An Idiot’s Guide to Propaganda: How To Cook the Data (Part 2)

An Idiot’s Guide to Propaganda: How to cook the data (Part 2)

RHODA WILSON

Last year, Aaron Hertzberg compiled an idiot’s guide on how to convince the masses that there is a deadly pandemic, when there isn’t one, and pretend there are no injuries caused by the vaccine, when there are.

He has written the text for aspiring propagandists who would like to learn the art: “For the beginner, [the art of propaganda] can be very difficult to master. Even the experienced propagandist can at times fall into the trap of thinking that creating and disseminating propaganda is a straightforward enterprise – which is a good way to win a permanent all-expenses paid Siberian vacation,” he said.

“The following short guidebook will provide the aspiring propagandist, WEF lackey, Communist Apparatchik, Woke Marxist and seasoned government bureaucrat alike with the tools and knowledge necessary to develop their promising talent into full-bloom mastery of the art of propaganda.”

As one can imagine, Herzberg’s guide is necessarily long.  We are publishing one section at a time so hopeful propagandists don’t feel overwhelmed and give up on their dreams of a career in propaganda after the first hurdle.

idiots Guide to Cooking Data for Aspiring Propagandists

By Aaron Hertzberg as published by the Brownstone Institute on 20 December 2024.  The article was originally published on Hertzberg’s Substack page on 15 June 2023. For the introduction, which includes links to all sections, and ‘Section I – Definitions’ read HERE.

Section II – Curating Data

Even better than plying malleable definitions is avoiding situations that require definition shifting in the first place.

The best way to head off such issues is to curate the data in a way that avoids creating potential headaches, by employing one or more of the following tried and tested methods for corruptly hijacking the curation, organisation and presentation of data.

Table of Contents

II-1. Don’t Diagnose or Identify Something

If a patient comes in suffering from multiple neurological deficits after taking the Glorious Vaccine and gets sent home with a Xanax prescription for his “anxiety,” it won’t generate a diagnosis for a neurological deficit in the first place in any database. No diagnosis of a condition that could’ve been caused by the Glorious Vaccine – or diagnostic code in some big government or insurance database – means you will have to employ definitional sleight-of-hand to cover up the existence of diagnosed injuries associated with the Glorious Vaccine. Thus, you should ensure the people responsible for diagnosing or identifying problematic or contradictory data or observations to the Perfectly Safe and Effective Glorious Vaccine will avoid doing so.

It is worth emphasising here that patients are easily gaslit by their own physicians that “It’s all in their head,” even while they know they have serious, life-altering medical injuries that leave them disabled and completely unable to function that they experience daily.

Let’s illustrate this with the following hypothetical scenario:

Regime officials see that in the government-controlled PROPAGANDA Safety Surveillance Database set up to monitor Glorious Vaccine safety …

… there is a signal for VAMP Syndrome (Vaccine Associated Metamorphological Phenomena) conditions:

A patient comes into the doctor’s office presenting with rapid, acute onset of Renfield’s syndrome (thirst for blood), extreme photosensitivity, pronounced macrodontia, and severe Contact Dermatitis to silver that all began within hours of getting jabbed with the Glorious Vaccine. This is an obvious case of a VAMP Syndrome side effect – the patient’s presentation fits the diagnostic criteria for fully-fledged vampirism and the condition was caused by the Glorious Vaccine (since you the doctor can safely rule out any other cause plus the immediacy of the onset of VAMP symptoms after getting jabbed is a pretty self-evident indicator that the Glorious Vaccine caused the symptoms).

Even though the patient can see that they are clearly not right – they feel an overwhelming temptation to chomp down on your pulsating jugular vein, they can’t stand being in front of a window unless the shades are completely drawn shut, they accidentally bit off a few pieces of their tongue with their newly extra-long and razor-sharp front teeth, and their skin starts peeling if they touch the silver family heirlooms – so what?? You can still tell the patient, “This is in your head” and send them home with a Xanax prescription (and maybe a bag or two of O-Negative blood if you sense that the patient might not be able to control themselves much longer and you don’t want your jugular to supply their lunch). And the patient will actually just accept it and go home without much of a fight.

