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FBI Informant: Ray Bradbury's Sci-fi Written To Induce Communistic Mass Hysteria
v3rgEz writes: The FBI followed Ray Bradbury's career very closely, in part because an informant warned them that his writing was not enjoyable fantasy, but rather tantamount to psychological warfare. "The general aim of these science fiction writers is to frighten the people into a state of paralysis or psychological incompetence bordering on hysteria," the informant warned. "Which would make it very possible to conduct a Third World War in which the American people would believe could not be won since their morale had seriously been destroyed."
The government is taking the position that saying things that disagree with the official government position on things are subversive, anti-American, defeatist, comfort-to-the-enemony traitors? Color me surprised!
All of the stuff written from the COINTELPRO/pre-Church committee era should be exhibit #1 for the case of why the national security apparatus needs to be strictly controlled, and heavily limited in its ability to spy on American citizens. We don't even have to go back far to see the rampant abuses, paranoid delusions, and intrusive actions taken with the intent of ruining the lives of those deemed to be political enemies, subversives, or anything else.
This sort of shit is un-american, undemocratic, and the sort of thing that should have no place in a free society.
Obviously we should give the government more power. After all, as Barney Frank says, "Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.”
You chose this, right?
Vietnam is the prime example of this. The NVA despite taking overwhelming losses on the battle field manage to win by destroying the will of the American homefront to prosecute the war.
"Communistic mass hysteria"? Not clear what that means. It looks like they played with the idea that making people think about society made people more susceptible to Communism. Probably true in some cases.
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Most people get so caught up in the fantastical stories of science fiction they don't stop to think about how science fiction came about. It's writing in which the environment has been exaggerated in some fashion by science and technology, and this is used to make certain moral and ethical arguments more blatantly obvious.
Authors during the Cold War were grappling with the issues of nuclear war, ideological combat and widespread authoritarianism. This hasn't really subsided all that much even today.
I'm not sure these guys could distinguish a credible threat from a popular band fan base... Oh wait, they can't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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We have access to literally MILLIONS of attempts at propaganda - both from the US and from outside agencies.
It's not that hard to recognize propaganda and his work is not it. You have to target your intended audience pretty highly and anyone not in the target audience can easily see through it for garbage.
Otherwise, it's not propaganda, it's truth that you disagree with. So you call it propaganda and pretend it is based on lies.
The reason for this is simple - the only way to convince someone that a lie is 'true', is if the lie is aimed directly at their own personal belief structure. You can't convince a liberal that there is a secret conspiracy in the US Government to 'invade texas' without a TON of proof, but you can convince certain conservatives with radio broadcast and an internet web page.
Similarly, you can't convince a Republican that the Pro-life movement is designed to keep women barefoot and pregnant (rather than to stop abortion), but you can convince certain liberals with an article and a news report.
As such, any real attempt at Propaganda is obvious to anyone not targeted by it, and it's ridiculous to believe that an author could engage in 'secret' propaganda.
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"The general aim of these science fiction writers is to frighten the people into a state of paralysis or psychological incompetence bordering on hysteria,"
"...and believe me, you're talking to a man with a _lot_ of experience with psychological incompetence bordering on hysteria."
I'm no professional historian, but I question your assertion.
American lost the Vietnam War because we weren't able to cope with a situation where there was so much guerrilla warfare taking place. Everything was a big question-mark. Did we eliminate all of the enemies in locations A and B? Did those snipers shooting from unseen locations in the jungle represent the only 1 or 2 enemies left, or were there many more? We kept dumping loads of money on equipment and manpower without any ability to see clear results.
I think we saw the same issue with the "war on terror" in countries like Afghanistan, except this time, it's notable that reconnaissance missions played a very big role with liberal use of drones, spy satellites and more. There's a growing realization that even if you're technically winning a war, you're still losing if you can't tell the current "score of the game".
I know that when I was a kid, every time I read a Bradbury story I got into a state of communistic panic, and it took a hot dog, piece of apple pie and a baseball game to calm me down.
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
Wait....
"Which would make it very possible to conduct a Third World War in which the American people would believe could not be won"
Does that mean anyone in the FBI was crazy enough that a 3rd world war could actually be "won" in some kind?
bickerdyke
In both cases, the wars were unwinnable because you had proxies providing material support without any real repercussions. The fighters are in plentiful supply because they are pissed off about the state of their country. The materiel is plentiful because it is being supplied from outside the country by entities that we can't, for political or practical reasons, go after. At that point you have to decide whether to go into "kill everyone" mode or just get the hell out.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Aren't you just providing the details behind his assertion? The US was not willing to prosecute total war in order to win and it lost the will to fight a protracted guerrilla campaign. The British won their war in Malaysia using more overwhelming numbers and cutting off access to the villages by the guerrillas. It took about 10 years if I recall. It also takes a good 10 to 1 manpower advantage to pull this off. The US wasn't willing to make that commitment and the US population lost patience. News reports and general agitation by those opposing the war raised the public's consciousness about the war and how it was being prosecuted. (Interesting factoid, even though at the peak we had over 524000 service men and women in Vietnam, only 80,000 had direct combat roles. That' the same number the French had with only 140,000 + soldiers.) The French didn't have golf courses and pizza delivery by helicopter.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
I'm no professional historian, but I question your assertion.
