PsyWar

PsyWar

2010, Media  -   82 Comments
8.43
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Ratings: 8.43/10 from 191 users.

PsyWarThis film explores the evolution of propaganda and public relations in the United States, with an emphasis on the elitist theory of democracy and the relationship between war, propaganda and class.

Includes original interviews with a number of dissident scholars including Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Peter Phillips (Project Censored), John Stauber (PR Watch), Christopher Simpson (The Science of Coercion) and others.

A deep, richly illustrated study of the nature and history of propaganda, featuring some of the world's most insightful critics, Psywar exposes the propaganda system, providing crucial background and insight into the control of information and thought.

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spartacus
spartacus
26 days ago

why is everyone in this video a judeo-bolshevik? psywar is not really an appropriate title. just call it socialist apologetics to be more accurate

mona
mona
11 months ago

war makes the elite more profit like the fAkE Ukraine psywar and we as a taxpayer funded the elite and yet majority of the world still VOTE for the corrupted politician and president . EVERYTHING IS A LIE

David Dieni
David Dieni
2 years ago

Indoctrinated and infantile
We swallow every insane lie,
As denial, blind hope and optimism,
Hold up the walls that are our prison.

Evidence, data who needs that
They're just a bunch of useless facts
That only make me feel uneasy,
A little sick, a little queasy.

It's the immgrants....its the JEWS!!
So many scapegoats, now which one to choose?
And don't forget the neo-Marxists
Hiding at home in your bread baskets!

Now I haven't studied history
Or any political economy,
Don't know shit about sociology
Or the development of society.
I have no expertise at all,
No diplomas hang upon the wall.
But I know everything there is to know,
Because Jordan Peterson told me so.
Now I am registered with Jobster,
Looking for work as a lobster.

So hang on tight, we're going down,
Infantile fools before slaves of knaves and clowns.
No money left for the sick and poor,
Its all been spent on endless war.
And edumaction, well who needs that?
When its all downloadable from an app.

Now faster than the world's revolving,
Humanity is fast devolving
While good old Donald is no one's hero,
Why, he's a fiddler just like Nero!

Can't believe its come to this
My God we're bloody idiots

Rich
Rich
2 years ago

Noem Chomsky? Any Documentary that includes this Commies World View is very Suspect. No Thanks

Doug B
Doug B
4 years ago

Not the end-all to explaining why we buy what we buy into but a good basis for understanding.

Melvin
Melvin
4 years ago

This so much propaganda in one firm...

tim neaves
tim neaves
8 years ago

When war is declared ,truth and justice are the first casualties.could be why america is always at war.

David Hopper
David Hopper
10 years ago

I like this documentary, but in and of itself it's also propaganda too. I don't say that that's a bad thing, I think the goals of this documentary are indeed good, but if you want to empower people to fight propaganda, you have to teach them, why propaganda is so successful: because people choose to rely on others to give them objective truth. That my friends, will never happen, the burden of discovering truth is on the individual and if we as a people are to change, we must actively and vigilantly engage in the dialectic and challenge everything that people tells us as truth, even from people who we deem as on our side as well or who have similar self-interests as we do.

Johnrambo1
Johnrambo1
11 years ago

"The century of the self" is even better.

Ian Hulstein
Ian Hulstein
11 years ago

Our neverending quest for more effective, more intelligent, and faster communication of ideas through language and media has also led to an harmonic increase in our ability to deceive. The ability to propogate or communicate false ideas and false philosophies has gone hand in hand with the explosion of knowledge and the scientific understanding of ourselves. I think it ridiculously foolish of us to draw some immaginary spot in the Timeline of Humanity when all of a sudden, equality took hold and the powers that be gave up their prestige. All that we have witnessed is a development of the powers of deception and perception management to the point that we honestly believe the age of Propoganda and rule by a manipulative elite is over and done with. The more I read and discover through the internet, however, the more obvious the ever-present deception is. I am finally starting to understand why so many Greek philosphers spoke of the Immense power of Music and Theatre to control the masses (even though when I first heard this I found the suggestion laughable).

