Training Against Mental Torture. 16. Education for Discipline or Higher Morale. 17. From Old to New Courage. 18. Freedom -- Our Mental Backbone

Bernays proporciona mucha información sobre algunas de las instituciones más poderosas e influyentes de las democracias capitalistas estatales industriales contemporáneas.-Noam Chomsky

La manipulación consciente e inteligente de los hábitos y opiniones organizados de las masas es un elemento importante en la sociedad democrática. Aquellos que manipulan este mecanismo invisible de la sociedad constituyen un gobierno invisible que es el verdadero poder gobernante de nuestro país.-Edward Bernays

Edward Bernays, una figura importante y controvertida del pensamiento político y las relaciones públicas, fue pionero en un método científico llamado ingeniería del consentimiento. Durante la Primera Guerra Mundial, desempeñó un papel crucial en el Comité de Información Pública (CPI) de Estados Unidos, una poderosa máquina de propaganda que empaquetó y vendió la guerra a los estadounidenses como una forma de hacer el mundo seguro para la democracia. Las estrategias del PCI se convirtieron en el modelo para el marketing de guerra futura.

Más tarde, Bernays aplicó estas técnicas, influenciado por Walter Lipmann y su tío Sigmund Freud, defendiendo la propaganda como una herramienta para manipular tanto la democracia como los intereses corporativos. Su libro de 1928, *Propaganda*, predijo inquietantemente cómo la propaganda podría moldear el pensamiento colectivo en el gobierno, la política, el arte, la ciencia y la educación. Leerlo hoy revela cómo nuestras instituciones contemporáneas utilizan la manipulación organizada para influir en las masas. En este influyente trabajo, Bernays exploró la psicología detrás de la manipulación masiva, incluido el uso de acciones simbólicas y propaganda, a lo que ahora nos referimos como marca.

SINCE 1933, when a completely drugged and trial-conditioned human wreck confessed to having started the Reichstag fire in Berlin, Dr. Joost A. M. Meerloo has studied the methods by which systematic mental pressure brings people to abject submission, and by which totalitarians imprint their subjective truth on their victims' minds. The first two and one-half years of World War II, Dr. Meerloo spent under the pressure of Nazi-occupied Holland, witnessing at firsthand the Nazi methods of mental torture .on more than one occasion. During this time he was able to use his psychiatric and psychoanalytic knowledge to treat some of the victims. Then, after personal experiences with enforced interrogation, he escaped from a Nazi prison and certain death to England, where he was able, as Chief of the Psychological Department of the Netherlands Forces, to observe and study coercive methods officially. In this capacity he had to investigate not only traitors and collaborators, but also those members of the Resistance who had gone through the utmost of mental pressure. Later, as High Commissioner for Welfare, he came in closer contact with those who had gone through physical and mental torture. After the war, he came to the United States, where his war experiences would not permit him to concentrate solely on his psychiatric practice, but compelled him to go beyond purely medical aspects to the social aspects of the problem. As more and more cases of thought control, brainwashing, and mental coercion were disclosed - Cardinal Mindszenty, Colonel Schwable, Robert Vogeler, and others - his interest grew. It was Dr. Meerloo who coined the word menticide, the killing of the spirit, for this peculiar crime. His knowledge of these totalitarian procedures has been officially acknowledged; he served as an expert witness in the case of Colonel Schwable, the Marine Corps officer who, after months of subjection to physical and mental torture following his capture in Korea, was made to confess to having taken part in germ warfare. It is Dr. Meerloo's position that through pressure on the weak points in men's makeup, totalitarian methods can turn anyone into a traitor. And in The Rape of the Mind he goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurizing people's minds. He presents a systematic analysis of the methods of brainwashing and mental torture and coercion, and shows how totalitarian strategy, with its use of mass psychology, leads to systematized rape of the mind. He describes the new age of cold war with its mental terror, verbocracy, and semantic fog, the use of fear as a tool of mass submission and the problem of treason and loyalty, so loaded with dangerous confusion. The Rape of the Mind is written for the interested layman, not only for experts and scientists. Contents: Part One: The Techniques of Individual Submission. 1. You Too Would Confess. 2. Pavlov's Students as Circus Tamers. 3. Medication into Submission. 4. Why Do They Yield? The Psychodynamics of False Confession. Part Two: The Techniques of Mass Submission. 5. The Cold War against the Mind. 6. Totalitaria and its Dictatorship. 7. The Intrusion by Totalitarian Thinking. 8. Trial by Trial. 9. Fear as a Tool of Terror. Part Three: Unobtrusive Coercion. 10. The Child is Father to the Man. 11. Mental Contagion and Mass Delusion. 12. Technology Invades Our Minds. 13. Intrusion by the Administrative Mind. 14. The Turncoat in Each of Us. Part Four: In Search of Defenses. 15. Training Against Mental Torture. 16. Education for Discipline or Higher Morale. 17. From Old to New Courage. 18. Freedom -- Our Mental Backbone

Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, explains what propaganda is and how it is applied on society. It's an explanation of how an elite's class runs the world through the change of public opinion with propaganda as a tool. Edward Bernays, just like Tesla and any other figure that doesn't make it to the history books, is as important as the history books. Everyone owes it to himself to listen to this book.

