This is a new one on me, from a group that Rand Paul belongs to:
On its Website, the AAPS included an article in October 2008 titled, “Is Obama a Brilliant Orator … or a Hypnotist?” It cites an unsigned paper suggesting that Obama used hypnotic techniques and speech patterns in his 2008 campaign.
The paper bases its finding on the work of a controversial psychologist, Milton Erickson, who died 30 years ago and pioneered the also-controversial field of neuro-linguistic programming, which purports to use voice patterns to subliminally influence people’s decisions.
The paper claims to examine Obama’s speeches “word by word, hand gesture by hand gesture, tone, pauses, body language, and proves his use of covert hypnosis intended only for licensed therapists on consenting patients.”
The paper goes on to say that Obama’s “mesmerized, cult-like, grade-school-crush-like worship by millions is not because ‘Obama is the greatest leader of a generation’ who simply hasn’t accomplished anything, who magically ‘inspires’ by giving speeches. Obama is committing perhaps the biggest fraud and deception in American history.”
Face
AAPS = American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. Is this diff than Rand’s group?
Edit: looks like the groups are not the same.
Crackers gotta keep trying to justify how a Scary Negro stole the election
Rhoda
I voted for the Magic Negro! Now I know why, he hypnotized me.
Witchcraft, hypnotism…waiting for the Conservative Druids to appear.
TooManyJens
Yawn. Another wingnut who can’t understand why anyone would get behind a leader who isn’t a wingnut. Just like they had to invent Bush Derangement Syndrome because they couldn’t fathom how anyone could oppose torture, aggressive war, and the continued looting of our economy.
Dave
You think the crazy bar can’t be reset…and yet they keep finding a way to do it.
arguingwithsignposts
I knew the presence of the blackity-black in the oval office would cause some problems for some people, but damn, I could never have guessed the level of bullshit these people would reach.
New Yorker
Everyone has beaten me to it, but it’s hilarious and scary at the same time how much these people have lost their minds over a black man being more intelligent and successful than they could ever hope to be.
Dennis SGMM
And here I thought that Obama won because he was running against a senile old man who chose a wet-behind-the-ears grifter as his running mate.
You learn something new every day on the intertrons.
Zifnab
So when Obama promised to close Gitmo, leave Iraq, pass health care reform, and usher in a new Green Economy, he wasn’t winning votes with his campaign promises. Instead, it was his magic hypnotic vocal tones.
Does this mean Obama won because McCain / Palin was shrill?
biff diggerence
But . . .
Any mention of the Caucasian moisture and tumescence from President Codpiece?
Sloegin
Would have been awfully nice if he’d hypnotized me into losing 40 pounds along with having me vote for him.
Martin
This went around a couple of months ago. Maddow even covered it.
Mnemosyne
Isn’t neuro-linguistic programming what Scientology is based on? I’m too lazy to look it up, frankly.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@Martin:
Thanks, I didn’t know that.
Comrade Mary
Surely you meant “hip-mo-tized”?
Dennis SGMM
@biff diggerence:
Obama had to use secret hypnotism techniques “intended only for licensed therapists on consenting patients.” With Republicans, all you do is get ’em down on the sidewalk and draw a chalk line from their nose toward the horizon line.
lacp
Good God. I’m no Obama fan, but that’s because I’m a far lefty, not because of his Scary Macumba Juju Negritude. These people are insane.
Brachiator
Yes, because it is unpossible that a black man might actually be competent and able to inspire millions of people of all ages, genders and ethnicities.
Nope. Must be (all together now) Black Magic.
This weird racial anxiety about Obama has been building steadily since his nomination and election. And while usually this kind of craziness is largely confined to the late night alien conspiracy talk radio programs, it continues to spill over into the mainstream.
Also, too, Andrew Breitbart continues to be shameless (courtesy AP and other sources)
Pat Freaking Boone?
quaint irene
Did Obama use one of those spinning discs you could buy off the back of Archie comics?
Lysana
I’ve seen that claim bandied about before. It remains a steaming pile of Bantha shit.
Chyron HR
Other powerful hypnotic triggers include:
1) A fake Minnesota accent.
2) Screeching “Don’t retreat, reload”, “Pals around with terrorists” and “Drill baby drill”.
3) Seemingly incoherent “tweets” and other electronic communications which contain subliminal messages.
If you participate in “mesmerized, cult-like, grade-school-crush-like worship” of any individual engaged in these behaviors, you may be the victim of mass hypnosis.
