Media Slogans Quotes

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.

Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.

The issue is whether we want to live in a free society or whether we want to live under what amounts to a form of self-imposed totalitarianism, with the bewildered herd marginalized, directed elsewhere, terrified, screaming patriotic slogans, fearing for their lives, and admiring with awe the leader who saved them from destruction, while the educated masses goose-step on command and repeat the slogans they’re supposed to repeat and the society deteriorates at home.

The point of public relations slogans like “Support our troops” is that they don’t mean anything. They mean as much as whether you support the people in Iowa. Of course, there was an issue. The issue was, Do you support our policy? But you don’t want people to think about that issue. That’s the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody’s going to be against, and everybody’s going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy?

Poetic Terrorism WEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they're the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune--say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of alchemical mss. ... Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places (public or private) where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience, etc. Go naked for a sign. Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty. Graffiti-art loaned some grace to ugly subways & rigid public monuments--PT-art can also be created for public places: poems scrawled in courthouse lavatories, small fetishes abandoned in parks & restaurants, Xerox-art under windshield-wipers of parked cars, Big Character Slogans pasted on playground walls, anonymous letters mailed to random or chosen recipients (mail fraud), pirate radio transmissions, wet cement... The audience reaction or aesthetic-shock produced by PT ought to be at least as strong as the emotion of terror-- powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive breakthrough, dada-esque angst--no matter whether the PT is aimed at one person or many, no matter whether it is "signed" or anonymous, if it does not change someone's life (aside from the artist) it fails. PT is an act in a Theater of Cruelty which has no stage, no rows of seats, no tickets & no walls. In order to work at all, PT must categorically be divorced from all conventional structures for art consumption (galleries, publications, media). Even the guerilla Situationist tactics of street theater are perhaps too well known & expected now. An exquisite seduction carried out not only in the cause of mutual satisfaction but also as a conscious act in a deliberately beautiful life--may be the ultimate PT. The PTerrorist behaves like a confidence-trickster whose aim is not money but CHANGE. Don't do PT for other artists, do it for people who will not realize (at least for a few moments) that what you have done is art. Avoid recognizable art-categories, avoid politics, don't stick around to argue, don't be sentimental; be ruthless, take risks, vandalize only what must be defaced, do something children will remember all their lives--but don't be spontaneous unless the PT Muse has possessed you. Dress up. Leave a false name. Be legendary. The best PT is against the law, but don't get caught. Art as crime; crime as art.

Fascists despised the small truths of daily existence, loved slogans that resonated like a new religion, and preferred creative myths to history or journalism. They used new media, which at the time was radio, to create a drumbeat of propaganda that aroused feelings before people had time to ascertain facts. And now, as then, many people confused faith in a hugely flawed leader with the truth about the world we all share. Post-truth is pre-fascism.

The designer is primarily confronted with three classes of material: a) the given material: product, copy, slogan, logotype, format, media, production process; b) the formal material: space, contrast, proportion, harmony, rhythm, repetition, line, mass, shape, color, weight, volume, value, texture; c) the psychological material: visual perception and optical illusion problems, the spectators’ instincts, intuitions, and emotions as well as the designer’s own needs.

