Patterns of Propaganda
Skeptisim and PseudoScience > Who Rules America
> Neoliberal Brainwashing
For any citizen now it is extremely important to be able to discern patterns of propaganda.
Modern propganda should actually be property called information war that elite conducts against the
population of their countries The key concept of the information war entails that the
created by propaganda virtual reality affects and even replaces actual reality. What
is more important, virtual reality creates real motivations that ultimately bring real changes
including "regime changes" via color revolutions or Arab string variation of the latter. Unfortunately this subject is not thought schools and universities.
Actually propaganda is impresize and politically loaded word. A better word might be
“perception management” (or what is often referred to as “spin”, “public relations”, “public
diplomacy”, “positioning”, “presentation”, or “informational war”, or even “disinformation”, and so
on).
Essentially all propaganda efforts are attempts of perception management. In fact,
the term “perception management”, which is now used as synonymous with the word “propaganda”,
demonstrates the increasing sophistication and refinement of propaganda itself. Which since the
First World War became the powerful tool by which the elite controls that population, a technology
of social, psychological, and political manipulation, and control. Think about the movie The Matrix.
Although The Matrix looks like improbable science-fiction dystopia, the basic concept and
feasibility of something similar is not completely out of the question. It’s just a step toward more
full psychological contol of minds of people. And it is, moreover, the logical development of the
Natural Security State, as disclosed by the Snowden files. The intent is to ultimately shift these
perception management programs from mere monitoring and surveillance to active and direct
psychological engineering. That is implied in the documents (Propaganda
and “Information War”: Theirs and Ours , Mar 18, 2014)
In contrast to overt and clumsy style Soviet and post-Soviet propaganda,
the “invisible hand” of democratic propaganda has to remain “under the
radar” — undisclosed, covert, and hidden, as Bernays taught and as was
affirmed by Vance Packard’s 1957 book The Hidden Persuaders.
In the absence of an overt authoritarian state, other, more subtle, sly,
and cunning means of exerting pressure on consciousness and the public
had to be devised. Gaining access through the “back door” of the
unconscious was the effective solution. And it is ironic that many of
the issues related to artificial intelligence and “malware” (“back
doors”, “trojan horses”, “spoofing”, “viruses”, “spam”, “black ops”)
exactly parallel those of propaganda, information/disinformation war,
and perception management. All this is, of course, reflected in that
earlier reference I quoted from the late Samuel Huntington,
“The architects of power in the United States must create a force that
can be felt but not seen. Power remains strong when it remains in the
dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.”
... ... ...
Propaganda that is entirely
evident, noticeable and recognisable as propaganda is failed propaganda. Far more dangerous,
pernicious, and insidious is the covert, hidden, and invisible kind that creeps in through the back
door of the unconscious, and which I have referred to as “the foreign installation”.
But the problem is that even pitiful remnants of democracy that are sill present in some western
societies despite emergence of National Security State (with it Orwell-style permanent war against
"terrorism") are impossible when population is subjected to the influence of a powerful
government-funded propaganda machine. The essence of elite politics in this area was the best formulated by Hermann Goering, President of the Reichstag, Nazi Party, and Luftwaffe Commander in Chief
Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter
in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy
and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship,
or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to
the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and
denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same
in any country.
They also are required
skill for anybody dealing with sociopathic managers, especially female sociopaths. See
The Techniques of a Female Sociopaths
Patterns of propaganda
From Wikipedia
- Ad hominem A Latin phrase that
has come to mean attacking one's opponent, as opposed to attacking their arguments.
- Ad nauseam This argument approach
uses tireless repetition of an idea. An idea, especially a simple slogan, that is repeated enough
times, may begin to be taken as the truth. This approach works best when media sources are limited
or controlled by the propagator. Repetition is used in advertizing to "stick" the product name in
people mind and it is repeated many times during an advertisement. This technique may use a jingle,
which is appealing to the masses and fits in their minds.
- Appeal to
authority Appeals to authority cite prominent figures to support a position, idea, argument,
or course of action. Cult of personality is a common variant. A cult of personality arises when
an individual uses mass media to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning
flattery and praise. The hero personality then advocates the positions that the propagandist desires
to promote. For example, modern propagandists hire popular personalities to promote their ideas
and/or products.
- Appeal to fear Appeals to fear
and seeks to build support by instilling anxieties and panic. Commonly called Fear, uncertainty,
and doubt (FUD). An attempt to influence public perception by disseminating negative and dubious/false
information designed to undermine the credibility of their beliefs.
- Appeal to prejudice. Using loaded or emotive terms to attach value or moral goodness
to believing the proposition. Used in biased or misleading ways.
- Glittering generalities
Glittering generalities are emotionally appealing words that are applied to a product or idea, but
present no concrete argument or analysis. This technique has also been referred to as the PT Barnum
effect. Generalities are logical fallacies. They are often vague but positive ideas. An example
could be, "It's cool!" What is cool is not specified. It implies the use of appealing words giving
no concrete idea of what the words are talking about.
- Bandwagon: It aims at persuading people to do a certain thing because many other
people are doing it. An example can be a soft drink advertisement wherein a large group of
people is shown drinking the same soft drink. People feel induced to opt for that soft drink as
it is shown to be consumed by many. Snob appeal is reverse of bandwagon. It indicates that buying
a certain product will make you stand out from the rest, as the masses won't afford to buy it.
- In 'Plain Folks' propaganda technique, common people are attracted on the basis of their
common values. The current vernacular of the target audience is used. Scholastic speech seems artificial.
So errors are made on purpose to give the feeling of spontaneity. 'Homey' words, as they are called,
are used, so that audience can connect to the propagandist. 'It's Morning in America' is an example
of 'Plain folks' strategy. It is an attempt to convince the audience that the propagandist's positions
reflect the common sense of the people. It is designed to win the confidence of the audience by
communicating in the common manner and style of the target audience. Propagandists use ordinary
language and mannerisms (and clothe their message in face-to-face and audiovisual communications)
in attempting to identify their point of view with that of the average person. With the plain folks
device, the propagandist can win the confidence of persons who resent or distrust foreign sounding,
intellectual speech, words, or mannerisms." For example, a politician speaking to a Southern United
States crowd might incorporate words such as "Y'all" and other colloquialisms to create a perception
of belonging. This technique is used with glittering generalities.
- Testimonial: This propaganda technique uses words of an expert or a famous person to
promote a particular idea. For example, a sports person is shown recommending a brand of sport shoes.
Generally, people idealize celebrated figures. So celebrities are used to advertise certain products.
A testimonial has to be reasonable. Advertisers are cautioned not to use false testimonials, as
they lack authenticity.
- Transfer: In this technique, qualities of a well-known person are associated with a product
to promote or demote it. Linking an item to a respected person is positive transfer. Creating
an analogy between a disliked person and a product is negative transfer. It is also used during
war times.
- Emotional words: This is meant to generate positive feelings in the minds of the masses.
Words like 'luxury', 'paradise' are used to evoke certain feelings in the minds of the people, which
they associate with the product being sold.
- Name-calling also called stereotyping or labeling. Name-calling is a direct attack on
an opponent. If it is likely to annoy the audience, indirect name-calling is used. In this case,
sarcasm is employed. That is related to standard technique of demonizing the enemy during the
war, make the people with an opposing standpoint, appear inferior. The use of the term 'gooks'
for NLF soldiers during the Vietnam War-era is an example of this type of propaganda. Obtaining
disapproval is another technique of obtaining disfavor of an idea by signifying that the opposite
idea/approach is of the 'hated lot' .
- 'Quotes out of Context' is a technique of selectively changing quotes to change meanings.
It is used in political documentaries. 'Half truth' technique makes use of a deceptive statement.
Double meaning may be used to misinterpret a truth. 'Card stacking' is another propaganda technique,
where information is manipulated to make a product appear better. Only the facts in favor of the
propagandist are used. The advertisement of comparison between Apple Macintosh and Windows computers
is an example of card stacking. Success of this technique lies in the choice of facts or cards and
the way they are stacked by the propagandist!
- 'Black and White fallacy' aims at presenting only two choices to the public. Either you
with us or with enemies mentality. 'Unstated assumption' that any other choice is bad and represents
betrayal is used although it is not stated explicitly. But it is obviously implied.
- Rumors (grey propaganda) is propaganda without any identifiable source or author. A major
application of grey propaganda is making enemies believe falsehoods using straw arguments: As phase
one, to make someone believe "A", one releases as grey propaganda "B", the opposite of "A". In phase
two, "B" is discredited using some strawman. The enemy will then assume "A" to be true.
Children are most vulnerable to different types of propaganda techniques. They cannot reason to decide
whether a message is propaganda or not. They are highly fascinated by media and influenced by the behavior
of their peers. They assimilate propaganda promiscuously.
Media manipulation Map (The
Full Wiki)
Media manipulation is an aspect of
public relations in which
partisans create an image or argument that favours their particular interests. Such tactics may include
the use of logical fallacies and
propaganda techniques, and often
involve the suppression of information or points of view by crowding them out, by inducing other people
or groups of people to stop listening to certain arguments, or by simply diverting attention elsewhere.
As illustrated below, many of the more modern
mass media manipulation methods
are types of distraction, on the
assumption that the public has a limited
attention span.
Distraction by nationalism
This is a variant on the traditional
ad hominem and
bandwagon fallacies
applied to entire countries. The method is to discredit opposing arguments by appealing to
nationalistic pride or memory
of past accomplishments, or appealing to fear or dislike of a specific country, or of foreigners in
general. It can be very powerful as it discredits foreign journalists (the ones that are least easily
manipulated by domestic political or corporate interests).
- Example: "You want to know what I really think of the
Europeans?" asked the senior
United States
State Department
official. "I think they have been wrong on just about every major international issue for the past
20 years." .
- Example: "Your idea sounds similar to what they are proposing in Turkey. Are you saying the
Turks have a better country than us?"
- Example: "The only criticisms of this proposed treaty come from the United States. But we all
know that Americans are arrogant and uneducated, so their complaints are irrelevant."
- Example: The "Support Our Troops" campaign created by the Republican party during the War on
Terror implies that opposing the war effort detracts support away from the individual soldiers fighting
the war. Thus patriotic support of the troops becomes a form of support for the war in general.
This could, however, be seen as a weak example because those on the right traditionally support
the troops and the war, and those on the left typically make the distinction between supporting
the troops but not the mission.
Straw man fallacy
The "straw man fallacy" is the lumping of a strong opposition argument together with one or many weak
ones to create a simplistic weak argument that can easily be refuted.
- Example: Grouping all opposed to the
2003 invasion of Iraq
as "pacifists", so they can be refuted by arguments for war in general. As with most persuasion
methods, it can easily be applied in reverse, in this case, to group all those who supported the
invasion together and label them as "warmongers" or "lackeys of the United States".
Distraction by scapegoat
A combination of straw man and
ad hominem, in which your weakest
opponent (or easiest to discredit) is considered as your only important opponent.
- Example: If many countries are opposed to our actions, but one of them (say, France) is obviously
acting out of self-interest, mention mostly France.
Distraction by phenomenon
A risky but effective strategy summarized best, perhaps, by
David Mamet's 1997 movie
Wag the Dog, by which the
public can be distracted, for long periods of time, from an important issue, by one which occupies more
news time. When the strategy works, you have a war or other
media event taking attention away
from misbehaving or crooked leaders. When the strategy does not work, the leader's misbehavior remains
in the press, and the war is derided as an attempted distraction.
Distraction by semantics
This involves using euphemistically pleasing terms to obscure the truth. For example saying "choice"
or "reproductive rights" instead of referring to the medical term "abortion", or, similarly, "pro-life"
instead of "anti-abortion". A brilliantly executed example was the way that President Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation
prevented European nations from entering the war in support of the Confederacy by framing the war in
terms of the moral issue "slavery" as opposed to states rights. In reverse "States
Rights" was used as justification for the fight against
Civil
Rights in the 1960s.
Other types
Appeals to consensus
By appealing to a real or fictional "consensus" the media manipulator attempts to create the perception
that his opinion is the only opinion, so that alternative ideas are dismissed from public consideration.
Michael Crichton explains:
Marginalization
This is a widespread and subtle form of media manipulation: simply giving credence only to "mainstream"
sources of information; it exists in many news outlets. Information, arguments, and objections that
come from other sources are simply considered "fringe" and ignored, or their proponents permanently
discredited, or accused of having their own agenda.
- Example: "I think there are a lot of people out there who feel the way I do, but haven't wanted
to come forward because they're afraid of being identified with a fringe group..." Langley said.
"I don't believe in all the things that all the (anti-war) groups stand for, but we all do share
one thing in common: I do believe that this war is wrong."
- Example: "Because Mike Gravel has not demonstrated measurable public support for his campaign
to date, he has not received an invitation [to the 2008 Democratic Presidential Candidate Debates]."
Fear mongering
Fear mongering (or scaremongering) is the use of
fear to influence the opinions and actions
of others towards some specific end. The feared object or subject is sometimes exaggerated, and the
pattern of fear mongering is usually one of
repetition, in order to continuously
reinforce the intended effects of this tactic to frighten citizens and influence their political views.
It often states that if something is or is not done, a disastrous event will occur, and that by voting
for or against it this can be prevented. The end result is the voter being scared into changing their
vote or opinion to one more favorable to the person that is fear mongering.
Demonisation of the opposition
This is a more general case of distraction by nationalism. Opposing views are ascribed to an out-group
or hated group, and thus dismissed out of hand. This approach, carried to extremes, becomes a form of
suppression, as in McCarthyism,
where anyone disapproving of the government was considered "un-American" and "Communist" and was likely
to be denounced.
- Example: The consignment of almost all dissent to the "International Jewish conspiracy" by Nazi
Germany.
- Example: Labelling those with any sort of right-wing views as "Nazis", or those with left-wing
views as "commies", etc.
- Example: Dismissing attendees of tea-party protests opposing government spending as racists.
Propaganda techniques
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to:
navigation,
search
See also:
Doublespeak,
Cult of personality,
Spin (politics),
Demonization and
FactoidCommon media for transmitting
propaganda
messages include news reports, government reports, historical revision,
junk science,
books, leaflets,
movies,
radio, television, and posters. Less common nowadays are letter post
envelopes examples of which of survive from the time of the
American Civil War. (Connecticut Historical Society; Civil War Collections; Covers.)
In the case of radio and television, propaganda can exist on news, current-affairs or
talk-show segments, as advertising or
public-service
announce "spots" or as long-running
advertorials. Propaganda campaigns often follow a strategic transmission pattern
to indoctrinate the target group. This may begin with a simple transmission such as a
leaflet dropped from a plane or an advertisement. Generally these messages will contain
directions on how to obtain more information, via a web site, hot line, radio program,
etc. The strategy intends to initiate the individual from information recipient to
information seeker through reinforcement, and then from information seeker to
opinion leader through
indoctrination.
[1]
A number of techniques based in
social psychological research are used to generate propaganda. Many of these same
techniques can be found under
logical fallacies, since propagandists use arguments that, while sometimes
convincing, are not necessarily valid.
Information dissemination strategies only become propaganda strategies when coupled
with propagandistic messages. Identifying these messages is a necessary
prerequisite to study the methods by which those messages are spread.
Specific techniques
(Wikipedia)
Scholars have identified many standard techniques used in propaganda and persuasion.[2]
- Ad hominem
- A Latin phrase that has come to mean attacking one's opponent, as opposed to
attacking their arguments.
- Ad nauseam
- This argument approach uses tireless repetition of an idea. An idea, especially
a simple slogan, that is repeated enough times, may begin to be taken as the truth.
This approach works best when media sources are limited or controlled by the
propagator.
-
Appeal to authority
- Appeals to authority cite prominent figures to support a position, idea,
argument, or course of action.
- Appeal to fear
- Appeals to fear seek to build support by instilling anxieties and panic in the
general population, for example,
Joseph Goebbels exploited Theodore Kaufman's
Germany Must Perish! to claim that the Allies sought the extermination of
the German people.
-
Appeal to prejudice
- Using loaded or emotive terms to attach value or moral goodness to believing the
proposition.
- Bandwagon
- Bandwagon and "inevitable-victory" appeals attempt to persuade the target
audience to join in and take the course of action that "everyone else is taking."
-
Inevitable victory: invites those not already on the bandwagon to join those
already on the road to certain victory. Those already or at least partially on
the bandwagon are reassured that staying aboard is their best course of action.
(e.g., "The debate is over. Nearly everyone who matters agrees with me.")
-
Join the crowd: This technique reinforces people's natural desire to be on
the winning side. This technique is used to convince the audience that a program
is an expression of an irresistible mass movement and that it is in their best
interest to join.
-
Beautiful people
- The type of propaganda that deals with
famous people
or depicts attractive, happy people. This suggests if people buy a product or follow
a certain ideology, they too will be happy or successful. (This is used more in
advertising for products, instead of political reasons.)
- Big Lie
- The repeated articulation of a complex of events that justify subsequent action.
The descriptions of these events have elements of truth, and the "big lie"
generalizations merge and eventually supplant the public's accurate perception of
the underlying events. After World War I the German
Stab in the back explanation of the cause of their defeat became a justification
for Nazi re-militarization and revanchist aggression.
-
Black-and-White fallacy
- Presenting only two choices, with the product or idea being propagated as the
better choice. (e.g., "You're
either with us, or against us....")
-
Cherry picking (fallacy) or Selective
truth
- Richard Crossman, the British Deputy Director of
Psychological Warfare Division (PWD) for the
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) during the Second World
War said "In propaganda truth pays... It is a complete delusion to think of the
brilliant propagandist as being a professional liar. The brilliant propagandist is
the man who tells the truth, or that selection of the truth which is requisite for
his purpose, and tells it in such a way that the recipient does not think he is
receiving any propaganda... [...] The art of propaganda is not telling lies, but
rather selecting the truth you require and giving it mixed up with some truths the
audience wants to hear."[3]
-
Classical conditioning
- All vertebrates, including humans, respond to
classical conditioning. That is, if object A is always present when object B is
present and object B causes a physical reaction (e.g., disgust, pleasure) then we
will when presented with object A when object B is not present, we will experience
the same feelings.
