Charley Reese Quotes

Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear--kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor-with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it

Of course the people don't want war... It is the leaders...who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along...all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

There are those who wrap themselves in flags and blow the tinny trumpet of patriotism as a means of fooling the people.

The tactic of leading people into... a war that doesn't make any sense by telling them they are under attack, and if they raise any objection they're unpatriotic, is a very old tactic. And it doesn't intimidate me.

I love America, but I've now got two young kids and America has changed so much since 9/11 and Bush. It's beyond Orwellian. The idea in '1984' that if you keep saying you're being attacked then you can get away with anything has come true.

All these stories are grist to the mill of the government because they build up a very useful war psychosis.

In a war, as indeed at most times, we become the ready victims of phrases.

In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.

The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology

War is no longer made by simply analyzed economic forces if it ever was. War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues and dictators who play on the patriotism of their people to mislead them into a belief in the great fallacy of war when all their vaunted reforms have failed to satisfy the people they misrule.

Propaganda is bad when it comes from the enemy. It is good when it comes from us.

In two weeks the sheeplike masses of any country can be worked up by the newspapers into such a state of excited fury that men are prepared to put on uniforms and kill and be killed, for the sake of the sordid ends of a few interested parties. Compulsory military service seems to me the most disgraceful symptom of that deficiency in personal dignity from which civilized mankind is suffering today.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

It has too often been too easy for rulers and governments to incite man to war.

I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The 'dazzling royals' have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press.

Part of the reason that the government's fear mongering is succeeding is because so many people are so ignorant, that it is easier for government to frighten people in submission.

Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

When one nation is at war with another nation, the political machine does everything it can to vilify the people of the other nation, so it makes it easier to kill them. Which is understandable and it's happened this way throughout history.

The whole thing was done for internal political reasons to galvanize and unify the country against the Americans, and if they hadn't had that immediate opportunity they would have found another one.

When politicians use fear, they are playing into the enemy's hand.

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency.

Unfortunately, after Sept. 11, there was an outburst in America of intense suffering and patriotism, and the Bush administration was very shrewd and effective in painting anyone who disagreed with the policies as unpatriotic or even traitorous.

When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war.

In order to rally people, governments need enemies... if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.