Meanwhile, Mme Mao and her cohorts were renewing their efforts to prevent the country from working. In industry, their slogan was: "To stop production is revolution itself." In agriculture, in which they now began to meddle seriously: "We would rather have socialist weeds than capitalist crops." Acquiring foreign technology became "sniffing after foreigners' farts and calling them sweet." In education: "We want illiterate working people, not educated spiritual aristocrats." They called for schoolchildren to rebel against their teachers again; in January 1974, classroom windows, tables, and chairs in schools in Peking were smashed, as in 1966. Mme Mao claimed this was like "the revolutionary action of English workers destroying machines in the eighteenth century." All this demagoguery' had one purpose: to create trouble for Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiao-ping and generate chaos. It was only in persecuting people and in destruction that Mme Mao and the other luminaries of the Cultural Revolution had a chance to "shine." In construction they had no place. Zhou and Deng had been making tentative efforts to open the country up, so Mme Mao launched a fresh attack on foreign culture. In early 1974 there was a big media campaign denouncing the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni for a film he had made about China, although no one in China had seen the film, and few had even heard of it or of Antonioni. This xenophobia was extended to Beethoven after a visit by the Philadelphia Orchestra. In the two years since the fall of Lin Biao, my mood had changed from hope to despair and fury. The only source of comfort was that there was a fight going on at all, and that the lunacy was not reigning supreme, as it had in the earlier years of the Cultural Revolution. During this period, Mao was not giving his full backing to either side. He hated the efforts of Zhou and Deng to reverse the Cultural Revolution, but he knew that his wife and her acolytes could not make the country work. Mao let Zhou carry on with the administration of the country, but set his wife upon Zhou, particularly in a new campaign to 'criticize Confucius." The slogans ostensibly denounced Lin Biao, but were really aimed at Zhou, who, it was widely held, epitomized the virtues advocated by the ancient sage. Even though Zhou had been unwaveringly loyal, Mao still could not leave him alone. Not even now, when Zhou was fatally ill with advanced cancer of the bladder.

Meanwhile, Mme Mao and her cohorts were renewing their efforts to prevent the country from working. In industry, their slogan was: "To stop production is revolution itself." In agriculture, in which they now began to meddle seriously: "We would rather have socialist weeds than capitalist crops." Acquiring foreign technology became "sniffing after foreigners' farts and calling them sweet." In education: "We want illiterate working people, not educated spiritual aristocrats." They called for schoolchildren to rebel against their teachers again; in January 1974, classroom windows, tables, and chairs in schools in Peking were smashed, as in 1966. Mme Mao claimed this was like "the revolutionary action of English workers destroying machines in the eighteenth century." Mme Mao launched a fresh attack on foreign culture. In early 1974 there was a big media campaign denouncing the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni for a film he had made about China, although no one in China had seen the film, and few had even heard of it or of Antonioni. This xenophobia was extended to Beethoven after a visit by the Philadelphia Orchestra.

A properly functioning system of indoctrination has a variety of tasks, some rather delicate. One of its targets is the stupid and ignorant masses. They must be kept that way, diverted with emotionally potent oversimplifications, marginalized, and isolated. Ideally, each person should be alone in front of the TV screen watching sports, soap operas, or comedies, deprived of organizational structures that permit individuals lacking resources to discover what they think and believe in interaction with others, to formulate their own concerns and programs, and to act to realize them. They can then be permitted, even encouraged, to ratify the decisions made by their betters in periodic elections. The "rascal multitude" are the proper targets of the mass media and a public education system geared to obedience and training in needed skills, including the skill of repeating patriotic slogans on timely occasions.

Fascists despised the small truths of daily existence, loved slogans that resonated like a new religion, and preferred creative myths to history or journalism. They used new media, which at the time was radio, to create a drumbeat of propaganda that aroused feelings before people had time to ascertain facts. And now, as then, many people confused faith in a hugely flawed leader with the truth about the world we all share. Post-truth is pre-fascism. 11 Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles.

But the old traditions of sectarian misdirection still in spite of a certain advance in technical efficiency, cripple and distort the general mind. "All that has been changed," cry indignant teachers under criticism. But the evidence that this teaching of theirs still fails to produce a public that is alert, critical, and capable of vigorous readjustment in the face of overwhelming danger, is to be seen in the newspapers that satisfy the Tewler public, the arguments and slogans that appeal to it, the advertisements that succeed with it, the stuff it swallows. It is a press written by Homo Tewler for Homo Tewler all up and down the scale. The Times Tewler, the Daily Mail Tewler, the Herald, the Tribune, the Daily Worker; there is no difference except a difference in scale and social atmosphere. Through them all ran the characteristic Tewler streak of willful ignorance, deliberate disingenuousness, and self-protective illusion.

