The 10 Strategies Of Mass Manipulation, According To Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky is one of the most respected intellectuals in the world. This American thinker has been considered the most important of the contemporary age by The New York Times . One of his main contributions is to have proposed and analyzed the mass manipulation strategies that exist in the world today.

Noam Chomsky became known as a linguist, but he is also a philosopher and political scientist. At the same time, he has become one of the leading activists for libertarian causes. His writings have circulated around the world and never cease to amaze readers.

Chomsky produced a didactic text in which he synthesizes the mass manipulation strategies. His reflections on this are profound and complex. However, for didactic purposes, he summarized it all in simple principles accessible to all.

1. Distraction one of the mass manipulation strategies

According to Chomsky, the most recurrent of mass manipulation strategies is distraction. It consists, basically, in directing the public’s attention towards irrelevant or banal topics. In this way, they keep people’s minds occupied.

To distract people, he gorges on information. Overemphasis, for example, is given to sporting events. Also to show business, curiosities, etc. This makes people lose sight of what their real problems are.

Once it is possible to give importance to more banal issues, it is possible to convince the population that their gaze and thinking should be focused on it. In other words, everything that is out of the ordinary, out of the “normal”, will be seen as strange. In this way, the same society will push us in the same (and wrong) direction.

2. Problem-Reaction-Solution

Sometimes power, deliberately, fails to attend or attends in a deficient way to certain realities. They make citizens see this  as a problem that demands an external solution. They themselves propose the solution.

This is one of the mass manipulation strategies to make decisions that are unpopular. For example, when they want to privatize a public company and intentionally impair their service. In the end, this justifies the sale.

3. Graduality

This is another one of those mass manipulation strategies to introduce measures that usually people would not accept. It consists of applying them little by little, in such a way that they are practically imperceptible.

This is what has happened, for example, with the reduction of labor rights. In different societies they have been implementing measures, or forms of work, which end up making it seem normal that an employee does not have any guarantee of social security.

We can observe this gradualness more clearly when we compare two situations at different moments in time. In this way, we can see in a simple and enlightening way the great difference between a before and an after. One of the most obvious examples is the difference with the time of the word “mileurista”. A few years ago, someone who earned a thousand euros was called “mileurista” in a somewhat pejorative way, in reference to his low salary. At present, charging a thousand euros for many is something difficult to achieve.

4. Defer

This strategy consists of making citizens think that a measure is being taken that is temporarily harmful, but that in the future it can bring great benefits to the whole society and, of course, to individuals.

The goal is for people to get used to the measure and not reject it, thinking about the supposed good it will bring in the future. At the time, the “normalization” effect has already worked and people do not protest because the promised benefits do not arrive.

5. Infantilize the public

Many of the televised messages, especially advertising, tend to speak to the public as if they were children. They use gestures, words and attitudes that are conciliatory and that are permeated with a certain halo of naivety.

The goal is to overcome people’s resistance. It is one of the mass manipulation strategies that seeks to neutralize people’s critical sense. Politicians also employ these tactics, sometimes portraying themselves as father figures.

6. Go to the emotions

The messages that are designed from the power do not target the reflective minds of the people. What they mainly seek is to generate emotions and reach the unconscious of individuals. Hence, many of those messages are full of emotion.

The purpose of this is to create a kind of “short circuit” with the most rational area of ​​people. With emotions, the global content of the message is captured, not its specific elements. In this way, the critical capacity is neutralized.

7. Create ignorant audiences

Keeping people in ignorance is one of the purposes of power. Ignorance means not giving people the tools to analyze reality for themselves. Tell him the anecdotal data, but do not reveal the internal structures of the events.

Keeping in ignorance is also not putting emphasis on education. Promote a wide gap between the quality of private education and public education. To numb the curiosity for knowledge and give little value to the products of intelligence.

8. Promote complacent audiences

Most fashions and trends are not created spontaneously. They are almost always induced and promoted from some center of power that exerts its influence to create massive waves of likes, interests or opinions.

The media usually promote certain fashions and trends, most of them around silly, superfluous or even ridiculous lifestyles. They convince people that behaving like this is “the thing to do.”

The problem at this point is that many people think they think for themselves when they just repeat. However, they are unaware that their thoughts are unfounded. They repeat, consciously or unconsciously, what they see and believe has been the result of their own thought process. “I’m going to buy these shoes because I like them,” many people think.

Actually, those shoes may not have been so popular a few years ago, but now they are. And since they are in fashion now, they do like them now, but we are not aware that we like them because they have become fashionable. They mold and manipulate us so that we like some things or others.

9. Reinforcement of self-blame

Another of the mass manipulation strategies is to make people believe that they, and only they, are to blame for their problems. Whatever negative thing happens to them, it only depends on themselves. In this way they are made to believe that the environment is perfect and that if a failure occurs it is the responsibility of the individual.

Therefore, people end up trying to fit in with their environment and also feeling guilty for not quite succeeding. They shift the indignation that the system could provoke in them towards a permanent self-blame.

10. Thorough knowledge of the human being

During the last decades, science has managed to collect an impressive amount of knowledge about the biology and psychology of human beings. However, all this collection is not available to most people.

Only a minimal amount of information reaches the public about it. Meanwhile, the elites have all this knowledge and use it for convenience. Again it becomes clear that ignorance facilitates the action of power over society.

All these strategies of mass manipulation are aimed at keeping the world as it suits the most powerful. Block the critical capacity and autonomy of most people. However, it is also up to us to allow ourselves to be passively driven, or to offer resistance as far as possible.