Democracy, The Most Dangerous Religion
民主，最危险的宗教
1. Chapter 1 – Introduction
第一章——介绍
拉里·罗曼诺夫
译者：珍珠
Having been raised in a Western democratic political environment, Americans (and yes, others as well, but most especially Americans) have been by design infused from birth with a conviction that some form of a multi-party electoral system – which we can loosely term “democracy” – is, even with the occasional flaw, the right way, the only way, the way God intended when He designed the Universe. It is not unfair to state that Americans generally believe – because this is what they have been taught since birth – that all nations aspire to their superior and enlightened form of government and that, as these nations develop, they will naturally gravitate toward that which Americans hold to be true – that “democracy“, however defined, is a “universal value” because it represents the pinnacle of civilisation. Indeed, “democracy” is very often presented as a reflection of “the yearnings of all mankind“.
在西方民主政治环境中长大的美国人（当然，其他人也是，但主要是美国人）从出生起就被灌输了一种信念，即某种形式的多党选举制度——我们可以笼统地称之为“民主”——即使偶尔有缺陷，也是正确的、唯一的、上帝在设计宇宙时所期望的方式。可以说，美国人普遍认为——因为这是他们从出生起就被教导的——所有国家都渴望他们优越和开明的政府形式，随着这些国家的发展，它们自然会倾向于美国人认为正确的——民主，无论如何定义，都是一种“普世价值”，因为它代表了文明的巅峰。事实上，“民主”经常被视为“全人类的渴望”的反映。
But these opinions and convictions appear for the most part to be unexamined positions, seemingly never having been openly challenged or even discussed, positions which, through generations of intense and incessant propaganda reinforcement have obtained the status of revealed religious truths which cannot be questioned because they are by nature not questionable. I have covered in detail the propaganda myths and tactics leading to this situation, in a series of articles in an E-book titled Bernays and Propaganda. It contains all the necessary references and would be worth your time to read and understand how deeply this has permeated into American society.[1]
但这些观点和信念似乎大多未经检验，似乎从未被公开挑战或讨论过，这些观点通过几代人强烈而不断的宣传强化，获得了无法质疑的宗教真理的地位，因为它们本质上是不容置疑的。我在一本名为《伯奈斯与宣传》的电子书中的一系列文章中详细介绍了导致这种情况的宣传神话和策略。它包含了所有必要的参考文献，值得你花时间阅读和理解它对美国社会的渗透有多深。[1]
The false propaganda campaign to insinuate the theology of democracy into the American psyche began in the early 1900s with Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann, two Jews taking instruction from a Rothschild and the City of London. Lippman and Bernays wrote of their open contempt for a “malleable and hopelessly ill-informed public” in America. Lippmann had already written that the people in a democracy were simply “a bewildered herd” of “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders” who should be maintained only as “interested spectators”, to be controlled by the (Jewish) “secret government”. They concluded that in a multi-party electoral system (a democracy), public opinion had to be “created by an organized intelligence” and “engineered by an invisible government”, with the people relegated to the status of uninformed observers, a situation that has existed without interruption in the US for the past 95 years. “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”[2]
将民主神学渗透到美国人心灵中的虚假宣传活动始于20世纪初，爱德华·伯奈斯和沃尔特·李普曼是两位犹太人，他们接受罗斯柴尔德和伦敦金融城的指导。李普曼和伯奈斯公开蔑视美国“易受影响且消息闭塞的公众”。李普曼曾写道，民主国家的人民只是“无知且爱管闲事的局外人”，他们只是“一群困惑的羊”，应该只作为“感兴趣的旁观者”被（犹太人）的“秘密政府”控制。他们得出结论，在多党选举制度（民主）中，公众舆论必须“由有组织的情报机构创造”并“由一个看不见的政府设计”，人民则被降级为不知情的观察者，这种情况在美国已经存在了95年。“有意识和智慧地操纵群众的有组织习惯和观点是民主社会的重要组成部分。操纵这种看不见的社会机制的人组成了一个看不见的政府，这是我们国家的真正统治力量。” [2]
Bernays claimed a necessity to apply “the discipline of science”, i.e., the psychology of propaganda, to the workings of democracy, where his social engineers “would provide the modern state with a foundation upon which a new stability might be realized”. This was what Lippmann termed the necessity of “intelligence and information control” in a democracy, stating that propaganda “has a legitimate and desirable part to play in our democratic system”. Both men pictured modern American society as being dominated by “a relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses”. To Bernays, this was the “logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized”, failing to note that it was his Jewish European masters who organised it this way in the first place.
