Seeing is Believing vs Group Pressure

 

When I was a student nurse in the late 1960s we had to attend a weeklong seminar on psychology. The lecturer asked the class of about thirty wannabe nurses if anyone would volunteer to participate in a psycho experiment. The class remained noncommittal until I put my hand up, unafraid, even enjoying a challenge to perform for a crowd. The lecture droned on for another hour and I forgot about it. The psychologist then asked me if I'd go fetch a book from the library and eager to please I rushed off. Returning in seven minutes I handed over the book and sat back down, ignoring the smug silence of the rest of the class.

"Now I want to ask the class to participate in a little exercise that will confirm cooperation within a group of disparate characters," announced the lecturer. "I will show you each a diagram and ask for your opinion." He held up two sheets of paper, each of which had a line drawn on it, both lines of the same length and he went from student to student asking, "Are these lines the same length?" Every single person agreed including myself, the last participant sitting by the door. He then held up two more sheets of paper and asked, "Are these lines of equal length?" To my eye one seemed ever so slightly shorter than the other but after everyone agreed they were of equal length so I figured maybe it was my sight that was deficient and I agreed also that the two lines were the same.

Then he held up two more sheets and the lines were radically opposed, one very short and one very long and he nonchalantly asked, "Are these two lines of equal length?" As each student replied in the affirmative I grew more unsettled, confused, stunned in disbelief. The whole class agreed the two lines were the same. Had I misheard the question? Was I in a parallel universe? Finally it was my turn to answer, the psychologist stared at me with laser eyes, the rest of the class watched expectedly. I turned bright red, my brain seemed to swell, I coughed and gargled. Was I going mad? Surely I has misinterpreted the question?

For endless seconds I gasped and shook my head, "What the fuck was going on?" Perhaps I should agree so as not to stand out as a fool, go with the group, there could be something wrong with my brain, my perceptions. Before I could groan a reply the whole class burst into laughter and the teacher smiled upon me patronisingly. "You've just undergone a test of "group pressure." Many would've agreed as to the absurdity of the obvious difference, you seemed to be holding out against it. I'm sorry if it has disturbed or upset you in any way."

To this day, in my old age, I have remembered that "test" and not gone with group pressure to conform with any questionable event or proposal, without a full study and consideration of its factual truth, its history, its possible use as propaganda for some devious cause. This why I call myself a "punk outsider", I don't just sheepishly believe and follow whatever information, pitch, lie or confidence trick that's thrown at me. 

An egregious example is the Main Stream Media's attempt to convince me it's the Palestinians who are the main terrorists in this inhumane war with Israel. I have studied the history of the Palestinian struggle for their very existence and self-determination. I have seen every day for many years on the mainstream and alternative media the destruction of their homes, the dispossession of their lands, the tortured and imprisonment of their resistors, the murder of their children, their aged, their young men, by the Israeli Zionists. I didn't imagine it, I wasn't brainwashed by the superior forces of media propaganda, militarism and geopolitical powerplays into thinking that Palestinian minority are the perpetrators of most of the destruction. They are a conquered and colonised people, everyone knows it was their land invaded and their population murdered in 1947/48. No amount of revisionism and post-truth can change these facts.

The same goes for the proxy war with Russia in the Ukraine instigated by the U.S. in its determination to be the sole, hegemonic power ruling the world. The media bias plus the politicians' acquiescence in Europe, America and Australia, carping on and on about Russian "provocation" and imperialist terrorism, will not change the facts of a long history of lies, betrayals, coups, massacres, sacrifices imposed upon Ukraine in the U.S. long desired agenda of weakening and dismantling Russia so its resources can be grabbed and its economic competition wiped out.

U.S. Secretary of State Blinkin at a Ukrainian cemetery

The latest brainwash into compliance with certain economic and  power-hungry "overlords" has been the referendum on the YES to First Nations Voice to parliament here in Australia. With intense media negativity from the Murderoch Newscorpse empire, along with conservative politicians' lies, distortions, provocations and hysterical fear-mongering, the NO reactionaries have held the day, convincing a majority of unquestioning, uncaring and seemingly racist Australians into turning their backs on the hopes, needs and concerns of our First Nations people. 

But history not only informs us here and now of the past iniquities against this colonised people, the citizens of the future will look back on this referendum in perplexed distaste: how could a majority get it so wrong. What was the group pressure into being blind to the stealing of Koori lands, their rates of dying earlier, their over-incarceration in gaols, their stolen children, their mass poverty, their lesser opportunities, their worse health conditions? It's a very obvious fact that Australia is an apartheid society, as one rarely sees white people socialising with black people.

The struggle will continue, the First Australians will surely gain total respect and a Voice and a Treaty as it's obviously a progressive fact that it's necessary and its time will come. Perhaps white Australia will snap out of its sleepwalking when the MSM Newscorpse brainwashes it into a war with China and we get destroyed as Ukraine has been destroyed. When Aussies stagger about with no shelter, starving, bombed, tortured, rained down upon by white phosphorous, our environment poisoned by Agent Orange and depleted uranium detritus, then we might snap out of our white supremacy, born to rule masturbation and know what it is to be "less than zero." Will anybody then listen to and believe the inhumane drivel coming from the Newscorpse.