Cognitive dissonance

[Deep Knight]

On the Dinar thread I've talked about cognitive dissonance and the book in which the phrase was coined, "When Prophecy Fails."

Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying, blaming, and denying. The phrase was coined by Leon Festinger in his 1956 book When Prophecy Fails, which chronicled the followers of a UFO cult as reality clashed with their fervent beliefs. It is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology. A closely related term, cognitive disequilibrium, was coined by Jean Piaget to refer to the experience of a discrepancy between something new and something already known or believed.

Experience can clash with expectations, as, for example, with buyer's remorse following the purchase of an expensive item. In a state of dissonance, people may feel surprise, dread, guilt, anger, or embarrassment. People are biased to think of their choices as correct, despite any contrary evidence. This bias gives dissonance theory its predictive power, shedding light on otherwise puzzling irrational and destructive behavior.

A classical example of this idea (and the origin of the expression "sour grapes") is expressed in the fable The Fox and the Grapes by Aesop (ca. 620–564 BCE). In the story, a fox sees some high-hanging grapes and wishes to eat them. When the fox is unable to think of a way to reach them, he surmises that the grapes are probably not worth eating, as they must not be ripe or that they are sour. This example follows a pattern: one desires something, finds it unattainable, and reduces one's dissonance by criticizing it. Jon Elster calls this pattern "adaptive preference formation."

On the "Sign the Petition!" thread I noted the love/hate relationship the NESARAites had towards the Occupy Wall Street movement. On the positive side, it was a populist movement they thought they could mine for petions signatures or new believers. On the negative, it was a liberal, socialist, communist, and possibly demonic.

MacHaffie has bounced back and forth like a superball on this one, sometimes posting vehement pro and con articles on the same day. Today he has a list of "supporters" up which includes most of the planet's hated organizations (and one "Anonymous," which is a link to some anonymous poster). The first link for the claim that the Nazi Party supports it actually says this:

The Latest Desperate Smear Of Occupy Wall Street Protests: The Nazis Like Them
October 18, 2011 1:49 am ET by Todd Gregory

The American Nazi Party put out a statement on Thursday that was supportive of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Rocky Suhayda, the party's chairman, said, "My heart is right there with these people."

The right-wing blogosphere saw an opportunity to associate the protests with Nazis, and the pile-on began. The Blaze quoted the statement, as did Fox Nation and Gateway Pundit blogger Jim Hoft.

On the Monday edition of Fox News' flagship "straight news" program Special Report, anchor Bret Baier also treated this endorsement as if it were significant:

Interesting fact about Suhayda: During the 2008 presidential campaign, he declared his preference for Barack Obama over John McCain.

In a June 2008 piece, Esquire magazine interviewed Suhayda along with three other white supremacists -- and three of the four preferred Obama. Esquire also interviewed a black nationalist who chose McCain.

Similarly, an Al Qaeda affiliate expressed its hope that George W. Bush would win re-election in 2004, and an Al Qaeda website offered its support for McCain in 2008.

So, does this mean that Obama is just like the Nazis, or that Bush shares Al Qaeda's goals, or that McCain is a black nationalist?

Of course not. These are all ridiculous associations to make. Fringe groups make provocative comments like this all the time, often in the interest of attracting publicity.

The right-wing media's promotion of Suhayda's statement reveals an agenda that is dead-set on delegitimizing the message of the protests, to the extent that they're willing to employ comically flimsy logic in an attempt to do so.

Reminder: If a Nazi says something nice about you, that doesn't make you a Nazi.

Isn't "Media Matters" one of those liberal websites MacHaffie claims is part of Obama's New World Order? And he's now using it as a source? My theory is that MacHaffie's head must be spinning around like the possessed girl in "The Excorist." Then again, he probably doesn't read 99% of what he posts, he just looks at the titles and decides that it sounds anti-government enough to support his fantasies and that's good 'nuff for him.

