Roasting the Press Episode 57 for Sunday, February 2nd, 2025
Chase Hughes vs. Zachary Elwood on Information, Propaganda & "Shooting the Messenger" + Struggling in Family Court with Parental Alienation + Red Dye is Petroleum.
Chase Hughes vs. Zachary Elwood on Information, Propaganda & “Shooting the Messenger!”
We start tonight’s program with an overview of the January 16th, 2025 Chase Hughes on Substack post, “Once You Know This, Every PSYOP Becomes Obvious.”
It’s essentially a twenty minute video providing an overview on how to recognize what Hughes calls “the 20 indicators of reality control used by media, corporations, and even governments to shape what you think, feel, and do.”
Hughes says he’s a twenty year US military intelligence veteran, and a Harvard educated neuroscientist, keynote speaker, and the author of multiple bestselling books who currently teaches propaganda tradecraft to civilians for money through his company, the Milton Delaware based Applied Behavior Research.
He often gets some useful PR from online sources, such as the November 22nd, 2019 Entrepreneur post, “Behavior Science Expert Chase Hughes Trains Real-World Jason Bournes on How to Negotiate, Interrogate, and Read People for Extreme Persuasion.”
He’s been on a lot of podcasts and even on Dr. Phil.
Most of his content is designed to promote his business and, while there’s nothing wrong with this, its worth noting his revenue stream.
But sometimes, people disagree with his teachings. An example is the September 1st, 2024 People Who Read People: A Psychology Podcast, “The many lies of Chase Hughes, the alleged “#1 expert in behavior & influence.”
That post is written by author Zachary Elwood, who runs a variety of different podcasts and writes on much the same topics as Hughes, although the focus is different.
Elwood’s views are mostly summarized in his “People Who Read People: A Psychology Podcast,” which Elwood uses to drive revenue, much like Hughes uses his platform.
But Elwood doesn’t seem to like Hughes. According to Elwood:
… it’s obvious that Chase Hughes’ claims to expertise are built on a foundation of immense lies and exaggerations — not only in the behavior and psychology space, but also in other pursuits, including pick-up artistry and shady vitamin supplement sales.
He has claimed since at least 2014 to be well known and highly respected in the behavior and psychology space, despite him being clearly unknown and there being almost no mention of him online during the 2010s.
He has stated (but more often, vaguely implied) that he had a military career that involved high-level intel- and interrogation-related work, but there is no evidence for that; from what people have told me, his Navy career was apparently focused on ship maintenance and operation.
Its worth noting that Hughes is a bigger online presence than Elwood, generally achieving one to two million views per video on YouTube, compared to Elwood’s far smaller amounts on the same platform.
It’s also worth noting that Elwood’s highest viewed video’s, with tens of thousands of viewers, are the video’s where he critiques, criticizes and complains about Chase Hughes. So Elwood is growing his platform and making money off his criticisms.
And finally, its worth noting that Elwood is “shooting the messenger” by highlighting his criticisms of Hughes past and his character. Hughes focuses on his craft and his message in his video’s, which is a good thing, since most of Hughes information is independently verifiable and actionable.
Maybe Elwood provides useful information as well, but you’d never know this by viewing his critiques of Hughes.
So is Elwood or Hughes providing useful information and/or bald propaganda? Your guess is as good as Freedom Forum’s, although we’ve provided a few hints.
Just remember not to shoot the messenger when making your decision.
Struggling in Family Court with Parental Alienation.
Propaganda is everywhere, even in the courts.
Hope in Darkness is a school essentially designed to help parents who have been alienated from their child or children to understand what is happening and learn how to navigate through the family law courts to rescue the abused alienated children. It explains how this parental alienation and training to a child to reject the other parent is “domestic abuse by proxy,” and teaches how parents can effectively fight to get your children back.
According to the website
When we are told that a child or teenager is rejecting a parent without an obvious reason, it suggests that there is a cause and an effect.
Given that survival and quality of life of virtually all humans is contingent on forming attachments, there is reason for great concern.
The site is focused around the concept that all behavior is a function of learned conditioned experiences.
The learning theory approach has a strategy.
Besides gathering observational evidence to identify the experience field that caused the maladaptive behavior, there is a reinforcement (learning) procedure that will be prepared that draws on the research experience of behavioral sciences, including elements of Wolpe's Systematic Desensitization Process, Skinner's Operant Conditioning and Watson's stimulus-reinforcement work going back to the 1920's.
The site focuses on combating parental alienation claims in family courts.
It’s part of a small but growing group of lawyers, PhDs and activists assisting parents against charges of parental alienation in Canadian and US courts.
For more information about the program, please contact Chuck Black at chuck.black@protonmail.com.
Red Dye is Petroleum
And finally tonight, here’s the January 31st, 2025 Mongo Minds on Bitchute post, “Red Dye And How It Used To Be Made From A Plant."
“Roasting the Press,” is an open forum with new media journalists critiquing and complaining about our well funded competitors, the stories they create and the techniques they use.
For more information on the show, or to become a guest, please send an email to chuck.black@protonmail.com.
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