HOW TO DEFEAT THE PRO-WAR PROPAGANDA

It is important for our egalitarian revolutionary movement to expose the warmongering for what it truly is: something the ruling elites do to control ordinary people and enrich themselves at our expense, and not at all something to protect or benefit ordinary Americans or ordinary people anywhere else.

Failure to defeat the pro-WWI propaganda led to the utter destruction of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, 'Wobbly') superb revolutionary movement in the U.S. as I write about at http://newdemocracyworld.org/revolution/iww.html .

But how can we successfully counter the ruling class propaganda about war? After all, the ruling class controls a mass media, and we don't.

Here's how.

First, let's not try doing it the ineffective way. We cannot defeat the mass media pro-war propaganda by simply saying that it lies about the facts. Sure, we should point that out. But the true facts about far away places, such as Iraq and Iran, are things about which most people here have no direct experience and hence no way to judge whether we or the mass media are telling the truth. Arguing about what did or did not happen far away is thus to engage in a battle where the ruling class is strong and we are weak.

Instead, we should explain WHY the ruling class is warmongering. And the way to do this convincingly is by talking to people about things that they DO INDEED have direct knowledge of, such as the lack of affordable housing and the consequent horrible gentrification driving working class people out of their own neighborhoods. Here's what I mean.

When we talk about, say, the lack of affordable housing people readily agree with our assertion that we live in a fake democracy that is really a dictatorship of the rich. They agree because their personal experience in life tells them this is so.

When we say that the upper class and the politicians beholden to them don't really give a damn about the welfare of ordinary people and don't do what they do to make life better for us even though they always lie about how much they care for us, people know that's the truth: they know that gentrification is getting worse and worse despite the pretty statements of politicians that they're working to solve that problem.

So, when we also say that this same dictatorship of the rich is warmongering for exactly the same reasons that they are building luxury housing instead of affordable housing--that it has absolutely nothing to do with protecting or benefiting ordinary people and everything to do with enriching themselves at our expense and controlling us (by making us 'rally around the flag' in obedience to our upper class-controlled government) to make sure we don't upset their "apple cart" or "gravy train," then people know we're telling the truth. The mass media cannot stop people from knowing we're telling the truth when we express it THIS way.

Let's get to work!

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