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The parade under the cloud: Chernobyl and official silence
On 1 May 1986 Kyiv's children marched under fallout, and Romanians were told radiation rose "without danger to the population". How performed normality works, what people lived, and how to notice it.
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Everyone agrees: social proof and manufactured consensus
We judge what is right by what others seem to think. Asch showed how far people follow a group. Today the group can be faked: paid reviews, astroturf, documented sockpuppet networks of Russia, China and the US, and a reported Israeli-funded campaign.
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What it feels like to be persuaded
Persuasion rarely feels like a push. It feels like urgency, belonging, relief or the pleasure of certainty. Kahneman's System 1 and 2 and Cialdini's shortcuts explain why, with cases from shops, scams, groups and states.
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Romania 1989: "sixty thousand dead" and the terrorists never tried
The charge sheet said more than 60,000 victims. The most cited count is about 1,100, and some 940 died after Ceaușescu fled, fighting "terrorists" no court ever identified; who fired after 22 December is still disputed.
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Romania 1990: the mineriads and the power of state television
In June 1990 a president thanked miners who had beaten students in Bucharest. In March, Târgu Mureș was told two opposite stories in two languages. How labels, one TV channel and a call to act turned neighbours into targets.
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Selling a war in 1917: the Creel Committee and modern propaganda
In 1917 the US built a propaganda machine in a week: 75,000 volunteer speakers, posters, films, forged documents and laws against dissent. What the record shows about the Committee on Public Information.
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The silence you choose: self-censorship, chilling effects and NDAs
After the Snowden revelations, views of sensitive Wikipedia articles fell nearly 30% with no ban at all. The evidence on chilling effects, self-censorship surveys, NDAs at work, and the rulings on retaliation.
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Gulf of Tonkin, 1964: the attack that did not happen
A reported attack on US destroyers in August 1964 led Congress to vote 416-0 and 88-2 for war powers. The NSA's own historian later concluded the second attack never happened. How a non-event was presented as certain.
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When the "conspiracy theory" became an official assessment
The lab-leak idea went from "conspiracy theory" to an FBI, DOE and CIA leaning, all hedged. The laptop was blocked, then authenticated. 5G-COVID and chemtrails stayed false. The lesson is method: confidence, evidence, who said what when.
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Nayirah, 1990: how an atrocity story is built
A 15-year-old's four-minute testimony about babies taken from incubators helped sell the 1991 Gulf War. She was the Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter, coached by a PR firm. How the story was built, and why real atrocities still get dismissed.
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"Just the old-fashioned grippe": wartime censorship and the 1918 flu
Around 20 September 1918 a federal health officer called the new flu "the plain old 'La Grippe'". Wartime censorship shaped what people were told, and the country that reported honestly got its name on the disease. What it cost.
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Iraq 2002–2003: how the case for war was made
The case for invading Iraq rested on a few weak strands of intelligence, presented with certainty while dissent stayed hidden. What the US Senate (2004, 2008) and the UK Chilcot Inquiry (2016) later found, and the regime's own bluff.