Imagine, for instance, that all of Washington’s 100,000 lobbyists were to go on strike tomorrow.3 Or that every tax accountant in Manhattan decided to stay home. It seems unlikely the mayor would announce a state of emergency. In fact, it’s unlikely that either of these scenarios would do much damage. A strike by, say, social media consultants, telemarketers, or high-frequency traders might never even make the news at all. When it comes to garbage collectors, though, it’s different. Any way you look at it, they do a job we can’t do without. And the harsh truth is that an increasing number of people do jobs that we can do just fine without. Were they to suddenly stop working the world wouldn’t get any poorer, uglier, or in any way worse. Take the slick Wall Street traders who line their pockets at the expense of another retirement fund. Take the shrewd lawyers who can draw a corporate lawsuit out until the end of days. Or take the brilliant ad writer who pens the slogan of the year and puts the competition right out of business. Instead of creating wealth, these jobs mostly just shift it around.

In any society, the ruling class tries to bring about the unchallenged predominance of its own ideology. In capitalist society, where the society is split into classes and people’s interests’ conflict, one ideology cannot hold undivided sway and it is inevitable that different ideas exist. The imperialists and their mouthpieces claim the existence of these ideas is a source of pride for the “free world”. However, progressive ideas can never develop freely in capitalist society, where the means of propaganda and education such as the mass media are in the hands of monopoly capitalists and reactionary rulers. The reactionary bourgeois ruling class tolerates progressive ideas to some extent, to make capitalist society seem democratic; but when they are considered the slightest threat to its ruling system, it mercilessly suppresses them. Outwardly, different thoughts appear to be tolerated in capitalist society, but all kinds of thoughts throughout it are, without exception, none other than various forms and expressions of bourgeois ideology. The “freedom” of ideology talked about by imperialists is a deceptive slogan to dress up–under the signpost of “freedom”–their oppression of progressive ideas in capitalist society and their resorting to every method to propagate reactionary bourgeois ideas. It is a deceptive slogan to justify their ideological and cultural infiltration into other countries.

GAI does this because Bannon decided it’s the secret to how conservatives can hack the mainstream media. Hall has distilled this, too, into a slogan: “Anchor left, pivot right.” It means that “weaponizing” a story onto the front page of The New York Times (“the left”) is infinitely more valuable than publishing it on Breitbart (“the right”) because the Times reaches millions of readers inclined to vote Democratic. This approach prompted a wholesale change in how Bannon and his confederates think about elite media. “We don’t look at the mainstream media as enemies, because

Truncated arguments could be supported by nationalist newspapers slinging images, slogans, and headlines that wrapped themselves in the glory of the flag.

Dictators seizing power across Europe seemed to offer hope. Hitler, until quite recently the butt of complacent laughter by commentators who said he would come to nothing, was now chancellor of Germany and worshipped by millions; Virginia’s host country, Italy, was effectively a one-party fascist state under Mussolini, upheld by gangs of Blackshirt thugs known as squadristi; Stalin ruled by murderous diktat in Russia. Such extremism (on the left and right) seemed to be on the march everywhere, on the back of propaganda, sloganeering, and ruthless media manipulation. In what became known as the decade of lies, truth and trust were falling victim to fear, racism, and hatred. Virginia found herself in a ringside seat as the increasingly fragile ideal of democracy failed to find champions with alternative answers.

Do you realize what acronym that slogan spells out? ‘Blump-Pence: MAD DOGS.’ It won’t be long before the media picks up on that. You said these are shipping this afternoon?

In September 2020, a Daily Kos/Civiqs poll reported that over half of the Republicans surveyed believed either partially or mostly in QAnon’s theories . . . at least the theories they were aware of. Because tumble further down the QAnon rabbit hole, and you’ll find Satanic Panic–esque, flagrantly fascist beliefs that not every subscriber even knows about (at least not at first): theories about Jeffrey Epstein co-conspiring with Tom Hanks to molest hordes of minors, Hillary Clinton drinking the blood of children in order to prolong her life, the Rothschilds running a centuries-old ring of Satan worshippers, and beyond. But QAnon quickly grew to encapsulate much more than stereotypical far-right extremists. Take a soft turn to the left, and you’ll find a more outwardly palatable denomination of conspiritualists whose paranoias might be slightly less focused on Hillary Clinton worshipping Satan and more on Big Pharma forcing evil Western medicine on them and their kids. These believers wield a slightly different glossary of loaded terms, some co-opted from feminist politics—like “forced penetration” (which conflates vaccination with sexual assault) and “my body, my choice” (an antivaxx/anti-mask slogan purloined from the pro-choice movement). Because social media algorithms track people’s keywords in order to feed them only what they’re already interested in, a sprawling spiderweb of customized QAnon offshoots was able to form.

