Summary: Weakness always produces aggression by the strong, and we have chosen to be weak. In America the mode of conflict is information. Conservatives have worked long and hard on their information programs (aka propaganda). Their decades of skillfully conducted work have earned large rewards, advancement of their policies to the benefit our ruling elites. This is another chapter in a series about the origins of the housing crisis (links to the others appear at the end).
“Facts are stubborn things,” said he, “and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
— John Adams argument in defense of the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre, 4 December 1770
Propaganda works through many channels. New viewpoints seep into people’s minds through repetition. Large scale lying saturates our mindspace, and keeps the opponents playing defense — the hopeless game of responding to the latest lies. Today we examine a few of a thousand examples seen during 2012. Other posts in this series:
- Facts are an obstacle to the reform of America, 20 October 2011
- Our minds are addled, the result of skillful and expensive propaganda, 28 December 2011
Contents
- Paul Krugman sets the stage
- Joe Nocera dares to explain the big lie
- Other posts about the origin of the housing crisis
- Other posts about propaganda
(1) Paul Krugman sets the stage
“Joe Nocera Gets Mad“, Paul Krugman, New York Times, 24 December 2011 — Excerpt:
Today Joe once again goes after the Big Lie — the claim that Fannie and Freddie caused the crisis — and drives home the point that the people advancing this story aren’t just wrong but are acting with intent, engaged in deliberate deception …
Basically, Joe is arriving where I’ve been since 2000: what’s going on in the discussion of economic affairs (and other matters, like justifications for war) isn’t just a case where different people look at the same facts but reach different conclusions. Instead, we’re looking at a situation in which one side of the debate just isn’t interested in the truth, in which alleged scholarship is actually just propaganda.
Saying this, of course, gets you declared “shrill”, denounced as partisan; you’re supposed to pretend that we’re having a civilized discussion between people with good intentions. And you’re supposed to match each attack on Republicans with an attack on Democrats, as if the mendacity were equal on both sides. Sorry, but it isn’t. Democrats aren’t angels; they’re human and sometimes corrupt — but they don’t operate a lie machine 24/7 the way modern Republicans do.
(2) Nocera dares to speak the truth about the big lie
“The Big Lie“, Joe Nocera, op-ed in the New York Times, 23 December 2011 — Excerpt:
So this is how the Big Lie works. You begin with a hypothesis that has a certain surface plausibility. You find an ally whose background suggests that he’s an “expert”; out of thin air, he devises “data.” You write articles in sympathetic publications, repeating the data endlessly; in time, some of these publications make your cause their own. Like-minded congressmen pick up your mantra and invite you to testify at hearings.
You’re chosen for an investigative panel related to your topic. When other panel members, after inspecting your evidence, reject your thesis, you claim that they did so for ideological reasons. This, too, is repeated by your allies. Soon, the echo chamber you created drowns out dissenting views; even presidential candidates begin repeating the Big Lie.
Thus has Peter Wallison {AEI bio}, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a former member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, almost single-handedly created the myth that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the financial crisis. His partner in crime is another A.E.I. scholar, Edward Pinto {AEI bio}, who a very long time ago was Fannie’s chief credit officer. Pinto claims that as of June 2008, 27 million “risky” mortgages had been issued — “and a lion’s share was on Fannie and Freddie’s books,” as Wallison wrote recently. Never mind that his definition of “risky” is so all-encompassing that it includes mortgages with extremely low default rates as well as those with default rates nearing 30 percent. These latter mortgages were the ones created by the unholy alliance between subprime lenders and Wall Street. Pinto’s numbers are the Big Lie’s primary data point.
Allies? Start with Congressional Republicans, who have vowed to eliminate Fannie and Freddie — because, after all, they caused the crisis {see this for details}! Throw in The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, which, on Wednesday published one of Wallison’s many articles repeating the Big Lie. It was followed on Thursday by an editorial in The Journal making essentially the same point. Repetition is all-important to spreading a Big Lie.