- Cognitive dissonance
- People desire to be consistent. Suppose a pollster finds that a certain group of
people hates his candidate for senator but loves actor A. They use actor A's
endorsement of their candidate to change people's minds because people cannot
tolerate inconsistency. They are forced to either to dislike the actor or like the
candidate.
- Common man
- The "'plain
folks'" or "common man" approach attempts to convince the audience that
the propagandist's positions reflect the common sense of the people. It is designed
to win the confidence of the audience by communicating in the common manner and
style of the target audience. Propagandists use ordinary language and mannerisms
(and clothe their message in face-to-face and audiovisual communications) in
attempting to identify their point of view with that of the average person. A common
example of this type of propaganda is a political figure, usually running for a
placement, in a backyard or shop doing daily routine things. This image appeals to
the common person. With the plain folks device, the propagandist can win the
confidence of persons who resent or distrust foreign sounding, intellectual speech,
words, or mannerisms."[4]
For example, a politician speaking to a Southern United States crowd might
incorporate words such as "Y'all"
and other
colloquialisms to create a perception of belonging.
- Cult of personality
- A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media to create an
idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise.
The hero personality then advocates the positions that the propagandist desires to
promote. For example, modern propagandists hire popular personalities to promote
their ideas and/or products.
- Demonizing the enemy
- Making individuals from the opposing nation, from a different ethnic group, or
those who support the opposing viewpoint appear to be subhuman (e.g., the
Vietnam War-era
term "gooks" for
National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam aka Vietcong, or "VC",
soldiers), worthless, or immoral, through suggestion or
false accusations.
Dehumanizing is also a termed used synonymously with demonizing, the latter
usually serves as an aspect of the former.
- Dictat
- This technique hopes to simplify the decision making process by using images and
words to tell the audience exactly what actions to take, eliminating any other
possible choices. Authority figures can be used to give the order, overlapping it
with the
Appeal to authority technique, but not necessarily. The
Uncle Sam "I
want you" image is an example of this technique.
- Disinformation
- The creation or deletion of information from public records, in the purpose of
making a false record of an event or the actions of a person or organization,
including outright forgery of photographs, motion pictures, broadcasts, and sound recordings as
well as printed documents.
-
Door-in-the-face technique
- Is used to increase a person's latitude of acceptance. For example, if a
salesperson wants to sell an item for $100 but the public is only willing to pay
$50, the salesperson first offers the item at a higher price (e.g., $200) and
subsequently reduces the price to $100 to make it seem like a good deal.
- Euphemism
- A euphemism is a generally innocuous word or expression used in place of one
that may be found offensive or suggest something unpleasant.
-
Euphoria
- The use of an event that generates euphoria or happiness, or using an appealing
event to boost morale. Euphoria can be created by declaring a holiday, making luxury
items available, or mounting a military parade with marching bands and patriotic
messages.
- Exaggeration
- An exaggeration (or hyperbole) occurs when the most fundamental aspects of a
statement are true, but only to a certain degree. It is also seen as "stretching the
truth" or making something appear more powerful, meaningful, or real than it
actually is. Saying that a person ate 20
spring rolls
at a party when they actually ate 7 or 8 would be considered an exaggeration.
-
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt
- An attempt to influence public perception by disseminating negative and
dubious/false information designed to undermine the credibility of their beliefs.
- Flag-waving
- An attempt to justify an action on the grounds that doing so will make one more
patriotic, or in some way benefit a group, country, or idea. The feeling of
patriotism this technique attempts to inspire may not necessarily diminish or
entirely omit one's capability for rational examination of the matter in question.
-
Foot-in-the-door technique
- Often used by recruiters and salesmen. For example, a member of the opposite sex
walks up to the victim and pins a flower or gives a small gift to the victim. The
victim says thanks and now they have incurred a psychological debt to the
perpetrator. The person eventually asks for a larger favor (e.g., a donation or to
buy something far more expensive). The unwritten social contract between the victim
and perpetrator causes the victim to feel obligated to reciprocate by agreeing to do
the larger favor or buy the more expensive gift.
-
Framing (social sciences)
- Framing is the
social construction of a
social phenomenon often by
mass media
sources, political or social movements, political leaders, or other actors and
organizations. It is an inevitable process of selective influence over the
individual's perception of the meanings attributed to words or phrases.
- Glittering generalities
- Glittering generalities are emotionally appealing words that are applied to a
product or idea, but present no concrete argument or analysis. This technique has
also been referred to as the PT Barnum effect. (e.g., the advertising campaign
slogan "Ford has a better idea!")
-
Guilt by association or
Reductio ad Hitlerum
- This technique is used to persuade a target audience to disapprove of an action
or idea by suggesting that the idea is popular with groups
hated,
feared, or held in
contempt by
the target audience. Thus if a group that supports a certain policy is led to
believe that
undesirable,
subversive,
or contemptible people support the same policy, then the members of the group may
decide to change their original position. This is a form of bad logic, where A is
said to include X, and B is said to include X, therefore, A = B.
- Half-truth
- A half-truth is a deceptive statement that includes some element of truth. It
comes in several forms: the statement might be partly true, the statement may be
totally true but only part of the whole truth, or it may utilize some deceptive
element, such as improper punctuation, or double meaning, especially if the intent
is to deceive, evade, blame, or misrepresent the truth.
-
Intentional vagueness
- Generalities are deliberately vague so that the audience may supply its own
interpretations. The intention is to move the audience by use of undefined phrases,
without analyzing their validity or attempting to determine their reasonableness or
application. The intent is to cause people to draw their own interpretations rather
than simply being presented with an explicit idea. In trying to "figure out" the
propaganda, the audience forgoes judgment of the ideas presented. Their validity,
reasonableness and application may still be considered.
- Labeling
- A Euphemism
is used when the propagandist attempts to increase the perceived quality,
credibility, or credence of a particular ideal. A
Dysphemism
is used when the intent of the propagandist is to discredit, diminish the perceived
quality, or hurt the perceived righteousness of the individual. By creating a
"label", "category", or "faction" of a population, it is much easier to make an
example of these larger bodies, because they can uplift or defame the individual
without actually incurring legal-defamation.
Labeling can be thought of as a sub-set of
Guilt by association, another Logical Fallacy.[5]
-
Latitudes of acceptance
- If a person's message is outside the bounds of acceptance for an individual and
group, most techniques will engender psychological reactance (simply hearing the
argument will make the message even less acceptable). There are two techniques for
increasing the bounds of acceptance. First, one can take a more even extreme
position that will make more moderate positions seem more acceptable. This is
similar to the Door-in-the-Face technique. Alternatively, one can moderate one's own
position to the edge of the latitude of acceptance and then over time slowly move to
the position that was previously.[6]
"The Conquest or Arrival of Hernán Cortés in Veracruz", 1951, National
Palace, Mexico City.
Diego Rivera's political murals depict a modern interpretation of the
Black Legend.
- Loaded language
- Specific words and phrases with strong emotional implications are used to
influence the audience, for example, using the word reforms rather than a
more neutral word like changes.
- Love
bombing
- Used to recruit members to a cult or ideology by having a group of individuals
cut off a person from their existing social support and replace it entirely with
members of the group who deliberately bombard the person with affection in an
attempt to isolate the person from their prior beliefs and value system-see
Milieu
control.
- Lying and
deception
- Lying and deception can be the basis of many propaganda techniques including Ad
Homimen arguments, Big-Lie, Defamation, Door-in-the-Face, Half-truth, Name-calling
or any other technique that is based on dishonesty or deception. For example, many
politicians have been found to frequently stretch or break the truth.
- Managing the news
- According to Adolf Hitler "The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield
no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must
confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."[7][8]
This idea is consistent with the principle of classical conditioning as well as the
idea of "Staying on Message."
- Milieu control
- An attempt to control the social environment and ideas through the use of social
pressure
-
Minimisation
- Minimisation is the opposite of exaggeration. It is a type of
deception[9]
involving denial
coupled with
rationalization in situations where complete denial is implausible.
-
Name-calling
- Propagandists use the name-calling technique to incite fears and arouse
prejudices in their hearers in the intent that the bad names will cause hearers to
construct a negative opinion about a group or set of beliefs or ideas that the
propagandist wants hearers to denounce. The method is intended to provoke
conclusions about a matter apart from impartial examinations of facts. Name-calling
is thus a substitute for rational, fact-based arguments against the an idea or
belief on its own merits.
- Obfuscation, intentional vagueness, confusion
- Generalities are deliberately vague so that the audience may supply its own
interpretations. The intention is to move the audience by use of undefined phrases,
without analyzing their validity or attempting to determine their reasonableness or
application. The intent is to cause people to draw their own interpretations rather
than simply being presented with an explicit idea. In trying to "figure out" the
propaganda, the audience forgoes judgment of the ideas presented. Their validity,
reasonableness and application may still be considered.
- Operant conditioning
- Operant conditioning involves learning through imitation. For example, watching
an appealing person buy products or endorse positions teaches a person to buy the
product or endorse the position. Operant conditioning is the underlying principle
behind the Ad Nauseam, Slogan and other repetition public relations campaigns.
-
Oversimplification
- Favorable generalities are used to provide simple answers to complex social,
political, economic, or military problems.
- Pensée unique
- Enforced reduction of discussion by use of overly simplistic phrases or
arguments (e.g., "There is no alternative to war.")
-
Quotes out of Context
- Selective editing of quotes that can change meanings. Political documentaries
designed to discredit an opponent or an opposing political viewpoint often use this
technique.
-
Rationalization
- Individuals or groups may use favorable generalities to rationalize questionable
acts or beliefs. Vague and pleasant phrases are often used to justify such actions
or beliefs.
-
Red herring
- Presenting data or issues that, while compelling, are irrelevant to the argument
at hand, and then claiming that it validates the argument.[5]
-
Repetition
- This is the repeating of a certain symbol or slogan so that the audience
remembers it. This could be in the form of a jingle or an image placed on nearly
everything in the picture/scene. This also includes using subliminal phrases, images
or other content in a piece of propaganda.[5]
- Scapegoating
- Assigning blame
to an individual or group, thus alleviating feelings of
guilt from responsible parties and/or distracting
attention
from the need to fix the problem for which blame is being assigned.
- Slogans
- A slogan is a brief, striking phrase that may include labeling and stereotyping.
Although slogans may be enlisted to support reasoned ideas, in practice they tend to
act only as emotional appeals. Opponents of the US's invasion and occupation of Iraq
use the slogan "blood for oil" to suggest that the invasion and its human losses was
done to access Iraq's oil riches. On the other hand, supporters who argue that the
US should continue to fight in Iraq use the slogan "cut and run" to suggest
withdrawal is cowardly or weak. Similarly, the names of the military campaigns, such
as "enduring freedom" or "just cause" can also be considered slogans, devised to
influence people.
-
Stereotyping or Name Calling or Labeling
- This technique attempts to arouse prejudices in an audience by labeling the
object of the propaganda campaign as something the target audience fears, hates,
loathes, or finds undesirable. For instance, reporting on a foreign country or
social group may focus on the stereotypical traits that the reader expects, even
though they are far from being representative of the whole country or group; such
reporting often focuses on the
anecdotal. In
graphic propaganda, including war posters, this might include portraying enemies
with stereotyped racial features.
- Straw man
- A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an
opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having
refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the
"straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original
position.
- Testimonial
- Testimonials are quotations, in or out of context, especially cited to support
or reject a given policy, action, program, or personality. The reputation or the
role (expert, respected public figure, etc.) of the individual giving the statement
is exploited. The testimonial places the official sanction of a respected person or
authority on a propaganda message. This is done in an effort to cause the target
audience to identify itself with the authority or to accept the authority's opinions
and beliefs as its own. See also,
damaging quotation
-
Third party technique
- Works on the principle that people are more willing to accept an argument from a
seemingly independent source of information than from someone with a stake in the
outcome. It is a marketing strategy commonly employed by Public Relations (PR)
firms, that involves placing a premeditated message in the "mouth of the media."
Third party technique can take many forms, ranging from the hiring of journalists to
report the organization in a favorable light, to using scientists within the
organization to present their perhaps prejudicial findings to the public. Frequently
astroturf
groups or
front groups are used to deliver the message.
See:
Soft Power.
-
Thought-terminating cliché
- A commonly used phrase, sometimes passing as folk wisdom, used to quell
cognitive dissonance.
- Transfer
- Also known as Association, this is a technique of projecting positive or
negative qualities (praise or blame) of a person, entity, object, or value onto
another to make the second more acceptable or to discredit it. It evokes an
emotional response, which stimulates the target to identify with recognized
authorities. Often highly visual, this technique often utilizes symbols (for
example, the swastikas used in Nazi Germany, originally a symbol for health and prosperity)
superimposed over other visual images.
- Unstated assumption
- This technique is used when the propaganda concept would seem less credible if
explicitly stated. The concept is instead repeatedly assumed or implied.
- Virtue words
- These are words in the
value
system of the target audience that produce a positive image when attached to a
person or issue. Peace, hope, happiness, security, wise leadership, freedom, "The
Truth", etc. are virtue words. Many see
religiosity
as a virtue, making associations to this quality effectively beneficial. See ""Transfer"".
Manifactureing of history
Propaganda and Disinformation How the
CIA Manufactures History
Propaganda and Disinformation:
How the CIA Manufactures History
By Victor Marchetti
In the eyes of posterity it will inevitably seem that, in safeguarding
our freedom, we destroyed it. The vast clandestine apparatus we built up to
prove our enemies' resources and intentions only served in the end to
confuse our own purposes; that practice of deceiving others for the good of
the state led infallibly to our deceiving ourselves; and that vast army of
clandestine personnel built up to execute these purposes were soon caught up
in the web of their own sick fantasies, with disastrous consequences for
them and us.
-- Malcom Muggeridge, May 1966
That, in a nutshell, sums up what the CIA has accomplished over the years
through its various clandestine propaganda and disinformation programs. It
has unwittingly and, often, deliberately decieved itself -- and the American
taxpayer. The CIA is a master at distorting history -- even creating its own
version of history to suit its institutional and operational purposes. It can
do this largely because of two great advantages it possesses. One is the
excessively secret environment in which it operates, and the other is that it
is essentially a private instrument of the presidency.
The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to
keep the opposition (the CIA's euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing
what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for
governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing -- for
you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy -- so that you cannot
interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is
doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact,
they can even lie to your about what they are doing or have done, and you
will not know it.
As for the second advantage, despite frequent suggestion that the CIA is a
rogue elephant, the truth is that the agency functions at the direction of
and in response to the office of the president. All of its major clandestine
operations are carried out with the direct approval of or on direct orders
from the White House. The CIA is a secret tool of the president -- every
president. And every president since Truman has lied to the American people
in order to protect the agency. When lies have failed, it has been the duty
of the CIA to take the blame for the president, thus protecting him. This is
known in the business as "plausible denial."
The CIA, functioning as a secret instrument of the U.S. government and the
presidency, has long misused and abused history and continues to do so. I
first became concerned about this historical distortion in 1957, when I was a
young officer in the Clandestine Services of the CIA.
One night, after work, I was walking down Constitution Avenue with a
fellow officer, who previously had been a reporter for United Press.
"How are they ever going to know," he asked.
"Who? How is 'who' ever going to know what?" I asked.
"How are the American people ever going to know what the truth is? How are
they going to know what the truth is about what we are doing and have done
over the years?" he said. "We operate in secrecy, we deal in deception and
disinformation, and then we burn our files. How will the historians ever be
able to learn the complete truth about what we've done in these various
operations, these operations that have had such a major impact on so many
important events in history?"
I couldn't answer him, then. And I can't answer him now. I don't know how
the American people will ever really know the truth about the many things
that the CIA has been involved in. Or how they will ever know the truth about
the great historical events of our times. The government is continually
writing and rewriting history -- often with the CIA's help -- to suit its own
purposes. Here is a current example.
Just last month in Moscow, there was a meeting, a very strange meeting.
Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara met with former Soviet foreign
minister Andrei Gromyko and a member of the Cuban Politburo. These three men,
along with lesser former officials of their governments, has all been
involved in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, and they had gathered
intheSoviet capital to discuss what has really occurred in that monumental
crisis, which almost led to World War III.
Since I, too, had been personally involved in that crisis, I took some
interest in the news reports coming out of Moscow concerning the doings of
this rather odd gathering of former officials. Much to my surprise, I learned
that Robert McNamara was saying that neither he nor the U.S. intelligence
community realized there actually had been some 40,000 Soviet troops in Cuba
in the autumn of 1962. The former defense chief of the Kennedy administration
was also saying that he and the U.S. government did not realize that the few
dozen medium and intermediate range missiles the Soviets had tried to sneak
into Cuba were actually armed with nuclear warheads and ready to be fired at
targets in the U.S.
Furthermore, he was claiming that the U.S. did not understand that this
huge military build-up by the Soviets had been carried out to protect Cuba
and to prevent the U.S. from attacking the island's Communist regime. He
added, for good measure, that he was surprised to learn from the talks in
Moscow that the Soviets and Cubans thought the U.S. had plans to bring down
the government of Fidel Castro through the use of force. According to
McNamara, the entire Cuban missile crisis was a dangerous misunderstanding
that came about because of the lack of communication among the governments
involved in the near catastrophe.
Well, when I heard what McNamara and the band were playing in Moscow, I
said to myself, "Either McNamara is getting a little dotty in his old age and
doesn't remember what really happened during the Cuban missile crisis -- or
there's some other reason for this." Well, it soon became apparent that
McNamara was not senile. What, then, is the reason for these curious -and
false -- "admissions" in Moscow? The reason is that the United States and the
Soviet Union have decided to become friends again, and Washington wants to
set the stage for rapprochement with Castro's Cuba.
