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Indoctrination Techniques Online

Indoctrination Techniques Online

To properly control information, one must be able to forcefully (1) stop certain language, (2) emphasize other language, and (3) alter the meaning of current language across/on a population. We will focus on the second component. Specifically, how does the forceful emphasis of propaganda - indoctrination - occur in the modern tech era?

In this essay, the focus is ad feed and search result manipulation, otherwise known as the Redirect Method. The Redirect Method

  1. tracks users,
  2. profiles them based on their searches, link clicks, and data history,
  3. categorizes them into special "cohorts", and finally
  4. tailors the ad feeds of these users.

[By "searches", I am mean a broader application than browser and general search platforms like Google and Bing. Facebook and Twitter have search functions, and indeed, the Redirect Method is now built into these platforms.]

The think tanks that refer to themselves as the counter-violent extremists (CVEs) are responsible for developing this technique. The CVE community is comprised of software developers and extremist "researchers". The London-based Moonshot and Google's special division, Jigsaw, are the principal authorities in the CVE community, though there are many others. With their origins in the War on Terror, the CVE community has largely shifted their attention from The State's External Threat of Islamic terrorism overseas to The State's Internal Threat of far-right extremism at home. We will prove later that the CVE community is not the result of free market action, but instead an extension of the illegitimate rule of The State.

The first step (tracking) in the process functions because the tech platforms store sensitive data on their users indefinitely and because the CVE software tracks users real-time. In fact, in addition to disseminating propaganda (indoctrination), the redirect method can use this tracking feature to censor as was the case during the 2020 election. The questionable "ad results" that show up in the last step of the Redirect Method involves a third set of organizations that are neither CVEs nor tech platforms. This third group of organizations are chosen by the CVEs to indoctrinate users flagged by the program.

It should be noted that when the Redirect Method uses ad results as opposed to search results, this is not an exchange between advertiser and platform. The Redirect Method merely uses the infrastructure and software that resulted in this market so that the redirected message will appear like an advertisement. The truth of the matter is that the redirected message was part of the deal between the platform and the Security State. The platform's incentive is legal privileges from The State and to not be slandered by the Security State's propaganda sector. Their competitors are characterized as extremist-infested by the security state apparatus and the state's devoted news organizations. The CVEs and other parties only have an incentive to redirect/censor because the Department of Homeland Security promised $1 billion in funds to this community, effectively creating a market for information control. We will talk more on state intervention in upcoming essays.

What follows in the next section appears to be far-left propaganda being disseminated online, but recall that these measures were borne from government intervention. As such, far-left propaganda is state propaganda.

The Major Organizations

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD):

ISD, a favorite reference of the leftist think-tank CVE community, released their data collection 1 of social media posts that were critical of the Black Lives Matter movement and voting systems in America. Collection of data took place from 28 August to 25 September during 2020.

The validity of the claims of the posts were not considered in the article. As an example, any user on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, and 4chan that characterized the BLM movement as 'rioters', was taken as data points for extremism, despite the BLM movement causing $2 billion in damage in just a 2-week period. 2|3 Furthermore, any posts or comments that were critical of voting security in America or recent changes to voting systems was included in the data.

ISD's propaganda serves as justifications for The Redirect Method online.


ConnectFutures:

ConnectFutures worked with tech platforms and the CVE community to redirect traffic to a propaganda page on Facebook. 4 Aside from acting as an advisor to the CVE effort, ConnectFutures offers far-left courses online where:

  • Black Lives Matter propaganda, decolonization, white privilege, and collective learning are taught to young people 5
  • Immigrant communities are targeted and for similar training 6
  • Teachers and community leaders are taught about "conspiracy theories" and fake news 7
  • And more 8, including neo-Marxist courses for 7+ year old children 9.
  • ConnectFutures believes any nuance in the immigrant debate is considered be "far-right extremism" which includes pragmatic economic concerns, but organizations that bring up those points are categorized as extreme by ConnectFutures 10

ConnectFutures serves as the proselytizer in some applications of The Redirect Method.


Life After Hate:

The group Life After Hate indoctrinates Facebook users who have been redirected. 4|13 The group claims that "[t]oday, far-right extremism and white supremacy are the greatest domestic terror threats facing the United States" 11 despite far-right extremism being less significant than lightning strikes and far-left extremism. 12|14

The Life After Hate page campaigned for left-leaning institutional media, emphasized to their audience that discussion/debate are "escalation", and teaches users how to censor content on various platforms. 15|16 What is happening here ought to be put in perspective.

The state funded a group that is strategically placed in the ads and search results of users to indoctrinate them and turn them into censors.


The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism:

The "rise" in Asian hate crime myth originated from this state-funded group from the California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB). By taking "data" from 16 key police departments (from liberal cities) where 0, 1, or in some cases, up to 13 Asian hate crimes are recorded each year, the Center made flawed statistical claims about crime. 17 The Center did not use the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which is comprised of over 15,000 agencies and shows no increase in Asian hate crimes. When dealing with single-digits and varying definitions, anything can be shown to have arbitrary 30% or 200% increases. Percentage differences are statistical tools and require error analysis for the method to be considered sound. With data points as few as the Center used, the error analysis (or variation) is about the same or greater size as the measurements themselves.

What follows should not be particularly surprising, but the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism (again, out of CSUSB) is also a source of critical race theory training. 18|19

The Center's propaganda serves as justifications for The Redirect Method online.


