On Propaganda
The period following World War II saw the introduction of a US propaganda campaign against the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc which is still observable today, nearly 15 years since the end of the Cold War.
"There was as a purge in Hollywood of people who had been too sympathetic to the Soviet Union, in other words those who were not inclined to support the effort to go to the war with the Soviet Union," DeBar said.
"That purge of all kinds of left-leaning, even — let alone actual left and communist, socialist — talk, conversation, perspective in the American media, still remains. There was never really a restoration of democratic media in the United States."
Up to 90% of all print, radio, and television media in the US is controlled by six corporations with the same interests, both at home and abroad.
"It's difficult for me to say exactly how people in the US can take seriously the idea that they needed to be protected from Russian propaganda, when the media here contains no facts but opinions presented as news," the political activist underscored.
On social media
DeBar acknowledged Facebook and Twitter as central means of communication nowadays, but stressed that those companies are owned by the same corporate interests that own "all of the other multinational corporations that have been plaguing the world for the last 50 to 75 years." DeBar also pointed out the close relationship mass social media platforms have with the NSA, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and others.
"This is a massive tool in the hands of a very small elite who is really posed against the bulk of humanity in terms of their interests," he said.
On education
DeBar told Sputnik about the changes in the US educational system observable over the last 50 years that have led to a population that is not equipped to think for themselves. It's no wonder, then, that the country's media — and the power behind it — is able to get away with campaigns of misinformation.
"People are not taught how to research on their own and there are not courses until you get to the college level in critical thinking or philosophy or anything that would have people start tearing apart whatever construct they're studying, to analyze it, to kick it around, debate it, et cetera. " DeBar said.
"By the end of secondary school," he added, "they are already seasoned media consumers, and their perspective, even if it's challenged later in college or graduate school by taking courses, the foundation of it, the kernel of it developed under conditions where they did not critique what they were experiencing."
