Keyword Hijacking Smackdown! Challenge for HMW (and poll)

[populistindependent]

Our political discussions are packed with hijacked keywords, so much so that it is necessary to avoid the use of certain words if you want to make your point. Using a hijacked keyword is certain to enflame passions and lead to a talking points feud and break down all possibility for thoughtful intelligent discussion. I hesitate to even mention any of them as examples, because of the powerful and destructive effect they have. One word has the power of a scholarly and well documented and researched paper, let alone a logical paragraph or two.

Hijacked keywords are not only words that have been re-defined, or that have covert definitions, but they are words that become “thought clusters” - they contain an entire story line, that is designed to seem self-evident and irrefutable with numerous unexamined premises and assumptions along for the ride. Merely uttering the word makes for an entire argument, and one that precludes examination or discussion on any other terms.

Since words are poorly defined, or not at all, in these discussions, we are left with arguing about personal beliefs, feelings, preferences and prejudices, which through the hijacking of keywords are able to masquerade as philosophies and opinions. There are no immediate personal consequences for misusing a word or for using a word for covert effect , it is highly emotionally satisfying to indulge in beliefs, feelings, preferences and prejudices rather than ideas, and there are no objective standards for measuring anything in political discussions, so our discussions are dominated and steered and controlled by hijacked keywords.

Hundreds of well-compensated and talented people are working in think tanks every day at hijacking keywords and perfecting the techniques for doing it, and the loaded words are everywhere—like verbal landmines—they surface every few minutes in every conversation, and they are such an obvious and frustrating obstacle to discussion, that it surprises me that people don't see this or think that it is all explained away as coincidences.

In the commercial project I was involved in, we wrote programs for analyzing the content of thousands of websites, the keywords that were used by the public to get to them, the subsequent behavior of the visitors and cross-referencing that data. What we found is that what people say that words mean to them and what they really mean are two different things when we look at people’s behavior. Since we were required to actually produce objective results for the client, this disciplined us and forced us to look at the data rather than at our expectations or feelings or hunches. We discovered that the addition of a single word, if it was a hijacked keyword, to a body of text with no other changes dramatically impacted people’s behavior as measured objectively by length of visit, next destination, and likelihood of taking action, such as making a purchase. Again and again, we found ourselves saying “omg, look at that. That word means something different to people than what they claim it means, and it was always the same type of word—one that there was a concerted promotion effort that involved an emotional charge and a story line and the repetition of a new meaning for the word going on somewhere, and one that was popping up all over the place in a variety of contexts and with a variety of strange new meanings. It was so easy to steer and control people through the use of hijacked keywords, that we had many discussions about the ethical issues involved.

The smart and successful marketer cannot ignore this. He or she must build the marketing plan around the hijacked meaning of the word, not the supposed meaning of the word. I am absolutely certain that marketers and propagandists are using the techniques we discovered. Why would they not?

I don’t think there is a “keyword hijacking central” where devious people are coordinating all of this. No, I am sure there are hundreds and hundreds of “keyword hijacking centrals” where devious people are doing this, and no obvious coordination is needed to achieve the same effect in practical and functional terms.

Because of client confidentiality I can’t give any real examples from our work, but I will venture one example from the political realm, and I hope we don’t get into an argument about the issue as a result. “Illegal alien” - people who use that might claim that it means “I have nothing against Mexicans, and this is not racist, I am only concerned about people who break the law and won’t follow the rules the rest of us must follow, and I think we should have the right to exclude guests at the table who were not invited.” In a political discussion, a person can get away with defining these terms anyway they like, but if you were a marketer whose job it was to appeal to the people saying that, it would be much more successful to base the marketing program on what the words really mean, rather than what the people using them claim them to mean. That might be “I really don’t like Mexicans, and any plausible and believable excuse we can come up with to hurt them and exclude them will make me feel good.” Were I marketing for an organization that was promoting that idea, I wouldn't mess around talking about the immigration law or anything else factual that related to the supposed meaning of the phrase, I would insert many covert and sly references that reinforced the unspoken meaning, and wherever possible I would find hijacked keywords that conveyed the images that reinforced the hidden meaning and use those liberally in the copy.

