Like any good piece of propaganda, the Apollo moon landings needed to appeal to the fundamental biases and emotions of men. Indeed, this was not your average deception of the masses being carried out. It was nearly unprecedented in scale and audacity. To persuade humanity that the American government’s space program was able to send men to the moon and return them to earth successfully, would require extraordinary measures. The amount of propaganda would need to be massive in order to overcome the incredulity of rational men and women regarding what was being suggested.
Chapter 4 of Edward Bernays’ book Propaganda is titled THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PUBLIC RELATIONS. The chapter begins with the following statements (emphasis added).
The systematic study of mass psychology revealed to students the potentialities of invisible government of society by manipulation of the motives which actuate man in the group. Trotter and Le Bon, who approached the subject in a scientific manner, and Graham Wallas, Walter Lippmann and others who continued with searching studies of the group mind, established that the group has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotionswhich cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology. So the question naturally arose: If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?
The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible...
[Source: Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928]
The group mind should not be thought of as rational. It is largely emotional. Consequently, it can be manipulated through means of emotional stimuli. Speaking further of the character of the group mind, Bernays writes,
Trotter and Le Bon concluded that the group mind does not think in the strict sense of the word. In place of thoughts it has impulses, habits and emotions.
[Ibid]
Present in all effectual propaganda campaigns is a strong appeal to the emotions and biases present within humanity. One of the strongest of these biases is pride in one’s fatherland. I grew up in the America of the 1960s and 1970s, having been born in the year 1961. I attended public school. Every day without fail we began the day by standing to our feet, turning to face the American flag, and with our right hand over our heart we were led in a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
It was instilled in children from an early age that America was the greatest nation on earth. It had freedom, wealth, opportunity, a good public education system, a car in every driveway, abundant food, and the mightiest military on the planet. Everyone likes to be part of a winning team. Consequently, criticism of America was viewed as an assault on the pride of the group. To state that Americans were primed to believe the reports provided by the government leaders about another stunning national accomplishment is a simple statement of fact. Society had an enormous predilection to believe reports that increased national honor.
With consummate skill, the architects of the space program chose patriotic themes to tap into this bias of the group mind. America’s national symbol is the eagle, and the first lunar module reported to have landed men on the moon was named the Eagle. Similarly, the command module for the Apollo 11 mission was named Columbia, the female personification of the United States. The highlight of the Apollo 11 moon landing was planting the American flag on the moon. There could hardly be a greater appeal to American patriotism.
Buzz Aldrin - Eagle Lander, and American Flag
Rather than rationally considering the potential of NASA sending men to the moon, the American public responded emotionally to the reports and images they were being presented with. An immense pride swelled in the breast of the American citizenry. This pride served as a bulwark against any challenge to the authenticity of the lunar missions.
In conjunction with this emotional appeal to human pride, the propagandists further played upon another known tendency of mankind. This was the habit of believing people who are honored as leaders. Bernays states the following.
If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. But men do not need to be actually gathered together in a public meeting or in a street riot, to be subject to the influences of mass psychology. Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn. His mind retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by the group influences.
[Ibid]
Man is gregarious. That is to say, he is a social creature and tends to function in a herd-like manner. Men are readily influenced by those whom they are conditioned by their society to honor. This is why back in the 1950s and earlier, cigarette manufacturers employed doctors and other medical professionals in their sales ads to promote the safe, even beneficent qualities of smoking. It is widely understood now that all such claims were lies. Nevertheless, this propaganda was highly effective. It removed one of the greatest barriers standing in the way of the decision to smoke. When doctor’s were pictured in glossy magazine ads, on billboards, and television declaring smoking to be safe, people believed them.
What are doctors being used to promote today? Vaccines. Flu shots. Ritalin. Mind altering drugs. The safety of GMO foods. The herd instinct is still in force today. Honor is given where it is frequently undeserved.
If tasked to create a propaganda campaign of the scale of the Apollo moon landings, it would be necessary to use every ploy possible. Men of renown from all spheres of life should be called upon to lend their influential voice to the campaign. Political leaders were naturally selected, but why not also include religious leaders?
Note the article at the bottom of the front page of the Chicago Tribune dated July 21, 1969: Pope Hails Success of Apollo 11, Offers Blessing for Its Crewmen. The article begins, “Pope Paul VI hailed the Apollo 11 astronauts today as conquerors of the moon... The 71 year old Pontiff followed the lunar landing on color television in the pontifical observatory at his summer retreat south of Rome.”
The image of the Pope staring through a telescope as if watching the happenings on the moon, is pictured below an image of President Richard Nixon speaking by telephone to the astronauts who are declared to be standing on the surface of the moon. To the left of this article is another with the headline World Pauses, Peers, Praises Lunar Conquest. On the opposite side is an image of the three Apollo 11 astronauts and the words President Tells Nation’s Pride in Moon Walk. WOW! You cannot call in more influential men than this. If the Pope and the President both say man walked on the moon, and the article beside them states that the whole WORLD praises the lunar conquest, who would dare to question whether it really happened? People, this is how propaganda is performed! And lest the tendency of men to follow the leader is not enough, there is on the same page the appeal to national pride. In the very center of the page is the American flag shown planted firmly in the lunar soil. Following is another example of using the Pope to lend his influence to this event.
Don’t Forget Earth - Pope
Many citizens were not Catholic, so the endorsement of the Pope would not have much influence on them. Not to worry, the propagandists did not forget the Protestants. On the front page of the Auckland Star, a New Zealand newspaper, there are two prominent articles which appeal to Christians of all faiths.