It has evidently been decided by the powers that be in the U.S. to have a
little meeting in Moscow and tell the world that we were all mixed up about
Cuba and we didn't know what was going on there in 1962, because we weren't
communicating well with the Soviets at the time. Thus, the American people
would see how close to war we had come, how we should communicate more with
the Soviets, and how they weren't really very bad guys after all. For that
matter neither were Fidel and his gang. Therefore, it would follow that we
should in a few months from now get on with disarmament and whatever else is
necessary to bring about the new internationalism that is forming between
east and west. At the same time, we should begin rebuilding the bridge to
Cuba, too.
But to create the proper atmosphere for the coming rapproachement with
Moscow and, later, Cuba, it was necessary to scare the American public and
the world into thinking that the crisis of October 1962 was worse than it
really was. To do that, McNamara, Gromyko, et al. were playing a
little game -- their own distorted brand of historical revisionism. They were
rewriting history to suit the present purposes of their governments.
Now, I thought, what if I were a reporter. Would I be able to see through
this little charade that was going on in Moscow? Probably not. I began
studying the "knowlegeable" syndicated colunmists. They were writing things
like, "... My God, we never did understand what the Soviets were up to in
Cuba. Yes, we better do something about this." What McNamara and friends were
saying in Moscow was now becoming fact. It's becoming fact that we, the U.S.
government, did not really know what was going on during the missile crisis.
That is a lie.
If there was ever a time when the CIA in the United States intelligence
community and the United States Armed Forces really cooperated and
coordinated their efforts with each other, it was during the Cuban missile
crisis. The Cuban missile crisis is probably one of the few examples --
perhaps the only one -- of when intelligence really worked the way it was
supposed to work in a crisis situation.
I was there at the time, and I was deeply involved in this historical
event. A colleague and friend of mine, Tack, my assistant at the time, and I
were the original "crate-ologists"-which was an arcane little intelligence
art that we had developed. We had learned through a variety of tricks of the
trade, and some of our own making, to be able to distinguish what was in
certain crates on Soviet merchant ships as they went into Cuba, into
Indonesia into Egypt, Syria,and other places.We could tell if a crate
contained a MIG-21,or an IL-28, or a SAM-2 missile.
We did this in such an amateurish way that we dared not tell anyone our
methods. While the National Photographic and Interpretation Center employed
1,200 people in its office in downtown Washington, using state-of-the-art
equipment to analyze aerial and satellite photography, Tack and I would sit
in our office, feet up on the desk, using a beat-up old ruler to measure
photos taken from U.S. submarines. I'd measure a crate on the deck of the
Soviet freighter, say about three quarters of an inch in the photograph.
"Tack, do you think they could fit a Mig-21 in there?" He'd thumb through
an old Air Force manual and say, "Mig-21, fuselage length 25 feet." "Well?"
"Take the tail off, and we can fit it in." "Okay, let's call it a Mig-21."
We were pretty good at this. We had other aids to identification of
course. We were able to learn when the Soviets were preparing shipments and
from which ports they were sailing. We knew which personnel were involved,
and the ships' destinations. Thus we could alert the navy, which sometimes
conducted overflights, sometimes tracked them with a submarine.
We had an attaché in Istanbul row out in the middle of the night with a
Turk whom he'd hired, looking for three things in a Soviet freighter: its
deck cargo, how high it was riding in the water, and its name.
By these and other sensitive we were able to learn, in the summer of 1962,
that the Soviets were carrying out an unprecendented arms build-up in Cuba.
While some of the other agencies, namely the National Security Agency and the
Defense Intelligence Agency, did'nt agree with us, CIA director John McCone
was able to get president John Kennedy to authorize more intelligence
overflights. The overflights revealed that the Soviets were building
SAM (Surface-to-Air Missiles) launching sites to protect the build-up.
Further overflights revealed the construction of launching sites for Soviet
MRBMs (Medium Range Ballistic Missiles) capable of carrying nuclear warheads
to most cities in the United States.
We know exactly how many there were. where they were, and that they had
not yet been armed, because the warheads hadn't arrived yet.
Thus McNamara is lying when he claims that the Soviet missiles in Cuba
were armed and ready for launch against the United States. On the contrary,
we were watching the ships which caried the warheads; American ships
enforcing the blockade which President Kennedy had ordered boarded a Romanian
ship (which we knew carried no arms), and the Russian ships bringing the
nuclear warheads turned around in mid-ocean and went home.
It is also quite untrue that there were forty thousand Soviet troops in
Cuba. We knew that there were only ten thousand of them, because we had
developed a simple but effective way of counting them.
The Soviets had sent their troops over on passenger liners to disguise the
military buildup. Some genius back in Moscow must have then said: "But these
guys need to wear civilian clothes; let's put sport shirts on them." But
someone at the department store said: We've only got two kinds." So half the
troops wore one kind, half of them the other. They weren't very hard to spot.
Then, too, Soviet soldiers are a lot like our own. As soon as the first
group got established, the colonel sent them out to paint some rocks white
and then paint the name of the unit, 44th Field Artillery Battalion or
whatever, on the rocks. All we had to do was take a picture of it from one of
our U-2s. So it was easy to establish a Soviet troop strength of far below
40,000. Thus, McNamara is agreeing to a second lie.
The big lie, however, is that the Soviet Union came into Cuba to protect
the Cubans. That was a secondary, or bonus, consideration. The primary reason
for the build-up was that the Soviets at the time were so far behind us in
nuclear strike capability that Khruschev figured he could make a quantum leap
by suddenly putting in 48 missiles that could strike every city in America
except Seattle, Washington.
Nor did we come as close to war as many think, because Khruschev knew he
was caught. His missiles weren't armed, and he hadn't the troops to protect
them. Kennedy knew this, so he was able to say: "take them out." And
Khruschev had to say yes.
I must admit that at the time I was a little concerned, and so was my
buddy Tack. We were manning the war room around the clock, catching four
hours of sleep and then going back on duty. My wife had the station wagon
loaded with blankets and provisions, and Tack's wife was standing by on
alert. If either of them got a phone call with a certain word in it, they
were to take our children and drive to my home town in the anthracite region
of northeastern Pennsylvania. We figured they'd be safe there: if you've ever
seen the coal region with its strip mines you would think it had already been
bombed and we were hoping the Soviets would look at it that way too.
Last month's conference in Moscow is an example of how history is being
rewritten. Any historian who relies on what he reads in the newspapers, on
the statements from McNamara and the Russians and the Cubans will not be
learning the truth. The CIA has manufactured history in a number of ways over
the years not only through its propaganda and disinformation but through the
cover stories it uses for their operations, and the cover-ups when an
operation falls through Then there is "plausible deniability," which protects
the president.
All these techniques have one thing in common, and depend on one thing:
secrecy. Secrecy is maintained not to keep the opposition - the CIA's
euphemistic term for the enemy -- from knowing what's going on, because the
enemy usually does know. Secrecy exists to keep you, the American public,
from knowing what is going on, because in many ways you are the real enemy.
If the public were aware of what the CIA is doing, it might say: "We don't
like what you're doing -- stop it!," or You're not doing a good job -- stop
it!" The public might ask for an accounting for the money being spent and the
risks being taken.
Thus secrecy is absolutely vital to the CIA. Secrecy covers not only
operations in progress, but continues after the operations, particularly if
the operations have been botched. Then they have to be covered up with more
lies, which the public, of course, can't recognize as lies, allowing the CIA
to tell the public whatever it wishes.
Presidents love this. Every president, no matter what he has said before
getting into office, has been delighted to learn that the CIA is his own
private tool. The presidents have leapt at the opportunity to keep Congress
and the public in the dark about their employment of the agency.
This is what was at the basis of my book, The CIA and the Cult of
Intelligence. I had come to the conclusion, as a member of the CIA, that
many of our policies and practices were not in the best interests of the
United States. but were in fact counterproductive, and that if the American
people were aware of this they would not tolerate it.
I resigned from the CIA in 1969, at a time when we were deeply involved in
Vietnam. And how did we get into Vietnam on a large scale? How did President
Lyndon Johnson get a blank check from Congress? It was through the Gulf of
Tonkin incident The American people were told by President Johnson that North
Vietnamese motor torpedo boats had come after two American destroyers on the
night of August 4, 1964. This was confirmed by the intelligence community.
The fact of the matter is that while torpedo boats came out and looked at
the U.S. destroyers, which were well out in international waters, they never
fired on them. They made threatening maneuvers, they snarled a bit, but they
never fired. It was dark and getting darker. Our sailors thought they might
have seen something, but there were no hits, no reports of anything whizzing
by.
That was the way it was reported back: a bit of a scrape, but no weapons
fire and no attempt to fire. Our ships had not been in danger. But with the
help of the intelligence community President Johnson took that report and
announced that we had been attacked. He went to Congress and asked for and
received his blank check, and Congress went along. Everyone knows the rest of
the story: we got into Vietnam up to our eyeballs.
Every president prizes secrecy and fights for it. And so did President
Nixon, in my case. When I came to the conclusion that the American people
needed to know more about the CIA and what it was up to, I decided to go to
Capitol Hill and talk to the senators on the intelligence oversight
subcommittee. I found out that Senator John Stennis, at that time head of the
subcommittee, hadn't conducted a meeting in over a year, so the other
senators were completely ignorant as to what the CIA was doing. Senators
William Fulbright and Stuart Symington would tell Stennis, "Let's have a
meeting," but he was ignoring them. The other senators wrote Stennis a letter
urging him to at least hear what I had to say in a secret executive session,
but he continued to ignore them.
Then I would meet Fulbright -- at the barber shop. He was afraid to met me
in his office. I would meet with Symington at his home. I would meet with
senators at cocktail parties, as if by chance. But still they couldn't get
Stennis to convene the intelligence subcommittee.
Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania told me he had learned more
about the workings of the intelligence community in one afternoon of
conversation with me than in six years of work on the intelligence
subcommittee. That didn't surprise me, because I, several years before, had
done the budget for CIA director Richard Helms. It was feared that the Senate
appropriations subcommittee might have some hard questions about the growing
cost of technical espionage programs. Director Helms had evidently been
through this before, however.
As Helms put it, he and the CIA's head of science and technology, Albert
(Bud) Wheelon, staged a "magic lantern show" for the committee, complete with
color slides and demonstrations of the CIA's most advance spy gadgets: a
camera hidden in a tobacco pouch, a radio transmitter concealed in some false
teeth, a tape recorder in a cigarette case, and so on. One or two hard
questions were deflected by Senator Russell of Georgia, who chaired the
committee and was a strong supporter of the agency. There were, of course, no
slides or hi-tech hardware to exhibit the programs the CIA wanted to conceal
from Congress, and the budget sailed through the subcommittee intact.
What I learned in my dealings with Congressmen, in the CIA and after
leaving, was that the men who wanted to change the situation didn't have the
power, while those who had the power didn't want any change. With Congress a
hopeless case, and the White House already in the know and well satisfied to
let the CIA continue to operate in secrecy, I decided to talk to the press. I
gave my first interview to U.S. News and World Report, and that started the
ball rolling. Soon I was in touch with publishers in New York, talking about
doing a book.
I soon got a telephone call from Admiral Rufus Taylor, who had been my
boss in the agency, but by that time had retired. He told me to meet him at a
motel in the Virginia suburbs, across the Potomac from Washington. My
suspicions aroused by the remoteness of the room from the office, I was
greeted by Admiral Taylor, who had thoughtfully brought along a large supply
of liquor: a bottle of scotch, a bottle of bourbon, a bottle of vodka, a
bottle of gin ... "I couldn't remember what you liked," he told me, "so I
brought one of everything."
I began to make noise: flushing the toilet, washing my hands, turning on
the television. Admiral Taylor was right behind me, turning everything off. I
kept making noise, jingling the ice in my glass and so on, until the admiral
sat down. There was a table with a lamp on it between the admiral's chair and
the one which he now told me to sit down on. He looked at me with a little
twinkle in his eye: the lamp was bugged, of course.
We talked, and Admiral Taylor told me the CIA was worried about what I
might write in my book. He proposed a deal: I was to give no more interviews,
write no more articles, and to stay away from Capitol Hill. I could write my
book, and then let him and other retired senior officers look it over, and
they would advise me and the agency. After that the CIA and I could resolve
our differences. I told him, "Fair enough." We had a drink on it, and went
out to dinner. That was our deal
What I didn't know was that a few nights later John Erlichman and Richard
Nixon would be sitting in the White House discussing my book. There is a tape
of their discussion, "President Nixon, John Ehrlichman, 45 minutes, subject
Victor Marchetti," which is still sealed: I can't get it. Ehrlichman told me
through contacts that if I listened to the tape I would learn exactly what
happened to me and why.
Whatever the details of their conversation were, the president of the
United States had decided I should not publish my book. I was to be the first
writer in American history to be served with an official censorship order
served by a court of the United States, because President Nixon did not want
to be embarrassed, nor did he want the CIA to be investigated and reformed:
that would have hampered his ability to use it for his own purposes. A few
days later, on April 18, 1972, I received a federal injunction restraining me
from revealing any "intelligence information." After more than a year of
court battles, CIA and the Cult of Intelligence was published. The
courts allowed the CIA to censor it in advance, and as a result the book
appeared with more than a hundred holes for CIA-ordered deletions. Later
editions show previously deleted words and lines, which the court ordered the
CIA to restore in boldface or italics. The book is therefore difficult to
read, indeed something of a curiosity piece. And of course all the
information which was ordered cut out ended up leaking to the public anyway.
All this was done to help the CIA suppress and distort history, and to
enable presidents to do the same. Presidents like Harry Truman, who claimed
falsely that "I never had any thought when I set up the CIA that it would be
injected into peacetime cloak-and-dagger operations," but who willingly
employed the agency to carry out clandestine espionage and covert
intervention in the affairs of other countries. Or Dwight Eisenhower, who
denied that we were attempting to overthrow Sukarno in Indonesia, when we
were, and was embarrassed when he tried to deny the CIA's U-2 overflights and
was shown up by Khruschev at Paris in 1960. John F. Kennedy, as everyone
knows by now, employed the CIA in several attempts to assassinate Fidel
Castro. We used everyone from Mafia hoods to Castro's mistress, Marita Lorenz
(who was supposed to poison the dictator with pills concealed in her cold
cream -- the pills melted). I have no doubt that if we could have killed
Castro, the U.S. would have gone in.
There was a fairly widespread belief that one reason Kennedy was
assassinated was because he was going to get us out of Vietnam. Don't you
believe it He was the CIA's kind of president, rough, tough, and gung-ho.
Under Kennedy we became involved in Vietnam in a serious way, not so much
militarily as through covert action. It is a fact that the United States
engineered the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem, South Vietnam's premier, and Ngo
Dinh Nhu, his powerful brother. A cable was sent out to the ambassador which
said, "If Lou Conein goofs up [Lucien Conein was a key CIA operative in
Saigon], it's his responsibility." So when E. Howard Hunt faked these memos
and cables when he was working for the "plumbers" on behalf of President
Nixon (and against the Democrats), he knew what he was doing. That was his
defense, that he wasn't really forging or inventing anything. "Stuff like
that really existed, but I couldn't find it," he said. Of course Hunt
couldn't find it by that time the original documents were gone. But Hunt knew
what he was doing.
President Nixon's obsession with secrecy led to the end of his presidency,
of course. As indicated earlier, Nixon was determined to suppress my book. On
several occasions after his resignation, Nixon has been asked what he meant
when he said that the CIA would help him cover up the Watergate tapes,
because "they owed him one." He has responded, "I was talking about
Marchetti," in other words the efforts (still secret) to prevent The CIA
and the Cult of Intelligence from being published.
Another instance of the Nixon administrations' attempts to suppress
history is the ongoing attempt to cover up the details of the
administration's "tilt" toward Pakistan in its conflict with India in the
early 1970's. Although the basic facts soon emerged, Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist Seymour Hersh's account of the affair in his unflattering book on
Henry Kissinger revealed that Morarji Desai, an important Indian political
leader who later became Prime Minister, was a CIA agent. Kissinger spurred
Desai to sue Hersh, and the case is still dragging on today, seven years
later. I know what the truth is; Hersh knows as well, but as a conscientious
journalist refused to reveal his sources. Here historical truth is caught
between official secrecy and Hersh's loyalty to his informants; nevertheless,
I have a great deal of admiration for Hersh for his firm stand.
It is a fact that a good many foreign leaders, including those often seen
as "neutral" or even hostile to the United States, have been secretly on the
CIA's payroll. For instance, when Jimmy Carter came into office, he claimed
he was going to reform the CIA. No sooner than was he in the White House,
they decided to test him: the news that Jordan's King Hussein had been paid
by the CIA was leaked. President Carter was outraged, because now it was his
CIA. His efforts to deny the relationship were defeated by Hussein's
nonchalant frankness. He told the press, "Yes, I took the money. I used it
for my intelligence service. And that's all I'm going to say on that
subject."
There were a lot of other national leaders in Hussein's category. As I
revealed for the first time in my book, Joseph Mobutu, a corporal in the
Belgian forces in the Congo before its independence, went on the CIA payroll.
That is why he rules Zaire today. The CIA paid the late Jomo Kenyatta, ruler
of Kenya, fifty or a hundred thousand dollars a year, which he'd spend on
drink and women. Therefore we ended up paying Kenyatta twice as much, telling
him: "This is for you and this is for your party."
The CIA has funded individuals and movements across the political spectrum
in West Germany. A prime example is Willy Brandt, former chancellor of the
Federal Republic, who received much CIA support when he was mayor of West
Berlin. Axel Springer, the Christian Democratic-minded press and publishing
magnate, who pointed the finger at Brandt for working with CIA, was also a
CIA asset, who used his publications to spread CIA propaganda and
disinformation. It was a case of the pot calling the kettle black: I knew his
case officer quite welL
This is the way the CIA sees its mission, the job it was created to do.
The CIA is supposed to be involved with everyone, not merely the Christian
Democrats or the Social Democrats. The agency is supposed to have its fingers
in every pie, including the Communist one, so that they can all be
manipulated in whichever way the U.S. government desires.
