Newspeak - turnspeak

By Aussiegirl

Here's more on various means of propaganda being used to turn public opinion. No wonder Republicans are tearing out their hair over idiotic statements like those of Dick Durban (Dick Turban?) comparing GITMO to Nazi death camps, communist Gulags and the genocide of Pol Pot. Just remember this the next time the Democrats accuse the Republicans of everything they themselves are guilty of -- obstructionism, smearing, twisting the truth, being mean-spirited, personal attacks, etc. Now you know why you feel such a speechless inability to even counter such complete lunacy.

Eretz Yisroel has the story:

A technique of propaganda called "Turnspeak".

The Arab League makes use of a cognitive technique of propaganda called "turnspeak", where you attack someone and then turn it around 180 degrees and claim they attacked you. Because the truth is the exact opposite of the information being disseminated it is psychologically difficult to counter and leads to confusion.

Turnspeak leads to psychological confusion and a feeling of being "burned-out" or "overwhelmed" with too much information, effectively creating a blanket of "white noise" which makes clarity difficult to achieve.
Joan Peters, former White House consultant on the Middle East writes:

The term was first used by journalists to describe German propaganda after it invaded Czechoslovakia in March of 1939. To win sympathy for their invasion, the Germans practiced what has become known as "turnspeak". They turned the blame back on the Czechs for trying to precipitate an all-out war in the region. In other words, the Czechs in their attempt to hang onto their land were ready to plunge all of Europe into war.

How did the rest of Europe respond to this lie? They believed it. World leaders decided that something had to be done to preserve peace at any cost.

Author William Shirer, who was a reporter in Europe at the time, distilled the truth simply when he wrote, "Thus the plight of the German minority in Czechoslovakia was merely a pretext...for cooking up a stew in a land he [Hitler] coveted, undermining it, confusing and misleading its friends and concealing his real purpose...to destroy the Czechoslovak state and grab its territories..."