THE PROTESTORS HAVE IT WRONG

There is something completely missing in the chants, signs, and words of those protesting the war—namely, the lack of Critical Thinking Skills. These skills are necessary for clear and accurate thinking, to recognize a true “fact” from a conclusion, evaluation, or interpretation. These skills lead to rational thinking and reasoning. Among these basic skills are the following, but lacking these critical thinking skills, the protestors protests have simply got it wrong.

Considering each side’s view before judging it. Asking searching questions to flush out the actual details. Skeptically doubting information regarding its source, its credibility, etc. Detailing specifics and making critical Distinctions.

First, They do not Distinguish Protestors confuse Hamas with the Palestinians treating them as if they were one and the same. They are not. One refers to the population of Palestine; the other is the governing group; a group which even the Egyptian government has been identified, from time to time, as a terrorist group. One are the civilians, the other are the fighters (soldiers). When asked about using the tunnels to protect the Palestinians, Hamas leader recently said that the tunnels are to protect Hamas, not the Palestinians. The civilians can’t go there. If Hamas makes this distinction, so should we!

The protestors fail to distinguish who wants civilians to die. Israel certainly does not; every time a civilian dies, Hamas publicizes it to get a win in the media war. It’s Hamas who has an ulterior motive for wanting civilians to die. We all saw that when a rocket mis-fired and hit the parking lot of a hospital. Within minutes, Hamas announced “Israel bombed the hospital and killed 500.”

Protestors do not distinguish civilian hostages from soldiers. They should be marching and demanding the release of the 240 hostages. They should march shouting that Hamas stop using Palestinians as “human shields.” These are crimes against humanity. I am taking the side of the Palestinians, not Hamas.

Second, They do not Provide Details. A calm, clear mind simply accepts facts as facts, whether they support my side or another side. So detailing specifics is crucial. Regarding details: the hospital itself was not hit; 500 were not killed; and Israel did not fire the rocket. Hamas did win the media battle about this due to the media’s hunger for a sensational story. They grabbed it and ran with it. The New York Times published what Hamas announced and it spread like a wildfire, inflaming protestors around the world. Count that one up as a win for Hamas’ propaganda! When the facts later came to light, New York Times ran a retraction—it was not Israel, but a Jihad terrorist group in Gaza who sent the rocket. But the damage was done. Did Hamas apologize for the error? Of course not.

Protestors quote Hamas saying there were no beheadings on Oct. 7. Then on Oct. 29, Anderson Cooper in a CNN documentary, “The Whole Story” actually showed pictures of young women beheaded. Even on Oct. 7, while engaged in the massacre at the Kobbatz, Hamas soldiers took pictures and posted them on social media show them burning children alive, etc. Ah, details!

Third, They do not ask Searching Questions The media is almost always guilty of over-exaggerating to get a juicy story. Only later do they run a retraction which few see. Their motto: first sell the news, then maybe make corrections. No wonder there are so many cognitive distortions in the news: exaggeration, over- sensationalism, catastrophizing, personalizing, emotionalizing, name-calling, insults, etc.

Here’s the problem with cognitive distortions, biases, and fallacies: uncritical thinkers do not know how to question and doubt these. Because most people have not been taught how to think, most are fooled by such propaganda. Not knowing how to do critical thinking, they are not able to recognize when thinking or reasoning is full of deletions, generalizations, and distortions.

When I listen to interviews with the protestors, they speak from an absolutist mental state; they have no doubts, no questions. They speak by shouting, yelling, chant insulting and ridiculous chants, talking-over, and never take a moment to consider the perspectives of the other side.

Therapy for the Protestors The protestors need mental therapy to heal their minds for the way they think! They need training in how to think critically, how to use the Meta-Model to make distinctions and to ask questions. Learning these linguistic distinctions, you learn to ask specific questions to get details and distinctions so you turn ill-formed and vague statements into well-formed statements.

Those who use the media to propagandadize, manipulate and twist language to confuse minds. They do not want people to think. They want people to believe without questioning. They do not want people to disagree with them; they want people to submit to their ideology as they do their thinking for them.

People who don’t know critical thinking skills will inevitably be led by the nose to believe all sorts of irrational lies. It will be easy to inflame them by fabrications. Psychological warfare is a war for the mind—for the thinking and emoting of people. Many in the media know the captivating power of over-sensationalized headlines and news alerts. Their “communications” are essentially propaganda designed to promote some ideology. Long has been the day when fact-based journalism prevailed. Sadly, that has all but disappeared. All of this leads to the importance of learning critical thinking skills and why we teach them in Neuro-Semantics.

More about Critical Thinking skills? See the NLP Meta-Model, Communication Magic; Executive Thinking; Brain Camp I, and on The Shop, The Neuro-Semantics of Facts.