Friday, January 19, 2007

Liberal sod - Astroturfing







I have been doing research sparked by the great signage and cohesive message of protesters in non-English speaking countries from around the world. I have a background in graphics and message and I thought that, say in Indonesia, the protesters had a better "branding" of message than many US companies. I've shown a few examples here.
This led me to noticing the same thing with C.A.I.R. and other "islamic" groups only interested in saving America the pain of defeat and extending their handful of left over virgins in the next life. All for peace. They were using the same language and strawman all over the country in their "spontaneous" fits of indignation.
This is called astroturfing (via Wkipedia):

In politics and advertising, the term astroturfing describes formal public
relations (PR) campaigns which seek to create the impression of being a
spontaneous, grassroots behavior. Hence the reference to the "AstroTurf"
(artificial grass) is a metaphor to indicate "fake grassroots" support.

The goal of such campaign is to disguise the agenda of a political client as an
independent public reaction to some political entity —a politician, political
group, product, service, event. Astroturfers attempt to orchestrate the actions
of apparently diverse and geographically distributed individuals, by both overt
("outreach," "awareness," etc.) and covert (disinformation) means. Astroturfing
may be undertaken by anything from an individual pushing their own personal
agenda through to highly organised professional groups with financial backing
from large corporations.

Today I had the privilege of reading the Mudville Gazette who has much more chronicling the left's use of astroturfing in their worldwide effort to destroy America's war in Iraq, nee America's war on islamofascists. In this case Mudville delves into the millions spent to use dummy groups working with front companies to make it appear that the nation's citizens are working independently of their own conscience.
Did you really think that simple "soldiers", concerned "mothers" like Cindy Sheehan and women and children in countries around the world produced press events and media images all on their own?
Go read more about the campaign to destroy America here.