伯奈斯声称有必要将“科学纪律”，即宣传心理学，应用于民主运作，他的社会工程师“将为现代国家提供一个基础，在这个基础上可以实现新的稳定”。这就是李普曼在民主中所谓的“情报和信息控制”的必要性，他说宣传“在我们的民主制度中起着合法和可取的作用”。两人都认为现代美国社会是由“相对少数了解大众心理过程和社会模式的人”主导的。对伯奈斯来说，这是“我们的民主社会组织方式的逻辑结果”，没有注意到是他的犹太欧洲大师们首先以这种方式组织起来的。
Lippman and Bernays were not independent in their perverted view of propaganda as a “necessity” of democracy, any more than they were in war marketing, drawing their theories and instruction from their Zionist masters in the City of London, and in fact testing it in the UK before bringing it to the US. The multi-party electoral system was not designed and implemented because it was the most advanced form of government but rather because it alone offered the greatest opportunities to corrupt politicians through control of money and to manipulate public opinion through control of the press. In his book ‘The Engineering of Consent‘, Bernays baldly stated that “The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process”. In other words, the essence of a democracy is that a few “invisible people” manipulate the bewildered herd into believing they are in control of a transparent system of government, by choosing one of two pre-selected candidates who are already bought and paid for by the same invisible people.
利普曼和伯奈斯对宣传的歪曲看法是民主的“必需品”，这与他们在战争营销中的看法一样，他们从伦敦城的犹太复国主义大师那里汲取理论和实践指导，并在英国进行测试，然后再将其引入美国。 多党选举制度不是因为它是政府最先进的统治形式而设计和实施的，而是因为它提供了最大的机会，通过控制金钱来腐蚀政客，并通过控制媒体来操纵公众舆论。 在他的《同意工程》一书中，伯奈斯直言不讳地指出，“同意工程是民主进程的本质”。 换句话说，民主的本质是少数“看不见的人”操纵迷茫的群体，让他们相信他们控制着一个透明的政府体制，选择两个预先选定的候选人中的一个，而这两个候选人已经被同一些看不见的人收买和支付。
After the political fallout of the Vietnam war and Nixon’s resignation, Bernays’ secret government went into overdrive and the American political landscape changed forever. A major part of this ‘democratic overdrive’ was the almost immediate creation in 1973 of a US-based think tank called ‘the Trilateral Commission’, which focused on “the crisis of democracy“, which was exhibiting clear signs of going where no man should go. Their first major report, published by New York University in 1975, was titled, “The Crisis of Democracy”,[3][4] a lead writer of which was a Harvard professor named Samuel Huntington. In the paper, Huntington stated that “The 1960’s witnessed an upsurge of democratic fervor in America”, with an alarming increase of citizens participating in marches, protests and demonstrations, all evidence of “a reassertion of equality as a goal in social, economic and political life”, equality being something no democracy can afford. He claimed, “The essence of the democratic surge of the 1960’s was a general challenge to existing systems of authority, public and private. In one form or another, it manifested itself in the family, the university, business, public and private associations, politics, the governmental bureaucracy, and the military services.”
