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Obama Advisor Promotes ‘Cognitive Infiltration’

Your government appointees at work: Cass Sunstein seeks “cognitive” provocateurs

By Marc Estrin | The Rag Blog | January 11, 2010

Cass Sunstein is President Obama’s Harvard Law School friend, and recently appointed Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

In a recent scholarly article, he and coauthor Adrian Vermeule take up the question of “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures.” (J. Political Philosophy, 7 (2009), 202-227). This is a man with the president’s ear. This is a man who would process information and regulate things. What does he here propose?

[W]e suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. (Page 219.)

Read this paragraph again. Unpack it. Work your way through the language and the intent. Imagine the application. What do we learn?

  • It is “extremists” who “supply” “conspiracy theories.”
  • Their “hard core” must be “broken up” with distinctive tactics. What tactics?
  • “Infiltration” (“cognitive”) of groups with questions about official explanations or obfuscations or lies. Who is to infiltrate?
  • “Government agents or their allies,” virtually (i.e. on-line) or in “real-space” (as at meetings), and “either openly or anonymously,” though “infiltration” would imply the latter. What will these agents do?
  • Undermine “crippled epistemology” — one’s theory and technique of knowledge. How will they do this?
  • By “planting doubts” which will “circulate.” Will these doubts be beneficial?
  • Certainly. Because they will introduce “cognitive diversity.”

Put into English, what Sunstein is proposing is government infiltration of groups opposing prevailing policy. Palestinian Liberation? 9/11 Truth? Anti-nuclear power? Stop the wars? End the Fed? Support Nader? Eat the Rich?

It’s easy to destroy groups with “cognitive diversity.” You just take up meeting time with arguments to the point where people don’t come back. You make protest signs which alienate 90% of colleagues. You demand revolutionary violence from pacifist groups.

We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI. There the agents are called “provocateurs” — even if only “cognitive.” One learns to smell or deal with them in a group, or recognize trolling online. But even suspicion or partial exposure can “sow uncertainty and distrust within conspiratorial groups [now conflated with conspiracy theory discussion groups] and among their members,” and “raise the costs of organization and communication” — which Sunstein applauds as “desirable.” “[N]ew recruits will be suspect and participants in the group’s virtual networks will doubt each other’s bona fides.” (p.225).

And are we now expected to applaud such tactics frankly proposed in a scholarly journal by a high-level presidential advisor?

The full text of a slightly earlier version of Sunstein’s article is available for download

Source

January 13, 2010 - Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular

14 Comments

  1. To these extroverted sociopaths we call politicians, what everyone thinks of them is more important than what they themselves know to be true. Truth means nothing to these liars…

    So many people would take an evil job (white house press secretary, lying media pundit, etc.,), just so long as it paid well & it impressed all their friends & family. “oooh, i’d be on TV!!! I’LL *DO* IT!”

    “It is precisely because the universe is coherent that incoherent species do not survive.” -David Bohm

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    Comment by The End | January 13, 2010

  2. well, the latest P.D. that dickhead puppet boy Obombaton has penned, with David Addington’s help or Rahm Emanuel, is one that facilitates the FORMAL DECLARATION of the MARTIAL LAW we’ve been living under since 2001. Since we all are lucid enough to see the u.s.s.a. still sinking deeper into dictatorship and torture gulag mindedness, we’re also bright enough to know that this slide will hit a point where open revolt breaks out and the country slides into anarchy.

    once that comes, you can rest assured penis brain in the whore house will let the hammer fall finally.

    each day that passes we slip closer into the abyss.

    at some point, they, the politico’s know that they’ll be hunted down and strung up for their treason.

    they know it.

    and so do we, don’t we?

