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Gregory Bateson: The Master of Double-Bind Black Propaganda

GRAPHIC: Blog.ecornell.com

Anthropologist Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) was a heavy hitter in social theories and propaganda. He was also the husband of Margaret Mead. In 1942, while working in black propaganda, he wrote about the war:

… is now a life-or-death struggle over the role which the social sciences shall play in the ordering of human relationships. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that this war is ideologically about just this – the role of the social sciences. Are we to reserve the techniques and the right to manipulate peoples as the privilege of a few planning, goal-oriented and power hungry individuals to whom the instrumentality of science makes a natural appeal? Now that we have techniques, are we in cold blood, going to treat people as things? (Bateson 1942, as quoted in Price)

After the war, Bateson answered his own “rhetorical” question. In a CIA website article titled “The Birth of Central Intelligence,” Bateson is quoted as follows:

… the bomb would shift the balance of warlike and peaceful methods of international pressure. It would be powerless, he said, against subversive practices, guerrilla tactics, social and economic manipulation, diplomatic forces, and propaganda either black or white. The nations would therefore resort to those indirect methods of warfare. The importance of the kind of work the Foreign Economic Administration, the Office of War Information, and the Office of Strategic Services had been doing would thus be infinitely greater than it had ever been. The country could not rely upon the Army and Navy alone for defense. There should be a third agency to combine the functions and employ the weapons of clandestine operations, economic controls, and psychological pressures.

Black propaganda is false information that purports to be from a source on one side of a conflict but is actually from the opposing side. This, and false-dialectic mind games (Clinton vs. Trump, red vs. blue, whites vs. blacks, etc.) is something the population is being continually subjected to.

Bateson’s research focused on double-bind theory as a brainwashing and propaganda technique. A double bind is an emotionally distressing dilemma in which an individual (or group) receives two or more conflicting messages, and one message negates the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other (and vice versa), so that the person will automatically be wrong regardless of response. The double bind occurs when the person cannot confront the inherent dilemma, and, therefore, can neither resolve it nor opt out of the situation. I also like to think of this as a dead end.

The recent Miami Beach scene is a classic double bind at work. The Crime Syndicate tries to set up a nexus between perfectly acceptable close proximity partying among generally healthy young people and unacceptable weaponized savage dindus running amok, wilding and brawling in the streets. The insertion of the racist slur for those calling this out is double bind. Who dispensed the Pervitin to goose up this crowd?

Methamphetamine: A Growing Demonic Plague

In actuality these are two entirely separate issues -one acceptable and normal and one unacceptable anti-social criminality. The narrative to be pushed next is that the Brazil covid variant is spread from the beaches of Miami.

Double-think is an adoption of this method and is the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct. Double-think is notable due to a lack of cognitive dissonance — thus the person is completely unaware of any conflict or contradiction.

According to George Orwell’s book “1984,” double-think is:

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions, which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it …

The classic example given of a negative double-bind is of a mother telling her child that she loves him or her, while at the same time turning away in disgust, or inflicting corporal punishment as discipline. (“I’m spanking you because I love you!”) The words are socially acceptable, but the body language is in conflict with the message.

The field of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) also makes use of the expression “double bind.” Here, a communication could be constructed with multiple messages, whereby the recipient of the message is given the impression of choice — although both options have the same outcome at a higher level of intention. This is known as a “double bind” in NLP terminology.

The mind controllers then meld double binds or dead ends with the concept of injunctions. According to Bateson, a “primary injunction” is imposed on the subject by the others in one of two forms:

    • (a) “Do X, or I will punish you”
    • (b) “Do not do X, or I will punish you”
    • (or both a and b)

A “secondary injunction” is imposed on the subject, conflicting with the first at a higher and more abstract level. For example, “You must do X, but only do it because you want to.” It is unnecessary for this injunction to be expressed verbally.

If necessary, a “tertiary injunction” is imposed on the subject to prevent them from escaping the dilemma.

The punishment may include the withdrawing of love, the expression of hate and anger, or abandonment resulting from the authority figure’s expression of helplessness. A common tactic is gaslighting or shaming.

Typically, a demand is imposed upon the subject by someone whom he or she respects (or thinks he should respect), but the demand itself is inherently impossible to fulfill because some broader context forbids it. For example, this situation arises when a person in a position of authority imposes two contradictory conditions but there exists an unspoken rule that one must never question authority.