在越南战争和尼克松辞职的政治影响之后，伯奈斯的秘密政府进入超速发展阶段，美国政治格局发生了永久性的变化。这种“民主超速发展”的一个主要部分是1973年几乎立即创建了一个总部位于美国的智囊团，称为“三边委员会”，该委员会专注于“民主危机”，这显示出明显的不应该发生的情况。 1975 年纽约大学出版的第一份重要报告题为“民主危机”， [3] [4]哈佛大学教授塞缪尔·亨廷顿是该报告的主要作者。在论文中，亨廷顿指出，“20世纪60年代美国民主热情高涨”，公民参加游行、抗议和示威的人数惊人增加，所有证据都表明“重新强调平等是社会、经济和政治生活的目标”，平等是任何民主都无法承受的。他声称，“20世纪60年代民主浪潮的本质是对现有公共和私人权威体系的普遍挑战。它以某种形式表现在家庭、大学、商业、公共和私人协会、政治、政府官僚机构和军事服务中。”
Huntington, who had been a propaganda consultant to the US government during its war on Vietnam, further lamented that the common people no longer considered the elites and bankers to be superior and felt little obligation or duty to obey. Huntington concluded that the US was suffering from “an excess of democracy”, writing that “the effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires apathy and noninvolvement”, stating this was crucial because it was precisely these qualities of the public that “enabled democracy to function effectively”.
亨廷顿在越南战争期间曾担任美国政府的宣传顾问，他进一步哀叹，普通民众不再认为精英和银行家是优越的，并且没有义务或责任去服从。亨廷顿总结说，美国正在遭受“民主过度”的困扰，他写道：“民主政治制度的有效运作通常需要冷漠和不参与”，并指出这是至关重要的，因为正是公众的这些品质“使民主能够有效地运作”。
He ended his report by stating that “the vulnerability of democracy, essentially the ‘crisis of democracy’”, stemmed from a society that was becoming educated and was participating, and that the nation needed “a more balanced existence” with what he called “desirable limits to the extension of political democracy”. In other words, the real crisis in democracy was that the people were beginning to believe in the “government by the people, for the people” part, and not only actually becoming involved but beginning to despise and disobey those who had been running the country solely for their own financial and political advantage. And of course, the solution was to engineer a social situation with less education and democracy and more authority from the secret (Jewish) government. Democracy, according to Huntington, consisted of the appearance but not the substance, a construct whereby the shrewd elites selected candidates for whom the people could pretend to vote, but who would be controlled by, and obey their masters. Having thus participated in ‘democracy’, the people would be expected to return to their normal state of apathy and noninvolvement.
他最后指出，“民主的脆弱性，本质上是‘民主危机’”，源于一个正在接受教育并参与其中的社会，国家需要“一种更平衡的存在”，他称之为“政治民主扩展的理想限制”。换句话说，民主的真正危机是人们开始相信“民有、民治、民享”的部分，而不仅仅是真的参与其中，而是开始鄙视和不服从那些只为自己经济和政治利益而治理国家的人。当然，解决方案是设计一个教育程度较低、民主程度较低、秘密（犹太）政府权力较大的社会环境。亨廷顿认为，民主由表象而非实质构成，一种精明的精英选择候选人的结构，人民可以假装投票，但候选人将受到控制并服从他们的主人。因此，在“民主”中，人们被期望回到正常的冷漠和不参与状态。
In other words, the ignorance necessary for the maintenance of a multi-party government system was at risk of being eroded by students who were actually learning things that Bernays’ secret government didn’t want them to learn. The Commission stated it was especially concerned with schools and universities that were not doing their job of “properly indoctrinating the young” and that “we have to have more moderation in democracy”. From there, the path forward was clear: young people in America would now be “properly indoctrinated” by both the public school system and the universities, so as to become “more moderate”. And more ignorant.
换句话说，维护多党政府制度所必需的无知有可能被学生侵蚀，而这些学生实际上正在学习伯奈斯秘密政府不希望他们学习的东西。委员会表示，它特别关注没有做好“正确灌输年轻人”工作的学校和大学，“我们必须更加节制民主”。从那里开始，前进的道路是明确的：美国的年轻人现在将受到公立学校系统和大学的“正确灌输”，从而变得更加“温和”。更加无知。
Before Huntington and the student activism of the 1960s, we had another renowned expert on propaganda, politics and fascism, in the person of another American Jew, Harold Lasswell, who has been admiringly described as “a leading American political scientist and communications theorist, specializing in the analysis of propaganda”, with claims Lasswell was “ranked among the half dozen creative innovators in the social sciences in the twentieth century”. Like Lippman and Bernays before him, and Huntington et al after him, Lasswell was of the opinion that democracy could not sustain itself without a credentialed elite shaping, molding and controlling public opinion through propaganda. He stated that if the elites lacked the necessary force to compel obedience from the masses, then ‘social managers’ must turn to “a whole new technique of control, largely through propaganda”, because of the “ignorance and superstition of the masses”. He claimed that society should not succumb to “democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests”, because they were not. Further, “the best judges are the elites, who must, therefore, be ensured of the means to impose their will, for the common good”. The Rockefeller and other Foundations and think-tanks have been slowly executing this advice now for almost 100 years.