This is not a perfect example, but I chose it because I thought it might be the least charged that I could think of. Doodad would probably flip out, but other than that I am hoping that no one else here is so emotional about issues of race that they will feel compelled to drive this off topic because of the example I chose.

[populistindependent]

By the way, an effective way to hijack a keyword is to couple it solidly and inseparably with another word, as in death-tax, personal-responsibility, illegal-alien, welfare-queen, Islamic-terrorist, and yes....

democratic-underground
rigorous-intuition

...and populist-independent lol.

[professorpan]

The use of words, and framing, is NOT what Hugh calls "keyword hijacking." I'm well aware of how words can be twisted, crafted, and manipulated.

I'm talking about specific examples of what Hugh calls "keyword hijacking" -- like the use of the name "Limpet" in a Don Knotts film to detract attention from limpet mines. To pick just one example out of the dozens he's thrown around over his time on this board.

One. Just one. If he's so sure that it's a real phenomenon, I can't see why he won't suggest one of his better discoveries.

[populistindependent]

The use of words, and framing, is NOT what Hugh calls "keyword hijacking." I'm well aware of how words can be twisted, crafted, and manipulated.

I'm talking about specific examples of what Hugh calls "keyword hijacking" -- like the use of the name "Limpet" in a Don Knotts film to detract attention from limpet mines. To pick just one example out of the dozens he's thrown around over his time on this board.

One. Just one. If he's so sure that it's a real phenomenon, I can't see why he won't suggest one of his better discoveries.

I am not talking about framing or the creative use of words in the traditional sense. This is different, although related. It is going to take several months to flesh out. For example, why are we vulnerable to it today when we weren't in the past? That could possibly be because of the rise of brand names and what are called "nameplates" in the automotive field. People have become gradually accustomed to words being stripped of their original meanings and a new set of associations being attached to the words.

Another area for investigation - how much keyword hijacking is intentional and conscious, how much is dumb luck, how much is hunt and peck - after all, it works, so once hit upon, even if accidentally, it is reinforced and rewarded, and how much of it is the product of all of us internalizing the mechanism and using it without realizing that we do?

The point is that you can get words to trigger stories in people's minds - thought clusters, complete arguments, based on unexamined assumptions and premises.

We know that marketers have been working on stuff like this for decades. We also know that the intelligence agencies have been. We also know that the right wing propaganda think tanks are in communication with both of those groups of people. We know that there is a convergence of interests between those groups. We know that the public has gone half mad, and people act as though they had ideas implanted into their thinking without their full awareness and that they reliably regurgitate those ideas and that those ideas influence their behavior. We know, from arguing with people, that their arguments are not consciously worked out, but seem to spring into their minds fully formed when some trigger activates them. Those triggers are words, words encrusted with an array of new associations, emotionally charged and embedded in a complete story. Touch the word, and the story comes out. Yet the person reciting it cannot tell you what it means in any logical or coherent way.

Look, Hugh is not communicating this very well. I am just starting to work on it, so I don't have the sort of proof you are asking for yet. But I am confident that I will before long.

[§ê¢rꆧ]

Here's one that would seem to me to be a good example of KH (as I understand it)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058456/ (co-opting the word 'patsy' in a comedic light at a time when the word had most reverbation, say, with Oswald)

But I am really interested in the mechanism HMW conjectures KH takes place; Disney is mentioned a lot. How does a keyword hijack get from a psyop division to Disney's animation labs?

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Here's one that would seem to me to be a good example of KH (as I understand it)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058456/ (co-opting the word 'patsy' in a comedic light at a time when the word had most reverbation, say, with Oswald)

Jerry Lewis in 'The Patsy.' Just after Oswald told reporters that's all he was.

That's an excellent example of KH and I've already written it up here.
As soon as I found out it existed I ran out and found a copy.

Peter Lorre and some other actors who wouldn't normally be in this Lewis flick for 8 year-olds reinforce my strong suspicion that the State Department rep. in Hollywood commissioned Lewis to make this film for the mourning nation's kids.