American lost the Vietnam War because we weren't able to cope with a situation where there was so much guerrilla warfare taking place. Everything was a big question-mark. Did we eliminate all of the enemies in locations A and B? Did those snipers shooting from unseen locations in the jungle represent the only 1 or 2 enemies left, or were there many more? We kept dumping loads of money on equipment and manpower without any ability to see clear results.
America lost Vietnam precisely because of the political pressure at home, which indirectly caused much of what you describe above.
A little history lesson:
The Tet offensive in 1968, which garnered a lot of negative media attention in the US, effectively broke the back of the NVA. Until that offensive there were quite a few "traditional" battles. Remember, the NVA was a professional military force complete with armor and aircraft (in the case of the North Vietnamese air force). For several years after this the US was mainly fighting the VC (the guys in black pajamas), not the NVA. The NVA and the VC did most of their training, troop movement, and had much of ther senior command based in neighboring Laos. The US knew this, but apart from some small actions earlier in the war, barred the military from conducting operations in Laos due to fears of being seen as "widening the war". Had the US been able to put pressure (and keep it on) these troop marshaling areas and supply routes they could have pressed their advantage in both manpower and weaponry.
The negative publicity and public sentiment was not just felt in the White House and Pentagon, but in the squads and platoons climbing those hills for the 2nd and 3rd time. They knew the war was unpopular, had no real clue why they were there beside some vague notion of stopping the Communists (believe it or not, give soldiers a good, real reason to fight and they will put up with a lot), and very likely were against the war themselves in the case of draftees. When your primary goal is to survive your 1 year tour as opposed to winning the war, you probably are not going to win.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
America lost Vietnam precisely because of the political pressure at home, which indirectly caused much of what you describe above.
America lost Vietnam because the people at home came to realize we had wasted more than 50,000 young American lives fighting on behalf of a tyrannical, oppressive government the Vietnamese people hated, and were doing so not to oppose communism but mainly to protect rubber plantations belonging to companies like DuPont. There was no good point to the war, and people eventually wised up.
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Actually, this kind of delusion that you espouse is a primary example of the effectiveness of mass media propaganda. You are repeating the indoctrination presented in every single university, and most lower schools. You are repeating the same narrative shown on every single television channel. And one commonly found in science fiction.
Yet, you perceive yourself as being outside the mainstream, when you are repeating the very religion of the people who rule over you. You in fact do not deviate in any substantive way from the ideology of the billionaires who buy your politicians, fund your research institutions and universities, and control your media propaganda.
"wingnuts". Common folk with no money or influence who wield no power over you, and simply are tired of clowns such as yourself telling them how stupid they are for not swallowing all the propaganda shoved down their throats. That is who you attack. You are a fool.
It's really extraordinary how common such madness pervades America. Fortunately, most people like yourself are physically weak, cowardly, and so utterly atomized you have no allies in any substantive sense. You are utterly dependent upon The System to maintain your sheep like existence, and ultimately to protect you.
When the next civil war comes, people such as yourself will simply die. You have no place in a civilized society, except as a slave. Thanks to technology, people such as yourself are economically obsolete and a danger to social order as idleness breeds discontent in your kind.
And you know what? Between Vietnam and going into Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000's America spent years teaching this kind of asymmetric warfare around the world.
In Latin America. In Afghanistan. To Osama Bin Laden himself. Against a democracy and in favor of dictators if it was in the interests of the US.
So, like the British got all upset when America was fighting for independence that the Americans didn't wear uniforms and line up in rows, America has spent the last bunch of decades teaching how to do this very thing ... and are upset that people don't wear uniforms and line up in rows or play by any established rules of the game.
Sorry, that's not technically winning.
It's called being engaged in "low intensity" or "asymmetrical warfare", and means you might not be winning, and might not even know how you'd be able to tell.
Like the Russians weren't winning in Afghanistan.
And, in a similar way, why bombing ISIS and claiming you're winning doesn't mean you're winning when you can't change anything happening on the ground. It means the people who are counting the "score of the game" don't know if they're winning or losing, or what criteria to judge that.
It's notable to realize that America is now fighting people they trained and armed as they were fighting the Russians under the theory of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", only to find out that isn't the case.
America lost the war before they even left, walked away from it and claimed to have done a great job, and now they're wondering why they think they "technically" won the war all the while discovering they didn't even know the rules of the game.
Especially now that the game has shifted to a new playing field, and people will have to re-learn the historical lesson that you can't control a country from the air.