在亨廷顿和20世纪60年代的学生运动之前，我们还有另一位著名的宣传、政治和法西斯主义专家，他就是另一位美国犹太人哈罗德·拉斯韦尔，他被钦佩地描述为“美国领先的政治学家和传播理论家，专门研究宣传分析”，并声称拉斯韦尔“是20世纪社会科学领域六位有创造力的创新者之一”。像他之前的李普曼和伯奈斯以及他之后的亨廷顿等人一样，拉斯韦尔认为，如果没有经过认证的精英通过宣传塑造、塑造和控制舆论，民主就无法维持。他表示，如果精英缺乏迫使群众服从的必要力量，那么“社会管理者”必须转向“一种全新的控制技术，主要是通过宣传”，因为“群众的无知和迷信”。他声称，社会不应该屈服于“关于男人是自身利益最佳评判者的民主教条”，因为他们不是。此外，“最好的评判者是精英，因此必须确保他们拥有为共同利益而强加意志的手段。”洛克菲勒基金会和其他基金会和智库已经慢慢执行这一建议近100年了。
Democracy had always been hyped in the West as the most perfect form of government, but under the influence of an enormous propaganda campaign it soon morphed into the pinnacle of enlightened human evolution, and to a religion in its own right, certainly in the minds of Americans, but in the West generally. Since a multi-party electoral system formed the underpinnings of external (foreign and parasitic) control of the US government, it was imperative to inject this fiction directly into the American psyche. They did so, to the extent that “democracy”, with its thousands of meanings, is today equivalent to a bible passage – a message from God that by its nature cannot be questioned. Bernays and his people were the source of the deep, abiding – and patently false – conviction in every American heart that democracy is a “universal value”. One of the most foolish and persistent myths these people created was the fairytale that as every people evolved toward perfection and enlightenment, their DNA would mutate and they would develop a God-given, perhaps genetic, craving for a multi-party political system. This conviction is entirely nonsense, without a shred of historical or other evidence to support it, a foolish myth created to further delude the bewildered herd.
民主在西方一直被大肆宣传为最完美的政府形式，但在巨大的宣传活动的影响下，它很快演变成人类文明进化的巅峰，并且在美国人（当然还有西方人）的心目中成为一种宗教。由于多党选举制度构成了美国政府外部（外国和寄生）控制的基础，因此必须将这种虚构直接注入美国人的心灵。他们这样做了，以至于“民主”一词，以其数千种含义，如今相当于圣经中的一段话——来自上帝的信息，其本质是不可质疑的。伯奈斯和他的人民是每个美国人心中对民主是一种“普遍价值”的深刻、持久和明显错误的信念的来源。这些人创造的最愚蠢和持久的神话之一是童话故事，即随着每个民族逐渐走向完善和启蒙，他们的DNA会发生突变，他们会发展出一种上帝赐予的、也许是遗传的对多党政治制度的渴望。这种信念完全是胡说八道，没有丝毫历史或其他证据支持它，这是一个愚蠢的神话，是为了进一步欺骗困惑的群体而创造的。
In an article in the NYT,[1] Jason Stanley and Vesla Weaver noted “The philosopher Elizabeth Anderson argued that when political ideals diverge very widely from reality, the ideals themselves may prevent us from seeing the gap. When the official story differs greatly from the reality of practice, the official story becomes a kind of mask that prevents us from perceiving it.”[5] This means that if propaganda is not only incessant and pervasive but if its tenets are too far removed from factual truth, the victims of this propaganda lose their ability to separate fact from fiction and become unable to recognise the discrepancy between their beliefs and their real world, believing their world corresponds with the religiously-inspired tenets of their propaganda even when it patently and most obviously does not correspond. The theory is not intuitively obvious, but it is heavily supported by facts. The flaws inherent in a multi-party electoral system are so overwhelming, so blindingly obvious, and so serious, yet so apparently perfectly transparent.