An obvious area of disinformation and deception exists in our relationship
with a nation often represented as our closest ally, Israel. I have often
been asked about the relationship between the CIA and its Israeli
counterpart, the Mossad. The CIA maintains some kind of liaison with
virtually every foreign intelligence agency, including the KGB. These
relationships vary from case to case, but our relationship with the Mossad
was always a peculiar one.
When I was in the agency, the Mossad was generally not trusted. There was
an unwritten rule that no Jews could work on Israeli or near Eastern matters;
it was felt that they could not be totally objective.. There was a split in
the agency, however, and Israel was not included in the normal area division,
the Near Eastern Division. Instead it was handled as a special account in
counterintelligence. The man who handled that account, James Jesus Angleton,
was extremely close to the Israelis. I believe that through Angleton the
Israelis learned a lot more than they should have and exercised a lot more
influence on our activities than they should have.
For his trouble, James Angleton, who died last year, was honored by the
Israelis, in the way that the Israelis customarily honor their Gentile
helpers. They decided to plant a whole forest for Angleton in the Judean
hills, and they put up a handsome plaque in several languages, lionizing
Angleton as a great friend of Israel, on a nearby rock. Israeli's
intelligence chiefs, past and present, attended the dedication ceremony.
Later on, a television reporter of my acquaintance sought out Angleton's
memorial during an assignment in Israel. After some difficulty, he was able
to locate it, but something seemed odd about it. On closer inspection,
Angleton's plaque turned out to be made, not of bronze, but of cardboard. Nor
was the setting particularly flattering to Israel's late benefactor: the
trees and plaque were at the edge of a garbage dump. My friend's British
cameraman put it best "This guy sold out his country for the bloody Israelis,
and this is the way they pay him back!"
The CIA has distorted history in other ways than by outright coverups and
suppression of the truth. One method was to produce its own books. For
instance, one of its top agents in the Soviet Union was Colonel Oleg
Penkovsky. Penkovsky was eventually captured and executed. But the CIA was
unwilling to let it go at that The agency decided to write a book, which it
published in 1965, called The Penkovsky Papers. This was purported to
be drawn from a diary that Penkovsky had kept, a diary in which Penkovsky
revealed numerous espionage coups calculated to embarrass the Soviets and
build up the CIA.
Spies do not keep diaries, of course, and the Soviets were not likely to
believe the exaggerated claims made for Penkovsky and the CIA in The
Penkovsky Papers. Who was taken in? The American public, of course. More
than once people have come up to me after a lecture and shown me the book as
if it were gospel. I've told them, "I know the man who wrote it." "You knew
Penkovsky?" they invariably ask, and I tell them, "No, I didn't know
Penkovsky. But I know the man who wrote the book."
Not just ordinary citizens were taken in by the Penkovsky deception,
either. Senator Milton Young of North Dakota, who served on the CIA oversight
subcommittee, said in a 1971 Senate debate on cutting the inteligence budget:
And if you want to read something very interesting and authoritative
where intelligence is concerned, read The Penkovsky Papers ... this
is a very interesting story, on why the intelligence we had in Cuba was so
important to us, and on what the Russians were thinking and just how far
they would go.
Perhaps the most startling example ot the ClA's manipulation of the
publishing world is the case of Khrushchev Remembers. Khrushchev is
still widely believed to have been the author. He is supposed to have dashed
it off one summer and then said to himself, "Where will I get this published?
Ah! Time-Life!" The tapes reached Time-Life, we all read it, and we told
ourselves, "Isn't that interesting."
A little thought should be sufficient to dispel the notion that the KGB
would allow Khrushchev to sit in his dacha dictating tape after tape with no
interference. He certainly dictated tapes, but the tapes were censored and
edited by the KGB, and then a deal was struck between the U.S. and the USSR,
after it was decided, at the highest level, that such a book would be
mutually beneficial. Brezhnev could use against some of the resistance he was
encountering from Stalinist hardliners, and Nixon could use it to increase
support for detente.
The CIA and the KGB cooperated in carrying out the operation. The tapes
were given to the Time bureau in Moscow. Strobe Talbot, who appears on
television frequently today and is Time's bureau chief in Washington,
brought the tapes back with him. I was present in an apartment in which he
hid them for a couple of days. The tapes were then translated and a
manuscript developed. During this period Time refused to let people
who had known Khrushchev personally, including White House staff members,
listen to the tapes.
Knowledgeable people began to tell me. "I don't believe this." "There's
something mighty fishy here." When they read what Khrushchev was supposedly
saying, they were even more incredulous. But the book came out, Khrushchev
Remembers, accompanied by a massive publicity campaign. It was a great
propaganda accomplishment for the CIA and the KGB.
I touched on Khrushchev Remembers in my book. I did not go into any
great detail, merely devoting several tentative paragraphs to the affair.
Just before my book was published Time was considering doing a
two-page spread on me until they learned of my expressed reservations on the
trustworthiness of Khrushchev Remembers. I began to get phone calls
from Talbot and Jerry Schaechter, then Time's bureau chief in
Washington, telling me I should take out the offending passages.
I had written, correctly, that before publication Strobe Talbot had taken
the bound transcripts of the Khruschhev tapes back to Moscow, via Helsinki,
so that the KGB could make one final review of them. I told Schaechter and
Talbot that if they came to me, looked me in the eye, and told me I had the
facts wrong, I would take out the section on Khruschhev Remembers.
Neither of them ever came by, the paragraphs stayed in my book, and in any
event Time went ahead with the two-page spread anyway.
As I pointed out in the preface to The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence
in 1974, democratic governments fighting totalitarian enemies run the risk of
imitating their methods and thereby destroying democracy. By suppressing
historical fact, and by manufacturing historical fiction, the CIA, with its
obsessive secrecy and its vast resources, has posed a particular threat to
the right of Americans to be informed for the present and future by an
objective knowledge of the past. As long as the CIA continues to manipulate
history, historians of its activities must be Revisionist if we are to know
the truth about the agency's activities, past and present.
From The Journal of Historical Review, Fall 1989 (Vol. 9, No. 3),
pages 305- 320.
This paper was first presented at the Ninth IHR Conference, Feb. 1989, in
Huntington Beach, California.
About the Author
For 14 years Victor Marchetti worked for the Central Intelligence Agency,
where he rose to be executive assistant to the deputy director.
He joined the CIA in 1955, working as a specialist on the USSR. He soon
became a leading CIA expert on Third World aid, with a focus on USSR military
supplies to Cuba. In 1966 Marchetti was promoted to the office of special
assistant to the Chief of Planning, Programming, and Budgeting.
After becoming disillusioned with the CIA's policies and practices,
Marchetti resigned in 1969. He wrote a novel, The Rope Dancer (1971,
that was critical of the CIA. He is also the author – with John D. Marks – of
the book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, published in 1973.
Before its publication, the CIA demanded the removal of 399 passages, but
Marchetti stood firm and only 168 passages were censored. This was the first
book the US federal government ever tried to censor before publication
through court action. The publisher (Alfred A. Knopf) chose to issue it with
blanks for censored passages and with boldface type for passages that were
challenged but later uncensored.
- 20150914 : mainly macro Media myths by Simon Wren-Lewis ( Sep 11, 2015 , mainlymacro.blogspot.com )
- 20150517 : Andre Vltchek How to Fight Western Propaganda Information Clearing House - ICH by Andre Vltchek ( Andre Vltchek How to Fight Western Propaganda Information Clearing House - ICH, May 17, 2015 )
- 20150108 : Excerpts from the book Information War American Propaganda, Free Speech and Opinion Control since 9-11 by Nancy Snow ( Excerpts from the book Information War American Propaganda, Free Speech and Opinion Control since 9-11 by Nancy Snow, Jan 08, 2015 )
- 20150108 : Links for 12-29-14 ( December 28, 2014 , economistsview.typepad.com )
- 20150108 : Patterns of Propaganda ( Patterns of Propaganda, )
- 20150108 : 14 Propaganda Techniques Fox News Uses to Brainwash Americans Alternet ( 14 Propaganda Techniques Fox 'News' Uses to Brainwash Americans Alternet, )
- 20150108 : 7 TYPES OF PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUES flashcards Quizlet ( 7 TYPES OF PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUES flashcards Quizlet, )
- 20150108 : Joseph Goebbels - Propaganda Principles ( Joseph Goebbels - Propaganda Principles, )
- 20150108 : Happy 100th birthday, information warfare by John Maxwell Hamilton ( August 1, 2014 , The Washington Post )
- 20150108 : Wollaeger, M. Modernism, Media, and Propaganda British Narrative from 1900 to 1945. (eBook and Paperback) ( Wollaeger, M. Modernism, Media, and Propaganda British Narrative from 1900 to 1945. (eBook and Paperback), )
At first sight the research reported
here is something that
only political science researchers should worry about. In trying to explain election results, it
is better to use 'real time' data rather than 'revised, final or vintage' data. But as the authors
point out, it has wider implications. Voters do not seem to respond to how the economy actually is
(which is best measured by the final revised data), but how it is reported to be. (This does not
just matter for elections:
here is a discussion of some other research which suggests how the way recessions are
reported can influence economic decisions.)
Just one more indication that the media really matters. I would not bother to report such things,
if this point was generally accepted as an obvious truth. That it is not, in the UK at least, reflects
various different tendencies. Those on the right know that the print media is heavily biased their
way, and that this has a big impact on television, so they have an interest in denying that this
matters (while funding think tanks whose job is in part to
harass the BBC about its alleged left wing bias). Those on the centre left often react negatively
to a few of those further left who discount all awkward facts by blaming the media. And the media
itself is very reluctant to concede its own power.
As an example,
here is Rafael Behr in the Guardian talking disapprovingly about Labour supporters:
"I heard constant complaints about failure to "challenge myths" about the economy, benefits, immigration
and other areas where Labour is deemed unfit to govern by the people who choose governments. The
voters are wrong, and what is required is a louder exposition of their wrongness."
What is really revealing about this paragraph is what is not there. We go straight from myths
to voters, as if no one else is involved. I doubt very much that many who voice the 'constant complaints'
Behr is talking about think that voters created and sustained these myths all by themselves.
The discussion of issues involving the economy, the welfare system and immigration among most
of the 'political class' is often so removed from reality that it deserves the label myth. In the
case of the economy, I provided
chapter and verse in my 'mediamacro myth' series before the election. It was not just the
myth that Labour profligacy was responsible for austerity, but also the
myth about the 'strong recovery' when the recovery was the weakest for at least a century, and
that this recovery had 'vindicated' austerity. Given the importance that voters attach to economic
credibility, I do not believe I was exaggerating in
suggesting that the mediamacro myth was in good part responsible for the Conservatives
winning the election.
The media is vital in allowing myths to be sustained or dispelled. That does not mean that
the media itself creates myths out of thin air. These myths on the economy were created by the Conservative
party and their supporters, and sustained by the media's reliance on City economists. They get support
from half truths: pre-crisis deficits were a little too large, GDP growth rates for the UK did sometimes
exceed all other major economies.
Myths on welfare do come from real concerns: there is benefit fraud, and it is deeply resented
by most voters. But who can deny that much of the media (including the makers of certain television
programmes) have stoked that resentment? When the
public think that £24 out of every £100 spent on benefits is claimed fraudulently, compared
with official estimates of £0.70 per £100, that means that the public is wrong, and we have a myth.
(An excellent source for an objective view of the UK's welfare system is John Hills'
book,
which has myth in its subtitle) As I noted in that
post, when people are asked questions where they have much more direct experience, they
tend to give (on average of course) much more accurate answers. Its when they source the media that
things can go wrong. It is well known that fears about immigration tend to be greatest where there
is least immigration.
Of course reluctance to acknowledge myths may not be denial but fatalism. Fatalism in believing
that voters will always believe that migrants want to come to the UK because of our generous benefit
system because it suits their prejudices. Encouraging those beliefs will be in the interests of what
will always be a right wing dominated press. Some argue that myths can only be changed from a position
of power. But myths are not the preserve of governments to initiate. According to
this, over 60% of Trump supporters think their president is a Muslim who was born overseas.
[1]
Myths need to be confronted, not tolerated. The initial UK media coverage of the European migrant
crisis played to a mythical narrative that migrants were a threat to our standard of living and social
infrastructure (to
quote the UK's Foreign Secretary!). This reporting was not grounded in facts, as Patrick
Kingsley
shows. That changed when reporters saw who migrants really were and why they had made
the perilous journey north. It changed when Germany started welcoming them rather than trying to
build bigger fences. These facts did not fit the mythical narrative.
The UK government was clearly rattled when it realised that many people were not happy with
their narrative and policies. Myths can be challenged, but it is not easy. Policy has been changed
somewhat, but attempts are also being made to repair the narrative: to take some of those who have
made it to the EU will only encourage more (a variant of the previous European policy of reducing
the number of rescue boats), and a long term solution is to drop more bombs. Such idiotic claims
need to be treated with contempt, before they become a new myth that the opposition feels it is too
dangerous to challenge. Challenging these myths does not imply pretending real voter anxieties about
migration do not exist, but grounding
discussion and policy around the causes of those anxieties rather than the myths they
have spawned.
Yes, the non-partisan media needs to recognise the responsibility they have, and use objective
measures and academic analysis to judge whether they are meeting that responsibility. But more generally
myths are real and have to be confronted. The biggest myth of all is that there are no myths.
May 15, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - First they manufacture monstrous lies, and then they tell us that we
should be objective!
Is love objective; is it passion? Are dreams defendable, logically and philosophically?
When a house is attacked by brigands, when a village is overran by gangsters, when smoke, fire
and cries for help are coming from every corner, should we award ourselves with the luxury of
time to calculate, analyze and aim at complete logical, ethical, holistic and objective
solutions?
I strongly believe no! We are obliged to fight those who are burning our dwellings, to hit
with full force those who are attempting to rape our women, and to confront fire with fire when
innocent beings are slaughtered.
When the most powerful and the most destructive force on earth employs all its persuasive
might, utilizing everything from the mainstream media to educational facilities, in order to
justify its crimes, when it spreads its poisonous propaganda and lies in order to oppress the
world and suppress hope, do we step back and begin endless and detailed work on precise and
objective narratives? Or do we confront lies and propaganda with our own narrative, supported by
our intuition, passion and dreams for a better world?
***
The Empire lies continuously. It lies in the morning, during the day, in the evening, even at
night, when most of the people are sound asleep. It has been doing it for decades and centuries.
For grand deceits it relies on countless numbers of propagandists who pose as academics, teaches,
journalists and "public intellectuals". Perfection in the art of disinformation has been reached.
Western advertising (so much admired and used by the German Nazis) has some common roots with
propaganda, although propaganda is much older and "complete".
It appears that even some leaders of the Empire now believe in most of their fabrications, and
most of the citizens certainly do. Otherwise, how could they sleep at night?
The western propaganda apparatus is enormously efficient and effective. It is also brilliant
in how it ensures that its inventions get channeled, distributed, and accepted in all corners of
the world. The system through which disinformation spreads, is incredibly complex. Servile local
media and academia on all continents work hard to guarantee that only one narrative is allowed to
penetrate the brains of billions.
The results are: intellectual cowardice and ignorance, all over the world, but especially in
the West and in its client states.
***
What are we, who oppose the regime, supposed to do?
First of all, things are not as hopeless as they used to be.
This is not the morbid unipolar world that we experienced in the early 90's. Now Venezuela,
Russia, China, and Iran support large media outlets that are opposed to the Empire. Powerful
television stations emerged: RT, Press TV, TeleSUR and CCTV. Huge English language Internet-based
magazines and sites in the United States, Canada and Russia are also exposing the lies of the
official Western propagandists: Counterpunch, Information Clearing House, Global Research,
Veterans News, Strategic Culture, New Eastern Outlook quickly come to mind. And there are
hundreds of important sites doing the same in Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese and French
languages.
The fight is on: the fight for an intellectually multi-polar world. It is a tough, mortal
fight! It is a crucial battle, simply because the metastases of the Western propaganda cancer
have spread everywhere, contaminated all continents, and even some of the most courageous
countries and brains that are earnestly fighting against the Western imperialism and fascism! No
one is immune. To be frank, all of us are contaminated.
Unless we win this battle, by first clearly identifying and proving "their narrative"
as fraudulent, and later by offering humanist and compassionate perceptions, we cannot even dream
about the revolution, or about any significant changes in arrangement of the world.
***
How do we achieve victory? How do we convince the masses, those billions of people? How do we
open their eyes and make them see that the Western regime is dishonest, toxic, poisonous and
destructive? Most of humanity is hooked on the Empire's propaganda; that propaganda which is not
only spread by mainstream media outlets, but also by pop music, soap operas, social media,
advertisement, consumerism, 'fashion trends' and by many other covert means; cultural, religious
and media junk that leads to total emotional and intellectual stupor and is administered like
some highly addictive narcotic, regularly and persistently.
Do we counter the tactics and strategy of the destructive and ruthless Empire with our
honesty, with research, with telling and writing meticulously investigated facts?
The Empire perverts facts. It repeats lies through its loudspeakers and tubes. It shouts them
thousands and thousands of times, until they sink into the sub conscious of people, penetrate the
skin, spread all through their brains.
Good will, naive honesty, "speaking truth to power", could this change the world and the power
itself? I highly doubt it.
The Empire and its power are illegitimate, and they are criminal. Is there any point of
speaking truth to a gangster? Hardly! Truth should be spoken to people, to masses, not to those
who are terrorizing the world.
By talking to villains, by begging them to stop torturing others, we are legitimizing their
crimes, and we are acknowledging their power. By trying to appease gangsters, people are putting
themselves at their mercy.
I absolutely refuse to be in such position!
***
To win over billions of people, we have to inspire them, to fire them up. We have to outrage
them, embrace them, shame them, make them laugh and make them cry. We have to make sure that they
get goose bumps when they see our films, read our books and essays, listen to our speeches.
We have to detox them, make them feel again, wake up natural instincts in them.
Simple truth as a detox agent will not work. The poison of our adversaries has sunk too
deeply. Most of the people are too lethargic and too immune to simple, quietly stated truths!