Filming was started just weeks after JFK was shot and it is a hand-holding there-there for the nation's kids at a time when Jerry Lewis was a huge box office draw.

The story mirrors the loss of JFK and instead starts with a showbiz star dying in a plane crash and all his personal staff wondering what to do next. The realize they have all the savvy to train a new star to work for so they can have jobs, the bellboy, Lewis.

The female does lots of mothering of the child-like Lewis and gives speeches about how 'sometimes the things in life that make us who we are aren't happy things.'

There's a dream sequence of Lewis and the female maternal/love interest innocently slow-dancing on a school gym floor. He's in a suit and she's in an outfit that very closely resembles Jackie Kennedy's Dealey Plaza pink outfit complete with hat.

The camera pulls up and out to reveal them dancing on the gym floor right in the lines for basketball that closely resemble...a bullseye.

Subliminal catharsis accomplished.

But I am really interested in the mechanism HMW conjectures KH takes place; Disney is mentioned a lot. How does a keyword hijack get from a psyop division to Disney's animation labs?

The Pentagon took over Disney during WWII for training and propaganda films.

Hitler envied Disney Studios and tried to start a German animation industry but never succeeded. Still, his Nazi studios did manage to get out a cartoon about a bunch of animals banding together to defend themselves against a predator.
Anthropomorpism works really well on children and Disney is the expert.

The man, Walt Disney, was very anti-union and was an FBI informant, another Ronald Reagan type. The Disney business was struggling before WWII and was saved by becoming a US asset.

Having almost not been able to get Americans to take up arms to stop European fascism (kind of) since they were soured on 'the glories' of WWI like poison gas, the US government's psychological advisors were very concerned about the public's reaction to the new horrible nuclear age. Civilians are inclined to reject mass slaughter as an option and need to be manipulated into accepting it and participating.

So handling the public psyche became a new permanent national security strategy during the Cold War and America's kids especially needed a new kind of psychological baby-sitting that included indoctrination and conditioning.

This corporate-government relationship with Cold War baby-sitter, Disney, blossomed with the advent of TV as the CIA's new Cold War psy-ops venue in coordination with movies and Disney Land where the big military-industrial corporations like General Electric were showcased.

During WWII Disney had been used as a foot-in-the-door good will ambassador in South America under Nelson Rockefeller's Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, a large regional OSS division.

That propaganda function was transferred to America's kids as the total war doctrines used so effectively by Hitler were 'Americanized' by the CIA's Psychological Strategy Board and then Allen Dulles' Operation Mockingbird.

During WWII Disney made movies warning Americans about Nazis.
After WWII Disney used Project Paperclip Nazis like Heinz Haber to indoctrinate American children into accepting the nuclear age with 'awe and wonder' instead of horror.

American heroes, just fathers, action adventure males...these were the early role-models that Disney hyped for nationalist social cohesion, obedience to male authority, and military recruiting. All elements of "national will" for the new permanent low-level war.

Role-models and stereotypes, the basic tools of social engineering, are unavoidable elements of short-attention span theater like TV and movies.
And kids pick up their in-group/out-group ideas much earlier than adults think.

Nurturing a government-sanctioned and issued pantheon of useful stereotypes meant to create predictable behavior and provide mental handles for manipulation...is a national security project that goes back to the 1930s when the FDR administration was tapping the advice of social researchers and using it to slowly bring the public around as far as possible to face war against overseas fascism.

So Disney was mandated as the chief purveyer of desired stereotypes, values, and beliefs for the nation's children.

The Cold War's national security theme of loyalty was illustrated to kids using dogs as in 'Old Yeller' and 'Lassie.'

Preventing post-WWI isolationism and keeping kids aware of those other countries 'out there' in the newly-intimate world of intercontinental missiles was the reason for themes like 'It's a Small World After All...' a perfect sugary feel-good presentation to introduce a national security meme kids wouldn't choke on.

This was the same theme meant for reinforcement with the 1956 spectacle, 'Around the World in 80 Days,' not a Disney movie. Eleanor Roosevelt was prodded into making a record about the world's countries as a kind of goodwill ambassador, much the same as Bill Clinton today.