This neatly avoids even generating any diagnostic record of VAMP Syndrome altogether, so there’s nothing to show up in any database anywhere.

You’d be surprised at just how many doctors are compliant to the point that they will convince themselves that the furry woman with a tail that grew out of nowhere an hour after getting the Glorious Vaccine has nothing whatsoever to do with the Glorious Vaccine.

(Note: In all seriousness, it is important to come up with catchy acronyms or names for things that convey the impression of how you want people to view the thing, so don’t use this example in real life, because it conveys that you are not taking safety surveillance seriously, and makes people more likely to believe that you are trying to hide the actual safety issues with the Glorious Vaccine.)

II-2. Over-Diagnose or Over-Identify Something

Conversely, if you need to make more of something than there is readily available, simply reverse #1. For instance, if you need people to be more fearful of the Dreaded Disease, you can implement a mass-testing regime to juice up the number of “confirmed” cases of the Dreaded Disease. Also make sure to use tests that will return very high rates of positives, whether they’re true or not.

By increasing the surveillance or testing for something, you can generate the appearance of increasing numbers of whatever you’re testing for, or at least maintain the façade that it’s still around. Consider the following illustration from the good old US of A.  You can see on the top chart that as the number of daily covid tests went up, at the same time, the percentage of tests that were positive plummeted more than 75% (bottom chart). What this managed to do was keep the case numbers relatively high (middle chart), so even as the percentage of tests that were positive went down >75%, the number of new cases only decreased about 25% during that same time period.

The meaningless increase in the raw number of cases that was entirely a function of more testing nevertheless resulted in headlines like this great NBC panic porn piece published on 11 June 2020:

Remember: You find what you look for.  And you find more of what you look for more.

II-3. Don’t Report What Is Diagnosed or Identified

Sometimes it isn’t possible to avoid diagnosing or identifying something best left undiscovered. In such a case, you can at least make sure that what was observed isn’t included in official reports or data:

At a more individualised level, you should issue guidance to the doctors, medical personnel and administrative staff on the ground NOT to diagnose things you don’t want showing up in datasets. Don’t hesitate to use financial incentives to sweeten the pot for loyal regime-compliant doctors. Don’t be stingy here – prevention is almost always cheaper (and less stressful) than fixing problems after they have already arisen.

Even in those rare cases where a doctor cannot avoid diagnosing a patient with a severe condition that occurred right after taking the Glorious Vaccine, the doctor can still make sure to avoid reporting the adverse event to any database of Glorious Vaccine injuries.

Alternatively, if the regime database for documenting injuries from the Glorious Vaccine somehow still ends up containing too many problematic reports where it is casting doubts upon its safety, there are two things you must do.

The first is to strand a few of the database administrators along the stretch of Somalia’s coastline where the pirates hang out so the rest of them get their act together and stop letting so many reports get through. You’re paying them to do a job, which is to maintain the public perception that the Glorious Vaccine is the safest drug product ever invented; failure is not acceptable.

The second is to NOT publicly disclose the problematic reports in the database. The CDC tried their darndest, but were ultimately defeated by a rogue judge (which emphasises the need to have control over the judiciary as well):

II-4. Don’t Allow Investigation of Phenomena if the Findings Might Cause Problems

The flip side of “You’ll find what you look for” is that “You won’t find what you don’t look for,” so make sure nobody goes looking for potential signals of something that could be problematic for the regime narrative. If, say, the regime “accidentally” unleashes a plague in a third-world city, you can’t have pesky social media conspiracy theorists figuring out what happened, so you best make sure that nobody conducts autopsies or tests sick people.