Arguably, the Middle East might have been safer and less volatile if Bush hadn't gone into Iraq under bogus pretenses in the first place.
The problem is nobody else is playing this according to how the US strategists have claimed it would play out. Which means the US strategists don't seem to really know what is happening.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
We can't have people doing that. That's the government's job.
Have gnu, will travel.
The government is taking the position that saying things that disagree with the official government position on things are subversive, anti-American, defeatist, comfort-to-the-enemony traitors? Color me surprised!
It was the McCarthy era - the American Inquisition. He wasn't hauled up in front of HUAC (The House {of representatives} Un-Ameracan Activities Committee), so I presume, if he was investigated, the FBI (and the other witch-hunters) didn't find any evidence of an actual association between Bradbury and any of the Communist regimes.
Having said that: Bradbury's dystopias always struck me as an attempt to transplant mainstream literature's techniques and biases into Science Fiction.
SF is the art of the technical class. The central message is "You can fix it or create wonders by applying intelligence and dilligence to the problem." Even the dystopias a subset of "cautionary tales", with the central message being "Be careful not the break it THIS way, because that could wreck it so badly you CAN'T fix it.
Mainstream fiction is the propaganda of control of the general population: The central message is futility: "Do what the authorities tell you to do. No matrer HOW badly they're doing and HOW bad things get, don't try to improve them. Anything you try will make them worse."
My impression of Bradbury is that he tried to use mainstream fiction techniques and in the process imported the mainstream fiction message.
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And as a corollary:
"Hello, Authorities? I think this man is up to No Good. I'm seeing behavior that leads me to think a Plot is Afoot.".
"Thank you Sir. We'll check it out."
[an Investigation is Conducted]
"Well, it turns out that there's nothing going on that contravenes the law. No Nefarious Plot. We'll file this in our archives and move on to something else."
The fact that an investigation was conducted in response to a complaint is *to be expected*. That's what the "I" in "FBI" is all about. The good news here was that when the investigation turned up nothing illegal, it was shelved.
Now it is certainly true that during the McCarthy Era, there *were* investigations that went too far, and innocent people suffered consequences even when they were never charged and convicted. There was much for law enforcement and government to learn during this time period. I'm certainly no fan of witch hunts - especially ones where the definition of "witch" is not well defined.
But it is also true that there *were* foreign agents about, and they *were* seeking to do harm. Investigating leads that might end up in a legitimate conviction is a good thing. Dropping an investigation that proves unfounded is also a good thing.
But Oh Noes! Government! Security! These things must be bad, right?
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I think this FBI informant had a geek crush on Ray Bradbury. He wanted to stalk him at all costs. He invented this elaborate "Communist-angle" ruse to justify to his superiors the inordinate amount of time he used obsessing over Bradbury's every move, admiring him from afar. I imagine it's easier to maintain this fib than do actual work of any value.
This would make a good comedy sketch, actually! Like a variant of The Tailor of Panama.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
I was not sure where to put this, so I chose here. All of the problems in Vietnam resulted from the fact that the decision had been made to fight the Soviet Union in a series of proxy wars designed to cost them more than they could afford. That decision in itself was a good one, the dangers of fighting the Soviet Union directly were too great to risk. The problem was that the decision makers in Washington did not fight in Vietnam with the intention of winning that engagement. They decided to continue that proxy war indefinitely. If they had fought Vietnam with the intention of winning, it would likely have been over in 1968 or sooner. This strategy was complicated by their belief that they could control what information about the war came out (causing them to think they could lie about what was going on and not get caught).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
two countries couldn't have closer economic, social and military ties than the US and Canada.
There are plenty of examples of countries with far closer ties: members of the EU; England, Scotland and Wales; the counties in the former Soviet Union etc. Indeed I would argue that Canada has closer ties with the UK than the US: we share a monarch, style of government and social morals the later of which is very different from the US in that we have national healthcare, functioning social welfare etc. Of those you list I'd say that only our economic ties are closer to the US than the UK.
Well, that's the difference between winning the war and winning the peace.
The choice after the Civil War was either Reconstruction, on VERY generous terms, or risk insurgency and partisan actions for generations.
See also the end of WW1 versus the end of WW2.
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SF is the art of the technical class. The central message is "You can fix it or create wonders by applying intelligence and dilligence to the problem."
Mainstream fiction is the propaganda of control of the general population: The central message is futility: "Do what the authorities tell you to do."
Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein entered the mainstream because they wrote entertaining, well-written. stories for adults with engaging themes, three-dimensional characters and a minimum of techno-babble.
Heinlein, of course, could be remarkably observant and cynical about "the technical class" and its own desire for control --- not to mention its complicity in providing the means to control others.
I have often thought it a pity that he didn't live long enough to see the geek in full flight. The privileged adolescent who suddenly discovers that he can't have everything his own way.