How to make someone believe something – The Mainstream Media’s toolkit

The media has a certain way of doing things when it comes to spiritual or religious groups, and it usually goes something like this;

1. Don’t read any source material from the group or philosophy, instead take only accounts from those who both don’t understand the philosophy and have been harmed by someone who is even vaguely involved in the philosophy.
2. Give it a title that sounds impartial but isn’t. People make their minds up about something within the first seven seconds of reading it, so it has to give off the scent of being impartial but also attention grabbing, and it has to be something that makes the reader feel slightly more intelligent from reading the article. Putting ideas into the reader’s head, making them think their thoughts on the matter are original and self generated, they just agree with the article. A philosophical trap, if you will. Note that people don’t have the time to think about these things, and that is why they work. That is why people still buy newspapers.
3. Provide citations, but not good ones. Maybe someone wrote a critique that looks like a scientific paper. Maybe a critic of the philosophy wrote a blog post, and, you’re writing a scathing attack on a philosophy or group, who says it has to be true? Why not include some things that are objectively false, or cite sources that lie and miscontextualise quotes. Include your citations heavily, for they are your friends.
4. Use testimony as a tool to help yourself look impartial. Get some quotes from critics of the philosophy/group and use them as your argument. Give them a platform. Then, by using the citations to back up their argument it gives the reader the impression that this is the impartial, objective truth.
5. Email the group or a group related to the philosophy with a very crazy statement, asking them for comment. They are either not going to comment, which discredits them as you can just say “We asked ___ for comment and they refused.”, not including the actual email that was sent. Or, they do reply, but your sources don’t match up with what they are saying, so you can easily “debunk” them.

The media doesn’t have to be truthful. It never has been, but nowadays it is becoming more and more obvious to anyone who has more than half a brain cell that they are lying to you, and your family, and your friends. Another point; “Research” nowadays is literally just looking at mainstream media articles and taking things from the first page of google. This is what everyone does, even “intellectuals”.

Anthroposophy is a spiritual philosophy that was defined by Rudolf Steiner in the 1910s, it has its roots in theosophy and other, older spiritual movements and its impact now is immense. The Star Wars films, so many spiritualists and spiritual movements today are inspired by Steiner’s work and they don’t know who he even is. And if you have heard of it, it’s likely not too positive (i hope that that statement is not true, but it is for the majority of people).

I have read so many articles where they don’t read steiner’s actual work, where they don’t actually talk to an Anthroposophist, where they cite mistranlations and critics but claim they are staying impartial.

Anthroposophy is one of, if not the most slandered spiritual philosophy out there. I have a little reposatory of debunked claims here; https://www.reddit.com/r/Steiner/wiki/index/allegations/

And this is why i wrote this article. There are hundreds, if not thousands of articles and tweets that contain false information about a philosophy that is mainly populated by old people, who won’t fight against your claims.

But this isn’t a problem that only affects Anthroposophy, i have a little challenge for all of you at home, i want you to try to find an article on a mainstream news site that is positive about a religious or spiritual organization. I can’t, you can’t. Because atheists are easy to sell to, they will eat anything up.

An article about a religious organization who had one bad person in a slightly high position, just say that they are defined by that person (real article) and that’s 100000 clicks! A child goes to a school inspired by a spiritual philosophy and her mother makes a google search and finds that some people think that the schools are racist (yet no racist treatment ever happened at that school or to her child), it’s not only a real article but apparently it’s impartial enough and objective enough to be cited on wikipedia? And those are just two examples that i can think of off the top of my head. Imagine how many other articles there are, further reinforcing false beliefs for profit.

Now, this brings us onto another question, who profits from this? Obviously the media companies, but also some other groups. First you have the humanists, a group of “intellectuals” who take any oppetunity they get to slam groups that are even slightly spiritual. It’s simple. More atheists = More membes = More money. They are materialist in all aspects of the word.

But also, the conservative government. (I’m in the uk, may not apply to everywhere else) Now, hear me out on this. More atheists means more people who want secularization of the government. The detaching of religion and state. But we live in a democratic country, and the majority of us are religious. This is another way of detatching people from government and state decision making. While i do agree that we need reforms, we don’t need to be removing religion, we need to be adding religion! Instead of just christianity, we need every single religion to have a say. Pluralism, i think it’s called.

Anyway, that’s the article. If you have any quarrels, quieries or concerns please feel free to say them, and as long as you are not really stupid i will reply. Also, a large shoutout to Chapeltown Anthroposophy for being a great anthroposophical initiative. Follow them. Also follow me. Please and thank you.