British and Proud
10-10-2009, 02:13 PM
Conformity, Media Smears and Nationalism (http://unrepentantbritishnationalist.blogspot.com/2009/10/conformity-media-smears-and-nationalism.html)
Think back to when you were a child, did you not desire to fit in? Did you not follow popular trends, for example clothes and music? Even if later you rebelled against conformity, was it not just fashionable to do so amongst your peers, or your group of friends? The truth is, human beings are social animals, we are primates who have evolved over millions of years to hunt and live in groups and thus have developed an inherent desire to conform, as isolation could have proved deadly in the wild.
Solomon Asch - Conformity
If you doubt the ability of human beings to conform, consider the following experiment by Solomom Asch:
Every day we try to fit in. We may like to think we're individual but most of the time we don't actually want to stand out too much. It's this idea of conformity that the American social psychologist Solomon Asch studied in the 1950s, using nothing more complex than straight black lines drawn on pieces of card - it's one of the classic experiments in psychology.
http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/953/conformity01.jpg (http://www.imagehosting.com/)
Asch believed people wouldn't go along with the crowd; he set up his experiment to prove that people would stand up against group pressure. Unknown to his subjects, the rest of the group were stooges or plants, who'd been instructed to say A was longer than B, even though it patently wasn't. Contrary to his expectations, Asch discovered that a third of people went along with the group, even when it contradicted the evidence of their own eyes.
Can you believe that? One third of people would say that A is longer than B, just because they believed everybody else thought that it was! This implies one third of people will do and say whatever they believe the overwhelming majority say and do - even if there's no real pressure to conform, no real disincentive for dissent.
Stanley Milgram - Obedience
Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale, conducted a study of obedience to authority.
He employed 'teachers', who unkown to him/her were the subject of the experiment, and a 'learner' who was in fact an actor. Milgram informed his subjects (the 'teachers') that the objective of the experiment was to explore the link between punishment and learning, however in reality it was to determine how people responded to an authoritative figure instructing them to do something immoral. The experiment was conducted as follows:
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/5890/conformity02.png (http://www.imagehosting.com/)
The experimenter (E) orders the teacher (T), the subject of the experiment, to give what the latter believes are painful electric shocks to a learner (L), who is actually an actor and confidant. The subject believes that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual electric shocks, though in reality there were no such punishments. Being separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level.
The result? Sixty percent of the 'teachers' obeyed orders to punish the learner to the very end of the 450-volt scale! No subject stopped before reaching 300 volts! In other words, people will obey an authoritative figure, even if what they are being told to do is immoral.
One of Milgram's interpretions was, according to Wikipedia, thus:
the theory of conformism, based on Solomon Asch's work, describing the fundamental relationship between the group of reference and the individual person. A subject who has neither ability nor expertise to make decisions, especially in a crisis, will leave decision making to the group and its hierarchy. The group is the person's behavioral model.
In other words, the fact that the experimenter wore a grey technician's coat, was enough to convince the subjects to continue shocking the 'learner'. They imagined that he was some sort of scientist, and as he seemed to think it was okay to continue to 'shock' the victim, it must be alright. Ultimately, people are prepared to defer responsibility or decision making to those who are more suitably qualified.
Of course this has important implications. Thanks to our poor education system and constant media 'entertainment', we have a populace that is largely ignorant about important matters and thus if a newspaper columnist in The Sun states that, for example, immigration is vital to the economy, it is likely to be accepted as fact by his readership. After all, the author has presumably been employed because he knows about these things.
The Power Of The Media
So if people will, metaphorically, say black is white in order to conform when there is no real pressure to do so; and will accept the opinions of, and obey, those they believe are more knowledgeable than them, even if they feel uncomfortable doing so, surely the influence of the all-pervasive media and eleven years' state indoctrination is far more potent?
Consider now the power of the media. In the UK, tobacco companies have been banned from advertising their products on television, such is the potency of TV adverts, so thy have instead used other mediums of advertising:
During the period September 2001 to August 2002, tobacco advertising expenditure in the UK amounted to £25 million, excluding sponsorship and indirect advertising. The companies spent £11 million on press advertising; £13.2 million on outdoor (billboards); £714,550 on radio advertising; and £106,253 on direct mail. [8] Tobacco companies have traditionally invested heavily in the sponsorship of sport to promote their brands. In the UK, the tobacco industry was spending an estimated £8m a year on the sponsorship of sport (excluding Formula One) and a further £70m on Formula One in the UK.
http://old.ash.org.uk/html/factsheets/html/fact19.html
That's a lot of money! Tobacco companies wouldn't spend this unless they thought it worthwhile, which demonstrates that even their brand name on a racing car is an effective, though presumably subliminal, method of advertising. So imagine if every mainstream television channel, newspaper and radio station is constantly conveying propaganda endorsing multiculturalism, miscegenation and racial diversity! Sometimes the message is subtle, as in soap operas, other times it will be blatant, for example fictional dramas that portray nationalists as venimous, wicked yobs.