Instead of one-way interruption, Web marketing is about delivering useful content at just the precise moment that a buyer needs it. Search, a marketing method that didn't exist a decade ago, provides the most efficient and inexpensive way for businesses to find leads.

L’estinzione dello statista Gary Hart* | 805 parole Per quelli di noi che hanno avuto il privilegio di servire nel Congresso degli Stati Uniti alcuni anni fa, ci sono notevoli differenze tra i migliori dei nostri colleghi di allora e molti degli attuali membri delle due Camere. Le differenze hanno a che fare con la levatura e le doti di statista. Come si spiega questa differenza? Ha in gran parte a che fare con la rivoluzione nei media. Le tre principali tribune trent’anni fa o giù di lì erano i programmi delle interviste della domenica mattina mandate in onda sui network e, in misura minore, i programmi quotidiani del mattino. Cronisti politici di lungo corso e intervistatori erano ben versati nelle questioni del giorno e avevano accumulato anni di esperienza sulle vicende nazionali e internazionali. Ci si aspettava che i personaggi politici, in particolare tra i candidati ad incarichi nazionali, sapessero di che cosa stessero parlando, e se così non era, le loro pecche erano evidenti. Le interviste e le discussioni erano serie, ma raramente conflittuali e certamente non di parte. Più di recente, le cose sono cambiate. Adesso abbiamo trasmissioni non-stop via cavo, network partigiani, intervistatori che si distinguono solo per il sensazionalismo e le polemiche, conduttori pieni di sé abili nell’arte del comizio, batterie di sconosciuti «strateghi» politici con poca o nessuna esperienza al di là di una precedente campagna (e un parrucchiere) domande conflittuali che sottintendono la malafede dell’intervistato, e un generale disprezzo per i personaggi politici basata sulla superiorità dell’intervistatore. In breve, i media - i mezzi con cui gli eletti comunicano con i cittadini - sono ora un quarto ramo del governo e si ritengono uguali se non superiori rispetto ai rappresentanti eletti e si auto-attribuiscono il ruolo di tribuni della plebe. E in cima a questo, la compressione dei media - la necessità di comunicare con slogan di otto secondi e con i 140 caratteri di un tweet. Il risultato è che si privilegiano politici loquaci, brillanti, affascinanti e semplici rispetto a quelli del passato più inclini a essere riflessivi, determinati, sostanziali e diplomatici. Questo processo sacrifica gli statisti, uomini e donne istruiti, e con esperienza nell’arte del governo. L’ulteriore risultato è la divisione della nazione in fazioni avverse servite da media di parte che riciclano pregiudizi diffusi e dogmi e con poco riguardo per un’analisi ponderata dei complessi temi nazionali e internazionali che richiedono senso della storia, impegno per l’interesse nazionale a lungo termine e il prevalere del senso dello Stato sullo spirito di parte. Si sbaglierebbe, tuttavia, a credere che la massiva trasformazione dei media sia la sola responsabile per la diminuita statura dei leader. E’ colpa anche della conversione dei legislatori in cacciatori di fondi a pieno tempo e la costante opposizione di eserciti di lobbisti. Anche i senatori, che restano in carica per sei anni, sprecano una parte di ogni giorno di quei sei anni a questuare contributi. È umiliante per loro e per la nazione che servono. A rischio di farne una questione personale, mettete a confronto (se avete una certa età) l’attuale generazione di politici che aspirano a un incarico di rilievo nazionale con, per esempio, Abe Ribicoff, Stuart Symington, Mike Mansfield, Gaylord Nelson, Charles Mathias, Jacob Javits Clifford Case, Ed Muskie, William Fulbright, Hubert Humphrey, e molti, molti altri. Andati. Tutti andati. Nell’America di oggi ci sono di certo figure di uguale statura. Ma pochi di loro si sottoporrebbero al frullatore mediatico, all’umiliante ricerca di fondi e alla lotta nel fango dell’arena politica che viene definito percorso legislativo. E’ troppo aspettarsi a breve termine il ritorno a un processo politico più serio. C’è troppo denaro dei media e potere in gioco, nel sistema attuale. E non ci sarà mai carenza di perso