Survivalist themes that evoked a military mindset were displayed as costume drama adventures like 'The Swiss Family Robinson' and then 'The Cast Aways.' This theme was continued as TV's 'Gilligan's Island.'

The Just Father figure was the social anchor for nationalist cohesion and power dominance but couched in a friendly non-threatening manner that wouldn't scare kids.
Fred McMurray was the perfect role model and anti-heroes like Don Knotts served as foils for masculinity.

Then things to cover-up started to accrue and Disney began to make decoys and use keyword hijacking to keep the kids from picking up the bad news the adults might be discussing. These movies are like cupcakes loaded with warrior vitamins and anti-biotics that ward off critical thinking about authority.

Combining the universal social-engineering gender role-modeling and the decoys in the same movie became the norm, peanut butter and jelly in the same bite.
And that has remained the norm for psy-ops movies which accomplish several psy-ops tasks at the same time. (Now I'm hungry.)

I'd also like to know the name of the men at Disney who decide which projects go ahead and when. They are CIA-State Department assets OR simply members of those agencies themselves with no middle men. They do use state-of-the-art psy-ops that shapes kid's minds without incurring the suspicion of parents.

They've been doing it since...WWII. That's lots of organization and institutionalized savvy based on lots of tested product and state-of-the-art behavioral research.

Parents don't know how their kid's minds are formed. No idea. The CIA does.

I have the mini-book versions of the animated movies and deconstruct each page of drawing and text to find the social engineering propaganda and the cover-up counter-propaganda.

I have pages of this analysis because Disney (CIA for Kidz!) is the flagship of national security psy-ops for children. Extremely educational.

One good Disney picture book is a Rosetta Stone of psy-ops tricks and the sociology that they are exploiting at the same time.

[slow_dazzle]

is what violence is in a dictatorship" (paraphrased)

I don't always agree with you on KH hijacks Hugh. But on the subject of the pervasive use of imagery, concepts and words as ways to control a society I am in complete agreement. Your narrative on Disney? Yes, there is something important here and when we consider it is aimed at CHILDREN we should look really closely at the messages being promoted.

[Ziggy Toshiba]

Someone asked for this reference in another thread, but I forget where. Long time reader (from the beginning of this blog actually) first time poster...

William S Burroughs The Electronic Revolution

In the beginning was the word and the word was god

IMHO opinion, his definitive masterpiece and theory of everything.

HMW theory is correct, but less so a consort of conspiracy, than a confluence of the multi-contextualized world (thus like other ephemeral phenomena unprovable).

On this same subject here are some of my notes, excepted from a book called Verbal Behavior and Politics

1.Political Analysis of Verbal Behaviour: Verbal versus Empirical Reality

Zwischenwelt : a concept which means that the images of the world created through language constitute an intermediate world between man and reality.

Laffal, Pathological and Normal Language, p 10

(Linguists include Leo Weisgerber, Walther von Warthburg, Rudolph Hallig, Benjamin Lee Whorf)

Idiosyncrasies of the respective languages, rather than poor translations, explained the differences in images; however, the consequence was that each audience was exposed to and responded to a different Zwischenwelt, with little change for ever sharing the same image of reality. The limits of each experiential world coincided with the limits of its’ language system. Pg 10

Today, semantic maps of the real world become outmoded more and more quickly, yet older people change their existing maps only slowly if at all while the young internalize the new maps. Most political decisions were made by men whose maps were outlined at least thirty years ago. Pg 11

2. Reality Distortions
Discrepancies in truth perceptions arise from the fact that reality perception varies with the perceiver’s characteristics and experiences.

Alden E Lind, Perceptions and Political Bargaining, (ASA paper, 1969) p 20.

X claims cuts in taxes is sound economics.
Y deems this is a lie.
Y may be unable to understand rationale behind X claim.
Verbal justification by X, may provide clues to X perceptions of economics and taxes.
Even if X is wrong, verbal pronouncements identifies X rationale.
If X verbal pronouncements reveal his perceptions, they may shed light on possible action expected in future.

Nazli Choucri The Perceptual Base of Non-Alignment, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 13 (1969) 57.

