1. "This presentation discusses methods employed by the ruling elites to make their grave violations of moral norms invisible to public morality and cognitive awareness."

2. "Violations of moral norms can be made "morally invisible" even if all relevant facts are unobscured: This can be achieved by embedding these facts into a context that prevents eliciting widespread unease and indignation."

3. "One example is the structural violence associated with the implementation of neoliberal economical doctrine. While societal and humanitarian consequences of this violence have so far been mostly observed in so-called third-world countries, they also..."

3. .."manifest themselves more and more often in western industrialized nations. Violations of moral norms can also be made "cognitively invisible" even if all relevant facts are unobscured: This can be achieved by embedding these facts into a context such that.."

4. .."no conclusions may be drawn on their basis. In particular, such facts remain isolated from similar events that the elites wish you to judge according to very different principles. One example is the practice of "targeted killings" of persons whom the government.."

5. .."deems a risk to national security. These murders break international law and would not be accepted if carried out by states declared as "enemy" dictatorships."

6. "Mass media play a pivotal role in making facts morally and cognitively visible: In addition to reporting simple facts, media typically also deliver the contextual frame necessary for interpreting the facts, thus shaping our political world view."

7. "The invisibility of some moral transgressions is thus part of our daily live and concerns us all. Reflections on this phenomenon provoke basic and elementary questions. No expert certification is required to think about these questions, even if the ruling elites try.."

8. .."their best to restrict discourse about them to a narrow group of "qualified experts". As "citoyens", well-informed & dutiful citizens trying to actively participate in forming our community, we possess what in the age of enlightenment came to be called "lumen naturale":" ..

9. .."We are endowed with a natural reasoning faculty that allows us to engage in debates and decisions about matters which directly affect us. We can therefore adequately discuss the essential core of the ways in which grave violations of law and morality are hidden from.."

10. .."our awareness without having some specialist education. This point is at the heart of the following presentation."

Excerpt from an extended version of a talk presented by Rainer Mausfeld at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel, 22 June 2015 http://www.uni-kiel.de/psychologie/mausfeld

11. "Importantly, our natural reasoning faculty allows us to scrutinize &question the concepts used to describe, structure, and evaluate social &political phenomena. As a glaring example, we can look at the neoliberal jargon that tries to veil &hide what it is actually implying."

12. "It would be easy to fill an entire Orwellian dictionary with newspeak terms like structural reforms, willingness to reform, reducing bureaucracy, de-regulation, stability and growth pact, austerity, European financial stabilization mechanism (bailout fund),.."

13. .."free market, lean government, liberalization, harmonization, market-conforming democracy, necessity without alternative, human capital, temporary employment, ancillary wage costs, social envy, top performer, etc. etc. Such seemingly innocent words come silently bundled.."

14. .."with an ideology whose totalitarian character we need to uncover and point out explicitly. However, before we can do that, we need to become aware of and identify the hidden premises, prejudices, and ideological components which are engrained in the way in which we .."

15. .."talk about social and political phenomena. Otherwise, we might unwittingly and involuntarily fall for the ideology bundled with the vocabulary. Again, we need not be experts for this task. We all already have the prerequisite cognitive skills, .."

16. .."even if those skills may need to be trained and honed to be used effectively."

Excerpt from an extended version of a talk presented by Rainer Mausfeld at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel, 22 June 2015 http://www.uni-kiel.de/psychologie/mausfeld/

17. "The paradox of democracy
This presentation is about why it is possible to make facts invisible through fragmentation, and exactly how this can be done. In turn, these questions prompt us to ask who wants facts to be invisible, and who these facts should be invisible for."

18. "To understand these questions, we need to look at the so-called "paradox of democracy", really a problem in the relationship between the political leadership and the general population. The systematic analysis of this paradox goes back to antiquity."

19. "In political discussions, the general population is often compared to a herd of animals. Since the herd is said to sometimes exhibit irrational and unpredictable behavior, it is argued that it needs to be controlled."

20. "For the political leadership, it follows that it is important to interpret the silence of the herd and construe it to be in line with the leadership's own political actions."