Save time on the go with the compact format and concise summary. Explore key quotations from the book

Bernays' honest and practical manual provides much insight into some of the most powerful and influential institutions of contemporary industrial state capitalist democracies.-Noam Chomsky

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.-Edward Bernays

Edward Bernays, a significant and controversial figure in political thought and public relations, pioneered a scientific method called engineering of consent. During World War I, he played a crucial role in the U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI), a powerful propaganda machine that packaged and sold the war to Americans as a way to Make the World Safe for Democracy. The CPI's strategies became the blueprint for future war marketing.

Bernays later applied these techniques, influenced by Walter Lipmann and his uncle Sigmund Freud, advocating for propaganda as a tool to manipulate both democracy and corporate interests. His 1928 book, *Propaganda*, eerily predicted how propaganda could shape collective thinking across government, politics, art, science, and education. Reading it today reveals how our contemporary institutions use organized manipulation to influence the masses. In this influential work, Bernays explored the psychology behind mass manipulation, including the use of symbolic action and propaganda, which we now refer to as branding.

HOW WE ARE BEING MANIPULATED INTO HATRED, DIVISION, AND VIOLENCE

If you've been baffled at how citizens of the United States, even people you know, could turn against their democracy, there is an answer. There is a method for turning someone from a citizen of a peaceful democratic society into someone who feels he or she must destroy the existing political system to save their nation. It has been used successfully to create violence and conflict, to collapse nations and install autocratic regimes, at least four times in the last century. Now it's being used against American citizens through social media and other channels, with startling results.

Mary Wald's meticulously researched book, Sowing Hate and Chaos, pulls the curtain back to show how what is happening in our country isn't a natural evolution of events or pendulum swing, but a carefully planned and executed campaign that uses experimental and behavioral psychology to manipulate the American people toward hatred and violence - without their even realizing it's happening.

The world is astonished to witness events in the United States and the willingness of some Americans to dismantle their own democracy. Sowing Hate and Chaos, written by one of my most trusted associates, is a vital work for understanding and navigating the dangerous waters ahead for the United States and other democracies. -José Ramos Horta, President Timor-Leste, Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Thanks to the First Amendment, Americans enjoy a rare privilege: the constitutional right to lie. And although controversial, they should continue to enjoy this right.

When commentators and politicians discuss misinformation, they often repeat five words: fire in a crowded theater. Though governments can, if they choose, attempt to ban harmful lies, propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation, how effective will their efforts really be? Can they punish someone for yelling fire in a crowded theater--and would those lies then have any less impact? How do governments around the world respond to the spread of misinformation, and when should the US government protect the free speech of liars?

In Liar in a Crowded Theater, law professor Jeff Kosseff addresses the pervasiveness of lies, the legal protections they enjoy, the harm they cause, and how to combat them. From the COVID-19 pandemic to the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and the January 6, 2021, insurrection on the Capitol building, Kosseff argues that even though lies can inflict huge damage, US law should continue to protect them. Liar in a Crowded Theater explores both the history of protected falsehoods and where to go from here.

Drawing on years of research and thousands of pages of court documents in dozens of cases--from Alexander Hamilton's enduring defense of free speech to Eminem's victory in a lawsuit claiming that he stretched the truth in a 1999 song--Kosseff illustrates not only why courts are reluctant to be the arbiters of truth but also why they're uniquely unsuited to that role. Rather than resorting to regulating speech and fining or jailing speakers, he proposes solutions that focus on minimizing the harms of misinformation. If we want to seriously address concerns about misinformation and other false speech, we must finally exit the crowded theater.

2014 Reprint of 1925 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Dr. Lipsky asserts that it is the business of leaders and statesmen to form public opinion, to direct the thought of a nation in predetermined ways. He further states that on public matters few men have opinions. According to his view most people take their financial, economic and political opinions from mass media, advertising and other forms of social media. Few form their own opinion. Lipsky's work details how opinion is manipulated and the techniques employed to bring about the desired response. A classic and hard to find account of manipulation and propaganda.