We have tried, and others have tried as well. My acquaintance (but definitely not my comrade)
John Perkins, former US apparatchik educated by the State Department, wrote a detailed account of
his horrid deeds in Ecuador, Indonesia and elsewhere – "Confession of An Economic Hitman". It
is a meticulous, detailed account of how the West destabilizes poor countries, using corruption,
money, alcohol, and sex. The book sold millions of copies, worldwide. And yet, nothing
changed! It did not trigger a popular revolution in the United States. There were no protests, no
demands for regime change in Washington.
In the recent past, I wrote and published two academic, or at least semi-academic books,
packed with great details, quotes and tons of footnotes: one on Indonesia, a country used by the
West as a model horror scenario for the rest of the world, after the 1965-US-sponsored military
coup. The coup killed 2-3 million people, murdered all intellectualism, and lobotomized the 4th
most populous country on earth. The book is called "Indonesia
– Archipelago of Fear". The second book, unique because it covers an enormous part of the
world – Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia ("Oceania
– Neocolonialism, Nukes and Bones"), showed how the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and
France, literally divided and destroyed the great South Pacific island cultures and the people.
Now classes are being taught using my books, but only a very limited number of people are
influenced by the facts exposed in them. The elites in both Indonesia and Oceania made sure that
the books are not widely read by the people.
I have spent years and years compiling facts, researching, investigating. The revolutionary
effectiveness of my academic work is – I have to admit – nearly zero.
It is easy to see the contrast: when I write an essay, a powerfully crafted, emotional essay,
demanding justice, accusing the Empire of murder and theft, I get millions of readers on all
continents, as well as translations to dozens of languages!
Why do I write this; why do I share this with my readers? Because we should all be realistic.
We have to see, to understand, what people want – what they demand. The people are unhappy and
scared. Most of them don't know why. They hate the system, they are lonely, frustrated, they know
that they are lied to and exploited. But they cannot define those lies. And academic books,
exposing the lies are too complex for them to read since the masses have no time to read
thousands of indigestible pages or the necessary education to allow them to understand what they
are reading.
It is our duty to address those people, the majority, otherwise what kind of revolutionaries
are we? After all, we are supposed to create for our brothers and sisters, not for a few
researchers at the universities, especially when we realize that most of the universities are
serving the Empire by regurgitating official nomenclature and supporting demagogues.
***
The Empire speaks, writes and then repeats some outrageous lies, about its benevolence, and
exceptionality of its rule, or about the "evils" of the Soviet Union, China, Iran, Venezuela,
North Korea or Cuba. This is done daily. In fact it is designed so that almost every human being
gets his or her dose of the toxin at least several times a day.
We feel we have to react – we begin spending years of our lives, meticulously proving, step by
step, that the Empire's propaganda is either one big fat lie, or exaggeration, or both. After we
compile our arguments, we publish the results in some small publishing house, most likely in the
form of a slender book, but almost nobody reads it because of its tiny circulation, and because
the findings are usually too complex, too hard to digest, and simply because the facts do not
shock anybody, anymore. One million more innocent people were murdered somewhere in Africa, in
the Middle East, in Asia; what else is new?
Researching and trying to tell the truth, fully and honestly, we feel that we are doing great,
professional, scientific work. All the while the propagandists of the Empire are dying of
laughter watching us! We are representing little danger to them. They are winning effortlessly!
Why is that? Doesn't the detailed truth matter?
It does – from the point of higher principles it matters. Ethically it matters. Morally it
matters. Philosophically it matters.
But strategically, when one is engaged in an ideological war, it does not matter that much!
The truth yes, always; the truth matters! But simplified, digestible truth, presented powerfully
and emotionally!
When immorality is ravishing the world, when it is charging mercilessly, when innocent
millions are dying, what matters is to stop the slaughter, first by identifying the murderous
force, then by containing it.
Language has to be strong, emotions raw.
When facing murderous hordes, poetry, emotionally charged songs, and patriotic odes have
always been more effective than deep academic studies. And so were political novels and films,
passionate documentaries, even explicit cartoons and posters.
Some would ask: "Just because they are lying, should we lie as well?" No! We should try to be
as truthful as we can. But our message should be often "abridged", so the billions, not just
those selected few, could understand it.
It does not mean that the quality of our work should suffer. Simplicity is often more
difficult to achieve than encyclopedic works with thousands of footnotes.
Sun Tzu's "Art of War" is short, just a pamphlet, straight to the point. And so is the
"Communist Manifesto", and 'J'accuse!"
Our revolutionary work does not have to be necessarily brief, but it has to be presented in a
way that could be understood by many. I am constantly experimenting with the form, while never
compromising on substance. My recent book, "Exposing
Lies of the Empire" has more than 800 pages, but I made sure that it is packed with
fascinating stories, with testimonies of people from all corners of the globe, with colorful
description of both victims and tyrants. I don't want my books to collect dust in university
libraries. I want them to mobilize people.
***
I truly believe that there is not much time for "objectivity" in any battle, including those
ideological ones, especially when these are battles for the survival of humanity!
The lies of the enemy have to be confronted. They are toxic, monstrous lies!
Once the destruction stops, millions of innocent men, women and children will cease being
sacrificed, and we can return to our complex philosophical concepts, to details and to nuances.
But before we win our final battles against imperialism, nihilism, fascism, exceptionalism,
selfishness and greed, we have to fully and effectively utilize our most powerful weapons: our
visions of a better world, our love for humanity, our passion for justice. Our determination and
our beliefs have to be presented in a loud, potent, even "dogmatic" manner, our voice should be
creative, artistic, powerful!
The house is on fire, comrades! The entire town is turning to ashes. The entire planet is
plundered, devastated, lobotomized.
We cannot confront bigots with nukes and battleships. But our talents, our muses, and our
hearts are here, with us, ready to join the battle.
Let us outsmart our enemies; let us make sure that the world begins laughing at them! Have you
seen them, those pathetic losers, the buffoons – the CEO's? Have you listened to those Prime
Ministers and Presidents, those servants of the "market"? Let us convince the masses that their
tyrants –the imperialists, the neo-colonialists and all their dogmatic preachers – are nothing
more than pitiful, greedy, poisonous fools! Let us discredit them! Let us ridicule them.
They are robbing and murdering millions. Let us begin by at least pissing on them!
Let us fight Western propaganda by first exposing those who are really behind it. Let's get
personal.
Let's turn this revolution into something creative, hilarious, truly fun!
Andre Vltchek is a philosopher,
novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of
countries. His latest books are: "Exposing
Lies Of The Empire" and "Fighting
Against Western Imperialism".Discussion with Noam Chomsky:
On Western
Terrorism.
Point of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel.
Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book
about Indonesia: "Indonesia
– The Archipelago of Fear". Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After
living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East
Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his
website or his
Twitter.
Par K ·
I have been reading Andre Vltchek's essays and
commentaries for a longtime. His honesty,integrity, depth
of thought, and articulation id beyond any doubt.
Courageous and bold writing like this one need to reach as
many people as possible - more exposure - that is what is
needed:
- A compiler of 'Independent News and Editorials:
The News Scouter:
http://newsscouter.com/
What we need is to bring awareness to masses. We need to
promote the truth - the knowledge - let the Information
reach the maximum number of people. It is all about
knowing the facts.
The key to bringing in the change - the real change, is to
remain informed - well informed. To make the right
decision we need all the relevant information, news, and
analysis. Be it the economy & finance, politics, or wars,
information is the key. But, as we all know, searching out
for the needed information is a time consuming task.
Now, more than ever, in this fast changing world, we need
"information" - Fast & Quick - at a single point.
Here is a source that we have stumbled upon - A new comer
that is already gaining momentum and recognition among
both the readers and writers alike at a lightening speed:
The News Scouter.
"All the 'Must-Read' News Stories, Information and
Editorials from around the world - Everything from Global
Affairs & Finance to Science & Technology - Updated
Regularly - Sorted and Categorized - All in one place."
Here is the Link to The News Scouter:
http://newsscouter.com/
maninhavana · 1 day ago
The only decent journalists working in the media
today are working for Telesur, RT and those mentioned
in the article or as independents who get carried by
this indispensible website ICH. The rest are just
presstitutes .
Sarah Rainsford of the BBC is a supreme example and
John Simpson one time head of the BBC world service
admits to admiring John Pilger and Martha Gelhorn who
would most likely despise his lickspittle sellout
journalistic efforts. If you read this article and
havent sent a donation to ICH what are you thinking?
Andy Perry · 1 day ago
If Vltchek wants to build an oppositioin to the
self-styled 'West' he should avoid making major
concessions to his opponent right from the start.
What is the term 'West' supposed to mean?
It is relative, abstract and meaningless and it is
intended to be so.
The 'West' is a BRAND NAME. Its purpose is to control
the way you perceive the BRAND.
If you strip the packaging and the marketing away,
the 'West' is the Anglo Saxon Axis- a collection of
Germanic countries (under NATO) led by Anglo Saxon
America.
You should consider the fact that Vltchek hasn't been
smart enough to figure this simple truth out before you
listen to anything further he has to say on the
matter...
Cultural Constituencies: The Anglo Saxon Maidan.
https://unitedstatesofeverywhere.wordpress.com/
RubyRenae · 19 hours ago
What is this author Vltchek trying to do? Mobilize the people of the Police States of
AmeriKKKa? To...overthrow the regime? How, when the populace is acculturated with God, Guns,
and Grocery Stores with fully-stocked shelves? Those facts will beat any kind of moral suasion
in this wretched nation. The Police State propagandists themselves present the answer: the
AmeriKKKans must be defeated in a war to bring peace to the world. AmeriKKKa must be forced
into recognition that the Police States has lost legitimacy by a more powerful state (or
states). This is all that can be done, if you read their literature on the British Empire.
Dick · 10 hours ago
The seven Principles of Propaganda P{art 1 as follows:
Avoid abstract ideas - appeal to the emotions.
When we think emotionally, we are more prone to be irrational and less critical in our
thinking. I can remember several instances where this has been employed by the US to prepare
the public with a justification of their actions. Here are three examples:
The Invasion of Grenada during the Reagan administration was said to be necessary to rescue
American students being held hostage by Grenadian authorities after a coup that overthrew the
government and return the previous government. I had a friend in the 82nd airborne division
that participated in the rescue. He told me the students said they were hiding in the school
to avoid the fighting by the US military, and had never been threatened by any Grenadian
authority. Film of the actual rescue broadcast on the mainstream media was faked; the students
were never in danger.
The invasion of Panama in the late 80's was supposedly to capture the dictator Manual Noriega
for international crimes related to drugs and weapons. I remember a headline covered by all
the media where a Navy lieutenant and his wife were detained by the police. His wife was
sexually assaulted while in custody, according to the story. Unfortunately, it never happened.
It was intended to get the public emotionally involved to support the action.
The invasion of Iraq in the early 90's was preceded by a speech in congress by a girl
describing the Iraqi army throwing babies out of incubators so the equipment could be
transferred to Iraq. It turns out the girl was the daughter of one of the Kuwait's ruling
sheiks and the event never occurred. However, it served its purpose by getting the American
public involved emotionally supporting the war. It is the most blatant use of propaganda,
since it used the US congress to present the story as true. Whom do we trust?
The greatest emotion in us is fear and fear is used extensively to make us think irrationally.
I remember growing up during the cold war having the fear of nuclear war or 'The Russians are
coming!' After the cold war without an obvious enemy, it was Al Qaeda even before 911, so we
had 'Al Qaeda is coming!' Now we have 'ISIS is coming!' with media blasting us with terrorist
fears. Whenever I hear a government promoting an emotional issue or fear mongering, I ignore
them knowing there is a hidden Truth behind the issue.
Constantly repeat just a few ideas. Use stereotyped phrases.
This could be stated more plainly as 'Keep it simple, stupid!' The most notorious use of this
technique recently was the Bush administration. Everyone can remember 'We must fight them over
there rather than over here' or my favourite 'They hate us for our freedoms'. Neither of these
phrases made any rational sense despite 911. The last thing Muslims in the Middle East care
about is American's freedoms, maybe it was all the bombs the US was dropping on them.
Give only one side of the argument and obscure history.
Watching mainstream media in the US, you can see all the news is biased to the American view
as an example. This is prevalent within Australian commercial media and newspapers giving only
a western view, but fortunately, we have the SBS and the ABC that are very good, certainly not
perfect, at providing both sides of a story. In addition, any historical perspective is
ignored keeping the citizenry focused on the here and now. Can any of you remember any news
organisation giving an in depth history of Ukraine or Palestine? I cannot.
Demonize the enemy or pick out one special "enemy" for special vilification.
This is obvious in politics where politicians continuously criticise their opponents. Of
course, demonization is more productively applied to international figures or nations such as
Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Gaddafi in Libya, Assad in Syria, the Taliban and just
recently Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine and Crimea. It establishes a negative emotional view
of either a nation (i.e. Iran) or a known figure making us again think emotionally, thus
irrationally. Certainly some of these groups or individuals were less than benign, but not
necessarily demons as depicted in the west.
Appear humanitarian in work and motivations.
The US has used this technique often to validate foreign interventions or ongoing conflicts
where the term 'Right to Protect' is used for justification. Everyone should remember the many
stories about the abuse of women in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein's supposed brutality to his
people. One thing that always amazes me is when the US sends humanitarian aid to a country it
is accompanied by the US military. In Haiti some years back the US sent troops with no other
country doing so. The recent Ebola outbreak in Africa saw US troops sent to the area. How are
troops going to fight a medical outbreak? No doubt, they are there for other reasons.
Obscure one's economic interests.
Who among you believes the invasion of Iraq was for weapons of mass destruction? Or the
constant threats against Iran are for their nuclear program? Iraq had no weapons of mass
destruction and no one has presented firm evidence Iran intends to produce nuclear weapons.
The West has been interfering in the Middle East since the British in the late 19th century.
It is all about oil and the control over the resources. In fact, if one researches the cause
of wars over the last hundred years, you will always find economics was a major component
driving the rush to war for most of them.
Monopolize the flow of information.
This mainly entails setting the narrative by which all subsequent events can be based upon or
interpreted in such a way as to reinforce the narrative. The narrative does not need to be
true; in fact, it can be anything that suits the monopoliser as long as it is based loosely on
some event. It is critical to have at least majority control of media and the ability to
control the message so the flow of information is consistent with the narrative. In the last
few months, I have seen this played out on mainstream media concerning the Ukrainian conflict.
One of the most interesting examples of this principle was in the lead up to the Iraqi war in
2003. John Howard, Prime Minister at the time, gave a speech in the Australian parliament
justifying the intervention in Iraq on March 18, 2003. Two days later on March 20 Stephen
Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, gave the same speech word for word to the Canadian
parliament. Either Harper is lazy or there was an attempt to control the message in countries
supporting the war. What I would like to know is who wrote the speech in the first place. I
cannot see two Prime Ministers giving an identical speech to their respective parliaments as a
coincidence.
Jim
Who have ever been in a war don't wish to go back to such. US media always shows the
bombing in the distance. If the American people could see up close the carnage, they would
kill every congressman who have voted for any war.
Again that is the reason to have massive poverty so the poor provide the soldiers
with a promise of a free college education as long as you are able to go to school in the
evening after duty, but if you are at a relentless illegal war forget about your free
education.
p14
Walter Lippmann
"The public must be put in its place...so that each of us can live free
of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd."
p19
1960s anti-war poster
"War is good for business. Invest your son."
p22
In a controlled society, propaganda is obvious and reluctantly tolerated for fear of the
negative consequences. In an open society, such as the United States, the hidden and integrated
nature of the propaganda best convinces people that they are not being manipulated.
p23
"Un-American" is a favorite name-calling device to stain the reputation of someone who disagrees
with official policies and positions. It conjures up old red-baiting techniques that stifle free
speech and dissent on public issues. It creates a chilling effect on people to stop testing the
waters of our democratic right to question the motives of our government.
p31
As long as we continue to allow the media to function as a manipulative mind manager without
fear or disfavor, we'll continue to see the brain-numbing effects of a society underexposed to
real information and analysis, rendered incapable of critical judgment and social resistance.
p31
The public's dilemma is to know how to consume the news with an ability to extract opinion from
the simple facts and evidence... The best solution to the fact/opinion dilemma is to acquire
more diverse information across the ideological and geological divide. If you find yourself
relying on one source of information for the news, whether right or left, you are likely to be
exposed to more opinion that reinforces rather than challenges your own.
p32
Walter Lippmann, considered the father of modern American journalism, was also a writer of
propaganda leaflets during World War I. He saw how easily people could fall for lies small and
big, particularly captured prisoners of war who were easily manipulated by their captors.
Lippmann became so disillusioned by the public's inability to analyze policy that he wrote The
Phantom Public, in which he basically claimed that the public had no role to play in addressing
important questions of state because the media system created a pseudoreality of stereotypes and
emotional impressions along with facts. The public is easily manipulated, not because we're
necessarily dumb, but because we're ignorant. We don't have the necessary tools to counter
propaganda.
p33
Much of our media now are so image-rich and content-poor that they just serve to capture the
eye, manipulate our emotions, and short-circuit our impulses. The propaganda and advertising
industries therefore function increasingly like adult obedience industries. They instruct their
audiences in how to feel and what to think, and increasing numbers of people seem to accept and
follow the cues without question.
p37
Censorship ends the free flow of information so essential for democracy and makes dissent less
likely. Propaganda injects false or misleading information into the media in order to influence
the behavior of populations here and abroad... News organizations often willingly collude with
efforts to censor because media owners are members of the political elite themselves and
therefore share the goals and outcomes of government leaders.
p39
Since World War I, the United States has borrowed and adapted many of the methods of British
political intelligence that were first developed by the English aristocracy to manage its global
empire. Most of our secrecy classification system in the United States is based on the British
model. Britain has also long been a master of propaganda and deception. The British authors
Phillip Knightly and Philip Taylor have shown in their work how the British propaganda machine
of World War I inspired later efforts by the Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
Interestingly, Britain, with its Official Secrets Act, has never shared the American traditional
ideals about the freedom of the press and the public's right to know. Nevertheless, the steady
erosion of these ideals in the United States can be traced in part to the special relationship
and mutual admiration between the United States and Great Britain.
p40
... propaganda can be more easily injected into news from the inside than from the outside.