In Wallison’s article, he claimed that the charges {NYT article} brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against six former Fannie and Freddie executives last week prove him right. This is another favorite tactic: He takes a victory lap whenever events cast Fannie and Freddie in a bad light. Rarely, however, has his intellectual dishonesty been on such vivid display. In fact, what the S.E.C.’s allegations show is that the Big Lie is, well, a lie.
Central to Wallison’s argument is that the government’s effort to encourage homeownership among low- and moderate-income Americans is what led to the crisis. Fannie and Freddie, which were required by law to meet certain “affordable housing mandates,” were the primary instruments of that government policy; their need to meet those mandates, says Wallison, is what caused them to dive so heavily into those “risky” mortgages. And because they were powerful forces in the housing market, their entry into subprime dragged along the rest of the mortgage industry.
But the S.E.C. complaint makes almost no mention of affordable housing mandates. Instead, it charges that the executives were motivated to begin buying subprime mortgages — belatedly, contrary to the Big Lie — because they were trying to reclaim lost market share, and thus maximize their bonuses.
(3) Other posts about the housing crisis — shifting the blame, an example of successful propaganda
- Who should we blame for the mortgage crisis?, 16 January 2010
- Cutting through the fog to clearly understand the housing crisis, 8 July 2010
- Housing Update – dynamite to blast us out of our lethargy?, 27 July 2010
- Here’s an opportunity for the Tea Party: fighting foreclosure fraud by banks!, 22 September 2010
- A briefing about the foreclosure fraud crisis: its origin and impacts, 14 October 2010
- Who should we blame for the mortgage crisis?, 16 January 2011 — An assortment of evidence about the cause of the mortgage crisis.
- Who caused the housing crisis? Why do people not believe all the studies?, 15 November 2011
(4) Other posts about propaganda
For a full list see the FM Reference Page Information & disinformation.
About propaganda and info warfare:
- News from the Front: America’s military has mastered 4GW!, 2 September 2009
- 4GW at work in a community near you , 19 October 2007 — Propaganda warming us up for war with Iran.
- Successful info ops, but who are the targets?, 1 May 2008
- The most expensive psy-war campaign – ever!, 13 July 2008
- Psywar, a core skill of the US Military (used most often on us), 26 November 2008
- Iran’s getting the bomb, or so we’re told. Can they fool us twice?, 16 February 2009
- How the Soviet Menace was over-hyped – and what we can learn from this, 13 October 2009
- Another example of war advocates working their rice bowls, 24 December 2009
- Think-tanks bribe journalists to promote our wars, 24 December 2009
- Iran will have the bomb in 5 years (again), 20 January 2010
- Successful propaganda as a characteristic of 21st century America, 1 February 2010
- More propaganda: the eco-fable of Easter Island, 4 February 2010
- The hidden history of the global warming crusade, 19 February 2010
- Forensic analysis of propaganda: “Michelle Obama Keeps Socialist Books in the White House”, 19 February 2010
- Can Obama turn America into something like Zimbabwe?, 22 February 2010
- Another sad little bit of agitprop, this time from John Nagl, 28 February 2010
- Dumbest headline of the week, 1 March 2010
- A note about practical propaganda, 22 March 2010
- About the political significance of the conservatives’ health care propaganda, 23 March 2010
- The similar delusions of America’s Left and Right show our common culture – and weakness, 26 March 2010
- Programs to reshape the American mind, run by the left and right, 2 August 2010
- The US government successfully smears Wikileaks, while America sleeps, 22 October 2010
- Every day brings new advocacy for war. That’s our America., 1 November 2010
- Why Conservatives are winning: they use the WMD of political debate, 28 April 2011
- Facts are an obstacle to the reform of America, 20 October 2011
- Electromagnetic Pulse Weapons, generating waves of fear in America for 20 years, 9 November 2011
- Using covert operations to discredit your enemies, 27 November 2011