Council on Foreign Relations Tells Gov’t They “Have To” Use Propaganda on Americans
The Council on Foreign Relations delivered an Orwellian presentation recently that unsurprisingly went unnoticed in the mainstream media, in which CFR’s Richard Stengel forwarded the notion that governments “have to” direct “propaganda” at their own domestic populations.
The Council is recognized as one of the United States’ oldest and most establishment think tanks of the American power-elite, and it often sets the agenda on important policy questions—or, as former senior editor at the Washington Post, Richard Harwood, in a column entitled “Ruling Class Journalists,” approvingly described the Council as, “the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in the United States.”
Harwood admiringly wrote:
“The membership of these journalists in the Council, however they may think of themselves, is an acknowledgment of their active and important role in public affairs and of their ascension into the American ruling class. They do not merely analyze and interpret foreign policy for the United States; they help make it…. They are part of that establishment whether they like it or not, sharing most of its values and worldviews.”
CFR is a key cog in the hub of Washington think-tanks promoting endless war. As former Army Major Todd Pierce described, think-tanks act as “primary provocateurs” using “‘psychological suggestiveness’ to create a false narrative of danger from some foreign entity with the objective being to create paranoia within the U.S. population that it is under imminent threat of attack or takeover.”
In late January 2018, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange publicized the extensive sway the Council on Foreign relations carried over U.S. mass media by Tweeting a graphic created by Swiss Propaganda Research (SPR), a research and information project on geopolitical propaganda in Swiss media, which illustrated the heavy influence CFR exercises over the media narrative delivered to the American public, i.e. domestic propaganda.
The illustration of the Council’s deeply entrenched media presence is based on official membership rosters compiled by SPR, revealing the interconnectedness of CFR’s extensive mass media influence network and its main international affiliate groups—the Bilderberg Group (covering mainly the U.S. and Europe) and the Trilateral Commission (covering North America, Europe and East Asia).
According to the report from Swiss Propaganda Research:
Largely unbeknownst to the general public, many media executives and top journalists of almost all major US news outlets have long been members of the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
Established in 1921 as a private, bipartisan organization to “awaken America to its worldwide responsibilities”, the CFR and its close to 5000 elite members have for decades shaped U.S. foreign policy and public discourse about it. As one Council member famously explained, the goal has indeed been to establish a global Empire, albeit a “benevolent” one.
Stengel, a former editor of TIME magazine, told the audience at a CFR event in late April called Political Disruptions: Combating Disinformation and Fake News that governments “have to” direct “propaganda” toward their own populations.
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