Virtue Signaling

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notmartha
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Virtue Signaling

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Virtue Signaling

From HERE:

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WHEN EVIL IS CALLED VIRTUE

Take a close look at this week's cartoon. It carries a hidden message that is easy to miss. The irony is clear enough that the violent leftist demonstrators in the US, whose political ideology is identical to classical Fascist doctrine, seek to deny freedom-of-speech to those who disagree with them. That, too, is classical Fascism. Yet, these people have the gall to label those they attack as Fascists.

But the deeper message is that the demonstrators in every part of the country follow the same style book. They shout slogans and chants that are crafted to create the impression that they are virtuous and trod the moral high ground. They shout obscenities and assault people while chanting: "Shame. Shame. Shame." Observers are thereby programmed to feel that, even though the rioters are obnoxious, their actions are justified by the virtue of their cause and the evil they oppose.

This tactic is called 'virtue signalling' and it is studied at war colleges and universities specializing in psychological warfare. I recall reading about a similar strategy years ago in a manual for guerilla warfare. It stressed the importance of winning the support of peasants and local townspeople by convincing them that the guerillas are motivated by high ideals, such as a desire for peace, freedom, equality, and opposition to tyranny.

It is obvious that this tactic did not just occur simultaneously to the organizers. They are not products of a spontaneous uprising of the masses but part of a network of professional agitators with lots of training and money behind them.
In my view, one of the most important things that must be done by the Trump administration is to put these Fascist revolutionary organizations out of business, and the best way to do that is to cut off their funding from abroad and from within. Let's start with from within. The name George Soros comes to mind.

G. Edward Griffin
2017 February 3
Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling
Virtue signalling is the conspicuous expression of moral values by an individual done primarily to enhance their standing within a social group. The term was first used in signalling theory, to describe any behavior that could be used to signal virtue – especially piety among the religious faithful.Since 2015, the term has become more commonly used as a pejorative characterization by commentators to criticize what they regard as the platitudinous, empty, or superficial support of socially progressive views on social media. It has been used to describe analogous behavior in other groups, such as pro-gun-rights grandstanding among the American right, or within groups to criticize their own members for valuing outward appearance over substantive action.
Urban Dictionary:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... signalling
- Expressing an attitude or describing a behavior of yours in the hopes of gaining approval from a group that you fear in order to increase your sense of security, always at the expense of your own group.

- Advocating a political or philosophical position, and/or taking up a public cause, from a position of vanity, for the primary purpose of demonstrating your conformity with fashionable pop culture values.

- To take a conspicuous but essentially useless action ostensibly to support a good cause but actually to show off how much more moral you are than everybody else.
Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus:

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dict ... signalling
virtue signalling noun

› an attempt to show other people that you are a good person, for example by expressing opinions that will be acceptable to them, especially on social media:

Virtue signalling is the popular modern habit of indicating that one has virtue merely by expressing disgust or favour for certain political ideas or cultural happenings.
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