Horwitt describes an occasion in the spring of 1972 when Alinsky organized a student protest at Tulane University’s annual lecture week. A group of anti–Vietnam War protesters wanted to disrupt a scheduled speech by George H. W. Bush, then U.S. representative to the United Nations, and an advocate for President Nixon’s Vietnam policies. While the students planned to picket the speech and shout antiwar slogans, Alinsky told them that their approach was wrong because it might get them punished or expelled. Besides, it lacked creativity and imagination. Alinsky advised the students to go hear the speech dressed up as members of the Ku Klux Klan—complete with robes and hoods—and whenever Bush said anything in defense of the Vietnam War, they should cheer and holler and wave signs and banners saying: “The KKK Supports Bush.” This is what the students did, and it proved very successful, getting lots of media attention with no adverse repercussions for the protesters.17 On

Não é que as pessoas já não acreditem nela [publicidade] ou a tenham aceitado como rotina. É que, se ela fascinava por este poder de simplificação de todas as linguagens, este poder é-lhe hoje subtraído por um outro tipo de linguagem ainda mais simplificado e, logo, mais operacional: as linguagens informáticas. O modelo de sequência, de banda sonora e de banda-imagem que a publicidade nos oferece, a par com os outros grandes media, o modelo de perequação combinatória de todos os discursos que ela propõe, este contínuum ainda retórico de sons, de signos, de sinais, de slogans que ela domina como ambiente total, está largamente ultrapassado, justamente na sua função de estímulo, pela banda magnética, pelo continuum electrónico que está a perfilar-se no horizonte deste fim de século. O microprocesso, a digitalidade, as linguagens cibernéticas vão muito mais longe no mesmo sentido da simplificação absoluta dos processos do que a publicidade fazia ao seu humilde nível, ainda imaginário e espectacular. E é porque estes sistemas vão mais longe, que polarizam hoje o fascínio outrora concedido à publicidade. E a informação, no sentido informático do termo, que porá fim, que já põe fim, ao reino da publicidade. É isto que assusta e é isto que apaixona. A «paixão» publicitária deslocou-se para os computadores e para a miniaturização informática da vida quotidiana. A ilustração antecipadora desta transformação era o papoula de K. Ph. Dick, este implante publicitário transistorizado, espécie de ventosa emissora, de parasita electrónico que se fixa ao corpo e de que este tem muita dificuldade em libertar-se. Mas o papoula é ainda uma forma intermediária: é já uma espécie de prótese incorporada, mas recita ainda mensagens publicitárias. Um híbrido, pois, mas prefiguração das redes psicotrópicas e informáticas de pilotagem automática dos indivíduos, ao lado do qual o «condicionamento» publicitário parece uma deliciosa peripécia.

Prompt: I want you to act as an advertising agency. You will create a full and detailed marketing campaign to promote a product or service of your choice. You will choose a target audience, develop key messages and slogans, select the media channels for promotion, and decide on any additional activities needed to reach your goals. Give examples of the cost of advertising in each social media channel, as well as the best estimate of CPM and CPC charges. My first request is "I need help creating an advertising campaign for a new type of energy drink targeting young adults aged 18-30.