[Deep Knight]

Not so much cognitively dissodent as simply "crazy," MacHaffie also put up a picture of Angela Merkel photoshopped into a Nazi uniform with the claim that she's Hitler's illegitimate daughter. Never mind that he died in 1945 and she was born in 1954. The link after the picture (her "seminal bona fides," which sounds like a Deep Knight sexual claim to me) explains all this:

Angela Merkel was born in the D.D.R., the Communist portion of Germany in 1954. Her biography says she was born on July 17, 1954, and that she is the daughter of a Lutheran minister from an East German-controlled church. Recently, however, Soviet KJB archive files reveal an entirely different story. Stasi GDR files indicate that she was born on April 20th, 1954, and details of her birth were included in the records of the German Dr. Karl Klauberg, who was one of the Nazi "death doctors" convicted by Soviet courts and imprisoned. When he later was recognized as a brilliant scientist, he was released after seven years and was recognized as the father of artificial insemination. The Soviets were even more intrigued when they discovered Dr. Klauberg had preserved frozen samples of the sperm of Adolf Hitler. The forces of darkness in high places decided to try to produce a child from Hitler's sperm, obviously for occult and illuministic purposes. Dr. Klauberg then brought the youngest sister of Eva Braun (Hitler's wife), whose name was Gretl, to Eastern Germany, and the result of the experiment produced not a biological son of Hitler, but rather a daughter. Amazingly, Adolf Hitler was born on April 20th, 1889, and Angela Merkel was born on April 20th, 1954. (April 20th is 11 days before the witches' high sabat of Beltaine.) Angela became a custodian of the Catholic Church through its connections with the East German Lutheran Church. Once a German Pope would take the Roman throne, Angela Merkel was to also take her biological father's position as German Chancellor. On April 20th, 2005, the Nazi Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, (16th), precisely on the 116th birthday of Adolf Hitler. Then on November 22nd, 2005, Hitler's biological daughter, Angela Merkel was elected Chancellor of Germany. The day of that election, November 22nd, was the anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species, which is an antichrist publication denying the Creator of the universe.

If the Soviet record is true, and the evidence is strong, it opens up some amazing possibilities. The undeniable fact is that Angela Merkel came from obscurity to triumviral power as German Chancellor, President of the European Union, and head of the powerful G-8 economic cartel. When I began to do further research on this, I discovered that Hitler's father, who took the name Hitler, was the illegitimate son of a Rothschild mistress whose last name was Schicklgruber. The etymology of the name Hitler reveals that the name means a shepherd who lives in a hut. The name Adolf from Old High German means noble wolf. Thus, his combined name indicates that he was the Shepherd Wolf, or false shepherd. Strangely enough, Pope Ratzinger, or Benedict XVI, also has the title of Shepherd of the Church, and since he took office, the Roman Catholic Church has had a German shepherd. Incidentally, that breed of dog resembles a wolf. We also know that Adolf Hitler nicknamed himself Herr Wolf. His East Prussian headquarters was called Wolfsschanze; his headquarters in France was called Wolfsschlucht, and his headquarters in the Ukraine was called Werwolf. Will the powerful European Union become the New World Order and Fourth Reich? Only God knows.

One more interesting point is that Chancellor Angela Merkel has an unusual obsession with the works of the occult composer Richard Wagner, who was a Satanist. She made her obsession known in an interview with the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in July 2005. Wagner wrote the infamous composition called Parsifal, which is purely occult and demonic. Parsifal was a favorite of Adolf Hitler as well, and Hitler stated that the music of Wagner occupied his mind. Angela Merkel, like Adolf Hitler, is deeply fascinated with Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. The valkyries were minor female deities that would ride through every battle to gather the most valiant of the slain and carry them off to a place called Valhalla where they would wait to join the army of Odin in the last battle at the end of the world.

Is this woman, Angela Merkel, being used of Satan to marshal the forces for the last battle called Armageddon? It is also interesting to note that Chancellor Merkel has exactly the same eyes as Chancellor Hitler, and she bears a striking resemblance to him except for the little moustache, of course.

Soviet KJB files? Isn't KJB the King James Bible? And then there's the frozen sperm claim. Imagine this doctor getting Der Fuhrer's donation in his last days at the bunker then sneaking past Soviet lines around Berlin with his genetic treasure, keeping it frozen with liquid Nitrogen he happened to find along the way. Not to mention the 7 years he was in Soviet prison. Were the commies not paying attention because they were too busy reading the King James version of the Bible?


Oh yeah, put the toothbrush mustache on her and they could be twins!