Photo Credit: The New Media Journal
Recently, US Senator Charles Schumer – Harvard Doctor of Jurisprudence – auditioned for the position of Minister of Propaganda for the Obama Regime, and, perhaps, as a candidate to be the next Majority, or Minority, Leader of the Senate Democrats.
Doctor Schumer’s January 23, 2014 speech, delivered at the Center for American Progress, used several of Saul Alinksy’s “Rules for Radicals,” coupled with propaganda devices described by Julius Yourman in his article Propaganda Techniques Within Nazi Germany printed in the November 1939 Journal of Educational Sociology.
Schumer’s remarks, lasting fifty minutes, were titled “The Rise and Potential Fall of the TEA Party: the Fundamental Flaw in the TEA Party’s Premise and What Democrats Can Do to Exploit It.”
The founder and former president of the Center for American Progress is John Podesta. Podesta was President Clinton’s Chief of Staff from 1998-2001, co-chaired the Obama-Biden Transition Project, and is now a “White House counselor.” It requires the “willing suspension of disbelief” to think that Schumer’s speech was not choreographed from the White House, and is anything other than a preview of the Democrats’ strategy in the run-up to the midterm elections.
Schumer began his speech with this question:
“Why does the TEA Party, a group that seems to represent a small but extreme part of America, have such undue power, which, all too often, results in a stranglehold over our politics and policies?”
He defined the growth of the TEA Party as “an ingenious, well-executed plan.” In other words, it’s a conspiracy.
Here are samples of Schumer’s, essentially the Regime’s, accusations against the TEA Party that he formatted by coupling Alinsky Rule #12 – Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it – with Yourman’s Nazi Propaganda Technique #1:
“‘Name calling’ is a device to make us form a judgment without examining the evidence on which it should be based.”
According to Schumer, the TEA Party has:
▪ “…stymied Democrat priorities”
▪ “…taken a sledgehammer to programs important to tens of millions of Americans”
▪ “…had a devastating effect on domestic investments like scientific research, education, and infrastructure”
▪ Caused “voting rights” to be “rolled back”
▪ Caused the House to “stonewall” the “Senate-passed immigration law overwhelming supported by most Americans”
▪ “…shut down the government in October”
▪ “…blocked infrastructure bills that previously enjoyed bipartisan support”
▪ And has “greatly unsettled the American psyche.”
Also, “the TEA Party’s intransigence has prevented all efforts to reverse the trend” of declining middle-class incomes. Not a word, though, about how the TEA Party has increased tooth decay among poor children.
Schumer implicitly accused the TEA Party of being a racist movement that grew as a “backlash against the election of Barack Obama,” and that appeals to “parts of America” that are uncomfortable in “a different America” that “looks different, prays different, and works different.”
Doctor Schumer outlined a cascade of conspiratorial puppet masters.
First, who is behind this diabolical plot? It’s the “TEA Party elites.”
Schumer mentioned the “elites” seven times. The TEA Party elites have made:
▪ “…government the boogeyman”
▪ “…decided to light the fuse of discontent” in America
▪ “…gained extraordinary influence by being able to funnel millions of dollars into campaigns with ads that distort the truth & attack government”
▪ “…swooped in and sold many Americans on a simple nostrum: that government was to blame for all their problems. ”
“TEA Party elite have manipulated their millions of grassroots followers.” This is a variation on Yourman’s Nazi Propaganda Technique #5: “‘Plain folks’ is a device used by politicians, labor leaders, business men, and even by ministers and educations to win our confidence by appear to be people like ourselves.” The TEA Party has manipulated the “plain folks.”
But who controls the TEA Party elites? It’s the “plutocrats” who are the TEA Party “leaders”:
“The fundamental weakness in the TEA Party machine is the stark difference between what the leaders of the TEA Party elite, plutocrats like the Koch Brothers, want and what the average grassroots TEA Party follower wants.”
The plutocrats are the, “wealthy, hard right, selfish, narrow people who don’t want to pay taxes and don’t want government interfering with their companies… the plutocrats and their friends never acknowledge where government helped them.”
And who facilitates spreading the message of these plutocrats, who control the elites, who control the TEA Party members? Answer: “The Rush Limbaughs and the Fox Newses agree with the plutocrats and spread their propaganda to the masses.”