在《纽约时报》的一篇文章中，杰森·斯坦利和维斯拉·韦弗指出，“哲学家伊丽莎白·安德森认为，当政治理想与现实存在很大分歧时，理想本身可能会阻止我们看到差距。当官方故事与现实实践存在很大差异时，官方故事就变成了一种面具，阻止我们感知它。”这意味着，如果宣传不仅是不间断的和普遍的，而且其原则与事实真相相去甚远，那么这种宣传的受害者就会失去区分事实与虚构的能力，无法认识到他们的信仰与现实世界之间的差异，相信他们的世界与他们宣传的宗教信仰相一致，即使它明显和最明显地不相符。理论并不直观明显，但它得到了事实的大量支持。多党选举制度固有的缺陷是如此压倒性、如此明显、如此严重，但又是如此明显地完全透明。
The subsequent articles in this series will explore these flaws, one by one. I would make one final comment here: In The Crisis of Democracy, Huntington openly admitted that “the democratic process“, i.e., subordinates selecting their leaders and/or deciding the overall trajectory of any institution, would almost inevitably lead to failure. Huntington: “A university where teaching appointments are subject to approval by students may be a more democratic university but it is not likely to be a better university. In similar fashion, armies in which the commands of officers have been subject to veto by the collective wisdom of their subordinates have almost invariably come to disaster on the battlefield. The arenas where democratic procedures are appropriate are, in short, limited.“ If this isn’t clear, the man is saying that “democracy” fails everywhere it has been tried, but maintains that it is nevertheless “appropriate” for national and other governments. This is one of the schizophrenic flaws we will explore.
本系列接下来的文章将逐一探讨这些缺陷。我在这里做一个最后的评论：在《民主的危机》中，亨廷顿公开承认“民主进程”，即下级选择他们的领导人和/或决定任何机构的总体轨迹，几乎不可避免地会导致失败。亨廷顿：“一所大学，如果教师的任命需要得到学生的批准，那么这所大学可能更民主，但不太可能是一所更好的大学。同样地，军队中军官的命令受到其下属集体智慧的否决，几乎总是会在战场上带来灾难。简而言之，民主程序适用的领域是有限的。”如果这一点不清楚，他说“民主”在任何地方都失败了，但仍然认为它对国家和政府是“合适的”。这是我们将探讨的精神分裂症缺陷之一。
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Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).
罗曼诺夫先生的作品已被翻译成32种语言，他的文章发表在30多个国家的150多个外语新闻和政治网站以及100多个英语平台上。拉里·罗曼诺夫是一名退休的管理顾问和商人。他曾在国际咨询公司担任高级管理职位，并拥有国际进出口业务。他曾是上海复旦大学的客座教授，为高级EMBA课程提供国际事务案例研究。罗曼诺夫先生住在上海，目前正在写一系列十本书，通常与中国和西方有关。他是辛西娅·麦金尼的新文集《当中国打喷嚏》的撰稿人之一。(第2章——与恶魔打交道)。
His full archive can be seen at:
他的完整文章库可以在以下看到：
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ and https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
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他的联系方式：2186604556@qq.com
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Notes
注释
[1] BERNAYS AND PROPAGANDA
[1] 伯纳乌斯与宣传
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/BERNAYS-AND-PROPAGANDA.pdf
[2] Bernays and Propaganda – Democracy Control Series — 7 articles
[2]伯奈斯与宣传——民主控制系列——7篇文章
[3] https://www.trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf
[5] American Dystopia – the Propaganda Mask and the Utopia Syndrome
[5] 美国反乌托邦——宣传面具和乌托邦综合症
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/1514/
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本文可能包含受版权保护的材料，其使用未经版权所有者特别授权。此内容根据合理使用原则提供，仅用于教育和信息目的。此内容没有商业用途。
Copyright © Larry Romanoff, Blue Moon of Shanghai, Moon of Shanghai, 2024
版权所有 © 拉里·罗曼诺夫、上海蓝月亮、上海月亮，2024