Or stupid.
maya
I saved some of “O”s campaign speeches on TeVo. After reading this I put a few back up, slowed them down to 1/16th speed and danged if ice cream sundaes, with sprinkles, walnuts, whipped cream and lots and lots of cherries on top weren’t intersperced at every few nano-second intervals.
jacy
The crazy, it’s like a virus.
What, was John McCain too old to learn hypnotism? He could have saved the country from the sekrit muslins!
And where is the book that teaches you how to do this? Why, I could have the neighbors mowing my lawn, the kids would be cleaning their rooms and doing their homework, and my S/O wouldn’t complain if I drank beer and watched TV all day. Dammit, why am I always left out of the big nefarious mind-control plots?
Winston Smith
@Mnemosyne:
Not really. As questionable as NLP is, it’s way more credible than Dianetics, the theory behind Scientology.
Dianetics basically says that every problem you have is due to you reacting self-destructively to some past psychological trauma. They take that rather common-sense premise and turn it into dogma.
NLP says that your cognition is so tightly bound to language that you can essentially force people to think things by using certain language. A trivial example is that if you walk up to someone and say, “2+2” they will reflexively think of the number 4. You can try to train yourself not to, but it’s really, really difficult.
Most NLP parlor tricks are intended to allow socially awkward NLP nerds to seduce women by making them think of sex. I’m not making this up.
NLP is another thing (somewhat like Dianetics) that starts in relatively uncontroversial territory and then tries to take it beyond reason.
gg
Damn, I *knew* it was suspicious, after watching Obama’s inaugural speech, how I started repeating, “I loved it. It was much better than ‘Cats’. I’m going to see it again and again.”
Brachiator
@Winston Smith:
Which is why, of course, you see so many hot babes with nerds instead of with rock stars, athletes and bad boys.
Sm*t Cl*de
Milton Erickson, who died 30 years ago and pioneered the also-controversial field of neuro-linguistic programming
Grinder and Bandler (the NLP people) borrowed some of Erickson’s methods and over-simplified them as part of their psychobabble, but it’s nonsense to talk of Erikson pioneering the field. They didn’t think much of Erickson’s theories, but thought that the mannerisms that he showed when applying those theories were worth emulating consciously.
licensed to kill time
♫ ♪ Obama you do something to me,
something that simply mystifies me.
Tell me, why should it be
you have the power to hypnotize me?
Let me live ‘neath your spell,
Do do that voodoo
that you do so well. ♫ ♪ ;-)
mclaren
This is an old Limbaugh meme going back to 2008. We heard about Obama’s alleged “hypnotic powers” prior to the November 2008 elections. Repubs were warned not to watch the Evil Dark One on TV lest they succumb to his Rasputin-like powers.
But the “hypnotism” meme goes back a lot farther than that. I first recall encountering it during my youth when a hardcore conservative foisted upon me the immortal booklet Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles. The Beatles were at that late date considerably passe’, so this provoked more hilarity than alarm.
Withal, it shows just how hoary this particular canard is.
Plus c’est change, plus c’est la meme chose…
Menzies
It may have been removed since I last checked, but Conservapedia’s article on Obama used this as a source.
In fact, Andrew Schlafly serves (or at least used to serve) as AAPS’ general counsel. He’s filed a few amicus curiae briefs on their behalf, I think.
Bob L
The right was claiming this during the election. Basically a cheep shot to explain why Obama draws crowds because he can say something coherent while the Repugs just toss out talking points.
Nethead Jay
I think I’ve seen that one around before, in the last weeks of the election campaign in 2008. And a quick google confirms that it was around the wingnutosphere even back then. So yet another insane RW meme.
electricgrendel
Sekrit hipno mooslim?!
David Brooks (not that one)
Anyway, I’m confused. I thought NLP as applied to political messaging was the great and wonderful (and totally not-evil) discovery of Frank Luntz and his Republican clentele.
some other guy
Seriously, Obama is like Lex Luthor to these people. Listen to 15 minutes of Beck, Rush, or Hannity and you’ll learn that everything the man does is part of some grand Marxist conspiracy going back decades. I’d say they’ve lost their minds there were any evidence that they ever had proper functioning minds to lose.
Stefan
The paper goes on to say that Obama’s “mesmerized, cult-like, grade-school-crush-like worship by millions is not because ‘Obama is the greatest leader of a generation’ who simply hasn’t accomplished anything,
Hasn’t accomplished anything? For god’s sakes, he’s turned America into a communist dictatorship! He’s instituted death panels! He’s destroyed liberty and enslaved a generation of American patriots to his evil version of universal annual medical checkups for all! Isn’t that at least worth some recognition?
