Interview 906 – Social Engineering 101 with James Corbett
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
James Corbett joins Walter Hendricks of The Solvinur Event to discuss social engineering. In this wide-ranging conversation, James and Walter break down propaganda and PR, advertising and education, how the media is used to form our habits and opinions, and how to fight back against the social engineers.
SHOW NOTES:
Propaganda by Edward Bernays
Carroll Quigley on the Bank for International Settlements
Aldous Huxley: The Ultimate Revolution
How Darwin, Huxley, and the Esalen Institute launched the 2012 and psychedelic revolutions
B.F. Skinner’s Shaping Experiment (“Skinner’s Box”)
Most Disturbing Presentation Ever
José Delgado stops a bull in its tracks with electromagnetic mind control
“Discourse on Voluntary Servitude” by Étienne de La Boétie
Edward Bernays Explains the “Torches of Freedom” Campaign
Meet Adam Curtis, Establishment Contrarian
Filed in: Interviews
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
In a completely non-partisan way I’ve always wondered to what extent the creation and funding by James Warburg, Samuel Rubin, Philip Stern and Daniel J Bernstein of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washinton D.C. was a formidable stroke of social engineering largely contributing to the creation of the counter-culture and controlled left-wing opposition…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Bernstein_(businessman)
Incidentally, from the link above “…Bernstein initiated hedge funds and became extremely wealthy, largely through betting long on Japanese stocks…”
This is one of the most important podcasts you have done. I will save it and pass it on. I have just finished an essay called Art and Society which deals with the subject at an earlier stage. What you call social engineering I call moulded consciousness. I have shown the undeniable proofs of how writers, poets and composers stepped out of the moulding, dissociated themselves from it. But I still have trouble with musical friends who suffer severely from cognitive dissonance and determinedly refuse. Even ritually repeated performances of Beethoven are absorbed into manipulated consciousness that don’t look at what he is trying to say in his music. Samuel Beckett is rendered harmless and the capitalists make money out of him. I have met anarchists in London who have no idea about how much they have absorbed capitalist values. My essay is a struggle to dismantle such conformism. James, you are interested in the arts.I would so much like to send you this essay. I have your e-mail address and will plonk it o there. You are under no obligation to read it and can delete it.Thanks again for the important work you are doing.
Looks like Gladio A, B or C (take your pick) is alive and well in Germany, as the far right that brought us the wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria, are now using “their” asylum seeking jihadis to overthrow Merkel. Timely, just as the German elections draw near.
Taking the risk of being viewed (rightly) as a Johnny One Note, I will expand some on some of what James has said here. On the subject of Eddie Bernays, it’s good that James mentioned that he was Freud’s nephew (the 2nd time around) and that psychoanalytical means were included in his concept of “propaganda”, but that doesn’t go nearly far enough. Bernays was Freud’s nephew through two paths – his father’s sister was married to Freud and his mother was Freud’s sister. That just emphasizes how close this clan was; both Bernays and Freud were Austria-born Jews, which is a critical consideration. Regarding Freud and social engineering in this vein generally, it is worth listening to Kevin MacDonald on Freud’s psychoanalysis and the Frankfurt School, starting here at 44:45 and lasting about eight minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKEMsZQUuII
So we’re not just talking about psychological manipulation in a general way, we’re talking about tactics in a sort of covert cultural warfare. Another one of these (Jewish) guys who should be right there with Bernays is Walter Lippmann, described by Chomsky as “the leading public intellectual of the 20th century”, was a leading leftist in those days, but broke with most of the left in supporting America’s entrance into WWI (suggesting the Jewish push for this related to the Balfour deal). Lippmann’s thinking was in lock-step with Bernays, he was an advocate of decision-making being limited to the “responsible men”, the elite, under an “enlightened despotism” and be free of the “bewildered herd” (us). Bernays’ forte was controlling that herd to accomplish that.
The Frankfurt School thing really gets to the point of social engineering, and in that case also apparently with ulterior motivations – changing the thinking and behavior of an entire society to make it more accepting and malleable for the purposes of this small minority culture’s elites. This is one of the components addressed by MacDonald and others in the (incomplete) documentary Minority Rule: The Rise of Political Correctness (one can find that on Youtube). Obviously political correctness is a tool of social engineering, get the herd to herd themselves.
A brief comment on James’ example of the thrice-daily brushing of teeth. James puts this on the government, when in reality something like this happening would almost certainly be the result of an initiation by the giant corporations who make money on the brushing of teeth, like Procter & Gamble (Crest) or Colgate-Palmolive. Similarly, the Blade Runner replicant reference is from a film that features a future not where the government is the real power, rather it’s corporations, represented there by Tyrell Corp. I point this out because government is always made the boogieman at CR, when perhaps the real issue is the corporatocracy…
I (and perhaps JC and most here?) would argue that it is “both/and”. It is both the centralization of power into governments and corporations that is the problem… The decentralization of power from both public and private institutions is the only solution. This includes both national and international institutions and governance. In our present system, governments, banks and big business will always be in bed together. Governments, “representation” and “democracy” are used and needed to placate the masses, to give them a placebo that they are being represented. Governments are crucial for a buffer between the corporate, banking elite class and the masses.
I’m definitely anarchist leaning. But I think my perspective might be a bit unique in that spectrum. In my view, it is not the overthrow of all corporations and governments that is necessarily the answer tho… because other institutions and circles of power would just rise up in there place imo. Destruction or deconstruction alone is not the answer. The only long term answer that makes sense to me is a perpetual process of decentralization that each individual, community, collective and all humanity generally must be engaged in. This requires a dramatic growth in awareness and “careness” amongst us all in order for this to happen and be effective. Like Corbett argues, ideally we can move more and more toward a world where typical corporations and existing governments are becoming mostly redundant and obsolete.
I agree with you James.
The link here to John Lennon’s “Working class hero” is, I believe, a classic.
https://youtu.be/YsmQhbd1KWE