Using CIA documents, the American reporter Carl Bernstein was able to identify more than 400
American journalists who secretly carried out CIA assignments over a twenty-five-year period
between 1945 and 1970. Among media executives who cooperated with the CIA were the president of
CBS, William Paley, Henry Luce of Time, Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, and James
Copley of the Copley News Service. The most valued CIA assets were the New York Times, CBS, and
Time, Inc. The New York Times alone provided cover to the CIA for at least ten operatives
between 1950 and 1966. Bernstein found that those journalists who played along with the CIA by
signing secrecy agreements were most likely to succeed in their careers because the CIA
connection gave them access to the best stories. The journalists and their CIA handlers often
shared the same educational background and the same ideal that both were serving the
national-security interests of the United States. Included in the many examples of the
intelligence community/media revolving door are: (1) the former CIA director Richard Helms
(mid-1960s to early 1970s) was once a UPI wire service correspondent. (2) William Casey, the CIA
director under Ronald Reagan was once chief counsel and a board member at CapCities, which
absorbed ABC News in Reagan's second term. (3) Two prominent journalists, Edward R. Murrow and
Carl Rowan, served as directors of the U.S. Information Agency under Kennedy, while the NBC
Nightly News reporter John Chancellor was director of the government international propaganda
radio service, Voice of America, under L. B. Johnson. (4) The first deputy director of the NSA,
Joseph H. Ream, had previously worked as executive vice president of CBS, and after NSA, he
returned to CBS without disclosing his association with the supersecretive agency. (5} Perhaps
best known is the World War I propaganda apparatus known as the Committee on Public Information
chaired by the progressive journalist George Creel with the assistance of Lord Northcliffe,
owner of the Times of London and the Daily Mail, and a central figure in the massive British
propaganda effort of World War I.
The point to be made is that the intelligence and media communities are
and have been closely affiliated with each other. What such collusion leads to is censorship,
such as when Arthur Sulzberger prevented his reporter Sydney Gruson from covering the United
States-backed overthrow of the Guatemalan government in 1954 at the direct request of
Sulzberger's good friend Allen Dulles.
p42
Norman Solomon and Martin Lee wrote about Reagan-era propaganda strategies:
The pattern was set early in his administration: leak a scare story about
foreign enemies, grab the headlines. If, much later, reporters poke holes in the cover story, so
what? The truth will receive far less attention than the original lie, and by then another round
of falsehoods will be dominating the headlines.
p43
A more sinister version of domestic propaganda insertion is CIA sponsorship of global media,
including Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty (Cuba), Radio Free Asia, and numerous print
publications, such as Prevves (France), Der Monat (Germany), El Mundo Nuevo (Latin America),
Quiet and Thought (India), Argumenten (Sweden), and La Prensa (Nicaragua).
p46
The Tyndall Report by the media analyst Andrew Tyndall analyzed 414 stories on Iraq from the
Major Three (ABC, CBS, and NBC) between September 2002 and February 2003 and found that all but
34 stories originated at three government agencies-The White House, the Pentagon, and the State
Department.
... According to the Tyndall Report, of 574 stories about Iraq on the
ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news aired between Bush's address to the United Nations on September
12, 2002, and March 7, 2003, just 12 stories dealt with the aftermath of the war with Iraq.
p47
The American newsroom ... lacks diversity not only in ethnic, racial, and gender categories, but
perhaps more important, a lack of diversity in upbringing and outlook... This attitude creates a
bias born of class, race, and socioeconomic heritage.
p47
James Carey, a scholar at Columbia University and author of Television and the Press
"There is a bit of a reformer in anyone who enters journalism. And
reformers are always going to make conservatives uncomfortable ... because conservatives, by and
large, want to preserve the status quo."
p48
In the federal government, the largest public-relations division is inside the Pentagon, where
government public-relations specialists provide M-F feeds to the national media.
p50
It was 1917. Creel, an American journalist and editor and, more importantly, an F.O.W. (Friend
of Woodrow), convinced President Wilson that what the country needed was not a Committee on
Censorship to control the mind of the overwhelmingly pacifistic and apathetic American public's
entry into World War I. No indeed, George Creel had the clever idea then to create a Committee
on Public Information "for the production and dissemination as widely as possible of the truth
about America's participation in the war." The CPI was an ad hoc committee whose membership
included the leading persuasion and propaganda experts of the day, the avowed dean of American
journalism, Walter Lippmann, and Edward Bernays, the grandfather of American public relations.
But it was George Creel, that early George, who commanded the spotlight and knew that to win the
Great War, he had to convince the American people, like George number 43 does in the first war
of the twenty-first century, that this war was a fight over ideas and values more than a fight
over land, people, and resources. Controlling public opinion was a major force during World War
I as it was to become in World War II and now in the War on Terror. The issues of the day would
be fought in the media and mental mindfields of men and women as well as on the minefields of
battle. Creel wrote of his mission:
In no degree was the Committee an agency of censorship, a machinery of
concealment or repression. Its emphasis throughout was on the open and the positive. At no point
did it seek or exercise authorities under those war laws that limited the freedom of speech and
press. In all things, from first to last, without halt or change, it was a plain publicity
proposition, a vast enterprise in salesmanship, the world's greatest adventures in
advertising...We did not call it propaganda, for that word, in German hands, had come to be
associated with deceit and corruption. Our effort was educational and informative throughout,
for we had such confidence in our case as to feel that no other argument was needed than the
simple, straightforward presentation of the facts.
What does George Creel teach us now about the War on Terrorism? In order
to win the information war then, the administration, through Creel's Committee, had to convince
the population that the Great War was not the war of the Wilson administration, but rather a war
of one hundred million people: "What we had to have was no mere surface unity, but a passionate
belief in the justice of America's cause that moulds the people of the United States into one
white-hot mass instinct of fraternity, devotion, courage, and deathless determination. The
war-will, the will-to-win, of a democracy depends upon the degree to which each one of all the
people of that democracy can concentrate and consecrate body and soul and spirit in the supreme
effort of service and sacrifice. What had to be driven home was that all business was the
nation's business, and every task a common task for a single purpose."
To George Creel, the peace and labor movements of the early twentieth
century created unacceptable conditions for generating a mass warmaking mindset. To turn a
pacifist and neutral populace into one white-hot mass instinct, Creel made the Committee a
totally integrative enterprise, with "no part of the Great War machinery that we did not touch,
no medium of appeal that we did not employ." This included print, radio, motion pictures,
telegraph, and cable messages and worldwide circulation of President Wilson's official addresses
from Teheran to Tokyo, posters, and signboards, along with a volunteer service corps of 75,000
speakers known as the Four-Minute Men, who worked in 5,200 communities and made a total of
755,190 speeches, with "every one having the carry of shrapnel."
The Committee on Public Information was in the business of mobilizing
world public opinion in support of American participation in the war. By the time of World War
II, the United States government and military institutions were fully engaged in an all-out
information war that built upon the efforts put forth by the ambitious George Creel.
The Bush administration's war on terror is in the same business of
mobilizing mass public opinion both here and abroad.
p53
In the early months of the October 2001 ground offensive in Afghanistan, the propaganda war
began to heat up and the truth about war was, in fact, becoming its first casualty. The public
diplomacy section of the U.S. State Department, under the leadership of Charlotte Beers, was
beginning its global task of reshaping the image of America through international diplomatic
efforts. Beers, a former Madison Avenue advertising executive, was assigned the most ambitious
branding assignment of her life-repackaging America's image so to "sell" the war against
terrorism to the Islamic world.
p56
The information war on opinion and free speech intensified with the creation of several
post-9/11 nonprofit organizations. These included Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT),
whose intention is to "take their task to those groups and individuals who fundamentally
misunderstand the nature of the war we are facing." Among those targeted by AVOT were
Congressman Dennis Kucinich, chair of the Progressive Caucus and his cochair, Congresswoman
Barbara Lee; Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's magazine; and Robert Kuttner, editor of The
American Prospect. AVOT's work followed from the work of the American Council of Trustees and
Alumni (ACTA), which issued a November 2001 report, "Defending Civilization: How Our
Universities are Failing America," that condemned dissident anti-war language propagated by
liberal professors on American college campuses. The co-founder of Empower America, one of the
wealthiest of the right-wing Washington, D.C., think tanks and former Secretary of Education
under President George Bush, Sr. (George 41) William Bennett, has said, "We do not wish to
silence people, " and added that AVOT plans to hold teach-ins and public education events,
particularly on college campuses. Both organizations are united in their belief that the United
States must retain its superpower empire for global goodness and redemption, keep military
ethics and power the primary focus of the United States response to 9/11, and shout down the
"morally coward liberals" on American university campuses and in Europe.
p61
Propaganda is defined as any organized or concerted group effort or movement to spread a
particular doctrine or a system of doctrines or principles.
p61
Three important characteristics of propaganda are that ( l ) it is intentional and purposeful,
designed to incite a particular reaction or action in the target audience; (2) it is
advantageous to the propagandist or sender which is why advertising, public relations, and
political campaigns are considered forms of propaganda; and (3) it is usually one-way and
informational (as in a mass media campaign), as opposed to two-way and interactive
communication.
p61
President George W. Bush became an effective commander-in-chief of propaganda because of his
ability to frame the war on terrorism in vivid and simplistic either/or terms. "The propagandist
strives for simplicity and vividness, coupled with speed and broad impact. He stimulates popular
emotional drives...in so doing, he must for the most part bypass factual discussion and debate
of any sort." [Alfred McClung Lee, How to Understand Propaganda, 1952]
p63
The message to the American public is to simply define the problem as an attack on freedom, to
present a simplified, readily understood case that "terrorist parasites" want to destroy freedom
and democracy. To support the case, an effective propagandist wants to make sure that the case
includes plenty of omnibus phrases and symbols-American flags, U.S. Armed Forces, and experts
who can lead us, like the avuncular Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, as well as a suddenly
popular wartime President. Omnibus words such as "freedom" and "liberty" are the shorthand
symbols of the propagandists-they carry vague general meanings that arouse
emotions (fear or hate of our enemy, pride in one's own leadership, in our armed forces). These
symbols provide a shorthand dictionary for the conflict. So when you are asked why we fight, you
can answer quickly and with a moral imperative: "We fight to defend freedom."
p64
... the 9/11 attacks were packaged as our generation's Pearl Harbor and the United States
invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq as Operations Defending Democracy, Liberty,
and Freedom-all of which evokes positive emotional reactions in majorities of people. This
leaves little wiggle room for someone to be against the war, because what does being against the
war then mean? You don't support freedom, liberty, or democracy? President Bush quickly
succeeded in defining the parameters of our national dialogue in the war on terrorism when he
said, "Either you are against us or you are with us." He wasn't talking just to the terrorist
"parasites" but also to the American people ...
p64
"I think this conflict is going to require a suspension of freedom and rights unlike anything we
have seen, at least since World War II, " said Marlin Fitzwater, the press secretary to Bush,
Sr., in the New York Times of October 7, 2001.
p66
Walter Lippmann, The Phantom Public
[The public is] "a mere phantom. It is an abstraction. The public must be put in its place so
that it may exercise its own powers, but no less and perhaps even more, so that each of us may
live free of the trampling and roar of a bewildered herd.''
p67
Bill Bennett is the Director of Empower America, one of the wealthiest of the right-wing
Washington, D.C. think tanks, whose motto is "ensuring that government actions foster growth,
economic well-being, freedom and individual responsibility." Empower America is not your typical
inside-the Beltway think tank that issues annual reports or occasional policy statements known
as white papers that go unread on some Congress member's staff assistant's desk. Empower America
is a full-frontal assault organization involved in changing national policy through active
engagement of public opinion... Empower America's board of directors includes former Clinton
Defense Secretary William Cohen, Republican vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp, and Reagan's
ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick. But Bill Bennett serves as Empower
America's omnipresent spokesman. Empower America favors a foreign policy that rejects
"shortsighted isolationism and imprudent multilateralism," which could be redefined as
advocating international intervention whenever the United States unilateral interests are at
stake. Bennett, who served as Ronald Reagan's education secretary and George Bush Sr.'s "drug
czar ... joined forces with former CIA director James Woolsey in the spring of 2002 to found
Americans for Victory over Terrorism f (AVOT) as a sort of public relations arm of the Bush war
on terrorism. A full-page ($128,000 1 AVOT advertisement in the March 10, 2002 Sunday edition of
the New York Times attacked the radical Islam of the twenty-first century as an enemy "no less
dangerous and no less determined than the twin menaces of fascism and communism we faced in the
20th century." But AVOT went further by blasting domestic enemies "who are attempting to use
this opportunity to promulgate their agenda of 'blame America first."' In that second flank
attack, AVOT aligned with Lynne Cheney (wife of Vice President Dick Cheney), who helped to
organize the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), whose fall 2001 report, "Defending
Civilization: How Our Universities are Failing America, " citing blame-America-itis and anti-war
bias among hundreds of American professors. The report included 117 critical quotes from
university students and professors in the early days after 9/11 to show proof that American
universities were the "weak link" in the war on terror.
p71
University professors remain easy targets for allegedly causing their
students to hate the United States by raising questions about the motives and policies of the
government. To Bennett [Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism] declarations of
war seem to imply cessation of critical thinking, especially on college campuses:
In short, many in the "peace party" who cloak their ~ arguments in moral
objections to war are really expressing their hostility to America, and it does the cause of
clarity no good to pretend otherwise. That hostility-in more than a few cases, hatred is a more
accurate word-is many-sided and has a long history ... But where armed conflict is concerned,
the arguments of today's "peace party" are basically rooted in the period of the Vietnam War and
its aftermath. It was then that the critique of the United States as an imperialist or
'colonialist' power, wreaking its evil will on the hapless peoples of the third world, became a
kind of slogan on the Left. This same critique would, in due course, find a home in certain
precincts of the Democratic party, and in more diluted form, would inform the policy preferences
of the Carter and Clinton administrations, and it is with us still. It is especially prevalent
in our institutions of higher learning.
If you follow Bennett's logic, then America as a country worth fighting
for must include a fight that is absolutist in language, thought, and action. If you don't
absolutely defend your country, right or wrong, the logical fallacy goes, then you give aid and
comfort to the enemy.
p73
"In retrospect and in balance, the remarkable control of American consciousness during and after
the war [Gulf War I] must be regarded as a signal achievement of mind management, perhaps even
more impressive than the rapid military victory." Herbert I. Schiller wrote these words in May
1991 for the French newspaper, Le Monde Diplomatique, to explain the first Bush administration's
great success in controlling information about the war and American press acquiescence in
withholding information that the public needed in order to make a sound decision about critical
issues of war and peace. It wasn't until after the Persian Gulf War that the www.udesen.com
press claimed any complicity in its reportage, as when Tom Wicker of the New York Times reported
"the real and dangerous point is that the Bush administration and the military were so
successful in controlling information about the war [Gulf War I] they were able to tell the
public just about what they wanted the public to know. Perhaps worse, press and public, largely
acquiesced in the disclosure of only selected information." That public acquiescence followed
from the American people's habits of media consumption. As Michael Deaver, spin doctor to
President Reagan, gloated in the New York Times, "Television is where 80% of the people get
their "information, " and what was done to control that information in the six weeks of war
"couldn't [have] been better."
A March-April 1991 Columbia Journalism Review (March-April 1991) survey
of Gulf War coverage noted how much information about domestic dissent against the war was kept
off those television screens. As pointed out by the consumer advocate and subsequent Green Party
presidential candidate Ralph Nader in the article, the January 26, 1991, peace march in
Washington, D.C. was "probably the biggest citizen demonstration ever...in winter," but CBS gave
it a four-second mention. Similarly, a senior House Democrat, Henry Gonzales of Texas, who
chaired the House Banking Committee, sponsored a resolution to impeach President Bush on the war
in Iraq, but this action went unreported in the broadcast media. Bob Sipschen, Newsweek
correspondent in the Gulf, wrote in the Los Angeles Times March 1991 that "Desert Storm was
really two wars: The Allies against the Iraqis and the military against the press. I had more
guns pointed at me by Americans and Saudis who were into controlling the press than in all my
years of actual combat."
p75
The United States media were as utterly unconcerned with Iraqi casualties in 1991 as they would
later be unconcerned with Afghan citizen casualties in fall 2001 and again with Iraqi casualties
in 2003. When asked in March 1991 about the number of Iraqi dead from United States air and land
operations, then General Colin Powell stated, "It's really not a number I'm terribly interested
in."
p81
In the case of Iraq, slogans and facile statements of freedom over tyranny from the President
seem to satisfy the appetite of the press, while opposing thought from the grassroots requires
evidence beyond reasonable doubt. Is the lesson of September 11 as simple as this President
would have us believe? Why do we as a nation continue to acquiesce in support of an
administration that gets away with simplifying very complex situations of life and death? In
part, the situation is due to instant bestsellers like Woodward's Bush at War that promote
individual personality over the social context. He could have written America at War, a sort of
people's history of life after 9/11, but that would have required more than a two-hour
one-on-one with the President at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. More important, Jacques Ellul
writes in Propaganda, there can be no unanimity of thought without the steady propaganda of a
political chief, "in whom everyone finds himself, in whom everyone hopes and projects himself,
and for whom everything is possible and permissible."
The President's pet slogan, "war on terrorism" remains a convenient state
tactic to control public opinion, expand the ' climate of fear, and shut down opposition to war
in Iraq and elsewhere.
p82
Lt. General William Odom (Ret.) U.S. Army said on C-SPAN's Washington Journal
"Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It's a tactic. It's
about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we're going to win that war.
