The old Historical Review Press logo Media control and censorship!


The mind-bending power of the masters of the media

The media-power in Great Britain and elsewhere


The Mind-Benders is an analysis of the media power in Great Britain. Written in 1997, it details how (and why) the information we receive via the media is censored and distorted. If we are to avoid insidious totalitarianism we must be aware of the enormous control over every form of mass media the Jews possess and – in any democratic society under such powerful influences – who are the real manipulators of political power.



INTRODUCTION

A power greater than government?



“The freedom of the press belongs to those who own the presses. And it’s true.” Jonathan Tobin, Editor of the weekly The Jewish Ledger (West Hartfort, USA), quoted in the Jewish Chronicle (London), Aug. 25, 1995, p. 19


According to the theory of democracy, ‘the people’ rule. They elect politicians by their own choice, and if and when those politicians fail to act according to their wishes they can be dismissed by the vote of the people. The pluralism of different political parties provides the people with ‘alternatives’; if one loses their confidence, they can support another. Thus is realised the democratic principle of: government of the people, by the people and for the people.

It would be nice if it were all so simple. But in a medium-to-large modern state things are not quite like that. How do ‘the people’ acquire the information and knowledge necessary for them to use their votes other than by blind guesswork? They cannot possibly witness everything that is happening on the national scene, still less at the level of world events. Only a tiny few of them ever see their political leaders close up and are able to watch and assess their performance of their duties. The vast majority are not students of politics. They don’t really know what is happening, and even if they did they would need guidance as to how to interpret what they knew.

‘The people’ are doctors, lawyers, engineers, clerks, shopkeepers, factory workers, farmworkers, small tradesmen, nurses, secretaries, schoolteachers and a thousand or more other things. They know, or ought to know, something about the occupations in which they are engaged. But only the minutest number can be expected to know the business of politics – one of the most complex of subjects, with its vast range of issues and the many points of view that will be brought to bear on each of these issues. To know what the issues are, and to examine and evaluate these points of view, the people need to have these issues presented to them and the points of view expounded in a form that they can understand.

This is where the ‘mass media’ come in: newspapers; television; radio. And for those with a more studious and enquiring bent there are other media: books; magazines; the internet. The list is growing as information technology advances.

But there is a problem here. ‘The people’ cannot own, control and regulate the media. That can only be done by a small minority – a mere fraction of the population, in fact much fewer than one per cent. And it is this minority which is able to determine which facts the people will be allowed to know about, which events will be reported to them, which points of view they will be able to examine and evaluate, which political parties it is good to vote for and which not, which politicians are decent, upright, honourable and capable citizens and which are disreputable, incompetent, ‘dangerous’ and ‘extreme.’

This invests that minority who control the mass media with enormous power – perhaps even greater power than a prime minister or cabinet. It is this minority which determines the climate of ‘public opinion’ in which politicians have to operate, the ‘public opinion’ to which they have to defer and which they dare not offend if they are to get elected and stay elected.

“Today the film makers are the people who control the most powerful medium in the world, and art that can create ideals, change language or topple governments.” John Baxter in the Daily Mail, 28 December 1995

Even when the mass media consisted mainly of newspapers, and only a small minority read those newspapers, this power was considerable. Today, when it embraces mass-circulation newspapers and television, it is colossal beyond imagination.

And we must not forget another fact about the media. Their political influence extends far beyond newspaper reports and articles, and television programmes, of a direct political nature – connected, that is, with current affairs that bear upon politics. In a much more subtle way, they can influence people’s thought patterns by other means: newspaper stories, pages dealing with entertainment and popular culture, movies, TV ‘soaps,’ ‘educational’ programmes, popular music: all these types of fare help form human values, concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, sense and nonsense and what is ‘fashionable’ and ‘unfashionable.’ These human value systems, in turn, shape people’s attitude to political issues, influence how they vote and therefore determine who holds political power.

“Wide-eyed KGB agents reported back to Moscow on the impact of the movies; how they reached the hearts of millions over a weekend, changing the attitudes of the audience in subtle but profound ways.” Daniel Jeffreys in the Daily Mail, 9.1.99, about the book Hollywood Party

Yet for some strange reason there is very little public discussion in Britain today of who actually exercises media control. The people are encouraged to get tremendously excited about the outcome of a general election, even of local government elections, yet these contests probably have far less a bearing on the question of who wields power over us than the much more crucial one of who regulates ‘public opinion’ and therefore determines the agenda both for the contesting of elections and for what is done in government by whoever wins.

Any study of what is happening on the national scene must therefore today include a study of the workings of the mass media: who the people are who own, control and operate those media, and to what purposes their immense power is being put.