Article continues here (http://unrepentantbritishnationalist.blogspot.com/2009/10/conformity-media-smears-and-nationalism.html).
Think back to when you were a child, did you not desire to fit in? Did you not follow popular trends, for example clothes and music? Even if later you rebelled against conformity, was it not just fashionable to do so amongst your peers, or your group of friends? The truth is, human beings are social animals, we are primates who have evolved over millions of years to hunt and live in groups and thus have developed an inherent desire to conform, as isolation could have proved deadly in the wild.
Solomon Asch - Conformity
If you doubt the ability of human beings to conform, consider the following experiment by Solomom Asch:
Every day we try to fit in. We may like to think we're individual but most of the time we don't actually want to stand out too much. It's this idea of conformity that the American social psychologist Solomon Asch studied in the 1950s, using nothing more complex than straight black lines drawn on pieces of card - it's one of the classic experiments in psychology.
http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/953/conformity01.jpg (http://www.imagehosting.com/)
Asch believed people wouldn't go along with the crowd; he set up his experiment to prove that people would stand up against group pressure. Unknown to his subjects, the rest of the group were stooges or plants, who'd been instructed to say A was longer than B, even though it patently wasn't. Contrary to his expectations, Asch discovered that a third of people went along with the group, even when it contradicted the evidence of their own eyes.
Can you believe that? One third of people would say that A is longer than B, just because they believed everybody else thought that it was! This implies one third of people will do and say whatever they believe the overwhelming majority say and do - even if there's no real pressure to conform, no real disincentive for dissent.
Stanley Milgram - Obedience
Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale, conducted a study of obedience to authority.
He employed 'teachers', who unkown to him/her were the subject of the experiment, and a 'learner' who was in fact an actor. Milgram informed his subjects (the 'teachers') that the objective of the experiment was to explore the link between punishment and learning, however in reality it was to determine how people responded to an authoritative figure instructing them to do something immoral. The experiment was conducted as follows:
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/5890/conformity02.png (http://www.imagehosting.com/)
The experimenter (E) orders the teacher (T), the subject of the experiment, to give what the latter believes are painful electric shocks to a learner (L), who is actually an actor and confidant. The subject believes that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual electric shocks, though in reality there were no such punishments. Being separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level.
The result? Sixty percent of the 'teachers' obeyed orders to punish the learner to the very end of the 450-volt scale! No subject stopped before reaching 300 volts! In other words, people will obey an authoritative figure, even if what they are being told to do is immoral.
One of Milgram's interpretions was, according to Wikipedia, thus:
the theory of conformism, based on Solomon Asch's work, describing the fundamental relationship between the group of reference and the individual person. A subject who has neither ability nor expertise to make decisions, especially in a crisis, will leave decision making to the group and its hierarchy. The group is the person's behavioral model.
In other words, the fact that the experimenter wore a grey technician's coat, was enough to convince the subjects to continue shocking the 'learner'. They imagined that he was some sort of scientist, and as he seemed to think it was okay to continue to 'shock' the victim, it must be alright. Ultimately, people are prepared to defer responsibility or decision making to those who are more suitably qualified.
Of course this has important implications. Thanks to our poor education system and constant media 'entertainment', we have a populace that is largely ignorant about important matters and thus if a newspaper columnist in The Sun states that, for example, immigration is vital to the economy, it is likely to be accepted as fact by his readership. After all, the author has presumably been employed because he knows about these things.
The Power Of The Media
So if people will, metaphorically, say black is white in order to conform when there is no real pressure to do so; and will accept the opinions of, and obey, those they believe are more knowledgeable than them, even if they feel uncomfortable doing so, surely the influence of the all-pervasive media and eleven years' state indoctrination is far more potent?
Consider now the power of the media. In the UK, tobacco companies have been banned from advertising their products on television, such is the potency of TV adverts, so thy have instead used other mediums of advertising:
During the period September 2001 to August 2002, tobacco advertising expenditure in the UK amounted to £25 million, excluding sponsorship and indirect advertising. The companies spent £11 million on press advertising; £13.2 million on outdoor (billboards); £714,550 on radio advertising; and £106,253 on direct mail. [8] Tobacco companies have traditionally invested heavily in the sponsorship of sport to promote their brands. In the UK, the tobacco industry was spending an estimated £8m a year on the sponsorship of sport (excluding Formula One) and a further £70m on Formula One in the UK.
http://old.ash.org.uk/html/factsheets/html/fact19.html
That's a lot of money! Tobacco companies wouldn't spend this unless they thought it worthwhile, which demonstrates that even their brand name on a racing car is an effective, though presumably subliminal, method of advertising. So imagine if every mainstream television channel, newspaper and radio station is constantly conveying propaganda endorsing multiculturalism, miscegenation and racial diversity! Sometimes the message is subtle, as in soap operas, other times it will be blatant, for example fictional dramas that portray nationalists as venimous, wicked yobs.
Article continues here (http://unrepentantbritishnationalist.blogspot.com/2009/10/conformity-media-smears-and-nationalism.html).