Article Review 9/26

Ben Hunt's article describes how crisis actors are people hired from the government to go on TV and pretend to be victims in a staged event, such as a fake terrorist attack, to influence other people to support government action. Hunt warns readers that such lies inevitably influence our opinions. Since humans have self-awareness, we can resist these lies using our own knowledge. We do not have to immediately believe in the propaganda delivered by governments. My favorite quote/passage that describes Hunt's theory best is the Hermann Goring interview by Gustave Gilbert (1947) describing "poor slobs in the farm". This passage states that people are so willing to go fight for their country because the country makes the people feel endangered by the enemy and sparks a sense of patriotism in them. This clearly showed me how propaganda by the government controlled its people and influenced their opinions. Without using self-awareness, people could be controlled by the government and its lies. The crisis actors are the people that don't use their self-awareness and let the government control them and their decisions. They act AS their leader's words are the absolute truth, meanwhile people usually act AS IF their leader's words are true. We must prevent ourselves from going from AS IF to AS, from not using our self-awareness. I thought this article was interesting to read. I thought it was cleaver to use quoted evidence, from places like movies, to support the views stated in this article. That made the article easier to understand.