The current affairs ‘discussion’

Discussion programmes on TV and radio dealing with current affairs and topical public issues are presented so as to convey the impression that they are conducted in accordance with the letter and spirit of ‘democracy,’ with various viewpoints given a hearing. However, where the discussion threatens to touch upon issues considered ‘sensitive’ to the liberal establishment which controls TV and radio, it is carefully stage-managed so that ‘dangerous’ viewpoints are excluded. This is particularly noticeable where discussion concerns matters of race or the related and equally ‘sensitive’ “Jewish question.”

One British TV programme some time ago was devoted to the subject of ‘anti-semitism,’ which was presented as being on the increase throughout Europe, including Britain. Various spokesmen, some Jewish and some non-Jewish, appeared on the programme to give their views. After the programme had proceded a little while, it became quite clear that the only differences between the participants lay in their attitudes as to how ‘anti-semitism’ should be treated. Some maintained that it should be rigorously suppressed by the introduction of tighter laws against it; others said that this practice would play into the hands of the ‘anti-semites’ by making them martyrs and that, however much ‘anti-semitism’ was to be deplored, suppressing it by law was not the way to fight it. One member of the discussion panel launched into a lengthy analysis of the mental state of ‘anti-semites,’ implying them to be suffering from a certain kind of insanity.

What was entirely absent from the discussion was any contribution offering an explanation of the viewpoint of the so-called ‘anti-semites.’ Of course, ‘anti-semitism’ itself is a misleading term deliberately adopted by our media-controllers so as to suggest that those thus labelled want to ill-treat Jews, even kill them, for no reason than that they are Jews, whereas the vast majority of people described as ‘anti-semites’ simply oppose what they see as excessive Jewish power. Whether or not they are correct in their assessment of this power is beside the point; if ‘democracy’ is to be more than just an empty phrase, they should be allowed to state their case in public then have that case seriously examined and debated. This, however, is the very last thing our media-controllers want. Therefore, when any programme discussing anti-semitism (i.e. criticism of Jewish power) is broadcast on TV or radio, ‘anti-semites’ (i.e. critics of Jewish power) are deliberately excluded, so that the ‘discussion’ is not really a discussion at all, merely an imitation of one.

Who are the manipulators?

But who is behind it all? Who are the people who determine what is watched on television and printed in the newspapers? This is not so easy a study because a great many of the people concerned operate in the shadows. And even in the case of those whose names are known, what is known about their backgrounds and their connections? Very little.

For this reason, very few people in Britain are aware of the huge influence over the mass media exercised by a certain ethnic minority, namely the Jews.

Straightaway, we can expect that mention of this minority will put many readers on the defensive. Is this ‘anti-semitism’?, some will ask. That, you see, is the first example of the hypnotic effect of media power. The mass media in Britain today have managed to implant into many people’s minds the idea that it is ‘anti-semitic’ even to acknowledge that members of the Jewish community play a large part in controlling our news and opinion and to question whether this is a good thing for Britain. In the uncomfortable feeling provoked in a number of readers of this text by the very mention of the word ‘Jews,’ there is provided the first lesson in media indoctrination and brainwashing!

This text is simply a study of who controls public opinion in Great Britain. We believe that in this study there should be no ‘no-go’ areas, no forbidden avenues of enquiry. We are concerned here with facts. What deductions people make from those facts is their decision. Our intention is that they should be roused from their former ignorance and apathy and persuaded to join our political struggle to achieve, through peaceable and legal means, the change of government which is required as a first step towards reversing the long decline of Britain and the British people.

It is the contention of this study that members of the Jewish community (whether practising or not) exercise a power and influence in Britain’s mass media that are out of all proportion to their numbers in the population. We believe that this is a fact that should not be hidden but should be known – and discussed. No great issue of concern can be properly examined unless all the facts pertaining it are known and are faced – fairly and squarely, with nothing swept under the carpet for fear that some noisy element may object.

Some people may accept the findings of this study as authentic and accurate but then say: “So what?” Isn’t it quite common for certain groups to be found in profusion in certain occupations whether for reasons of natural talent and aptitude, accidents of history, or whatever? Are there not a lot of Irish building workers and writers, Scottish doctors and engineers, Welsh singers, Black sportsmen, French and Italian restaurateurs and Indian and Pakistani textile merchants? Given that Jews are to be found in large numbers in the mass media, is this to be regarded as particularly sinister or dangerous? In other words, what’s the big deal?”

We hope that we have answered these questions in the foregoing part of this introduction. None of the other occupational fields mentioned have anything like the scope for the wielding of real power – political power, power over who governs us and to what purpose, power to shape our society and its values, to determine our destiny and future as a nation, to decide whether we even have any future as a nation.

We cannot therefore say of Jews in the media as some might say of other groups in their respective occupations and lines of business: “Oh well, they’re good at it – let them get on doing it.” What is at stake in respect of control of an institution with such massive power as the media places that institution in a special category of its own, which justifies a very high degree of concern over the matter.