The CDC offers another illustration of good pre-emptive strategic thinking to keep out data potentially harmful to the regime:

The CDC very smartly also has yet to commission a single autopsy of the thousands and thousands of deaths reported in the CDC’s own VAERS vaccine safety monitoring database. (Remember from Section I the part about adding absurd conditions to definitions? If you don’t, it’s best you review the material so that you have it at your fingertips.)

II-5. Publish only Part of the Data at First

Often enough, simply by publishing one part of the data and leaving out the other part for later, you can create a false narrative that takes root. So, when you finally publish the rest of the data, it won’t matter that it contradicts the basis for what has now become accepted dogma.

For example, if you need to portray the Dreaded Disease as more widespread than it actually is, you could follow the lead of Virginia’s cutting-edge propagandists and withhold some of the negative test results for a bit to raise the percentage of test results that are positive – which makes it seem like more people are sick with the Dreaded Disease:

Another scenario where you can utilise the partial data publication technique to great effect is where you find yourself forced to release data for whatever reason that will make the regime look really bad (it happens). So, you want to delay the release of the really damaging stuff for as long as possible – if you wait long enough, it will eventually cease being relevant. Also, if you dump it all at once, the shock factor will be enormous and you will have a big mess on your hands. However, if you release the information drip-drip-drip, then by the time the scandalous pieces are released, the “wow” shock factor has already long since worn off and people are not going to be paying as much attention anymore. This tactic was attempted by the FDA, although it was mostly thwarted by the rogue judge (emphasising the critical need for judicial control to prevent renegade judges from going rogue on the regime).

II-6. Limit the Acceptable Sources of Data or Information

When there are sources that generate data inconsistent with the regime narrative (it’ll happen once in a while despite your best efforts), simply discredit them as propaganda or something else uncredible and dangerous, like Russian bots. (As a general rule of thumb, you can always default to blaming or attributing any inconvenient information to “Russian disinformation” in a pinch.)

Exhibit A for this tactic would be the VAERS database run by the CDC. When VAERS showed utterly insane numbers of vaccine injuries by the covid vaccine …

Notice the underlined sentences above, they are quite revelatory.

For the green underlined sentence – “The CDC’s method makes it appear that the US has greater capacity to test than it really does” – observe how the CDC brilliantly managed to wrangle multiple propaganda cookies out of this one manoeuvre. Not only did they create the mirage of vastly higher rates of actively infected people but they also created the mirage that the government had a much greater capacity to test people for the virus than the government actually possessed. (It’s good to flaunt instances of government competence given that the government’s legendary reputation for staggering incompetence is one of the most notoriously difficult conceptions to push back on that people have about government.) A sharp propagandist is always looking to exploit additional angles for advantages instead of being content that the deployed propaganda tactic accomplished its primary intended objective.

The red underlined sentence – “The numbers can make it seem like states have enough testing capacity and are ready to lift restrictions, when that might not be the case” (and really the last two paragraphs) – offers a sagacious lesson about nipping potential thorns in the bud. You must always – always!! – be vigilant to head off *any* potential implications or quick takes on information that even though is generally supportive of the regime, also contains something that can be twisted to undermine some other aspect of the official Regime narrative. Basically, you can have your cake AND eat it too! Appreciate here how the regime scientist quoted adroitly manages to simultaneously:

1. voice approval of the increased testing capacity as a measure of the regime’s extraordinary competence;
2. lays the blame for the [intentional] “accident” upon the dissident political party; and,
3. cautions that even though the state is doing such an awesome job making testing widely available, that doesn’t mean that it’s safe to reopen! Remember, there’s a pandemic to maintain, which this regime scientist expertly does.

(Make sure to handsomely reward regime scientists for outstanding work like this. It’ll incentivise the rest of them to up their game and it’s good for morale.)

Also, observe that the media is a critical regime ally without whom you will fail. So do what you gotta do to maintain the cozy relationships – don’t start penny-pinching here.