    Like

    Comment by Fuggem Inderededazzas | January 13, 2010

  3. If I were part of the conspiracy, I’d look at how everything is unraveling and realize that the scapegoating is about to begin, and that if I don’t betray my co-worker before he betrays me,

    Like

    Comment by imp | January 13, 2010

  4. They are going to get such a spanking.

    Yeah, 9/11; sure, I remember that, it was pulled off by some stone age Arabs living in caves. No way was it done by the Israeli Mossad and the CIA. Thank god they are here to protect us from the people they pretend to be when they attack us. Hey Mr Sunscreen. If you got a list, put me on it. You are definitely on mine.

    Like

    Comment by Les Visible | January 13, 2010

  5. Sounds like this zionist hasbara king will be granting the zio- Killers another few billion to escalate their war against free speech and thought under the auspices of the war on terror/Islam.

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    Comment by smudge | January 14, 2010

  6. […] Read more… Related Posts:BPA Found in 90% of All NewbornsOur Toxic World: Nine-Year-Old Girl Diagnosed With DementiaMorphine 'Might Spread Cancer'The World Bank’s Carbon Trade FiascoBritain's New Internet Law — As Bad as Everyone's Been Saying, and Worse. Much, Much Worse. Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | […]

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    Pingback by Obama Advisor Promotes ‘Cognitive Infiltration’ | January 14, 2010

  7. This plan of Sunstein’s to eliminate conspiracy theories is itself a conspiracy. Ironic isn’t it?
    So you want to be a tyrant, Sunstein? Remember what happens to tyrants?

    Like

    Comment by Sophia | January 14, 2010

  8. They have already been doing this for a very long time. I think the aim now is to confuse the recently awakened masses. The ones who have just woken up to the fact that their Government doesn’t have their best interests at heart and actually lies to them These are the ones that will think “Is that a government lie that we are supposed to believe or government lie to protect us from a conspiracy theory lie or is that a conspiracy truth Oh what the heck, this is all too dam confusing, I’m just going back to sleep again. The ones who have been awake a while can smell the truth.

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    Comment by Szi | January 14, 2010

  9. Bascially what it is saying is to turn truth seekers against one another. Hey, it worked in Iran and Iraq, why not do the same thing in America. The elite know they are in deep trouble now, the truth has been exposed. And the only way they can save themselves and other corrupt politicians getting attacked by a very angry American public is to get those angry truth seekers to attack each other.

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    Comment by Billy G. | January 14, 2010

  10. Sounds a lot like COINTELPRO

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    Comment by Michael | January 14, 2010

  11. Some of the Americans are pretty dumb but others are very astute and this will not fly. I am aware that we the people have been pretty much pacifist or of the sheep mentality but once awaken we the people are a formidable force and most of us will realized what is going on…but for some it might take quite a bit of time but then it will be too late.
    I reread Jeanne Dixon (famous Washington psychic) prophecies and realized it fit Obama to a “T”. He is the anti-Christ the archon of evil. I did not vote him because his speaches was too good to be true. All rhytorics. Elections today makes me sick! No one to vote for except for a very few, and you know that the candidate is choosen in advance and the good candidate do not stand a chance. We the people have to unite and fire the whole bunch of them…

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    Comment by Lily | January 15, 2010

  12. […] Via Aletho News […]

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    Pingback by Proposed government infiltration of Conspiracy groups at Mind Set Central | January 15, 2010

  13. […] Obama Advisor Promotes ‘Cognitive Infiltration’ […]

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    Pingback by Uncensored Magazine | Who’s Afraid Of 9/11 Conspiracy Theories? | April 2, 2010

  14. As the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are nearing completion, the Zionist gatekeepers to truth throw up more smokescreens.

    Realisation of Zionist terror from the King David Hotel, the Lavon Affair, USS Liberty, and the crowning false flags of 9/11 and 7/7 gained from conspiracy research leads inevitably to uncovering this Zionist global criminal network that enshrouds the world.

    Google “Israel did 911 all the proof in the world” to see that powerful Jews are running the endgame, together to a common goal, their World Government.

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    Comment by Moshe | April 5, 2011


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