Unlike the usual no-win situation, the subject has difficulty in defining the exact nature of the paradoxical situation in which he or she is caught. The contradiction may be invisible to external observers, only becoming evident when a prior communication is considered.

Growing up and being subjected to perpetual double binds could lead to learned patterns of confusion in thinking and communication. It can even induce societal schizophrenia and psychosis. Bateson and his colleagues hypothesized that schizophrenic thinking was a learned confusion in thinking and could be induced on whole populations.

Bateson had established a scholarly relationship with hypnotist Milton Erickson as early as 1932. Erickson’s research involved the idea that hypnotically effective trance states could be established in the course of ordinary life activities, such as reading, talking to a therapist or watching motion pictures, especially if intense and traumatic emotional states could be evoked by the experience. During such trance states, Erickson believed, the subconscious mind of the the target could be accessed by means of hypnotic suggestion (Atwill).

Gregory Bateson was an instrumental player at the Jewish backed Macy Conference. He was at Ground Zero in the creation of cybernetics. Early on, the cyberneticians realized that you could manipulate society by creating echo chambers, “feedback loops,” whereby you gave the culture positive and negative signals. The  internet is a “cybernetic manipulation tool”.

The word “cybernetics,” by the way, translates as “to steer, to govern” in Greek.

The video below is an illustrative example of all these concepts in action. Audience members are interviewed as they leave a showing of “An American Sniper.” This is an emotional and patriotic rendering produced by the icon and authority figure Clint Eastwood. The end of the movie shows the sniper being honored in a parade for his “heroic” conduct.

The paradox is that the sniper, Chris Kyle, loves his job of killing. The movie is about this blood sport being portrayed as heroic. The second paradox is that the people he kills in Iraq are arguably defending their own now ruined cities and homeland. Yet the people interviewed claim and espouse the notion that Kyle was defending the American homeland with his cold-blooded sniper attacks on Iraqi locals.

The interviewer (an Iraqi veteran) in the clip is very skilled at getting these jingoistic people to face their inconsistencies, circular logic, fuzzy thinking, dilemmas and paradoxes in their points of view. The reactions vary from vague realizations, to cognitive dissonance to just flat-out double-think. But above all, it illustrates first hand just how twisted, warped and inverted large segments of American society have become as a result of the methods concocted by Gregory Bateson and his ilk.

13 Comments on Gregory Bateson: The Master of Double-Bind Black Propaganda

  1. I refuse to watch any war movies or stories put out by Hollyweird or sources such as the History Channel. I had many friends and relatives look on me with disgust when I refused to go see American Sniper. I told them I would not pay money to go see the story of a “legalized” murderer. I really like how Adam spun it all back around the girl at the 5 minute mark and left her totally speechless.

    Another great article Russ!

      • I just so happen to have a few Erickson technique books in my library, as well as the early Grinder & Bandler NLP books.

        None of them are very good, they are utterly dry and revolve entirely around describing “theoretical framework” and fanatical cultish personality worship. In every video I’ve ever seen of these guys, I can’t help but think – “This fucking guy, this is the man with an irresistibly hypnotic persona!?”

        Here’s a video of Milton Erickson:
        https://youtu.be/-rH9v5JYmB4

        And Richard Bandler:
        https://youtu.be/zS8C0tPecAo

        Now, contrast these weird and completely uncharismatic geeks with Dane Cook at the absolute height of his stand-up career.
        https://youtu.be/C6tspWwsRRc

        Night and day, Dane Cook is telling you a story and inducing you into a hypnotic trance by changing voice tonality, speed, volume. At the end, the pay-off is that you laugh because of the masterful set-up. Real charismatic people out there in the world are exceptionally rare. But, weird geeks who try to emulate Anthony Hopkins from Silence of the Lambs are a dime a dozen.

        Something else has created successful mind control techniques, and they don’t write self-congratulatory manuals. They don’t want you to know who they are, or what they’re doing, and certainly not why.

  2. Excellent post – the UK’s dilemma is a good current double blind example. Despite the ruling elites and politicians all being at the EU trough, the people forced a rare democratic event – a yes or no referendum in a representative democracy (ie you vote in politicians who lie their way into power then do something else entirely for 4 years).
    Despite the government spending over 11 m USD of tax payer money on election ‘instructions’ telling people to vote to stay in the EU the people voted to leave.
    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/515068/why-the-government-believes-that-voting-to-remain-in-the-european-union-is-the-best-decision-for-the-uk.pdf
    The (overwhelmingly pro EU) government politicians then spent two years on failing to organize the people’s wishes, creating a double bind that makes most English people scared and wishing it would all just go away., and that it is all a disastrous dead end. This process has previously happened in Ireland and elsewhere, resulting in forcing another vote that goes the way the establishment wants….