II-9. Delete Problematic Data

Yup. Like Bleach Bit-ing Hillary’s emails. It’s good to purge databases from time to time of data inconsistent with the regime’s narratives or positions otherwise it might accumulate into a discernible trend that could be noticed by regime dissidents or disinformation spreaders.

So, if for instance, the safety database for the Glorious Vaccine contains too many reports, simply expunge them, like the CDC does, as illustrated by the chart below showing the number of problematic VAERS reports expunged by the CDC each week:

Notice in this instance that the CDC’s VAERS workers were underperforming for most of the time – you can’t allow critical personnel to slack off. This entire chart should show bars up to the top – there’s no valid reason why they couldn’t have deleted lots of VAERS reports in August 2021 like they did during April and May 2022. If you have to hire extra personnel to handle expunging reports, do it.

Also, why did these slackers allow so many reports to accumulate in the first place?? There shouldn’t even be enough reports in such a database to begin with where there would then be a need for weekly mass purges of said reports.

Perhaps the most important lesson of this entire book is this: The boring, droll, tedious logistical minutiae of disseminating and maintaining propaganda are every bit as critical as a grand sweeping Big Lie or breathtaking linguistic gymnastics.

You might have to get creative to come up with a justification or explanation for this if people figure out that there are missing data, so be sure to have talking points prepared in advance just in case.

Another great example of devious data deletion in action is the following brilliant expungement undertaken by the Australian government to eliminate inconvenient climate data showing heat records that happened too many years ago to be blamed on human carbon emissions:

Unfortunately, they got busted, which is sometimes inevitable when you try to delete something really significant and noticeable. Which is why it’s imperative to have a Gulag system ready and waiting around the clock to handle a sudden surge of new inmates at a moment’s notice (like Australia’s quarantine camps).

II-10. Create False Data That Seems to Debunk Your Own Narrative to Trick and Discredit the Opposition

When confronted with a persistent information threat that is corrosive to your propaganda efforts, this is a brilliantly devious tactic to defoliate them of their authority, credibility and clout. Simply put out false data that superficially seems to debunk the regime’s narrative but that is easily disproved. The craven enemies of the state will undoubtedly seize upon this false info or data, and will therefore become discredited when you demonstrate that they fell for the now-obviously ludicrous claims.

Such as what the military did with their own in-house database of all the medical conditions for the entire military called DMED. They deliberately seeded it with fake data that looked like a total OMG!!!!!!!! moment that showed unholy massive increases in all sorts of medical conditions like cancers, pregnancy loss and others associated with the sacred covid vaccines. Then when a few heroic military doctors found the DMED data, they fell for it hook line and sinker … which killed the whole story. (For a full detailed timeline and explanation of this, see HERE.)

II-11. Use Pictures, Memes or Other Types of Media to Lie Boldly and Audaciously

Much of public perception of the Science or data comes down to the visual presentation of the science or data – a good meme or image can effectively communicate completely false data in a way that leaves people with the conviction that the false data is absolutely 100% true.

For example, if you want to portray that the rates and severity of myocarditis caused by the Dreaded Disease are dramatically worse than the rates and severity of myocarditis caused by the Glorious Vaccine even though the precise opposite is true, you could create a powerful image like this:

Now, people will instinctively associate “Dreaded Disease Myocarditis” with a massive mushroom cloud apocalypse vs myocarditis from the Glorious Vaccine as a tiny nothing pinprick that doesn’t even show on the chart.

II-12. Create Data Visualisations That Misrepresent the Data

Sometimes you can’t help but publish data that is really, really bad (for the regime or Science™️). But luckily for you, most people (and academics) are shallow idiots who are too lazy to read words printed next to a chart or graph. So, you can deviously portray the data in a visualisation scheme that distorts or hides what the data says.

