Refute the Enemy's Damn Lies!

The general public is on our side, but only if and when we do it

What lies? Here’s 102 of them for starters.

A huge student anti-Vietnam-war movement developed because the U.S. government’s lie about the purpose of its invasion of Vietnam was exposed as a lie by teach-ins across the nation. Read about this here, and here’s my personal experience.

THE ENEMY LOVES IT WHEN WE IGNORE ITS FALSE CLAIMS

I've noticed that some people think that the best way to respond to false claims by the enemy is to ignore them.

RACE

When racists taunt BLM folks with "How come you never talk about black on black crime?" (i.e., "How come you don't admit that blacks are a criminal race and THAT, not the police, is the problem?") most BLM folks just ignore the taunt; they don't respond to it directly with an explanation of how black on black crime is caused by systemic racial discrimination against non-whites, as I explain here.​

When the ruling class via its liberal wing (Hillary Clinton, etc.) declares that working class whites benefit from systemic racial discrimination against non-whites, good people who hate racial discrimination let this lie (and it IS INDEED a lie as MLK, Jr. and Frederick Douglass and a truthful look at race in U.S. history make clear, as I discuss in great detail here) go unchallenged. How come? I suspect that it is because they don't know it is a lie.

The sorry result is that when good anti-racism people talk about the FACT (yes it is indeed a fact, as I discuss here and also here) of systemic racial discrimination against non-whites, without also explaining (as MLK, Jr. so eloquently did in his 1965 Selma, Alabama speech that you can read and listen to here) that this racial discrimination is for the PURPOSE of enabling the very rich to dominate and oppress ALL races of working class people by destroying their solidarity, then white working class people respond to the implicit FALSE message--that they (and their ancestors in the past) benefit (benefited) from this racial discrimination and therefore they are racist oppressors--by being angry. And then, the good anti-racism people, instead of saying that this anger (at being falsely accused) is just tell these angry white working class people they are being racist for being angry. Presto! Divide-and-rule!​

ZIONISM

When Zionists say that Israel protects ordinary Jews from harm and therefore anybody who opposes what Israel does to defend itself is in effect, if not intent, antisemitic, anti-Zionists just ignore this PILLAR of Zionist propaganda, instead of directly refuting it by showing that the Israeli government, far from protecting ordinary Jews in Israel, severely oppresses them and uses the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to do it, as I discuss here and here.

The enemy just LOVES it when we ignore, rather than directly refute, its false propaganda. When we ignore the enemy's propaganda this way we make it seem to the many people who are paying attention--potential allies!--that we are not able to refute the propaganda because it is true and our position is based not on the facts but just our emotions.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

The ruling class censors the most important fact about illegal immigration, which is that the ruling class, for decades and by both major parties, has been doing things south of our border to FORCE poor people to have to migrate north into the US illegally in order to survive, as I discuss here. By focusing on this fact that is censored by the ruling class, and condemning what the ruling class does and by explaining why it does it (to oppress ALL working class people in the United States) one invariably obtains the AGREEMENT of those who oppose this illegal immigration. But good people don't do this. Instead they wag their accusing finger at the U.S. working class people who are most directly harmed by the illegal immigration and accuse them of being bad people for opposing it. Presto! Divide and rule!

SOCIAL ISSUES

Read here how the ruling class uses social issues to divide and rule, and how it gets away with this because good people do not refute the lies on which the ruling class's false frameworks for public discourse about these issues are based.

How come we're letting the enemy get away with this?

Why are we acting so defensively instead of taking the offense by refuting the lies our enemy uses to keep people on its side? Why aren't we doing what it takes to win over the great majority of people to our side, since our side is the morally and factually right one? Why are we responding to the enemy's most powerful propaganda lies with a "head in the sand" defensive response of ignoring them?

Part of the explanation for this losing "head in the sand" response is that people have given up on the idea of winning the war of ideas among the general public. They're satisfied with being in a righteous minority and feeling good about it, and they don't really have any expectation of winning the great majority to our side and actually defeating the enemy that way. This defeatism, in turn, is based on believing the enemy's false portrayal of ordinary people as selfish and uncaring about others, so if you care about others, according to this wrong view of people, you can never expect to have the majority on your side and thereby prevail over the enemy.

It is "head in the sand"-ism to just "preach to the choir." Here's an example of what I mean. The Zionists say that Israel is protecting ordinary Israeli Jews from harm and that in order to do this it needs to carry out the violent ethnic cleansing to keep Israel a majority Jewish population Jewish state, and that anybody who opposes Israel for doing what it must to protect its existence is therefore antisemitic in effect if not intent. Instead of directly refuting this Zionist lie by explaining (and proving with abundant facts!) that the Israeli government is NOT protecting ordinary Israeli Jews from harm but is instead oppressing ordinary Israeli Jews and using the violent ethnic cleansing to do this, anti-Zionists ignore the Zionist lie. Anti-Zionists merely respond by saying that the violent ethnic cleansing is immoral. This wins some people to "join the choir" but it does not persuade the many people who believe that the violent ethnic cleansing is NOT immoral because--however unfortunately and regrettably--it is absolutely necessary to protect ordinary Israeli Jews from harm, to prevent another Holocaust even.

"Head in the sand"-ism takes the form of people in the movement never asking, "What is the most powerful lie that the enemy uses to win people to its side and against us?" and never, therefore, working hard to answer the question, "How can we most persuasively refute this powerful lie; what facts must we learn and use and what argument is most effective?" Figuring out how to answer this key question is what serious strategic thinking is all about.​

Instead, movement meetings are devoid of serious strategic thinking; they are filled up with busy-work that distracts from the fact that "head in the sand"-ism is preventing the movement from gaining the support of the vast majority of people that it truly could gain if it thought about how to do so. The movement ends up remaining a minority movement--passionate but incapable of defeating the enemy that opposes its goal. The movement remains "the choir" preaching to itself and focused on making its members feel righteous rather than actually winning its goal, which, judging from this "head in the  sand" behavior, the members don't really think can be won.

Another part of the explanation for this "head in the sand" response to the enemy's propaganda is something different: a simple lack of knowledge about the relevant facts that are required to refute the enemy propaganda. It is one of the chief purposes of a movement to educate its members about these relevant facts so they will be able to refute the enemy propaganda whenever and wherever it raises its ugly head. This is why I write my articles.

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