The Occupy Movement and the Counter Reaction

It looks like a strident counter-revolution is in play against Occupy Wall Street using police state tactics and propaganda.  In this clip police at UC-Davis  pepper spray sitting protesters like they are so many insects. In Portland, a policeman decides to pepper spray a protester point blank in the face.  Next an absurd lobbying piece from the American Bankster Association is out (more detail here), labeling the OWS movement a nexus between radical right wingers and left wingers. Notice the labeling here as if somehow it is radical to protest against kleptocrats who are then portrayed as what exactly, moderates, good folks?

Protest movements that are targeted by the police state and kleptocrats will face challenges and even set backs. Support for OWS is solid, but now there is a pick up in opposition, which the police state fascists can use to ramp up the pressure. Ultimately this suggests that the protests and counter measures will lead to even more divisiveness. One really gets the impression that another Kent State is coming.  I just don’t like the way some police are behaving. The different expressions on officers faces was especially interesting — some angry, some smirking, some confused looking, some scared, some embarrassed.  It is not at all clear if proper controls are being placed on the angry goons among the police.  Also the movement has elements that are more than willing to engage in street fighting.

Still again and again you see the Occupy movement employing compelling tactics, including this one where UC Davis Chancellor Katehi is subjected to very effective Gandhi-like “silent treatment” and a walk of shame. This is what happens when you turn loose the goon squad and it ends up on YouTube.   Retired Police Captain Ray Lewis states that corporate America is using police as hired thugs.

To me, it looks like the Establishment has a poor understanding of social propaganda.  Taking Joseph Goebbels principles of propaganda presented here as a matrix, we can analyze who the winner might be.   The problem in a society with modern instant communications is that pepper spraying and firing tear gas canisters at agitated, but generally passive protesters, backfires.  Now the spin is to argue about taking back space for the public at large, and is  some what effect at drawing opposition to Occupy.  However, the great  young comedian and social critic Lee Camp addresses that one.

The high ground on Goebbels Principle 6 of using “attention-getting media”  has been effectively used by the Occupy movement.   Plus there is no single authority (principle 2, Occupy leadership is organic and hard to pin down)  in the counter reaction, as the US has been so dumbed down by negative selection, incompetents and corrupt behavior that true professionals like Goebbels are MIA.  The counter reaction goon squad is lacking leaders with prestige (Goebbels principle 12),  which is why I think they are in big trouble.   Comics like Jon Stewart can just mock them unmercifully. In otherwords what we see here is an incompetent quasi police state with lots of expensive bells and whistles,  but with failed leadership and a failed media. Essentially they are good at selling detergent and I Pads but not at countering revolutionary movements.

The timing (Principle 13) of Occupy has been pretty good. The counter reaction was largely asleep.    The Occupy message is strong on (14, effective phrases and slogans), the kleptocrats look sleazy, arrogant and stupid (see Mike Myers clip, especially starting at 0:45).   The counter reaction failed on principle 8 and ignored or tried to humor the Occupy movement for too long.  That’s the approach of Presidente Hopium. The rection seem to fall back largely on (16)  ”Propaganda to the home front  must create an optimum level of anxiety”.  I don’t think this one- trick pony approach is going to be enough to counter Occupy. Occupy uses principle 18 well, and has identified specific targets for hate. In total,  in terms of effective propaganda, Occupy is running rings around the counter-reaction, that is really only using fear and intimidation.

Charles Hughes Smith is out with a piece I am in complete agreement with.  I would add that an incredible amount of criminality is now overlaid on this system. The key take away:

Suppressing dissent, facts, transparency and feedback inevitably destabilizes the system. It is ironic, isn’t it, that the suppression of dissent, facts and transparency creates the surface illusion of stability, but it is only a facade.  Beneath the surface, the lack of information and low-level fluctuation/volatility builds up system instability which is suddenly released as non-linear, chaotic volatility and collapse.

What Europe, the U.S., China and Japan have now are leaderships that substitute lies for fact, obfuscation for transparency, artifice for feedback and propaganda for communication. the essential negative feedback of dissent has been choked off, leaving only self-reinforcing positive feedback loops in the system, feedback that inevitably leads to runaway collapse.

In  Europe, the political and financial Elite is preserving the Status Quo with artifice and lies. This can only lead to non-linear systemic collapse. Beneath the surface, they are manipulating, intervening, propping and pumping, but preserving a terminally unstable system with more lies and intervention is impossible.