I know why they do it — throw everything against the wall and see what sticks, etc. — but I’m continually amazed at the wingnuts’ ability to turn on a dime between “Obama is destroying us all” and “Obama is shiftless and has no accomplishments!” I mean, it can’t be both, people.
As always, I’m left with the feeling that these people are so stupid it would be a sin not to separate them from their money, and wondering why I’m not the one doing it…..
Urza
Having actually had NLP training, i’ll respectfully disagree with some of the other posters on it being like Scientology or being used to convince people to do what you want. However, it will depend on who you’re learning it from and why. I learned it as a set of techniques for mental therapy to help people. Get past traumas and things like that.
It is getting a bad name because businesses got ahold of it and use the methods for advertising. I like knowing the techniques because it makes it alot easier for me to shut down the messaging. I literally try to make a point not to buy anything thats advertised too much, or in certain ways because its not very ethical to hit those buttons in the brain if the customer doesn’t actually need your product.
I wish Obama had used the techniques though. Better yet, use them now to sway the mindless idiots running around the country. Beck certainly uses a few of the techniques to brainwash his followers. But then the techniques in NLP are things that effective people have known for centuries, it just gathers them up into one place and teaches how to use them together.
jrg
Ahh, wingnuts. They can come up with 1,001 reasons why their VP candidate should not know what the “Bush Doctrine” is, but can’t explain why anyone would vote for the other guy, even after it’s been explained to them numerous times.
It makes sense though. If they “got it”, they’d cease to be Republicans.
gnomedad
Okay, the White House has been usurped by a Kenyan Muslim soshulist Nazi racist anti-colonialist … hypnotist. Damn, it’s hard to keep up.
cat48
I first read this stunning fact on Conservapedia. It is under BO’s “biography.” Real eye opener I must say. Does Dr. Paul do surgery or Lasik? It’s troubling if he does anything besides dispense glasses & I wouldn’t even let him examine my eyes!
Sasha
@Brachiator:
RalfW
My grade-school-like crush was because, for whatever reasons that maybe years of analysis on a couch could reveal, I find skinny, smart policy geeks to be really quite hot. As in actually sexy.
I don’t know what explains the other 65 million votes. Maybe they thought he’d offer some decent policies, competent management, and not blow the earth to kingdom come like McCain?
Nahhh, it was hypnosis, natch!
aarrgghh
because mccain’s loss had nothing to do with his charisma.
(its total absence thereof, that is.)
GeorgeSalt
You know what’s really spooky? If you take a recording of one of Obama’s speeches and play it backwards, in the background you can hear the voice of Josef Stalin!
Tonybrown74
Oh, Sweet Chocolate Jesus!
Hypno-speech now?? Really???
grumpy realist
Funny, now I want to reenact the roses of Heliogabalus schtick on these morons, replacing the roses with copies of speeches by Cicero and Demosthenes…
(Anyone good at Photoshop?)
Linda Featheringill
@Sloegin:
Amen! A lot of us [including me] would have been grateful.
goatchowder
Example #4,329,029 of Classic Repug Projection in action. Obama doesn’t do any of that stuff. Bush, however, was practically reading from the textbook.
I have been certified in NLP, Hypnosis, and DHE. I got my training directly from Richard Bandler (the inventor of this stuff) himself.
Bush the senior and Bush the junior BOTH used tons of straight-ahead hypnotic patterns. Everywhere. That disjointed, stream-of-consciousness, random word-salad type of speech that both Bushes used, and we used to laugh at as a sign that Dubya was “dumb”? Nothing of the sort. Both were very talented at NLP, and W being even better at it than his father (more obvious and over-the-top with it, anyway).
Bandler trained people in the CIA, NSA, and intelligence services during the 70’s and 80’s. He may have even personally trained the head of the CIA a the time– George HW Bush. Bandler’s techniques advanced dramatically over the years, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Bander trained W himself in what was his latest state-of-the-art stuff back in the late 1990’s and even afterwards.
Obama as a hypnotist? No fucking way, more like a college professor. The guy actually forms full sentences in English. Meanwhile, Bush was doing hypnosis all day long.
Resident Firebagger
The wingnuts have bandied the Obama-as-Svengali meme pretty much from the beginning.
Not sure how controversial Milton Erickson was. YouTube has some vids. Pretty impressive stuff, actually.
Goatchowder, just caught your post. You really think W. understands NLP, or was that maybe what he was being fed on the other side of the mic? And what about Palin or her Facebook ghostwriter?