  3. A rare high value comment at Reddit:

    from Drooperdoo via /r/conspiracy sent 10 hours ago

    What you’re describing is called cybernetics. The science of cybernetics is based on the feedback loop. (The guy who founded it, Norbert Wiener, was working on the first early primitive computers. He noticed that humans (and all living things, for that matter) learn through feedback. As he was giving a speech, a physiologist was in the audience named Warren McCullough. McCullogh did the first neural map of the human brain. Up until hearing Wiener, he was confused as to why certain neurons were linked in loops. Only after learning about “feedback” as a process of learning did it make sense.) McCullough and Wiener collaborated on the first “electronic brain,” the precursor to the modern computer. Its programing was based on the inner-workings of the human mind. Since neurons only had two positions [off and on] and existed in a state of negative or positive feedback, the first computers were given a similar set-up (with 1’s and 0’s in binary, to represent negative and positive feedback).

    Long story short, the guy who set up the Macy Conference (where Wiener and McCullough met) was none other than the Gregory Bateson mentioned in this article. He was at Ground Zero of the creation of cybernetics. Early on, the cyberneticians realized that you could manipulate society by creating echo chambers, “feedback loops,” whereby you gave the culture positive and negative signals.

    The word “cybernetics,” by the way, translates as “to steer, to govern” in Greek.

    It’s the concept of having “a set goal and using feedback to ‘steer’ the society to the pre-determined target.”

    You can read more about Gregory Bateson in “The Cybernetic Brain,” by Andrew Pickering. A fascinating read.

    Footnote: The very word “cyberspace” comes from cybernetics. It was coined in 1982 by William Gibson, who said that he based it on the work of Cybernetics founder Norbert Wiener. Aside from creating cybernetics, Wiener also wrote several papers that were foundational to the creation of the internet. (Read “The Internet Is Not The Answer,” by Andrew Keen to learn more.) In summation: The very internet you’re on is a “cybernetic manipulation tool”. It’s a finely-honed “echo chamber” which can be used to manipulate society. Look at Facebook getting busted last year “putting particular news stories in people’s feeds to manipulate their users emotions”. Notice how we have alternative medias now: Leftwing media and rightwing media. What you’re looking at are echo chambers, dispensing positive and negative feedback to the society. 1’s and 0’s. Don’t look now: But the culture is being “steered”. What the ultimate goal is, who can say? (But cybernetics doesn’t kick in, unless it has a pre-set goal to start off with.)

  4. “… it illustrates first hand just how twisted, warped and inverted large segments of American society have become as a result of the methods concocted by Gregory Bateson and his ilk. …”
    . . . I doubt if this is true. They sound like people probably sounded throughout the ages. I expect e.g. Britons faced with Napoleon said the same sorts of things about the French. People during WW1 killed each other without any idea what they were fighting for. I think you’re over-rating Bateson.

    • According to author Michael Hoffman this mind control or alchemical processing of humanity has been going on for centuries. Bateson sounds like a modern day guru on the subject.

  5. Related to the dual mind Michael Hoffman refers to in his book Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare. He calls most Americans mind bombed patsies and I am agreeing with him more and more each day.

  6. Bateson was highly opposed to the idea of ‘control’ and tried to steer cybernetics away from determinitsic and applied ‘control’ paradigm. It very misleading to say that the double bind is “concocted” by Bateson. He was describing a phenonema not creating a Method. Do some reading of him and you’ll find that the above depiction is completely misconstrued.

  7. I’ve read several military Psyop papers that simply defined “Black Propaganda” as untruthful. As in, it does not need to appear to come from a side. It simply has to be untrue to be black propaganda. Ref: “Psychological Operations, Principles and Case Studies”.

    They also defined “White Propaganda” as being truthful information, and thought that this was a position of strength to come from, as your position could not be undermined. I agree with this. It seems though, that things have become so corrupt, that black propaganda is the “go to” approach.

    Most of what the cabal is involved in is black propaganda. They can only be called out by websites such as this, as most mainstream media is now operating in black propaganda, due to copy and paste journalists with no spine. Add in the echo chamber effect, well noted above.

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