http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/422 <snips>
They have borrowed the techniques of their old enemies, as Cheryl Seal wrote back in 2001:
Joseph Stalin was successful in seizing and retaining power primarily because he was able to stack the Politburo with politicians as extreme as himself and to dictate their actions and their votes on every issue. Party dissenters were harassed mercilessly by the Politburo members who remained blindly loyal to Stalin. With a block of supporters who did not think for themselves, Stalin was able to completely reverse Russia's policy on a number of key issues, right across the board. For example, in 1936, he completely reversed the liberal communist doctrines pertaining to family, divorce, and abortion. He made divorce difficult, made abortion illegal, and stressed "family values"
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Stalin's propagandists used a three-point strategy to convince the Russian people that things in Stalin's policy that were in fact extremely bad for the country (including the systematic round up and extermination of all "enemies of the state") were in fact "good."
Point One: Create arguments that how the negative thing is actually NOT bad, but is actually good. .
Point Two: Show how the negative thing is actually not true. .
Point Three: Show that the negative thing is actually being caused by "enemies of the state" - most likely liberals. .
Finally, ponder the words of Nikita Khrushchev, who first exposed the crimes of Stalin back in l956:
Everyone can err, but Stalin considered that he never erred, that he was always right. He never acknowledged to anyone that he made any mistake, large or small, despite the fact that he made not a few mistakes in the matter of theory and in his practical activity.