We are taught to believe that Mythology is a thing of the past, an archaic system of control that is no longer necessary because we have outsmarted and outgrown it. Yet it has only evolved to match the times: We ourselves are victims of a false materialistic mythology based on the fundamental deception that I am seperate than YOU. That my self-preservation, and well-being is somehow more important than yours, even though we are both simply a miniscule speck of Awareness witnessing Existence manifest itself through Being.
I think this false philosophy we live under is the Fundamental problem with the world we have created since the 19th century onward, and this documentary really emphasized those points for me.

Ok
Ok
11 years ago

UMNO babi

stepitup_onenotch
stepitup_onenotch
11 years ago

Excellent film. The key is for more and more people to recognise all the propoganda out there in all its subtleties.

stopropaganda
stopropaganda
11 years ago

Excellently presented documentary. However, I would like to bring up the point that social media propaganda is now one of the greatest threats to our democracy. The power of the people as we have seen can be used through social media, but the powers that be are infiltrating it with propaganda (such as the recent viral Kony 2012 video). Our organization, Citizens Against Social Media Propaganda (find us on fb) is very concerned about this and has started a petition (see our website at Stop Social Media Propaganda dot org). This problem is far more serious than we think most people realize.

charlie pycraft
charlie pycraft
11 years ago

Excellent documentary

GreatMoel
GreatMoel
11 years ago

One solution for the problem:
CRITICAL THINKING

The key to change society is to inform and educate people, especially young children, where conditioning is the most effective.

I was here in London during the summer riots. Lots of young kids aged 12-21 attacked shops and took mostly electronic devices, sports shoes, gadgetry and booze.

Coincidence or evidence?

Raising our next generation by mass media and consumerism, will definitely create a distorted and disturbed society.
We are halfway.
We have a chance to reverse this process.
We have to show everybody and especially, young kids, that happiness is not achieved by possession.
That being in control or achieving more and more power or being successful in business/greediness is not the point of life.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Children need real values instead of Mickey Mouse garbage.”
“Lack of education turns soldiers into killing machines.”
- Jacque Fresco -

Ducaster
Ducaster
12 years ago

A very insightful documentary. Its interesting to see that towards the very end, particularly at 1:34:54 (time in) there is strong relevance to Julian Assange and the work of Wiki Leaks. - ' what we need is more information more freedom more transparency.' And more information about who's manipulating the public mind'

As bleak as this documentary may be I'm optimistic that things are now slowly changing, Time magazine aptly put The Protester as person of the year. Now through media avenues such as youtube and facebook (although not completely transparent) offer some liberation in social and political discourse and sharing information and ideas.

bfclark1
bfclark1
12 years ago

I've recently discovered that almost EVERYTHING we think is a fact is a LIE. It's a scary process to awake from the matrix. One small example is the latest diet fad. Eating 6 times a day is supposed to be good for you LIES. If you eat 6 times a day you will be FAT. We can eat one meal a day, like our ancestors and be skinny and healthy! All these diet fads are a trick to either make you consume more of their product (food) or be unhealthy and need medical care from big pharma. Please people do yourself a favor and question EVERYTHING you take as fact. The id*ot box is not on your side.

Admir Efendic
Admir Efendic
12 years ago

stop consuming, grow your own food, excercise every day instead of chugging down pills, and you will reduce their hold over you.

Darryl P
Darryl P
12 years ago

The answer is freedom!!!! Who said money is power?? Who told us that having things means something? It means nothing except the Belief you put on it. STOP!! And watch and see that fear is only a mirage.Its not real because if you pay attention you will notice that every time you are afraid of something you really never get harmed. You just BELIEVE its harmful. Start by helping someone and pass it on. When we as a people start doing for others and realize that money is really for our comforts and not survival were free. FREEDOM IS A INSIDE JOB AND SO IS SLAVERY!! YOU CHOOSE

Aaylsworth
Aaylsworth
12 years ago

My second watch of this... informative, insightful.... and sad...