We're not going to win the war on terrorism...
p82
The purpose of such propaganda phrases as "war on terrorism" and attacking "those who hate
freedom" is to paralyze individual thought as well as to condition people to act as one mass, as
when President Bush attempted to end debate on Iraq by claiming that the American people were of
one voice. The modern war president removes the individual nature of those who live in it by
forcing us into a uniform state where the complexities of those we fight are erased. The
enemy-terrorism, Iraq, Bin Laden, Hussein-becomes one threatening category, something to be
defeated and destroyed, so that the public response will be one of reaction to fear and threat
rather than creatively and independently thinking for oneself. Our best hope for overcoming
perpetual thinking about war and perpetual fear about both real and imagined threats is to
question our leaders and their use of empty slogans that offer little rationale, explanation or
historical context.
p83
The triumph of absolutist rhetoric like terror and freedom or good and evil impedes our ability
to distinguish real threats, which must be combatted and controlled, from self-serving threats
that reinforce state power and control over public freedom. Nevertheless, we cannot blame
President Bush or the press for our own lack of initiative in organizing ongoing resistance to
such power and control. Democracy demands constant vigilance.
p85
Secretary of State [Colin] Powell promised, "I'm going to be bringing people into the public
diplomacy function of the department who are going to change from just selling us in the old
USIA way to really branding foreign policy, branding the department, marketing the department,
marketing American values to the world and not just putting out pamphlets."
p95
The question remains of whether it is necessary to rebrand the United States. To many throughout
the world, America, already a brand, a multitrillion-dollar brand of mass consumerism, cultural
and military dominance, led by such worldwide symbols as Marlboro, McDonald's, Boeing, CocaCola,
and General Electric. The selling of America, even in a new format or packaging, may add to the
global perception that continues to plague the United States. America, Inc. is presented in
glittering generalities of good freedom and democracy fighting evil tyranny and fanaticism the
world over, but our global audience knows that the reality of America is quite different from
the rhetoric. Despite all the branding, to many the United States is seen as a violent
international aggressor with a military doctrine of open preemptive strike, the world's leader
in arms trafficking and economic globalization, an aggressive opponent of the International
Criminal Court and anti-global warming treaties, and a staunch supporter of Israel throughout
its brutal military occupation and collective punishment of Palestinians. For these reasons, and
as long as United States international interventions favors military solutions over humanitarian
assistance, many parts of the world will continue to be receptive to the kind of anti-United
States sentiment and rhetoric of groups like the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
p97
... the United States cares most about market share and least about sharing.
p113
Before the start of World War II, the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA) was established in
the United States by Edward Filene of Filene's Basement, who, along with other prominent
businesspeople and academics of the day, was frustrated with media manipulations. IPA was
founded in October 1937 "to conduct objective, nonpartisan studies in the field of propaganda
and public opinion...it seeks to help the intelligent citizen to detect and to analyze
propaganda, by revealing the agencies, techniques, and devices used by the propagandist." IPA
disseminated its research through monthly bulletins, special reports, adult-education programs,
and curricula for high schools and colleges. IPA disbanded after the United States entered World
War II but left behind many publications that continue to inform what we know now about how
propaganda influences our thoughts and actions. The organization is most famous for identifying
the seven key propaganda devices most commonly practiced: (1) Name Calling: associating an idea
with a bad label; (2) Card Stacking: literally "to stack the cards" for or against an idea by
selective use of facts or logic; (3) Bandwagon: to give the impression that the idea is
supported by everyone; (4) Testimonial: associating a person of some respected authority
(doctor) or visibility (celebrity) with the idea; (5) Plain Folks: associating an idea's merit
with its being "of the people"; (6) Transfer: carrying the prestige or disapproval of something
over to something else such as displaying the American flag as an emotional transfer device to
represent one's patriotism; (7) Glittering Generality: associating something with a virtue word;
opposite of name-calling (freedom, democracy); often used to make us accept a concept without
thoroughly examining its application.
anne:
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/12/28/the-victory-of-perception-management/
December 28, 2014
The Victory of 'Perception Management'
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration
pioneered "perception management" to get the
American people to "kick the Vietnam
Syndrome" and accept more U.S.
interventionism, but that propaganda
structure continues to this day getting the
public to buy in to endless war.
By Robert Parry
To understand how the American people
find themselves trapped in today's Orwellian
dystopia of endless warfare against an
ever-shifting collection of "evil" enemies,
you have to think back to the Vietnam War
and the shock to the ruling elite caused by
an unprecedented popular uprising against
that war.
While on the surface Official Washington
pretended that the mass protests didn't
change policy, a panicky reality existed
behind the scenes, a recognition that a
major investment in domestic propaganda
would be needed to ensure that future
imperial adventures would have the public's
eager support or at least its confused
acquiescence.
This commitment to what the insiders
called "perception management" began in
earnest with the Reagan administration in
the 1980s but it would come to be the
accepted practice of all subsequent
administrations, including the present one
of President Barack Obama.
In that sense, propaganda in pursuit of
foreign policy goals would trump the
democratic ideal of an informed electorate.
The point would be not to honestly inform
the American people about events around the
world but to manage their perceptions by
ramping up fear in some cases and defusing
outrage in others – depending on the U.S.
government's needs.
Thus, you have the current hysteria over
Russia's supposed "aggression" in Ukraine
when the crisis was actually provoked by the
West, including by U.S. neocons who helped
create today's humanitarian crisis in
eastern Ukraine that they now cynically
blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Yet, many of these same U.S. foreign
policy operatives – outraged over Russia's
limited intervention to protect ethic
Russians in eastern Ukraine – are demanding
that President Obama launch an air war
against the Syrian military as a
"humanitarian" intervention there.
In other words, if the Russians act to
shield ethnic Russians on their border who
are being bombarded by a coup regime in Kiev
that was installed with U.S. support, the
Russians are the villains blamed for the
thousands of civilian deaths, even though
the vast majority of the casualties have
been inflicted by the Kiev regime from
indiscriminate bombing and from dispatching
neo-Nazi militias to do the street fighting.
In Ukraine, the exigent circumstances
don't matter, including the violent
overthrow of the constitutionally elected
president last February. It's all about
white hats for the current Kiev regime and
black hats for the ethnic Russians and
especially for Putin.
But an entirely different set of
standards has applied to Syria where a
U.S.-backed rebellion, which included
violent Sunni jihadists from the start, wore
the white hats and the relatively secular
Syrian government, which has responded with
excessive violence of its own, wears the
black hats. But a problem to that neat
dichotomy arose when one of the major Sunni
rebel forces, the Islamic State, started
seizing Iraqi territory and beheading
Westerners.
Faced with those grisly scenes, President
Obama authorized bombing the Islamic State
forces in both Iraq and Syria, but neocons
and other U.S. hardliners have been
hectoring Obama to go after their preferred
target, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad,
despite the risk that destroying the Syrian
military could open the gates of Damascus to
the Islamic State or al-Qaeda's Nusra Front.
Lost on the Dark Side
You might think that the American public
would begin to rebel against these messy
entangling alliances with the 1984-like
demonizing of one new "enemy" after another.
Not only have these endless wars drained
trillions of dollars from the U.S.
taxpayers, they have led to the deaths of
thousands of U.S. troops and to the
tarnishing of America's image from the
attendant evils of war, including a lengthy
detour into the "dark side" of torture,
assassinations and "collateral" killings of
children and other innocents.
But that is where the history of
"perception management" comes in, the need
to keep the American people compliant and
confused. In the 1980s, the Reagan
administration was determined to "kick the
Vietnam Syndrome," the revulsion that many
Americans felt for warfare after all those
years in the blood-soaked jungles of Vietnam
and all the lies that clumsily justified the
war.
So, the challenge for the U.S. government
became: how to present the actions of
"enemies" always in the darkest light while
bathing the behavior of the U.S. "side" in a
rosy glow. You also had to stage this
propaganda theater in an ostensibly "free
country" with a supposedly "independent
press."
From documents declassified or leaked
over the past several decades, including an
unpublished draft chapter of the
congressional Iran-Contra investigation, we
now know a great deal about how this
remarkable project was undertaken and who
the key players were.
Perhaps not surprisingly much of the
initiative came from the Central
Intelligence Agency, which housed the
expertise for manipulating target
populations through propaganda and
disinformation. The only difference this
time would be that the American people would
be the target population.
For this project, Ronald Reagan's CIA
Director William J. Casey sent his top
propaganda specialist Walter Raymond Jr. to
the National Security Council staff to
manage the inter-agency task forces that
would brainstorm and coordinate this "public
diplomacy" strategy.
Many of the old intelligence operatives,
including Casey and Raymond, are now dead,
but other influential Washington figures who
were deeply involved by these strategies
remain, such as neocon stalwart Robert
Kagan, whose first major job in Washington
was as chief of Reagan's State Department
Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin
America.
Now a fellow at the Brookings Institution
and a columnist at the Washington Post,
Kagan remains an expert in presenting
foreign policy initiatives within the "good
guy/bad guy" frames that he learned in the
1980s. He is also the husband of Assistant
Secretary of State for European Affairs
Victoria Nuland, who oversaw the overthrow
of Ukraine's elected President Viktor
Yanukovych last February amid a very
effective U.S. propaganda strategy.
During the Reagan years, Kagan worked
closely on propaganda schemes with Elliott
Abrams, then the Assistant Secretary of
State for Latin America. After getting
convicted and then pardoned in the
Iran-Contra scandal, Abrams reemerged on
President George W. Bush's National Security
Council handling Middle East issues,
including the Iraq War, and later "global
democracy strategy." Abrams is now a senior
fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
These and other neocons were among the
most diligent students learning the art of
"perception management" from the likes of
Raymond and Casey, but those propaganda
skills have spread much more widely as
"public diplomacy" and "information warfare"
have now become an integral part of every
U.S. foreign policy initiative.
A Propaganda Bureaucracy
Declassified documents now reveal how
extensive Reagan's propaganda project became
with inter-agency task forces assigned to
develop "themes" that would push American
"hot buttons." Scores of documents came out
during the Iran-Contra scandal in 1987 and
hundreds more are now available at the
Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley,
California.
What the documents reveal is that at the
start of the Reagan administration, CIA
Director Casey faced a daunting challenge in
trying to rally public opinion behind
aggressive U.S. interventions, especially in
Central America. Bitter memories of the
Vietnam War were still fresh and many
Americans were horrified at the brutality of
right-wing regimes in Guatemala and El
Salvador, where Salvadoran soldiers raped
and murdered four American churchwomen in
December 1980.
The new leftist Sandinista government in
Nicaragua also was not viewed with much
alarm. After all, Nicaragua was an
impoverished country of only about three
million people who had just cast off the
brutal dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza.
So, Reagan's initial strategy of
bolstering the Salvadoran and Guatemalan
armies required defusing the negative
publicity about them and somehow rallying
the American people into supporting a covert
CIA intervention inside Nicaragua via a
counterrevolutionary force known as the
Contras led by Somoza's ex-National Guard
officers.
Reagan's task was made tougher by the
fact that the Cold War's anti-communist
arguments had so recently been discredited
in Vietnam. As deputy assistant secretary to
the Air Force, J. Michael Kelly, put it,
"the most critical special operations
mission we have … is to persuade the
American people that the communists are out
to get us."
At the same time, the White House worked
to weed out American reporters who uncovered
facts that undercut the desired public
images. As part of that effort, the
administration attacked New York Times
correspondent Raymond Bonner for disclosing
the Salvadoran regime's massacre of about
800 men, women and children in the village
of El Mozote in northeast El Salvador in
December 1981. Accuracy in Media and
conservative news organizations, such as The
Wall Street Journal's editorial page, joined
in pummeling Bonner, who was soon ousted
from his job.
But these were largely ad hoc efforts. A
more comprehensive "public diplomacy"
operation took shape beginning in 1982 when
Raymond, a 30-year veteran of CIA
clandestine services, was transferred to the
NSC.
A slight, soft-spoken New Yorker who
reminded some of a character from a John le
Carré spy novel, Raymond was an intelligence
officer who "easily fades into the
woodwork," according to one acquaintance.
But Raymond would become the sparkplug for
this high-powered propaganda network,
according to a draft chapter of the
Iran-Contra report.
Though the draft chapter didn't use
Raymond's name in its opening pages,
apparently because some of the information
came from classified depositions, Raymond's
name was used later in the chapter and the
earlier citations matched Raymond's known
role. According to the draft report, the CIA
officer who was recruited for the NSC job
had served as Director of the Covert Action
Staff at the CIA from 1978 to 1982 and was a
"specialist in propaganda and
disinformation."
"The CIA official [Raymond] discussed the
transfer with [CIA Director] Casey and NSC
Advisor William Clark that he be assigned to
the NSC as [Donald] Gregg's successor [as
coordinator of intelligence operations in
June 1982] and received approval for his
involvement in setting up the public
diplomacy program along with his
intelligence responsibilities," the chapter
said.
"In the early part of 1983, documents
obtained by the Select [Iran-Contra]
Committees indicate that the Director of the
Intelligence Staff of the NSC [Raymond]
successfully recommended the establishment
of an inter-governmental network to promote
and manage a public diplomacy plan designed
to create support for Reagan Administration
policies at home and abroad."
During his Iran-Contra deposition,
Raymond explained the need for this
propaganda structure, saying: "We were not
configured effectively to deal with the war
of ideas."
One reason for this shortcoming was that
federal law forbade taxpayers' money from
being spent on domestic propaganda or
grassroots lobbying to pressure
congressional representatives. Of course,
every president and his team had vast
resources to make their case in public, but
by tradition and law, they were restricted
to speeches, testimony and one-on-one
persuasion of lawmakers.
But things were about to change. In a
Jan. 13, 1983, memo, NSC Advisor Clark
foresaw the need for non-governmental money
to advance this cause. "We will develop a
scenario for obtaining private funding,"
Clark wrote.
As administration officials began
reaching out to wealthy supporters, lines
against domestic propaganda soon were
crossed as the operation took aim not only
at foreign audiences but at U.S. public
opinion, the press and congressional
Democrats who opposed funding the Nicaraguan
Contras.
At the time, the Contras were earning a
gruesome reputation as human rights
violators and terrorists. To change this
negative perception of the Contras as well
as of the U.S.-backed regimes in El Salvador
and Guatemala, the Reagan administration
created a full-blown, clandestine propaganda
network.
In January 1983, President Reagan took
the first formal step to create this
unprecedented peacetime propaganda
bureaucracy by signing National Security
Decision Directive 77, entitled "Management
of Public Diplomacy Relative to National
Security." Reagan deemed it "necessary to
strengthen the organization, planning and
coordination of the various aspects of
public diplomacy of the United States
Government. "
Reagan ordered the creation of a special
planning group within the National Security
Council to direct these "public diplomacy"
campaigns. The planning group would be
headed by the CIA's Walter Raymond Jr. and
one of its principal arms would be a new
Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin
America, housed at the State Department but
under the control of the NSC....
Because children are exposed to highly professional sales pitches on television and because the
old material produced by the Institute of Propaganda Analysis is outdated and in error, a new tool
for the analysis of propaganda and persuasion is called for.
Such a tool is the intensify/downplay pattern analysis chart, which includes the basic intensify/downplay
pattern and paragraphs discussing propaganda, persuasion, and advertising. The chart has received
considerable favorable comment from scholars and from respondents outside the academic community,
including the National Council of Teachers of English Committee on Public Doublespeak.
As a simplified tool for analyzing any human communication (verbal, nonverbal, and symbolic),
it has the virtue of making clear not only what has been emphasized in a particular pitch but also
what has been deemphasized. It can be used by children as well as by such groups as Nader's Raiders
and Congressional committees. (A copy of the pattern accompanies the paper.) (TJ)
The good news is that the more conscious you are of these
techniques, the less likely they are to work on you.
July 2, 2011
|
There is nothing more sacred to the maintenance of democracy than
a free press. Access to comprehensive, accurate and quality information
is essential to the manifestation of Socratic citizenship - the society
characterized by a civically engaged, well-informed and socially invested
populace. Thus, to the degree that access to quality information is
willfully or unintentionally obstructed, democracy itself is degraded.
It is ironic that in the era of 24-hour
cable news networks and "reality" programming, the news-to-fluff
ratio and overall veracity of information has declined precipitously.
Take the fact Americans now spend on average about 50 hours
a week using various forms of media, while at the same time
cultural literacy levels hover just above the gutter. Not only
does mainstream media now tolerate gross misrepresentations
of fact and history by public figures (highlighted most recently
by Sarah Palin's ludicrous depiction of Paul Revere's ride),
but many media actually legitimize these displays. Pause for
a moment and ask yourself what it means that the world's largest,
most profitable and most popular news channel passes off as
fact every whim, impulse and outrageously incompetent analysis
of its so-called reporters. How did we get here? Take the enormous
amount of misinformation that is taken for truth by Fox audiences:
the belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) and that he was in on 9/11, the belief that climate change
isn't real and/or man-made, the belief that Barack Obama is
Muslim and wasn't born in the United States, the insistence
that all Arabs are Muslim and all Muslims are terrorists, the
inexplicable perceptions that immigrants are both too lazy to
work and are about to steal your job. All of these claims are
demonstrably false, yet Fox News viewers will maintain their
veracity with incredible zeal. Why? Is it simply that we have
lost our respect for knowledge?
My curiosity about this question compelled
me to sit down and document the most oft-used methods by which
willful ignorance has been turned into dogma by Fox News and
other propagandists disguised as media. The techniques I identify
here also help to explain the simultaneously powerful identification
the Fox media audience has with the network, as well as their
ardent, reflexive defenses of it.
The good news is that the more conscious
you are of these techniques, the less likely they are to work
on you. The bad news is that those reading this article are
probably the least in need in of it.
1. Panic Mongering.
This goes one step beyond simple fear mongering. With panic
mongering, there is never a break from the fear. The idea is
to terrify and terrorize the audience during every waking moment.
From Muslims to swine flu to recession to homosexuals to immigrants
to the rapture itself, the belief over at Fox seems to be that
if your fight-or-flight reflexes aren't activated, you aren't
alive. This of course raises the question: why terrorize your
own audience? Because it is the fastest way to bypasses the
rational brain. In other words, when people are afraid, they
don't think rationally. And when they can't think rationally,
they'll believe anything.