Language, however deceives the deceiver; it cannot be stripped bare of its complex relation to a total flow of subjectivity. Within limits, it remains an unwilling mirror of the soul.

Satish K Arora and Harold D Lasswell, Political Communication: The Public Language of Political Elites in India and the United States (New York, Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1968) p 2.

Comparative Soundness of Verbal Data

Taken by themselves, actions often do not suggest the guidelines by which they ought to be interpreted. These guidelines are supplied by the interpretation of contextual criteria, which generally involves verbalized processes such as abstracting, categorizing, and stating of alternative interpretations.

Charles A McClelland

Your all welcome!

[FourthBase]

Wow, thank you Ziggy!!

[theeKultleeder]

I wish there were a set of "content-free" theses that one could use to build their own KW Hijacking examples. Like the principles shouldn't be embodied in the examples themselves.

That's another quality of scientific theories: the results can be reproduced by other independent researchers.

[IanEye]

Sepka wrote:

There's a way to test the hypothesis, you know. Movies aren't made in several weeks to cover up some inconvenient bit of news. They take several years to make, and the themes, characters, and title of upcoming films are available on IMDB. If Hugh's correct, then the government has to be planning out their actions several years in advance to be able to cover up breaking news with movies.

Let Hugh examine the upcoming movies for 2008 on IMDB. Go to http://www.imdb.com/nowplaying/ , and use the little dropdown menu to see upcoming movies to July, 2008. If there's anything to the theory, then Hugh (or others, for that matter) should be able to forecast which embarassing news items will break each month.

_________________


Sepka the Space Weasel has an interesting point here. If I was going to nominate an upcoming movie to keep an eye on it would be Fuqua's "By Any Means Neccessary" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0476966/ ), the plot of which is:
Looking to prevent a potential terrorist attack, a cop turns to a jailed mobster for insider information.
So, you will have Malcolm X's famous quote linked to terrorism and mobsters. Hugh should take grim validation from that.

The IMDB listing doesn't have much info, but it would appear to be a re-tread of a previous Fuqua film I have mentioned here before, 2000's "Bait" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211938/ ), which premiered on 09-12-2000 and features a plot involving releasing a prisoner to help solve a Fed gold heist from underneath the WTC towers.

Who knows? Maybe the premiere was off by a day because 2000 was a leap year.......

[professorpan]

Hugh, if you'd only remember when you were last proved wrong, instead of regurgitating, it might help your credibility a little. Back in this thread, You wrote:

Hugh: This Jerry Lewis movie, 'The Patsy,' was filmed from January 6–February 28 1964, a mere six weeks after Lee Harvey Oswald claimed to reporters that this was all he was.

I replied:

And therein lies the rub, dear manatee.

If you knew anything about film production (and you've proved, again and again, that you haven't a clue) you'd realize that any film which began shooting "a mere six weeks after" Oswald's use of the word "patsy," was written FAR in advance of the actual shoot. Jerry Lewis wrote and directed the film, so he would have had to have foreknowledge of the assassination and Oswald's role, and would have been complicit.

Maybe he was hanging around with those other spook puppets and collaborators -- Don Knotts and Bob Denver?

I very much look forward to see how you're going to defend this nonsense example, Hugh. Because, as we've all seen, you never admit you might be wrong.

You tried to wriggle out of it, but you couldn't. I encourage everyone to go back to that thread and see for yourself.

Don't let logic get in the way of your far-out theorizing. That might cause your whole house of cards to come crumbling down, one "keyword hijacking" example at a time.

You work the way a schizophrenic does -- spotting patterns and building elaborate theories to explain them. Your scrying over Disney books is little different than a mentally ill person looking for hidden messages in newspapers and magazines. I'm not suggesting you are mentally ill -- just that your process of ferreting out "secret" messages is identical.

If you only would do as I have suggested -- work backwards and try to *disprove* your supposed "hijackings" -- you'd start to notice the inconsistencies, the leaps of logic, and the chronological impossibilities. While that's not as fun as imagining you have remarkable insight into spook behavioral modification, it's more honest. And ultimately, more conducive to your well-being.