Ognjen
Ognjen
12 years ago

It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today!You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies,The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business,It has been since man crawled out of the slime.

Ognjen
Ognjen
12 years ago

network 1976

Ognjen
Ognjen
12 years ago

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!'

Lorell Jones
Lorell Jones
12 years ago

only the strong will survive on this planet. Survivial of the fittest! AWESOME DOCUMENTARY. Thank you.

rebecaagenta
rebecaagenta
12 years ago

If you had some knowledge about media, PR, and propaganda, you would easily see that this documentary has some strong subliminal persuasion techniques. Also, this documentary is one-sided and shows a deep lack of information about the difference between propaganda and PR.

Tervaris
Tervaris
12 years ago

I just say woe. They've been lieing to us since before we could comprohend. Woe! The sad part about it is that most people won't wake up, some not getting the chance to, some who don't want to, and as we seen others who are keeping them sedated. If your are not the Slave of the One who gives you life, the abiltiy to breath, blink, touch, taste, cognitive thought, and a universe of natural beauty and spender then you are the Slave of the corparations, fear, man, and desires. These propagandaist make Allah and Islam the enemy to fear when in all actualality it is the solution... but only if you knew. Salam (peace)

darren
darren
12 years ago

Sadly, I know of manipulation, and, though it is more often described as being from the Right, this video demonstrates, forcefully, it can be from the Left. Just reviewing the list of contributors lays strength to that claim. Left or Right, I beg to be given, simply, the Truth, without all the manipulation.

Kris Mays
Kris Mays
12 years ago

this is just scary that a are government would use these tactics wow

Bilal Bruce Morpeth
Bilal Bruce Morpeth
12 years ago

War is deception

Shannon Elizabeth Staley
Shannon Elizabeth Staley
12 years ago

Excellent. Wow. Our thought really are not our own. It's hard not to see evilness in some of the men who have fashioned terrible campaigns to urge women to smoke, to beat down unions, to drive consumerism and the like....oof!

Gary V
Gary V
12 years ago

The first casualty of any war is always the truth.
All governments rely on the fact that the majority of their citizens are stupid enough & gullible enough to believe whatever BS that they are told along with a bit of flag waving. The worst thing is that they are right. They just claim that they are right & that anyone who disagrees is not patriotic. Most people just follow along like sheep, like lambs to the slaughter.

AnjirGirl
AnjirGirl
12 years ago

THIS SITE DESPERATELY NEEDS A NEW CATEGORY: "SOLUTIONS" !

Or every documentary website needs one, for that matter... We want to see a doc about SOLUTIONS, not just the problems in the world!

caesar
caesar
12 years ago

beautiful documentary. if only the 315 million Americans watched this documentary. imagine how that would change the WORLD.

LIVEFROMLIMBO
LIVEFROMLIMBO
12 years ago

a very good doc.

ABucketOfSalt
ABucketOfSalt
12 years ago

Who is the dark skinned gentleman speaking at 1:15:42? He has some great points and I'd like to know if he's written anything

Tom
Tom
13 years ago

For those of you who liked this, Century of the Self (also on Top Documentary) is very interesting and deals with more of the psyhology underpinning it all and with a greater focus on Edward Bernays

esmuziq & frames
esmuziq & frames
13 years ago

sut jhally got some points there

cezy
cezy
13 years ago

I tend to agree with whatever Chomsky says, however, It's hard to maintain the idea of democratic participation after seeing the hysteria in wal-mart!
What I do agree with (100%) is that we should all work part-time, consume less and enjoy our lives a bit more. Maybe spend time with friends and family, or maybe read books, watch good films, do something creative...

edtheted
edtheted
13 years ago

Interesting documentary, but why does this film have background music running through every damn second of it ? American filmmakers really have an uncanny ability to ruin documentaries with a massive "over-use" of music. Most times inappropriatly placed in the film and far too loud running underneath "talking-head" interviews .It must be a cultural thing like "Fox News." Don't you trust the viewer to have an attention span?

