“Shortly, the public will be unable to reason or think for themselves...” — Zbigniew Brzezinski

[rmendes]

I've seen the below quote spread around frequently. The closest thing I've seen to a cite is "-1972". does anyone have a source for this. A Google search by decade doesn't turn much up other than then pages spreading the quote.

"Shortly, the public will be unable to reason or think for themselves. They'll only be able to parrot the information they've been given on the previous night's news."
— Zbigniew Brzezinski

 

[Rory]

There's full text of his 1970 book 'Between Two Ages' here:

https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-z5FBdAnrFME2m1U4/Zbigniew Brzezinski - Between Two Ages_djvu.txt

Lots of talk of the news and 'reasoning', but couldn't find anything resembling the quote.

He also published books in 1971 and 1972, but searching them on google books didn't turn up anything.

Maybe he said it in a speech or on a TV show?

 

[Mick West]

It's probably a paraphrasing of something in Between Two Ages.
Here's a 2009 reference, seemingly an interview with Steven Jacobson.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090831173245/http://pupaganda.com/originals/Tv_mind_control.html

When one continually controls the information, one controls the people absorbing the information. The manufactured and controlled information on TV can be referred to as the signal and that constant signal is what shapes and guides the masses to their conclusions. In order to take back our minds, we must first learn to "Unplug the Signal." By turning off your TV you will realize the world that you're living in is suddenly very unfamiliar to you. You will see that news of no importance is constantly debated and analyzed, and as you listen to the conversations of people around you, you realize they're talking robots just repeating what they've heard on the news. This is exactly what Zbigniew Brzezinski talked about in his book "Between Two Ages". He said, "Shortly, the public will be unable to reason or think for themselves. They'll only be able to parrot the information they've been given on the previous night's news."

However the quote is not in that book. Here's another PDF:
https://wikispooks.com/w/images/e/e6/Between_Two_Ages.pdf

You can verify that by searching for "parrot" or "shortly" or "night".

I suspect it was actually coined by Steven Jacobson. He's a kind of David Icke style proponent of the "mind control" theory of recent history. I think he's very loosely paraphrasing Brzezinski book, which is far more nuanced.

 

[Rory]

It looks like the text of that page is an article written by Nathan Janes - including the quote - and that the "interview with Steven Jacobson" is referring to this video here:


source: nexusilluminati.blogspot/2011/01/tv-mind-control.html (also in the code of the archived page)

The interview talks about some of the same ideas, but doesn't have the quote in it.

The archived version that Mick found does appear to be the earliest example of the quote though - the same article appeared on oped three days before that was captured, but links to the original location of the archived page on Janes's website pupaganda.com.

Maybe @rmendes could write Nathan Janes a note, if he can find him - the above link isn't his page, just a blog that's using his words (the oped page has a photo and links to a brief bio, though).

 

[Rory]

Where Janes got the quote is a mystery to me: I can't find anything in 'Between Two Ages' even remotely resembling it. The closest I can get by searching for "shortly", "news", "parrot", "reason", and "public" is:

[The increase in exposure to news] does not make for better "understanding" of our contemporary affairs. On the contrary, it can be argued that in some respects "understanding" - in the sense of possessing the subjective confidence that one can evaluate events on the basis of some organized principle - is today much more difficult for most people to attain. Instant but vicarious participation in events evokes uncertainty, especially as it becomes more and more apparent that established analytical categories no longer adequately encompass the new circumstances.

Which is not close at all.

On a cheerier note, this page is now third highest in Google's search results when looking for the quote.

 

[rmendes]

Whoa, very impressive work guys. I'll follow up with Nathan and report back. Thanks!

 

[Rory]

Whoa, very impressive work guys. I'll follow up with Nathan and report back. Thanks!

I'm in a facebook conversation with him as we speak (I know you know this; just wanted to let everyone else know, so he doesn't have it coming at him from multiple angles. )

 

[Rory]

UPDATE: He said he'd look into it but didn't get back to me. Oh well.