[FourthBase]

The question there is then...how much is the word patsy involved in the script, and was the word part of the original pre-Oswald script? The only way that example of Hugh's isn't unraveled is a scenario in which patsy is either not part of the screenplay dialogue or was added post-Oswald, and the same goes for the title -- was it the working title pre-Oswald or not?

[IanEye]

was it the working title pre-Oswald or not?

That would seem to be a fair question.
Also, ( i haven't seen the film) it would appear to be that the title refers to the Jerry Lewis character, which would be Oswald, but the way Hugh describes the film, Lewis is supposed to fit the JFK role. That doesn't work for me.
As it is, the plot reminds me of the Kevin Kline film, "Dave" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106673/ ), in which the character Dave Kovic , is the "replacement" for the President.

[professorpan]

The question there is then...how much is the word patsy involved in the script, and was the word part of the original pre-Oswald script? The only way that example of Hugh's isn't unraveled is a scenario in which patsy is either not part of the screenplay dialogue or was added post-Oswald, and the same goes for the title -- was it the working title pre-Oswald or not?

Wouldn't that be a good question to ask oneself before proclaiming the film to be a "keyword hijacking" piece of propaganda?

According to Wikipedia, the working title for the film was "Son of Bellboy" because the film was originally going to be a sequel to his film called "The Bellboy."

Even so ... that means nothing unless we can find documentation that the title was chosen for a particular reason. Only the writers -- Lewis and Bill Richmond -- could tell us. Or possibly documents with the title in place could be located. Which requires some actual work to find out -- much more difficult and time consuming than just looking for patterns and keywords.

Let's see what would have been required for Hugh to be correct.

1. Paramount or the CIA's moles at the studio would have to decide that Jerry Lewis's comedy would be used as a psyop to deflect attention from, or "hijack" Oswald. This itself would be a strange idea, because the use of "patsy" would just as likely draw attention to Oswald. This is an achilles heel of Hugh's keyword theory that he simply dismisses over and over again.

Studios pick titles carefully -- to maximize box office receipts. This is well-documented. Hugh's theory offers zero documentation.

2. If the studio insisted upon the title for propaganda purposes, Lewis and Richmond would have to agree to the title. Or, Lewis and/or Richmond would have to be "in on it." If they are in on it, they'd have to be trusted to cooperate. More assumptions with zero support.

3. Hugh suggests that Lewis was, indeed, "in on it" because he inserts material and orchestrates shots to "mirror" the Kennedy assassination. So not only do we have alleged CIA operators calling the shots at Paramount (zero evidence), we now have a complicit director/actor/comedian Jerry Lewis following the supposed CIA playbook.

Hugh suggests that this sort of over meddling infests Hollywood, at all levels -- from independent film companies to the major studios. If he is correct, there would be thousands of people, at bare minimum, involved in creating explicit propaganda -- and aware of their roles in doing so. Aware that their industry is completely in the grip of the CIA (or whoever the controllers are). That includes studio heads, directors, writers, publicists, actors, graphic designers, lawyers, etc. etc.

And they are all complicit, aware -- and not one of them has ever dared to expose what is really happening (per HMW).

That is a lot to swallow.

So what is more likely -- that this enormous, covert operation has been in place for decades and micromanages down to minor details of movies and tv in an unproven effort to subtly and not-so-subtly influence public opinion and behavior in the manner Hugh suggests? And that this vast conspiracy is so leak-proof that no one except our own manatee has uncovered it?

Or that Hugh is wrong? And things don't work like that? That his conception of media hijacking is a hacked together theory with no real substance?

There is ample documentation of how Hollywood works, from biographies and scholarly works to tell-all confessions of insiders. There is zero -- ZERO -- documentation that the CIA micromanages the content of media in the way Hugh suggests.

Over and over again, I have suggested that he put his theory to the test by attempting to prove it wrong -- to seek contradictory evidence. He could start by putting away the propaganda manuals and reading some books about Hollywood and the entertainment industry. Maybe even talk to people in the news media, or people who write for film and tv. And ask them how decisions are made -- and listen to them.

I doubt it will happen, but if he's so sure he's right, why fear the process of putting his beliefs to the test?