Question: How do we know when something is clear? - because for a long time it was ‘clear’ that Newton’s world was the final answer, and then something else was seen to be the clear way.

Dr. David Bohm: “Yes. You have to be constantly sensitive to incoherence. You see, it’s not that people should not have said that Newton’s world is clear but that this fits what we know, they simply said too much, you see, by saying ‘that’s the way it is.’ If they had said, ‘the evidence we have fits this idea,’ that would have been right. Now, there’s a tendency to go too far and say, it covers everything."   see the interview

Editor's note: There's a tendency to go too far because the dysfunctional ego seeks for solace in certainty and absolutism. As Bohm, in another interview, said, the ego distorts reality to protect itself.

Western civilization at a crossroads; weapons of censorship now forbid discussing or questioning, reducing all dialogue to puritanical conformance versus non-conformance

Professor Mark Crispin Miller

Professor Mark Crispin Miller of New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development has taught classes on mass persuasion and propaganda for the last two decades.

He has been accused of “hate speech” in the course of explaining to his students the workings of deception and propaganda.

Dr. Joseph Mercola, on his site, reviewed the case of Professor Miller:

“Miller recently sued 19 of his department colleagues for libel after they signed a letter to the school dean demanding a review of Miller’s conduct. He points out that his course on propaganda is not focused on historical examples of mass persuasion but, rather, teaches his students to recognize and resist propaganda in real or recent times.

‘This can be quite challenging,’ he says. It’s rather easy to identify examples of propaganda that you do not agree with. It’s much more difficult when it’s something you care about, agree with or believe in; when it pushes your buttons. It requires you to detach, to take a bird’s-eye view and develop impartiality. You have to ‘make an attempt to think about it, critically,’ Miller explains, and to look at both sides of the issue.

Unfortunately, as noted by Miller, getting the other side of the story is now becoming increasingly difficult, thanks to Big Tech censorship, which oftentimes filters out or blocks all but one viewpoint… If this scenario strikes you as typical of the kind of intellectual and scientific censorship we’ve seen all around the world over the past year, you’re not alone.

Miller recognized it too, and created an academic freedom petition, which at the time of this writing has been signed by nearly 36,000 people. ‘All it asks is that NYU respect my academic freedom and set a good example for other schools,’ Miller says. ‘But I did it in the name of all professors, all journalists, all scientists, all doctors, activists and whistleblowers who have been gagged or punished for their dissidence, not just last year, but really, for decades.’ He goes on to list 'the censorship trifecta' — repressive tactics — that he was hit with:

1. ‘Assailing my students with non-evidence-based arguments.’ Basically, they accused him of being a ‘conspiracy theorist,’ which is ‘the oldest and most effective means of silencing inconvenient opinion,’ Miller says.

Indeed, the CIA weaponized this catchphrase in 1967 to discredit writers who questioned the veracity of the Warren Report about the Kennedy assassination. To learn more about how conspiracy theory became ‘a thing,’ read Conspiracy Theory in America by Lance deHaven-Smith.

Editor’s note: Today, 60 years after the JFK assassination, classified documents have still not been released – even though Congress mandated this to be done. For “national security”? All those involved at the time are now dead! Who or what are we protecting by the secreting of documents? Or are we protecting institutions and, as JFK called them, “secret societies” of power and corruption? After all this time there can be no “national security” reason for secrecy – there never was – but only a protecting of rogue institutions, and those controlling them, who safeguard their abilities to do the same thing all over again.

2. ‘Hate speech and microagression,’ which are a form of ‘social justice puritanism’ that forbids discussing or questioning certain ideologies. Doing so means you’re mocking or ridiculing certain groups of people. This too is simply a way to shut people up and dissuade honest discussion that might reveal problems or chinks in whatever one-sided argument you’re told to blindly accept.

3. Spreading ‘dangerous misinformation.’ Presently, and since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, questioning any part of the official narrative, no matter how incongruent, scientifically baseless or socially destructive it may be, means you are putting people in danger. Of course, at any other time, ‘dangerous misinformation’ could refer to any narrative that the ruling class wants to maintain.

Part and parcel of all three of these tactics is the labeling of any science that deflates or disproves the propaganda narrative as ‘alternative science’ or ‘fringe science.’

Editor's note: This is why Dr. Sheldrake is often introduced as a "controversial biologist," and Wikipedia says that Dr. Mercola practices "alternative medicine." These are pejorative labels. It's a form of "poisoning the well," a subtle smear tactic. 

It doesn’t matter if it’s published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals. It’s still dismissed as unreliable at best and misinformation at worst, incapable of standing up to the wisdom of the Dr. Fauci’s of the world.

The Deeper Significance of This Case

The problem with normalizing these weapons of censorship is that it makes education impossible, it makes science impossible, it makes democracy impossible. Everything is reduced to compliance versus noncompliance.

As noted by Corbett, Miller’s case goes beyond mere freedom of speech, which everyone ought to have, it goes into the issue of freedom of inquiry itself — the freedom to ask questions and ponder an issue or problem from multiple angles. Without the ability to think freely and express those thoughts, life itself becomes more or less meaningless.

You Can’t Resist Propaganda if You Can’t Recognize It

‘I can’t imagine a more important moment for the study of propaganda than the present,’ Miller says, because we are bombarded with it every moment of every day now. Once you learn to recognize it, you’ll find there’s hardly anything else. ‘I used to think it was vulgar to compare the contemporary American media with Dr. [Joseph] Goebble’s practices [editor’s note: a German Nazi politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945],’ Miller says. ‘I no longer think so. I don’t think that’s a stretch at all. The daily dissemination of absolute 100% falsehoods by The New York Times on every single page, and by CNN and the rest of them — it’s breathtaking to me.’

To learn more about the journalistic failures and staggering fabrications published by The New York Times, read The Gray Lady Winked by Ashley Rindsberg.  Miller wrote the foreword to this book.

‘We have to talk back,’ Miller says. ‘We have to take the bull by the horns and say, ‘Yes, we’re conspiracy theorists if the alternative is swallowing this preposterous narrative you’re trying to push. That’s a badge of honor as far as I’m concerned. It’s people like us, who insist on telling the truth, who are really essential to the survival of not just democracy but humanity itself. I know that sounds a bit grandiose, but I sincerely believe that now, because we are at a very dire crossroads in the history of Western civilization and have got to fight back for our children’s sake and the sake of everything we hold dear.’”

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