Cris
Wish I could find a YouTube clip of late-80s era Letterman saying “I feel like I been hip-mo-tized!”
russell
No, but I think the TSA is using the X-Ray Specs as part of air travel screening now.
Warren Terra
I can’t believe I’m the first commenter to point out that Barack Obama is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.
P.S. Sadly, if you Google “kindest bravest warmest”, the first hit is on a blog entry by the noted internet racist Steve Sailer, applying the old jokey meme to Obama, although I refuse to click the link and find out how exactly. Which rather makes my attempt at humor sour a little.
PaulW
Obama performed a great show! Much better than Cats! I’m going to go see him, again… and again…!
…it’s from an SNL fake commercial with Jon Lovitz back in the late 80s. Too dated?
Warren Terra
@PaulW:
I’m not going to say it’s too dated (I can’t, really, seeing as how I used a quote from a 1962 film, albeit a cult classic) — but it was already in the thread, with a link to the YouTube, no less.
Tara the antisocial social worker
This explains why Fox viewers are immune to him. Mind control only works on people with minds.
Winston Smith
@Sasha:
Enjoy.
Money, power, sex. All yours for varying amounts of money, depending on what package you buy.
Also available: tachyon crystals. Geordi LaForge not included.
Daddy-O
There really is only one serious reaction to this ‘paper’:
ha ha
Laugh of the Day, hands down!
psycholinguist
The only real psychological phenomena here is the resoundingly robust example of confirmation bias. These idiots will believe anything, including this crackpot shit, if it in any way supports their hate for the guy.
Here’s a challenge – go find a psycholinguists (you know, somebody who actually studies language) who doesn’t laugh in your face when you mention NLP. That “trivial example” that if you walk up to someone and say, “2+2” they will reflexively think of the number 4? That’s called automatic processing, and Stroop demonstrated it for language back in 1929. It is no different than the fact that you magically press the brake pedal when you see a stop sign.
Blotto von Bismarck
FYWP.
Fun facts about the AAPS here. They oppose the fluoridation of water, they claim abortion causes breast cancer, they claim homosexuality causes crime and disease, they claim that vaccines cause autism, they claim vaccines didn’t cure whooping cough or measles, they think that vaccines promote socialzed medicine, they think that the government is going to ostracize the unvaccinated, and so on.
My favorite part is where they claim to be opposed to all third parties intervening in a patient-physician contract. However, they acted as a third party during the Schiavo case.
These people have giant red targets all over them for spoofers.
Janus Daniels
NLP fame claim: edited workshops into books; happiest with Bandler’s “Time for a Change”.
Every field that can gets the sex sells common denominator, so psychology of seduction, hypnotize women to bed, NLP to get laid, all seems inevitable.
Milton H. Erickson MD (1900-1980) is generally recognized as the most effective psychotherapist. Ever. His published papers fill four thick volumes of small print, and anyone who reads them can find single articles that deserve book length expansion. If you have any interest in psychology, put his work at the top of your must read list. In his early days, IMHO, he worked as an authoritarian and traditional (redundant I guess) therapist; he changed… a lot. Regrettably, as he got better, other therapists had difficulty learning from him.
NLP came from Bandler (science geek, ex-gestalt therapist, mad genius) and Grinder (linguist, ex-military, sane genius). They’ve both told me that the name was a joke they got stuck with. They used methods from linguistics to describe successful therapy, then other behavior. Their results impressed people in the therapeutic community, leading to work with Gregory Bateson, Virgina Satir, Milton Erickson, Moshe Feldenkrais… for me, you could not make a more impressive list for therapy from that era, and I’ve noticed a dramatic difference between pre and post NLP books on, for example, Erickson. Unfortunately, B & G’s shared disdain for academic publication or formal research, combined with a long list of more than misbehavior, served to discredit a wide range of dramatically effective and easily demonstrated techniques, as well as valuable methodology.
Political operatives, like sales people, etc. use NLP or anything else that might work. Bush used sleazy manipulative images and language heavily (Satan Hussein?) enough to embarrass me. Shrub went over the top even before he evidenced brain damage. And again Republicans accuse anybody of doing what Republicans have already done.
The best descriptions of NLP in politics IMO come from Thom Hartman, at least as early as 2005:
http://thomhartman.com/blog/2005/02/transcript-nlp-10-feb-01-2005
He has a free course, useful and entertaining as practically everything he does:
http://www.archive.org/details/ThomHartmannThomHartmannNLPLessons
Surprised and delighted to find NLP at Balloon-Juice. Anyone with any interest, feel free to email me. My address is my name (no space, no punctuation) at gmail.