With the president’s suggestion in mind, I cannot conclude this without reminding readers that the enablers of evil are not confined to one side of the Atlantic. In the period just before World War II there arose a multidimensional pro-fascist network within the United States, spurred on by German agents, fueled by demagogic media personalities, enamored of the slogan “America First,” and built on a foundation of antisemitism, racism, isolationism, and fear. This was no trivial movement.

Hitler, until quite recently the butt of complacent laughter by commentators who said he would come to nothing, was now chancellor of Germany and worshipped by millions; Virginia’s host country, Italy, was effectively a one-party fascist state under Mussolini, upheld by gangs of Blackshirt thugs known as squadristi; Stalin ruled by murderous diktat in Russia. Such extremism (on the left and right) seemed to be on the march everywhere, on the back of propaganda, sloganeering, and ruthless media manipulation.

Just before the world ended, people hated the word moist. Poverty was still a problem. Terrorism was a big issue at the time. Genocide was always happening somewhere. But you had to be careful when using the word moist. It was acceptable if you were describing cake, but if you used it in any other sense you were sure to get a talking to. Most people didn’t know a terrorist personally. If we had, then maybe more of us would have told them off with stern words and clever slogans. You couldn’t yell at poor people at all. It wasn’t acceptable. You couldn’t even wonder out loud why they were poor without being an insensitive ass. You couldn’t even suggest a new solution to the problem without being labeled horrible things. Perhaps it was this lack of outlet that caused so much frustration regarding the word moist. We couldn’t do anything about international terror or rampant poverty, but we could always chastise a friend for using a word that made them uncomfortable. Maybe this is why so much effort was put into hating the word. They scorned their friends whenever it was used and followed the scorning with a two-minute rant about how much they hated the word. They spent time and creative resources developing flowcharts for when the word was appropriate and clever cartoons to express just how much it annoyed them when it was used outside of cake references. They shared all of this on social media and built a wall of criticism that kept people in check. We could shut out what we didn’t want to hear. We felt free to berate anyone who thought different than us. By doing this, we fought the good fight. We were activists despite our inactivity. Moist was a line drawn in the sand and we stood behind our walls daring anyone to cross it. It may seem silly now. It may seem that our outrage was misdirected, but it made us feel safe. We stood behind our walls fighting our own battles against the things that offended us most. Times were good as long as the real problems were well outside our walls.

the angriest and most passionate voices, start to be rewarded by public opinion. This phenomenon is clearly observed in mainstream and social media. Consider the following comparison, for instance. After sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg made her landmark UN speech in 2019, media attention soared. While her efforts and sense of initiative were undeniably impressive, especially for a teenager, the fact remains that her credentials on the subject were nonexistent, and her scowling message offered no practical solutions whatsoever. Compare her accomplishments to another young environmentalist named Boyan Slat, who doesn’t make passionate speeches or hurl angry slogans, but did design a revolutionary ocean cleanup system that captures debris ranging from one-ton ghost nets to tiny microplastics. At the time of this writing, a quick Google search shows 69 million search results for Greta, and just over 500,000 for Boyan. Greta was named ‘Person of the Year’ by Time magazine. Boyan was not.

Historical memory is hijacked by those who carry out war. They seek, when the memory challenges the myth, to obliterate or hide the evidence that exposes the myth as a life. The destruction is pervasive, aided by an establishment, including the media, which apes the slogans and euphemisms parroted by the powerful. Because nearly everyone in wartime is complicit, it is difficult for societies to confront their own culpability and the life that led to it.

Worst among the new lexicon of anti-male slogans is that of ‘toxic masculinity’. Like each of these other memes, ‘toxic masculinity’ started out on the furthest fringes of academia and social media. But by 2019 it had made it into the heart of serious organizations and public bodies. In January the American Psychological Association released its first ever guidelines for how its members should specifically deal with men and boys. The APA claimed that 40 years of research showed that ‘traditional masculinity – marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression, is undermining men’s well-being’.