To explain the rise of the TEA party, Schumer used Yourman’s Nazi Propaganda Tactic #2 – “‘Glittering generalities’ is a device by which the propagandist identifies his program with virtue by using ‘virtue words,'” like reducing, growing, and creating.
The TEA Party is responsible for opposition to the Senate immigration bill which is based, in part, on the conservative principles of “reducing our deficit by billions, growing our economy, creating jobs and spurring new entrepreneurial activity.”
Meanwhile, “while we [the Democrats] were carefully crafting a healthcare bill that would ultimately reduce costs and improve healthcare in America, we allowed them to capture the negative. False scares of: ‘you’ll lose your Medicare or you’ll lose your employer-based healthcare if Obamacare passes,’ combined with the message: ‘healthcare = more government = disaster” predominated.'”
Schumer flips, taking positive to negative, Yourman’s Nazi Propaganda Technique #4 – Testimonial:
“a device to make us accept anything from a patent medicine or a cigarette to a program of national policy.” Schumer used negative testimonials to personalize and polarize the opposition.” (see Alinsky Rule #12, above)
In one negative testimonial he said,
“I came to realize this [namely, that grassroots Americans really like big government programs] while engaging the TEA Party members who would routinely come to picket my events during the Healthcare debate. I’d approach them and immediately someone would shout: ‘Get your government’s hands out of my pockets!'”
In detail, he described another negative testimonial that happened at
“an event on southern Staten Island in a working class, blue collar, and very Republican community. I was at a sidewalk event talking about prescription drug abuse with other legislators, Democrat and Republican, and a group came there to heckle us. The heckling was led by one very angry and very impolite gentleman. He kept interrupting us using all the standard Rush Limbaugh talking points.”
Midway through his speech, Schumer transitioned into Alinsky Rule #11 – The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
His “four-points” progressive alternative to the TEA Party is to
1) make the case for government as a “necessary force for good”;
2) “Focus, this year, on four or five simple but compelling examples of where government can help the average family”;
Then (3) & (4) morph into a list of “five issues we should focus on”:
a) raise the minimum wage;
b) devise “a simple, concrete, government-funded program that makes it a lot easier for people to attend college”;
c) “renew our commitment to revitalizing our national infrastructure”;
d) promote “equal pay for women”;
e) address the loss American jobs to other countries that, like China, don’t play by “the rules”;
And even though he said there were five issues, he added
f) address “universal Pre-K and childcare affordability”;
g) deal “with job training and the skills gap”;
h) “provide manufacturers with the capital to expand and hire”;
i) close “corporate tax loopholes”;
j) “address the damage done by the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision”; (11) “Finally, we have to look at electoral reform.”
Whew! Takes your breath away, doesn’t it?
Schumer rolled out a virtual hodge-podgic cornucopia of progressive initiatives – red meat to the denizens of the Center for American Progress – to counter the TEA Party mantra of less government in the next ten months. It was an example of Alinsky Rule #2 – Never go outside the expertise of your people. And those to whom his audition was addressed are the liberal progressives at the Center for American Progress who only know one direction for big government – grow it bigger.
As has been proven throughout world history, all propaganda is based on the projection of a wholly imaginary, alternative universe. At the close of his speech, the presumptive Minister of Propaganda for the Obama Regime said:
“The decline of the deficit and Obamacare as the most salient electoral issues and the prominence in the issues of government’s ability to help restore and build the middle class provides us a golden opportunity to expose what has always been a fault line in the TEA Party: that the obsessively antigovernment philosophy of the TEA Party elites does not meet the actual needs of the TEA Party membership.”
Of course, the manipulated grassroots TEA Party members are the “plain folks” for whom progressives deeply care.
Addendum: If you found this overview of Schumer’s presentation rambling and disjointed, try reading his entire speech. In comparison, the above is a bus schedule.
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First published at The New Media Journal.
Since 2007, Lee Cary has written hundreds of articles and blogs for several conservative websites, including the American Thinker and Breitbart’s Big Journalism & Big Government (as Archy Cary), been quoted on national television (Sean Hannity) and on nationally syndicated radio (Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin). His articles are cited in Jerome Corsi’s The Obama Nation and in Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny. Cary now writes for the Texas-based site teaparty911.com.
