Abbott's use of Nazi propaganda techniques

The Blowfly has been hanging around the Prime Minister this week seeking to understand how our No 1 redhead is thinking.

It has all been rather frantic trying to sell the carbon tax and matching Toxic Tony.

She wont listen to The Blowfly. I have been sending out telepathic signals to her to not even attempt to match him. He simply cant be matched! He is in another dimension.

A dimension where it is okay to tell lies and mistruths and treat human beings just like Joseph Goebbels did for Hitler.

And on that note The Blowfly was happy to see the PM reading the rather illuminating article by Ian Robinson in last Saturday's Fairfax papers. Ian is the president emeritus of the Rationalist society of Australia.

"Taxing the truth:why we must not let Abbott's dogmas lie" is a wonderful little tome on the methods that the Coalition in general, and Abbott in particular, is using to distort the reality of the political debate in Australia.

Although the PM says she is not that interested in the polls, because she has her eyes firmly on the end game, she is neither deaf nor blind.

She can hear the commentators opine that Abbott has the Government with its back to the wall and that he is a certainty to be our next PM.

This has surprised her a little----to say the least!

She thought that the three word slogans were used by Tony simply because that was all he could remember.

She thought that the way he misrepresents her apparent commitment to 'no carbon tax' before the last election was just sour grapes because his offer to build a $1 billion hospital for Andrew Wilkie was not taken up.

But according to the article these tactics are all propaganda strategies enunciated by Hitler in 'Mein Kampf' and used by his trusted assistant Goebbels to manipulate the thinking of the unsuspecting German people.

The PM was so intrigued by this article that she got out her trusty iPad and looked up 'Nazi propaganda' on Wikipedia. This is what she found.

Julia highlighted some of the points she thought were relevant .

"Mein Kampf contains the blueprint of later Nazi propaganda efforts. Assessing his audience, Hitler writes in chapter VI:

"Propaganda must always address itself to the broad masses of the people. (...) All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed. (...) The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses. The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. (...) The great majority of a nation is so feminine in its character and outlook that its thought and conduct are ruled by sentiment rather than by sober reasoning. This sentiment, however, is not complex, but simple and consistent. It is not highly differentiated, but has only the negative and positive notions of love and hatred, right and wrong, truth and falsehood."^[5]

As to the methods to be employed, he explains:

"Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favourable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side. (...) The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward. (...) Every change that is made in the subject of a propagandist message must always emphasize the same conclusion. The leading slogan must of course be illustrated in many ways and from several angles, but in the end one must always return to the assertion of the same formula."

 The entry on Nazi propaganda in Wikipedia is worthy of review by anyone curious about the propaganda methods used by the Nazis. The Blowfly commends it to anyone who is interested in the truth and the foundations for manipulating the thinking of voters.

But back to the PM!

As she absorbed the material on Nazi propaganda methods a serenity seemed to come over her as she realised what Abbott was up to.

At least when you fully understand what your opponents are up to you have a chance of winning.

And so instead of resorting to Goebbels she pondered the words of George Bernard Shaw: "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world."

And then she put her head back, clasping her iPad to her breast, and pondered the future.

A future where Tony Abbott has to explain to people why the carbon tax did not cause the sky to fall in.

A future where voters realise that the Minerals Resources and Rent tax is one of the few ways that Gina, Twiggy and Clive get to genuinely share their wealth with the people who own the minerals.

A future where the NBN allows Australia to be competitive in a global economy.

A future where Question time is used constructively to ask questions rather than be bastardised with censure motions.

A future where there is a genuine civility in the Parliament.

A future where refugees are welcomed as a building block of our nation.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! Poor dear! She dozed off while thinking about what this country could be.