Would we, for instance, feel happy and secure in the knowledge (should such be the case) that a particular ethnic group exercised control over our armed forces? We might wonder, in that case, where the loyalty of such a group would lie in the event of a war. And if we bear in mind that power over the mass media is today as potent in the possibilities it offers as command of a hundred armoured divisions on the battlefield, that mass media power should be a matter of tremendous national concern, and we would be foolish to the point of insanity to dismiss as of little importance a situation in which it lay in the hands of people who in their origins, and possibly in their loyalties, were not British.

And this is not all. As has been said, there is in Britain today a very broad consensus, transcending parties and classes, that much of the influence of the mass media is malignant and socially destructive in its effects. We simply take the question further: if so many believe the influence of the media to be malignant and destructive, we should be examining the nature of the media – not the least important question in which examination is: Who controls the media?

In a way, this study serves a purpose that is supposed to be served by the mass media in any democracy: The purpose of free and unfettered enquiry and of absolutely free expression of facts and opinion. Unfortunately, there is neither free enquiry nor free expression of either facts or opinion in the mass media in Britain today – and least of all on the subject of this study. Just when did you last see an article in a major newspaper examining, in proper depth, Jewish influence and control in Britain’s news and information industry? Just when did you last see a programme on TV dealing with the same topic? The answer to this question proves our point.

One phrase beloved of those who exercise influence in the media is ‘investigative journalism.’ The ‘investigative journalist’ is depicted as the crusading hero whose quest for the truth and whose dedication to the public interest leads him to take up the cudgels against all the forces of would-be suppression and censorship – even when, as is sometimes the case, this leads to a particularly loathsome form of intrusion into people’s private lives. But one form of investigative journalism which the media are most certainly not anxious to encourage is that which enquires into the identity of their own controllers and the underlying agenda to which they operate. Here we hope to remedy this glaring omission.

Naturally, we do not expect the facts which we unearth here to be taken up by the media and examined in the light of day. If there is any comment in the mass media on this study – which we think doubtful – it will that of condemnation, of dismissal out of hand, with liberal use of the term ‘anti-semitism.’ But it will not extend to any analysis of what we say or any attempt, by presentation of facts, to prove us wrong.

From this, dear reader, we leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Need for perspective

As we have prepared the material for this study it has been brought home to us that media influence and control in the modern world of communications is an immensely complex subject, in which the dangers of over-simplification are always present. The mere presence of members of a certain group working in a section of the media does not itself prove that that group has the ultimate ‘say’ in the section in question. In addition to this, there is the fact that ‘control’ of an institution like the mass media can operate in more than one way. Direct control through ownership is a relatively simple thing to understand, but this understanding does not provide for indirect forms by which the media can be, if not literally ‘controlled,’ then at least massively influenced. In this study we will be examining the power of particular lobbies to regulate the content of the press, TV, books and other means of communication by various pressures, such as the picketing of studios and bookshops (in which the implicit threat of violence is always present) and, perhaps more potent still, the method of advertising boycott (in which again the implicit threat of such an action can often suffice to achieve the lobby’s objective without the threat necessarily having to be put into practice).

Another factor must be borne in mind when the source of media control is being assessed. The communists in the heyday of their power were known to say: “Give us just a third of the places on any committee and we will guarantee to control that committee.” This was simply a statement of the fact that a minority in any body, public or private, which knows exactly what it wants and acts together as a coordinated group, bound by a single loyalty and a single objective, can quite easily get its way over a larger, but uncoordinated, mass of people with no such bonds, acting individually and in pursuit of no definite or conscious objective. It is not our claim that Jews necessarily outnumber non-Jews in all sections of the media (though in certain important ones this is indeed the case) but only that the former’s solidarity and oneness of loyalty, interest and purpose gives them an immense advantage over others in any bid for power and influence.

Students of Jewish influence in the mass media will notice a paradox: while that influence is used, in a hundred or more different ways, to weaken the national spirit and racial pride of the British people, Jews themselves, in their attitude to their Israeli homeland and to questions of Zionism generally, are to be found amongst the world’s most militant nationalists. In other words, what is good for us is definitely not good for them!

There is one final consideration of which we ask you, the reader, to take account. Jewish power in the mass media is a phenomenon acknowledged in political quarters widely different from our own and sometimes even by Jews themselves – as we shall show in one or two examples. In other words, as the saying goes, ‘Don’t just take our word for it!’

In the following text, we have highlighted individuals of Jewish origin by setting their names in bold type. Not all of the names in question will seem obviously Jewish; it has been the habit of Jews over the centuries to change their names, adopting those which best blend with the populations of the countries in which they have settled. Where persons with non-Jewish names are designated as Jewish, the reader can rest assured that extensive research has established them to be so.