I really did want to know what Noam Chomsky and John Manley had to say about the subject...I DIDN'T WANT THEIR WORDS DROWNED OUT!

I managed to get past an hours viewing until at 1.03, the pseudo "red indian" chant music finally killed this film off for me, it all became too much.
I had to stop watching what was admittedly an interesting subject. The terrible "over-use" of music devalued the subject matter and kudos of what the contributors were trying to say and that killed it for me....Which is a shame!

Note to the director/editor...you really need to look at the structure of UK documentaries and their "sparing" use of music. Placed in films as an aid to the film's narrative and not as a distraction to it!

jiggerj
jiggerj
13 years ago

Holy c@#$! I missed most of this because of the annoying background music.

Matt Mosley
Matt Mosley
13 years ago

Great film, shame most Americans will never see it.

I want to buy it.

Paul So
Paul So
13 years ago

I enjoy this documentary, but I don't find it convincing since they mostly substantiate claims about propaganda from past history to doubt our present foreign policy. This is not to doubt whether propaganda exists today, certainly it does exist today, but how it is managed today in contrast to the past would be helpful to understand propaganda.

GoughLewis
GoughLewis
13 years ago

Very Interesting film. Shows the psychological control over us "Corks floating on a body of water to be directed" Sheeple, who go with the flow with what ever government bodies or mainstream news outlets (Fox, CNN, BBC, etc.) propaganda to create the tides of opinion and consensus to get us into war or sell us Coca Cola. Time for some critical thinking and discernment people. Highly recommended film. My praise to Top Documentary Film for sharing with us quality films of this caliber. Thank you.

Guest
Guest
13 years ago

If we are ever to turn around from the downfall we are racing towards, a site like TDF may be our greatest help. There are very few sites that are watched and responded to with greater interest and intelligence. If you care to change your world spread the news about what is going on here. Send it to every ONE you know, bar none.
Do it before They shut it down with the hidden reason that it is becoming too influential to the mass. All docs are importants here because they represent freedom of speech but some like this ONE are vital to our own survival.
Not to save a country, a skin colour, a theist or atheist but to help all human beings who once they know the truth will inevitably change them self!
Post, E-mail,Copy, Send, Show, Tell...don't make it your lonely journal at home, make it carry your voice way beyond the walls of your home.
Thank you Vlatko...i don't think you even know what you did when you started this.
God or not you were inspired by something bigger than you know!
az

Philio
Philio
13 years ago

I will have to admit that throughout most of this documentary my ire was raised. I was expecting some Marx, Engels or Hegelian diatribe as a solution for the world’s problems. I was pleasantly surprised by the conclusion, Metanoia. That’s quite a switch from the standard documentary of this genre, as Pogo would state, “I have seen the enemy and it is us”.

hwo a
hwo a
13 years ago

This is a great film! I was initially a little sceptical of its sensationalist style, but as I watched more I became really glad that someone was articulating what has been troubling me for some years now.

MarkoK
MarkoK
13 years ago

Adding "Human resources" (also by Metanoia films) is a must.

Mad
Mad
13 years ago

Thank you for posting this excellent documentary Vlatko, this is one of my all time favorites on this topic because it shows the roots of a lot of these problems affecting our lives daily. I'll be sending a more requests in the future, I think its crucial to know your history if your going to even attempt changing the future. Propaganda is wonderful thing that has been horribly misused for all the wrong reasons throughout history, this is the reasoning behind the sophistication of our propaganda system in the west. Hopefully people will watch this and join the fight in these information wars exposing propagandists & private interests wherever they hide.