Mass Psychology in Geopolitics 4 of 9

Feb 27, 2025

Cross-post from Fadi Lama

Fadi Lama, author of Why The West Can't Win: from Bretton Woods to a Multipolar World. Fadi has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, and is founder and general manager of a machinery and automation systems production company. He is one of the Three Sages. -

Richard C. Cook

Mass Manipulation Platforms

Newspapers
Radio and TV
Movies and Music

Endnotes

Acknowledgements

This work has made extensive use of the research and publications of Joshua Stylman [1] and ICE-9.[2] It is strongly recommended to study their work.

Mass Manipulation Platforms

Mass psychology provides the know-how for mass manipulation, while mass communication platforms provide the medium for implementing mass psychology manipulation. Naturally therefore in democracies, the Money Powers should have a monopoly on media platforms. Thus, as technological developments provided new media platforms, from newspapers, to movies, to radio, to TV, to internet, to smartphones, there was and remains an effective Money Power monopoly.

Quoting Joshua Stylman[3]

When in 1908 Thomas Edison established the Motion Picture Patents Company, he created more than a monopoly; he demonstrated how five key mechanisms could systematically control information and shape consciousness:[4]
1. Infrastructure control – Film production equipment
2. Distribution control – Theaters
3. Legal framework – Patents
4. Financial pressure – Blacklisting
5. Legitimacy definition – "authorized" vs "unauthorized" content
These same mechanisms would evolve and reappear across industries and eras, becoming increasingly sophisticated tools for engineering public consciousness and controlling the boundaries of possible thought and expression.
Antitrust action broke up the Edison Trust in 1915, and control shifted from Edison's patent monopoly to a small group of studios. While presented as creating competition, this "breakup" actually consolidated power in an oligarchy of studios that could more effectively and subversively coordinate content control and messaging - a pattern that would repeat in future antitrust actions.
New forms of control quickly emerged. The Motion Picture Production Code (Hays Code), established in 1934, demonstrated how moral panic could justify systematic content control. Just as Edison had controlled film distribution, the Hays Code controlled what could be depicted on screen, establishing templates for narrative manipulation that would persist into the digital age.

Newspapers

By 1917 J.P. Morgan had acquired 25% of American papers including the major newspapers.[5] It wasn't about profit – it was about establishing the machinery of public consciousness management in preparation for World War I.[6] Without Morgan’s newspapers, the Bernays’ CPI would not have succeeded in flipping the opinions of 100 million Americans within one year.

Pointing to the fact that indirect influence for mass manipulation is much more effective than direct propaganda, Mockingbird, a covert operation run by the CIA, was launched in the 1950s to implant pro-US propaganda in major American and international media and in front organizations, including student magazines. The CIA also hired people in the media and students to write false stories, or embellish stories to favor the U.S government. The operation also infiltrated student organizations, with massive amounts of propaganda made using American student. [7] Quoting Joshua Stylman:[8]

The program demonstrated how thoroughly intelligence agencies shaped public perception through seemingly independent channels. Building on methods refined during wartime propaganda efforts, Mockingbird's techniques would influence everything from news coverage to entertainment programming, establishing templates for information manipulation that continue to evolve today.

Operation Mockingbird’s infiltration of global media was exposed by Udo Ulfkotte, former editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the largest newspapers in Germany. In his 2014 book Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys the News,[9] Ulfkotte revealed that the CIA pays journalists in Germany, France, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand to plant fake stories and that the CIA is instigating a war with Russia.[10] Ulfkotte’s book was published in German on November 1, 2014. He died at 56, on Friday the 13th of January 2017, while his book was being translated into English for publication three months later, in May 2014.[11]

Operation Mockingbird never stopped, as recently it was revealed that news outlet Politico had received $8.2 million from the government,[12] and Reuters $9.1 million from the Air Force for “Large Scale Social Deception.”[13]

As a matter of fact, one can speak of Total Spectrum Domination of news media, as a recent WikiLeaks report indicated:[14]

USAID has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive US government financed NGO, "Internews Network" (IN), which has "worked with" 4,291 media outlets, producing in one year 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and "training" over 9000 journalists (2023 figures). IN has also supported social media censorship initiatives.
In 2023, supported by Hillary Clinton, Bourgault launched a $10m IN fund at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). The IN page showing a picture of Bourgault at the CGI has also been deleted.
The operation claims "offices" in over 30 countries, including main offices in US, London, Paris and regional HQs in Kiev, Bangkok and Nairobi. It is headed up by Jeanne Bourgault, who pays herself $451k a year. Bourgault worked out of the US embassy in Moscow during the early 1990s, where she was in charge of a $250m budget, and in other revolts or conflicts at critical times, before formally rotating out of six years at USAID to IN.
IN has at least six captive subsidiaries under unrelated names including one based out of the Cayman Islands. Since 2008, when electronic records begin, more than 95% of IN's budget has been supplied by the US government (thread follows).

What Operation Mockingbird achieved through human editors and planted stories, today's platforms accomplish automatically through content moderation algorithms and recommendation systems. The same principles of narrative control persist, but the human intermediaries have been replaced by automated systems operating at breathtaking speed on a global scale.[15]

Radio and TV

Mass psychology manipulation through media platforms is exemplified by CBS, the leading TV and radio network and record publishing company. CBS was established by William S. Paley. During World War II, Paley was chief of radio in the Office of War Information (OWI), Psychological Warfare Division. Paley’s wartime experience in psychological operations directly impacted CBS's postwar programming strategy, where entertainment began to serve as an effective vehicle for social engineering. Under Paley's leadership, CBS became known for masterfully blending entertainment with subtle manipulation techniques refined during his psychological warfare service.[16]

David Sarnoff, a Reserve Brigadier General of the Signal Corps, headed RCA, the foremost media conglomerate of the 20th century, which included the first nationwide American radio network, NBC, which later split into NBC and ABC. Besides radio and TV, RCA established a leading music record label. In 1959 Sarnoff was also a board member of the Rockefeller Fund.

RCA's role in shaping mass culture traces back to its 1919 formation as a Navy-coordinated communications monopoly created to maintain domestic control of strategic communications, RCA's expansion into broadcasting, records, and consumer electronics preserved these foundational connections to military and intelligence networks.[17]

This fusion of entertainment and social control would become the template for modern media operations.[18]

It’s official: Watching lots of TV does make you stupid – City AM

Movies and Music

As noted earlier, mass psychology manipulation is not limited to news, be it newspapers, TV, or radio; rather all mass media is used for manipulation. Recalling some of the key findings of mass psychology:

By working on the unconscious, beliefs and actions can be influenced.
Emotion is more powerful than logic.
Indirect influence through trusted voices works better than direct propaganda.
People trust “celebrities” and “experts” over authority.
Reality is irrelevant; manipulated perception is, provided it is credible.

It is clear from the above, that the entertainment industry, in particular movies and music, can be used effectively for mass manipulation. This was noted early on by the military – intelligence – money power nexus:

World War I marked the birth of systematic coordination between Hollywood and intelligence agencies. During World War II, these connections were formalized through the OSS (precursor to the CIA), evolving into today's Entertainment Liaison Office, through which agencies like the Department of Defense actively shape desired military-themed film narratives.[19]

As the OSS (precursor to the CIA) stated in a declassified document:[20]