Milos Zeman is the President of the Czech Republic. He is pro-Russian, is friends with Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage, endorsed Donald Trump for President, and has ties to Hungary’s Jobbik movement. Zeman has justified the civil war in Ukraine and has denied that Russia has a military presence there. He stated, “I take seriously the statement of foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, that there are no Russian troops [in Ukraine].” Zeman had been consistently verbal in his support for the lifting of Western sanctions on Russia and was against EU sanctions on Russia. He was re-elected President in January 2018 with 51.4% of the vote. He won the majority of the rural vote by exhorting a populist anti-immigrant slogan: “Stop Migrants and [opponent] Drahos. This is our land! Vote Zeman!” Zeman’s chief economic advisor is Martin Nejedlÿ, a former executive of the Russian oil company, Lukoil Aviation Czech. Lukoil was once the second largest oil company in Russia following Gazprom. Martin Nejedlÿ of Prague was also owner of Fincentrum, a financial advisory firm with “more than 2,500 financial advisors” on its website with offices in Prague and Bratislava. The firm has a history of alliances with the Kremlin. The Prime Minister of the Republic’s coalition government is 63-year-old Andrej Babiš. He is a media and agribusiness mogul and the second-richest man in the Czech Republic. ANO is the Action of Dissatisfied Citizens Party that was founded by Babiš that holds a center-right populist platform like many European and American conservative right-

We knew there was a version of feminism that was being dumbed down and marketed, sloganized, and diminished. We wanted to draw deeper, more divisive lines. We wanted to separate ourselves from anything benign or pretty. One of my favorite songs that Corin has ever written, “Was It a Lie?”, sounds so prescient now in the age of social media and the voracious news and gossip cycles. The song is about a woman whose videotaped death is replayed for the amusement of others.

As analysis, the exhortations of the pessimists hover somewhere between pointless and trivially true. Of course dictatorships wish to spy on dissidents, just as dissidents seek to avoid detection—a game made vastly more difficult for those in power by the proliferation of digital hiding-places. Of course dictatorships wish to manipulate media of all kinds to influence opinion. In the industrial age, however, they did so boldly and officially, from authority, while under the new dispensation despots must try to impersonate the public to have any hope of influencing it. Instead of injecting slogans into the brains of the masses by means of banner headlines on People’s Daily or a televised speech of the lider maximo, they are now forced to ride the tiger of real opinion, and face the consequences should it turn against them. Pessimism tends to be the province of the disillusioned idealist and the false sophisticate. That seems to be very much the case when it comes to the loudest voices of cyber-pessimism. I have noted their cautions. Let’s move on.

I wondered if any of that was still possible, now that I lived locked behind gates and guardsmen, my image filtered through Fox News and other media outlets whose entire business model depended on making their audience angry and fearful. I wanted to believe that the ability to connect was still there. My wife wasn’t so sure. One night toward the end of our road trip, after we’d tucked the girls in, Michelle caught a glimpse of a Tea Party rally on TV—with its enraged flag-waving and inflammatory slogans. She seized the remote and turned off the set, her expression hovering somewhere between rage and resignation. “It’s a trip, isn’t it?” she said. “What is?” “That they’re scared of you. Scared of us.” She shook her head and headed for bed.

Bearing all this in mind, I prepared my own triple phrased slogan. Three words and three phrases: Distrust the government Avoid mass media Fight the lies

Historical memory is hijacked by those who carry out war. They seek, when the memory challenges the myth, to obliterate or hide the evidence that exposes the myth as lie. The destruction is pervasive, aided by an establishment, including the media, which apes the slogans and euphemisms parroted by the powerful. Because nearly everyone in wartime is complicit, it is difficult for societies to confront their own culpability and the lie that led to it.

This was a time of mass unemployment and grinding poverty when only the dictators seizing power across Europe seemed to offer hope. Hitler, until quite recently the butt of complacent laughter by commentators who said he would come to nothing, was now chancellor of Germany and worshipped by millions; Virginia’s host country, Italy, was effectively a one-party fascist state under Mussolini, upheld by gangs of Blackshirt thugs known as squadristi; Stalin ruled by murderous diktat in Russia. Such extremism (on the left and right) seemed to be on the march everywhere, on the back of propaganda, sloganeering, and ruthless media manipulation.