One article is titled Aldrin to take Communion on lunar surface. Another reads Parents were ‘hoping, praying.’ Yes, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who is a Shriner and Freemason, took communion on the moon.
Two and a half hours after landing, before preparations began for the EVA, Aldrin radioed to Earth:
"This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way."
He then took communion privately... Aldrin was an elder at the Webster Presbyterian Church, and his communion kit was prepared by the pastor of the church, the Rev. Dean Woodruff. Aldrin described communion on the Moon and the involvement of his church and pastor in the October 1970 edition of Guideposts magazine and in his book Return to Earth. Webster Presbyterian possesses the chalice used on the Moon and commemorates the event each year on the Sunday closest to July 20.
[Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11]
If this were not enough, the media was even able to come up with a comment from the Reverend Billy Graham that appeared to give a subtle acknowledgment of the moon landing. When President Richard Nixon effused that the moon landing was “the greatest event since Creation,” Graham commented that there were some other events recorded in the Bible which he considered greater. Numerous newspapers and magazines framed Graham’s statement to make it appear as an admittance that the moon landing took place.
It is often commented that in social settings a person should avoid speaking about “religion and politics.” The rationale behind this social taboo is that people tend to hold very strong emotional views on these subjects. Challenging another person’s political or religious beliefs, even if attempted civilly, is often not possible as people are easily offended. This visceral emotional response is precisely what the propagandists were tapping into as they built associations between the moon landing, national pride, and religious belief. Unconsciously, the masses were being conditioned to view an attack on the moon landings as an attack on the nation, or even an attack on their religious beliefs. This created an immense obstacle to a free and open discussion of the Apollo space program by naysayers and skeptics.
It is certainly within the realm of possibility for men who control the media, finance, and the government, to set before the populace a cleverly carried out illusion and convince them it was real. The more difficult task is to stand against popular opinion and attempt to lead people to truth when they have an emotional attachment to their beliefs.
The volume of propaganda used to sell the lunar landing hoax to the people was nothing short of astonishing. Every major paper in America, and around the world, carried front page reports on the successful moon landing in their July 21, 1969 editions.
In addition to this, all of the major television and radio networks devoted special programming to this event.
Walter Cronkite Covering the Lunar Expedition
Magazines carried articles on the moon landings. Inside the magazines were advertisements from trusted corporate brand names which referenced the moon landings. Since the transnational corporations owned these media channels, the cost to them to run their stories was negligible. Indeed, by publishing reports on an event that was as enthusiastically received by the general public, sales of print media increased and more people tuned into television and radio to hear about these incredible events.
TRW Ad in National Geographic, December 1969
Hasselblad Ad in National Geographic, December 1969
Boeing Ad in National Geographic, December 1969
Corporations go to tremendous lengths to develop a reputable public image. Most people view these corporations with respect, having no concerns about the legitimacy of the ads they place in magazines such as the National Geographicedition from which these images were obtained. Yet all of these companies have a vested interest in perpetuating the lunar landing myth. They all received lucrative contracts from the government pertaining to the space program. Indeed, the owners of these transnational corporations are the very same individuals who devise new means to bind and guide the world. The effect that each of these corporate sponsored ads has upon the reader is to legitimize the official government narrative regarding the space program and man landing on the moon.
When you consider the multiple, simultaneous influences exerted by the fascist propaganda machine (the combined abilities and resources of government and corporate power): the strong emotional biases which are manipulated through skillful and cunning use of symbols; the tendency of man to place trust in leaders and to follow them blindly; the unexpected use of advertisements to promote illusions; and the seldom recognized collusion of all forms of mass media, it becomes readily apparent that men like Edward Bernays were neither lying, nor exaggerating when they spoke of the ability of unseen rulers “to regiment and guide the masses.” This mind control, manufacture of consent, or social guidance, is accomplished without the people realizing what is being done to them.
I believe a good place to start if one is to unmask a deception is to show how deception works. As this book has established, there is a group of men and women who have the ability to carry out social mind shaping on a global scale. To put it another way, there is present on this earth a group of men and women under the guidance and authority of Satan who have both the motive and the means to carry out deceptions of audacious proportions upon an unwitting populace. That this is the real character of the world we live in, a world of grand illusions, should not be surprising to the disciple of Christ. Yahshua has informed us that this would be the character of the world in the last days before His return. The Son of God described Satan as the god of this world, the ruler of this age. He further defined him as the great deceiver who deceives the whole world. He has declared to us that both Satan and his earthly disciples are great pretenders, masquerading as that which they are not.
Knowing that the kingdom of this world has not yet become the kingdom of our Lord and Christ, we should not be asking why we should doubt the veracity of the rulers of this world, rather we should be asking why we should believe them. “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (I John 5:19).
Proverbs 9:1-6
Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn out her seven pillars; She has prepared her food, she has mixed her wine; She has also set her table; She has sent out her maidens, she calls from the tops of the heights of the city: "Whoever is naive, let him turn in here!" To him who lacks understanding she says, "Come, eat of my food, and drink of the wine I have mixed. Forsake your folly and live, and proceed in the way of understanding."
Proverbs 14:15
The naive believes everything, but the prudent man considers his steps.
The image of the eagle landing on the moon has no more relation to reality than the image of the eagle carrying an olive branch in its talons. There is as much truth in America being a nation of peace as there is in her having sent men to the moon and back.
Note: A correction was made to the preceding post. I had mentioned that Matt Drudge had been silenced when I meant Andrew Breitbart who was an editor for Drudge.
Credit to Joseph Herrin
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