Disinformation.

The Disinformation campaign to preserve Communism from being properly identified as the most evil influence of the 20th century has been very successful, as witness the ability of disinformation campaigns to depict Pius XII as pro-nazi and Lee Harvey Oswald as a tool of the CIA.

The problem is...

...Disinformation is built on lies.

//Lee Harvey Oswald visited embassies in Cuba and the Soviet Union to plot his escape before assassinating President John F Kennedy, declassified documents reveal.

The bombshell news was disclosed to Lyndon B Johnson three days after the shooting in Dallas, Texas, on November 22 1963.

But it has remained a secret until today, when the CIA released 19,000 confidential documents from the 1960s.//

According to former chief of Romanian Intelligence, this information was essentially covered up by American political authorities who feared that its release might incite Americans to demand action against the Soviet Union (although, to be fair, Pacepa thinks that Oswald was a Soviet agent who slipped his leash.) From my review of Pacepa's "Disinformation":

//Pacepa also has an interesting section on Oswald. I think that most people think that he was a CIA stooge. Certainly, very few people realize that Oswald was a dedicated Communist who spent time in the Soviet Union. Pacepa makes an interesting circumstantial case that Oswald provided the secrets that permitted the Soviets to shoot down Francis Gary Powers' U2 spy plane. He also explains the strange behavior of Oswald's trip to Mexico, which involved, according to Pacepa, "trade-craft." Is Pacepa's speculation that Oswald acted on his own in retaliation for Kennedy's humiliation of Kruschev during the Cuban Missile Crisis true? Who knows? Certainly it is far more credible given the facts than the conspiracy theory floated by far-left loons like Oliver Stone, who has profited nicely on his claim that the Kennedy assassination was a CIA coup. But thanks to disinformation, we can talk about whether the CIA killed Kennedy, and not whether a card-carrying Communist who had spent time in the Soviet Union might have been a Communist agent.//

How Disinformatsye works.

Stifle the "badthink" projects before they get launched.

Is it McCarthyism or simply the pursuit of traditional Communist disinformation strategies by the formerly anti-communist liberal wing of American politics?

Harry Reid's performance in enjoying the revelation of his lies about Romney during the last election is a reminder of why we will be so lucky to see the last of this nasty piece of human wreckage.

//But McCarthyism isn’t limited to one party or ideology. And if liberals have any sense of self-awareness they will recognize the tactic has returned and is growing in their back yard.

Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the Senate, was asked by CNN’s Dana Bash this week if he regretted his 2012 accusation on the Senate floor that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney “hasn’t paid taxes for ten years.”

Reid presented no evidence at the time and claimed he didn’t need any: “I don’t think the burden should be on me. The burden should be on him. He’s the one I’ve alleged has not paid any taxes.” Reid’s response in the interview was fascinating. When asked by Bash if his tactic was McCarthyite he visibly shrugged on camera, smiled, and said “Well, they can call it whatever they want. Romney didn’t win, did he?” White House spokesman Josh Earnest refused to criticize Reid for his comment because it “was three years old,” when in reality Reid’s televised reveling in it was only three days old.

Las Vegas journalist Jon Ralston, who has observed Reid over the latter’s 30-year career in the Senate, has had enough. He revealed that he had written a harshly critical column in 2012 about Reid’s “ruthless, Machiavellian politics” in response to the senator’s accusation against Romney but saw it spiked by the Las Vegas Sun because its editor wanted to protect Reid.//

Reading "Disinformation" by former Romanian head of foreign intelligence Ion Pacepa is a weird experience.  Pacepa describes the habituation of the techniques of "disinformation" - the Communist technique of recreating the past and selling that recreation by planting the story in congenial media locations throughout the world. The techniques involve finding a "kernel of truth," projecting Communist crimes onto the target, and mass distribution onto a target audience by supposedly neutral sources in order to "frame" a subject before the subject can react.

Certainly, disinformation is something that happens in normal politics, but in society committed to truth it ought to be an embarrassment, if only, as Pacepa documents, reliance on disinformation is like a drug, the need for which grows the more it is used, and, like a drug, it distorts the user's perception of reality.