Let’s illustrate using an example from the greatest of the Science™️journals – the Lancet. The Lancet published a study estimating the number of deaths caused by extreme cold and extreme heat around the world each year. Because governments around the world want to maintain the fiction of Global Warming being a mortal peril to humanity, they needed to show that deaths caused by heat outnumbered deaths caused by cold. At a minimum, they had to be equal. Thus, when the Lancet discovered that cold deaths outnumbered heat deaths by a 10 to 1 margin (literally), they had to figure out a way to create a chart that disguised that inconvenient little fact. Which resulted in the chart below on the left side:

The blue bars show deaths from cold, the red bars show deaths from heat. The bigger the bar, the more deaths. They needed to make the red bars to be as big as the blue bars. So, they employed a devious little trick: if you look at the purple underlined numbers which translate the size of the bar into a specific number of deaths, you’ll see that for the blue bars (cold deaths), each inch of a bar represents 50 deaths, but for the red bars (heat deaths), each inch of a bar represents only 10 deaths. Thus, the same size bar represents 5x the number of deaths for cold deaths as it does for heat deaths, even though they look the same. But people don’t pay attention and will just go, “Oh they look about similar so there must be a roughly equal proportion of heat deaths to cold deaths.” (And they even tried to sneak in a giant interval at the end where the last inch of red bars represents 210 deaths instead of only 10 (orange arrow).)

Had they created an honest chart that used the same scale for both cold deaths and heat deaths, it would look like the chart on the right. The thing is, one glance at that chart gives you the distinct impression that extreme cold is a vastly greater threat than extreme heat, which could lead to some uncomfortable questions about whether maybe a bit of Global Warming would actually be beneficial to humanity.

(Note: When using this tactic, try to be more subtle and discreet than the Lancet, where it was very easy for even a layperson to spot the sleight of hand.)

Rigging the SCIENCE

“To this end, Lysenko began to ‘educate’ Soviet crops to sprout at different times of year by soaking them in freezing water, among other practices. He then claimed that future generations of crops would remember these environmental cues and, even without being treated themselves, would inherit the beneficial traits.”—The Atlantic, ‘The Soviet Era’s Deadliest Scientist Is Regaining Popularity in Russia’

Rigging the science is nothing new. Fortunately for the propagandist, Science is very easy to manipulate at will if you are the regime. Just look at the accomplishments of Trofim Lysenko when he had the backing of Comrade Stalin. The following sections will detail what you need to do to successfully rig the Science to support the regime’s narrative and objectives.

A perfect illustration of a concerted and effective enterprise of Science-rigging is Big Pharma’s well-oiled propaganda machine. A group of renegade scientists conspired together to articulate precisely how Big Pharma controls and manipulates Science and Data at will:

Obviously, the fact that THIS article is still publicly accessible is an astounding failure of the regime censors. In a country with a functional government, all the authors of such an audacious attack on the regime (and censors who failed to stop it from being published and/or didn’t take it down) would be deported to the North Pole, yesterday.

(Sidebar: These authors do accurately describe how we corrupt the science to fit the regime agenda. Articles such as these, while they obviously cannot be allowed to be disseminated publicly, are perfectly acceptable to disseminate among regime propagandists in order to better understand how to effectively propagandise.)

Also important to note is that Pharmaceutical companies – “Big Pharma” – are usually going to be regime-compliant, but if a Pharma company becomes “less” compliant, then you, of course, should prosecute them for their dastardly fraud. Also, make sure to fine loyal Pharma companies big bucks every few years so the population thinks that the Regime has an adversarial relationship with Big Pharma and will therefore be less likely to realise that the regime and Pharma are in cahoots. A few billion is no big deal to their balance sheets.

About the Author

Aaron Hertzberg is a writer on all aspects of the pandemic response. You can find more of his writing at his Substack: ‘Resisting the Intellectual Illiteratti’.

Featured image taken from the front Cover of ‘The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cooking Data for Aspiring Propagandists’.

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This article (An Idiot’s Guide to Propaganda: How to cook the data (Part 2)) was created and published by The Expose and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Rhoda Wilson

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