Noam Chomsky, (born December 7, 1928) is a professor of linguistics and a fearless critic of the wealthy elite (himself of Jewish origin) who rule the United States. He has compiled a list of ten common strategies used by the media to manipulate people in the USA. In the past, our media have created or destroyed social movements, justified wars, mitigated financial crises, and encouraged or destroyed certain ideological currents. Chomsky has listed ten tools of manipulation used by our media. Essentially, they encourage stupidity, foster a sense of guilt, create distractions, or fabricate artificial problems and then magically solve them. These are the most important techniques:
Distraction Strategy
A fundamental element of social control is the strategy of diverting public attention from important issues and changes driven by our political and economic elites, using techniques that flood the public with constant distractions and trivial information. "The distraction strategy is also essential for extinguishing public interest in basic sciences such as science, economics, psychology, neurobiology, and cybernetics, but also ufology. This technique also redirects public attention away from our real social problems by focusing on matters that have no real importance. The idea is to keep the public constantly busy and not give them time to think about the most important principles and the core fact hidden behind our social problems."
Problem Creation Followed by Offering a Solution
(See also the work of former British Green Party spokesperson and author David Icke.) This method essentially highlights symptoms while hiding the underlying causes. For example, it points to violence in cities or details of bloody attacks without investigating the root causes of these problems. It also creates and manipulates crises related to the economy or violence in order to encourage the public to accept necessary evils such as restrictions on civil liberties or a gradual reduction in public services.
Gradual Strategy
This essentially means gradually implementing destructive social policies that would be unacceptable if imposed suddenly. This is what was implemented during the 1980s and 1990s within a new socio-economic framework by the radical right. These include privatization, insecurity, flexibility, massive unemployment, reduced purchasing power of wages, and guarantees of stable income. All these changes would trigger widespread rebellion if applied at once.
Subjugation Strategy
Another way to gain public acceptance for unpopular measures is to present them as "painful but necessary" in order to gain public understanding of their future implementation. This is similar to the gradual strategy. It is easier to accept future sacrifices than an immediate defeat at the outset, because the effect is not felt immediately. Later, the public is encouraged to believe that "everything will be better tomorrow." This gives the public more time to get used to the idea of unfavorable changes and to accept them with resignation when the time comes.
Treating the Public Like a Child
Many advertisements and propaganda campaigns utilize children's voices and intonations as if the viewer or listener were a child or mentally delayed. The rule is that if you treat people like 12-year-old children or younger, they tend to react without criticism, just as children do.
Promoting emotional reactions instead of reflective ones
This is a classic technique for bypassing rational analysis and critical thinking. It also opens the doors to the subconscious where plans, desires, fears, anxieties, compulsions, and required irrational behaviors are implanted.
Bombarding the public with trivialities to maintain their ignorance
It is important to force people into an inability to understand the technologies and methods used for their enslavement. The quality of education provided to lower social strata is intentionally kept poor and miserable as much as possible so that they can be manipulated like sheep.
Promoting the public - being happy with mediocrity
This includes promoting the belief among the public that it is fashionable to be stupid, vulgar, and uneducated, where everyone is encouraged to believe that these are characteristics essential for wisdom attained through age.
Supporting guilt and self-blame
This is an extremely twisted strategy. It involves constantly insulting people for their own misfortune due to the failure of their intelligence, abilities, or efforts so they do not examine structural flaws in the social and economic system that enslaves them. One of the most twisted controlling myths of American society is that if you work continuously long enough, then you will succeed and become wealthy. This occasionally happens to some people, and their success is widely announced by the media to the public. Sometimes it happens, and we are constantly reminded that since those people could do this, so can you. However, when you strive hard but do not get rich, then the problem is that you did not work hard enough or were not smart enough and ended up as an idiot. So regardless of what befalls you, the myth remains untouched, and America remains a land of opportunity and the greatest country in the world.
Knowing individual people better than they know themselves
In the last 50 years, scientific progress has generated an increasing gap between what the public knows and the knowledge held by dominant elites. Thanks to biology, neurobiology, and applied psychology, the "system" has acquired advanced knowledge of the physical and psychological nature of people. These insights are cynically exploited for manipulating the public as if it were a flock of sheep.(Noam Chomsky)
Additional manipulation methods
There are hundreds of manipulative techniques. They vary in sophistication, have different forms and structures, and appear practically in all areas of social life – from media through culture, exhibitions, concerts, libraries to newspapers and politics. Regarding current manipulative techniques, these today most prominently appear primarily in the media space. They have the greatest impact on us and exert the strongest influence because their goal is to create an environment of certain indoctrination. We are gradually drawn into such a space without critically evaluating it. Instead, we gain the feeling that we decide completely freely and that our decisions stem solely from our own will.
Besides current manipulation techniques, there are also long-term and medium-term ones. However, these interweave with each other to create a homogeneous whole intertwined with culture, politics, ideology, and economics. They permeate all spheres of social governance. Therefore, it is absolutely logical that one must know these manipulation techniques, recognize them, and form their own critical opinion on them.
Critical Approach to the Principle of Credibility
Another aspect I would like to highlight is our approach to information. My wish is for people to remember that every piece of information should be approached with maximum skepticism. Every source should initially be considered potentially unreliable. Only time, experience, and repeated verification will reveal which sources are less reliable, which more so, and which can be deemed trustworthy.
However, even sources we consider very credible should not be exempt from critical evaluation. Even the most reliable media need to be re-verified periodically. Ownership may change, multinational capital influence may emerge, editorial policy may shift, or political and economic pressures may arise—all of these factors can affect content and how information is presented to the public.
From my own experience, I know that even credible sources must regularly undergo critical thinking. Therefore, it is advisable to initially accept each new piece of information with a certain degree of doubt. Only through subsequent verification, comparing different sources, and critical analysis can one separate facts from errors or falsehoods among the vast amount of information available, gradually approaching the most accurate picture of reality.
When They Withhold Information and Context
By the way, one of the fundamental manipulation techniques is withholding information and context. I consider this to be one of the gravest forms of manipulation. If essential information or broader contexts are concealed, a person cannot objectively or critically evaluate the situation. They only assess what has been presented to them, not the full picture of reality. Therefore, it is necessary to actively seek additional information and verify it from various sources. At the same time, it is important to ask questions: What do they want us to understand with this message? Why was exactly this topic chosen? Why are other topics downplayed or covered up? And what happens in the background that goes unspoken—what does someone not want the public to know? It is precisely the ability to ask such questions and seek broader context that forms the foundation of critical thinking. This does not automatically mean assuming every incomplete information is intentional manipulation. Rather, it means becoming aware that without broader context, the picture of reality may be incomplete; therefore, it is advisable to verify, compare, and evaluate information within as broad a context as possible.
Jan Vojtěch, Editor-in-Chief General News