The freedom simulation
Today's elites have better techniques for manipulating elections than those of the GDR. Exclusive print from "Tamtam und Tabu". by Daniela Dahn and Rainer Mausfeld [This excerpt is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.rubikon.news/artikel/die-freiheitssimulation.] 1990 is considered the most important year in post-war history. Everything seems to have been said. The taboos survive. In their new book "Tamtam und Tabu", renowned essayist Daniela Dahn and cognitive scientist Rainer Mausfeld take a look at these taboos with a view to previously underestimated connections. Daniela Dahn examines how, in a breathtakingly short time, public opinion was turned with great fanfare in a direction that corresponded to the interests of the West. With her stringent synopsis of rich material from the media, the official narrative about the turnaround is shaken. Rainer Mausfeld's analysis reveals the reality behind the rhetoric in a capitalist democracy. The collaborative analyses are deepened in a fundamental discussion and provide an unsparing assessment of the current state of democracy. An excerpt. Rainer Mausfeld: The West has a unique arsenal of highly sophisticated psychological manipulation methods. This has been developed and refined for more than a hundred years with great research efforts. In these psychological techniques of population control, the West has an almost inconceivable research advantage over the East. The reason is simple: capitalist democracies, as was recognized early on, depend on free elections to maintain the impression of complete freedom among voters while ensuring that they vote the way they should. This can only be achieved with the greatest effort in terms of power technology. The methods required for this have been developed to perfection over many decades with the help of psychology and the social sciences, and have been tested in dozens of cases in domestic and foreign policy contexts. There is a large amount of literature on this subject. The psychological techniques of controlling dissent are also extremely subtle in capitalist democracies. They permeate all instances of socialization. Thus they are practically invisible to us and normally hardly noticeable. We swim in them like a fish in water, as it were, without even having an idea of them. Since the historical beginnings of capitalist democracies, the respective power elites have been aware that such a form of rule can only be stable if actual power is made largely invisible to the population. Therefore, for more than a hundred years social technologies have been developed to keep the "confused herd" on course in such a way that they are still convinced that they can follow their own needs freely and without guidance. A project of democracy management that has proven to be immensely successful. Unrivalled success even. So all this has been in continuous application for a long time. Even for extreme situations that