Moonshot

Moonshot, the pioneer of the Redirect Method, is the great proselytizer of our time. 20|21 Below are screenshots of the two CEOs and founders of Moonshot explicitly supporting the radical and manipulative ConnectFutures.


Jigsaw

Whereas high-tech propaganda should not be brought up without mentioning Moonshot, one should not mention censorship nor white supremacy myths without mentioning Jigsaw. 22|23 In spectacular fashion of recklessness, Jigsaw unwittingly provided more compelling evidence that white supremacy is an insignificant threat than any researcher in the world. This CVE that has special data privileges to Google and YouTube – literally billions of users – could only find 35 former white supremacists globally and relied on appeals to emotion rather than logic to support their claims that white supremacy is a grave threat.

Jigsaw also works with Moonshot on expanding and refining the Redirect Method.

https://jigsaw.google.com/issues/

It is critical that we consider the two principal assumptions of Jigsaw's narrative – that (1) white supremacy is a significant threat and that (2) it is a networking issue.

When combined, these assumptions lead to the inevitable conclusion that Jigsaw and the CVE community are needed to combat this threat across networks. Coincidentally, this special case also extends to Google's state-subsidized control over networks that are currently not under the giant's thumb.

The first assumption is easily debunked, but what about the second?

It is well understood even within the ill-defined and highly unscientific extremism research that far-right extremist attacks is largely due to solitary actors, or "lone wolves", rather than being from affiliated, or group attacks. Ironically, far-left extremist attacks are significantly more affiliated or group-oriented than far-right extremists. Where a swift search for their definitions of extremism ought to convince anyone that their methods and definitions are arbitrary, even within their own definitions, their arguments are defeated.

Inevitably, a day will come when The State seeks to expand it's chastisement sector rather than its beneficence sector; in which case it will have to appeal to the doctrine of top-dog warfare sociology rather than bottom-dog warfare sociology. For now, however, it seeks to expand the latter, so it's propaganda is in terms of left-leaning politics, currently.


Honorable Mention: Mental Health America

Mental Health America often finds its way onto the "ad" boxes of users, particularly on Instagram. This has all the earmarks of the Redirect Method, but I do not know for certain if Mental Health America is currently a part of the Redirect Method. Regardless, this highlights an additional technique to indoctrinate audiences by using mental health-related hashtags and adopting a persona of expertise. If a user types in "critical race theory" into Mental Health America's search function, the results include CRT propaganda and more CRT propaganda.

Given the amount of false mental health and psychology pages as well as the connection between these pages and modern Leftism, I conducted a review 24 of the psychology of trauma and resilience where 57 independent research studies were analyzed for sound data collection that isolated variables, sound empirical and statistical analysis of that data, and transparent scientific methodology. The true science of the psychology of trauma and resilience is fascinating and nearly antithetical to mainstream narratives of trauma.

Being one of the many false mental health pages, Mental Health America specializes in pseudo-psychology posts that sensationalize trauma and trauma treatments, despite the overwhelming empirical evidence that most people that succumb to PTSD don't benefit from treatment, and a significant portion of people actually regress from treatment. 24 In fact, more people are harmed by trauma treatments than those that benefit from treatments if clinics do not properly screen out the resilient. The science of resilience does not appear in Mental Health America's content.


[1] Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Cooper Gatewood. Ciarán O'Connor. "Disinformation Briefing: Narratives around Black Lives Matter and voter fraud."

[2] Offield. "Progressive Movements: How Unscientific and Harmful Are They?". The ARKA Journal.

[3] Breitbart. "BLM Riots are the most costly manmade damage to American property in history".

[4] Offield. "Leftist Indoctrination on Facebook". The ARKA Journal.

[5] ConnectFutures. "Race Privilege and Justice".

[6] ConnectFutures. "Building Resilience with New Migrant Communities".

[7] ConnectFutures. https://www.connectfutures.org/news-press/

[8] ConnectFutures. "Rise of Far Right, Mixed Ideology & Hateful Extremism".

[9] ConnectFutures. "Prevention Against Violence Youth".

[10] ConnectFutures. "Youth Engagement Against Violence Extremism".

[11] Life After Hate. "Life After Hate Fact Sheet".

[12] Offield. "The False Agenda". The ARKA Journal.

[13] Erin Saltman, Farshad Kooti & Karly Vockery(2021)New Models for Deploying Counterspeech: Measuring Behavioral Change and Sentiment Analysis,Studies in Conflict & Terrorism

[14] Institute for Economics and Peace. "Global Terrorism Index 2019 Measuring the Impact of Terrorism."

[15] Life After Hate. "How to Fight Fake News during Covid-19".

[16] Life After Hate. "Life After Hate's statement on the capitol building attack".

[17] Center for Study of the Study of Hate and Extremism. "Report to the Nation: Anti-Asian Prejudice and Hate Crime." California State Univeristy, San Bernardino (CSUSB).

[18] Center for Study of Hate and Extremism. "Preparing Anti-Racist Educators During a Time of Pandemics".

[19] Center for Study of Hate and Extremism. "Intercultural Effectiveness..." California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB).

[20] Offield. "The World's Leading Brainwasher: Moonshot". The ARKA Journal.

[21] Moonshot.

[22] Offield. "A Hidden War On Free Speech: Google's Jigsaw". The ARKA Journal.

[23] Jigsaw. "Issues".

[24] Offield. "A Tale of Suppressed Science: The Psychology of Trauma and Resilience". The ARKA Journal.