2. Character Assassination/Ad
Hominem. Fox does not like to waste time debating the
idea. Instead, they prefer a quicker route to dispensing with
their opponents: go after the person's credibility, motives,
intelligence, character, or, if necessary, sanity. No category
of character assassination is off the table and no offense is
beneath them. Fox and like-minded media figures also use ad
hominem attacks not just against individuals, but entire categories
of people in an effort to discredit the ideas of every person
who is seen to fall into that category, e.g. "liberals," "hippies,"
"progressives" etc. This form of argument - if it can be called
that - leaves no room for genuine debate over ideas, so by definition,
it is undemocratic. Not to mention just plain crass.
3. Projection/Flipping.
This one is frustrating for the viewer who is trying to actually
follow the argument. It involves taking whatever underhanded
tactic you're using and then accusing your opponent of doing
it to you first. We see this frequently in the immigration discussion,
where anti-racists are accused of racism, or in the climate
change debate, where those who argue for human causes of the
phenomenon are accused of not having science or facts on their
side. It's often called upon when the media host finds themselves
on the ropes in the debate.
4. Rewriting History.
This is another way of saying that propagandists make the facts
fit their worldview. The Downing Street Memos on the Iraq war
were a classic example of this on a massive scale, but it happens
daily and over smaller issues as well. A recent case in point
is Palin's mangling of the Paul Revere ride, which Fox reporters
have bent over backward to validate. Why lie about the historical
facts, even when they can be demonstrated to be false? Well,
because dogmatic minds actually find it easier to reject reality
than to update their viewpoints. They will literally rewrite
history if it serves their interests. And they'll often speak
with such authority that the casual viewer will be tempted to
question what they knew as fact.
5. Scapegoating/Othering.
This works best when people feel insecure or scared. It's technically
a form of both fear mongering and diversion, but it is so pervasive
that it deserves its own category. The simple idea is that if
you can find a group to blame for social or economic problems,
you can then go on to a) justify violence/dehumanization of
them, and b) subvert responsibility for any harm that may befall
them as a result.
6. Conflating Violence With
Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. This
is more of what I'd call a "meta-frame" (a deeply held belief)
than a media technique, but it is manifested in the ways news
is reported constantly. For example, terms like "show of strength"
are often used to describe acts of repression, such as those
by the Iranian regime against the protesters in the summer of
2009. There are several concerning consequences of this form
of conflation. First, it has the potential to make people feel
falsely emboldened by shows of force - it can turn wars into
sporting events. Secondly, especially in the context of American
politics, displays of violence - whether manifested in war or
debates about the Second Amendment - are seen as noble and (in
an especially surreal irony) moral. Violence become synonymous
with power, patriotism and piety.
7. Bullying. This
is a favorite technique of several Fox commentators. That it
continues to be employed demonstrates that it seems to have
some efficacy. Bullying and yelling works best on people who
come to the conversation with a lack of confidence, either in
themselves or their grasp of the subject being discussed. The
bully exploits this lack of confidence by berating the guest
into submission or compliance. Often, less self-possessed people
will feel shame and anxiety when being berated and the quickest
way to end the immediate discomfort is to cede authority to
the bully. The bully is then able to interpret that as a "win."
8. Confusion. As with
the preceding technique, this one works best on an audience
that is less confident and self-possessed. The idea is to deliberately
confuse the argument, but insist that the logic is airtight
and imply that anyone who disagrees is either too dumb or too
fanatical to follow along. Less independent minds will interpret
the confusion technique as a form of sophisticated thinking,
thereby giving the user's claims veracity in the viewer's mind.
9. Populism. This
is especially popular in election years. The speakers identifies
themselves as one of "the people" and the target of their ire
as an enemy of the people. The opponent is always "elitist"
or a "bureaucrat" or a "government insider" or some other category
that is not the people. The idea is to make the opponent harder
to relate to and harder to empathize with. It often goes hand
in hand with scapegoating. A common logical fallacy with populism
bias when used by the right is that accused "elitists" are almost
always liberals - a category of political actors who, by definition,
advocate for non-elite groups.
10. Invoking the Christian
God. This is similar to othering and populism. With
morality politics, the idea is to declare yourself and your
allies as patriots, Christians and "real Americans" (those are
inseparable categories in this line of thinking) and anyone
who challenges them as not. Basically, God loves Fox and Republicans
and America. And hates taxes and anyone who doesn't love those
other three things. Because the speaker has been benedicted
by God to speak on behalf of all Americans, any challenge is
perceived as immoral. It's a cheap and easy technique used by
all totalitarian entities from states to cults.
11. Saturation. There
are three components to effective saturation: being repetitive,
being ubiquitous and being consistent. The message must be repeated
cover and over, it must be everywhere and it must be shared
across commentators: e.g. "Saddam has WMD." Veracity and hard
data have no relationship to the efficacy of saturation. There
is a psychological effect of being exposed to the same message
over and over, regardless of whether it's true or if it even
makes sense, e.g., "Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States."
If something is said enough times, by enough people, many will
come to accept it as truth. Another example is Fox's own slogan
of "Fair and Balanced."
12. Disparaging Education.
There is an emerging and disturbing lack of reverence for education
and intellectualism in many mainstream media discourses. In
fact, in some circles (e.g. Fox), higher education is often
disparaged as elitist. Having a university credential is perceived
by these folks as not a sign of credibility, but of a lack of
it. In fact, among some commentators, evidence of intellectual
prowess is treated snidely and as anti-American. The disdain
for education and other evidence of being trained in critical
thinking are direct threats to a hive-mind mentality, which
is why they are so viscerally demeaned.
13. Guilt by
Association.
This is a favorite of
Glenn Beck and Andrew
Breitbart, both of whom
have used it to decimate
the careers and lives
of many good people.
Here's how it works:
if your cousin's college
roommate's uncle's ex-wife
attended a dinner party
back in 1984 with Gorbachev's
niece's ex-boyfriend's
sister, then you, by
extension are a communist
set on destroying America.
Period.
14. Diversion.
This is where, when
on the ropes, the media
commentator suddenly
takes the debate in
a weird but predictable
direction to avoid accountability.
This is the point in
the discussion where
most Fox anchors start
comparing the opponent
to Saul Alinsky or invoking
ACORN or Media Matters,
in a desperate attempt
to win through guilt
by association. Or they'll
talk about wanting to
focus on "moving forward,"
as though by analyzing
the current state of
things or God forbid,
how we got to this state
of things, you have
no regard for the future.
Any attempt to bring
the discussion back
to the issue at hand
will likely be called
deflection, an ironic
use of the technique
of projection/flipping.
In debating some of
these tactics with colleagues
and friends, I have
also noticed that the
Fox viewership seems
to be marked by a sort
of collective personality
disorder whereby the
viewer feels almost
as though they've been
let into a secret society.
Something about their
affiliation with the
network makes them feel
privileged and this
affinity is likely what
drives the viewers to
defend the network so
vehemently. They seem
to identify with it
at a core level, because
it tells them they are
special and privy to
something the rest of
us don't have. It's
akin to the loyalty
one feels by being let
into a private club
or a gang. That effect
is also likely to make
the propaganda more
powerful, because it
goes mostly unquestioned.
In considering these
tactics and their possible
effects on American
public discourse, it
is important to note
that historically, those
who've genuinely accessed
truth have never berated
those who did not. You
don't get honored by
history when you beat
up your opponent: look
at Martin Luther King
Jr., Robert Kennedy,
Abraham Lincoln. These
men did not find the
need to engage in othering,
ad homeinum attacks,
guilt by association
or bullying. This is
because when a person
has accessed a truth,
they are not threatened
by the opposing views
of others. This reality
reveals the righteous
indignation of people
like Glenn Beck, Bill
O'Reilly and Sean Hannity
as a symptom of untruth.
These individuals are
hostile and angry precisely
because they don't feel
confident in their own
veracity. And in general,
the more someone is
losing their temper
in a debate and the
more intolerant they
are of listening to
others, the more you
can be certain they
do not know what they're
talking about.
One final observation.
Fox audiences, birthers
and Tea Partiers often
defend their arguments
by pointing to the fact
that a lot of people
share the same perceptions.
This is a reasonable
point to the extent
that Murdoch's News
Corporation reaches
a far larger audience
than any other single
media outlet. But, the
fact that a lot of people
believe something is
not necessarily a sign
that it's true; it's
just a sign that it's
been effectively marketed.
As honest, fair and
truly intellectual debate
degrades before the
eyes of the global media
audience, the quality
of American democracy
degrades along with
it.
Dr. Cynthia
Boaz is assistant
professor of
political science
at Sonoma State
University.
She is also
vice president
of the Metta
Center for Nonviolence
and on the board
of Project Censored
and the Media
Freedom Foundation.
Dr. Boaz is
also a contributing
writer and adviser
to Truthout.org
and associate
editor of Peace
and Change Journal.
bandwagon (definition)
most people have this or are doing this so you should too(definition)
loaded words (definition)
using words that have strong emotions: examples: peace war patriotism freedom hope(definition)
testimonials (definition)
using an expert or celebrity to sell or support(definition)
name calling (definition)
saying bad things about your competitor(definition)
plain folk (definition)
using ordinary people or trying to sound ordinary to sell something or persuade you to vote or
support an idea(definition)
glittering generalities (definition)
employ vague, sweeping statements (often slogans or simple catchphrases) using language associated
with values and beliefs deeply held by the audience without providing supporting information or
reason. They appeal to such notions as honor, glory, love of country, desire for peace, freedom, and
family values.(definition)
transfer (definition)
a technique used to carry over the authority and approval of something we respect and revere to
something the propagandist would have us accept. Propagandists often employ symbols (e.g., waving
the flag) to stir our emotions and win our approval.(definition)
loaded words (example)
Love is a very special feeling, and people who care deeply should send Fare-Thee-Well greeting
cards.
plain folks (example)
Gem Star Toy Company's challenging game, Vacation Generation, is the board game designed for
families just like yours.
band wagon (example)
Buy two tickets to the annual Father and Daughter Dance, and join the hundreds of fathers who have
already brightened their daughters' lives.
glittering generalities (example)
Family Feelings is the most powerful and moving book ever written about family relationships.
testimonials (example)
Film star Alan Day says that when it comes to buying birthday gifts for his children, he always
chooses books from Ladbroke Publishers catalog of fine publications.
name calling (example)
People who oppose the funding for a new family recreation center are simply stubborn and narrow
minded.
transfer (example)
Based upon Goebbels'
Principles of Propaganda by Leonard W. Doob, published in Public
Opinion and Propaganda; A Book of Readings edited for The Society for the
Psychological Study of Social Issues.
1. Propagandist must have access to intelligence concerning
events and public opinion.
2. Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority.
a. It must issue all the propaganda directives.
b. It must explain propaganda directives to important officials and maintain their
morale.
c. It must oversee other agencies' activities which have propaganda consequences
3. The propaganda consequences of an action must be considered in planning that action.
4. Propaganda must affect the enemy's policy and action.
a. By suppressing propagandistically desirable material which can provide the enemy
with useful intelligence
b. By openly disseminating propaganda whose content or tone causes the enemy to draw
the desired conclusions
c. By goading the enemy into revealing vital information about himself
d. By making no reference to a desired enemy activity when any reference would
discredit that activity
5. Declassified, operational information must be available to implement a propaganda
campaign
6. To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be
transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium.
7. Credibility alone must determine whether propaganda output should be true or false.
8. The purpose, content and effectiveness of enemy propaganda; the strength and effects
of an expose; and the nature of current propaganda campaigns determine whether enemy
propaganda should be ignored or refuted.
9. Credibility, intelligence, and the possible effects of communicating determine
whether propaganda materials should be censored.
10. Material from enemy propaganda may be utilized in operations when it helps diminish
that enemy's prestige or lends support to the propagandist's own objective.
11. Black rather than white propaganda may be employed when the latter is less credible
or produces undesirable effects.
12. Propaganda may be facilitated by leaders with prestige.
13. Propaganda must be carefully timed.
a. The communication must reach the audience ahead of competing propaganda.
b. A propaganda campaign must begin at the optimum moment
c. A propaganda theme must be repeated, but not beyond some point of diminishing
effectiveness
14. Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.
a. They must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses
b. They must be capable of being easily learned
c. They must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate situations
d. They must be boomerang-proof
15. Propaganda to the home front must prevent the raising of false hopes which can be
blasted by future events.
16. Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level.
a. Propaganda must reinforce anxiety concerning the consequences of defeat
b. Propaganda must diminish anxiety (other than concerning the consequences of
defeat) which is too high and which cannot be reduced by people themselves
17. Propaganda to the home front must diminish the impact of frustration.
a. Inevitable frustrations must be anticipated
b. Inevitable frustrations must be placed in perspective
18. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets
for hatred.
19. Propaganda cannot immediately affect strong
counter-tendencies; instead it must offer some form of action or diversion, or both.
"Those engaged in a propaganda may genuinely believe
that success will be an advantage to those whom they address, but the stimulus to their action
is their own cause."
One hundred years ago this Monday, after German troops marched into Belgium, Britain declared
war and scarcely an hour later it sent its cable ship Alert into the English Channel. By dawn,
amid heavy rain and wind, the crew had severed Germany's five most important Atlantic cables.
For the duration of the war, Berlin's ability to communicate abroad, even with many of its
embassies, was impaired.
Today we take for granted that information warfare - whether the disruption of other nations'
computer systems, the monitoring of citizens' telephone calls to detect terrorist threats or the
use of social media to shape foreign attitudes - is a key tool of national security. These
measures, and the debates about their proper limits in a democracy, seem unprecedented because
they are driven by new technologies. But virtually all our concerns about such tactics find
their roots in the Great War, particularly in its first hours, when the Alert's hatchet-wielding
crew began its work.
The notion of winning the "hearts and minds" of local populations, so common to discussions of
war today, played out not only abroad but at home a century ago. The unprecedented scale of
World War I required mass domestic mobilization. Governments had to persuade their citizens to
serve in the military or, if they stayed at home, to conserve precious resources, pay higher
taxes, buy war bonds and patriotically stick with the war as it dragged bloodily along.
While the British sprinted ahead in disrupting communications, all belligerents quickly sought
the high ground in the battle of propaganda. The same day the Germans invaded Belgium, they
issued a "White Book" justifying their actions to the world. Similar reports, known by the
rainbow of colors on their covers, followed: a British "Blue Book" on Aug. 6, a Russian "Orange
Book" on Aug. 16 and so forth until the French, who were especially egregious in omitting and
falsifying facts, issued a "Yellow Book" on Dec. 1.
The warring nations understood that propaganda is a function of both what is said and what is
not said. The first German government press directive included in its list of prohibited
subjects any mention of censorship itself. The French banned references to a former finance
minister who favored diplomatic solutions to disagreements with Germany. Despite its long
democratic tradition, the British government kept secret the existence of the propaganda agency
it created at Wellington House.
The United States was a key propaganda target. The Germans wanted it to stay out of the war and
hoped the American government would press the British to relax their naval blockade. The British
wanted all the material support possible and a free hand to tighten the noose around Germany.
The blockade, plus control of transatlantic cables, allowed the British to intercept American
communications, including consular mail, which they did shamelessly. This was a major source of
irritation to Washington, much as the Germans took umbrage at U.S. tapping of Chancellor Angela
Merkel's cellphone .
The Germans aggressively courted German Americans and the legislators who represented them. To
reach mass audiences, they bought U.S. newspapers, at one point even considering the purchase of
The Washington Post. But the Germans were clumsy. Their chief propagandist in the United States
was so intemperate in his remarks, most notably with an over-the-top defense of Germany's
sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania, that he had to return home. Two German military
attaches, who had the odd dual responsibilities of propaganda and the sabotage of American
plants supplying the Allies, were expelled when documents revealed their plans to foment labor
strikes and contained unflattering comments about President Woodrow Wilson.
In contrast was Britain's Sir Gilbert Parker, whose work seems like a precursor to social media.
Married to an American and well known to U.S. readers, the novelist headed a secret program in
which he and other leading British figures urged the Allied viewpoint in seemingly innocent
letters to American influentials. In one of his reports, which survive in the British archives,
Parker noted, "In the eyes of the American people the quiet and subterranean nature of our work
has the appearance of a purely private patriotism and enterprise."
Americans came late to the war. But within a week of entering in April 1917, President Wilson
launched the nation's first effort to systematically shape public attitudes, the Committee on
Public Information. The CPI was headquartered in a brick rowhouse still standing on Lafayette
Square. Its director, the aggressive journalist George Creel, frequently walked the short
distance to the White House. He was considered one of the half-dozen most influential political
figures in Washington during the war.
The CPI's influence at home was manifested in articles, cartoons and advertisements in
newspapers and magazines; in public school lessons, university textbooks and Sunday sermons; in
talks at movie theaters, Indian reservations and anywhere else the CPI's 75,000 Four Minute Men
(volunteers charged with delivering short speeches on the war effort) found an audience; in
feature films and in ads on theater curtains; in posters plastered on buildings and on
storefronts; in pamphlets distributed by the millions.
Abroad, Creel's staff set up reading rooms, tested techniques for dropping leaflets in enemy
territory by air, established a cable news service and distributed movies with propaganda value.
To a degree never seen before for a president's pronouncements, the CPI promoted Wilson's
idealistic rhetoric overseas.
The men and women of the CPI were muckrakers, suffragists, municipal reformers and leading
progressive educators. Their legacy includes the public affairs officers in our embassies, who
explain American values abroad, and the Federal Register, which evolved from a CPI publication
created to bring the daily actions of government to light. Yet in making the world "safe for
democracy," the CPI could not resist using its considerable powers to set anti-democratic
precedents.
Creel headed off official news censorship domestically, but the CPI suppressed and sanitized
news - and views. "News itself must be given a new definition," he said. The committee extolled
transparency but supplied the news media with stories that were not identified as CPI-written,
and created front organizations to work with immigrant groups and labor. The CPI foreswore
emotional propaganda, but with other domestic propaganda groups pushing it along, the committee
contributed to hate propaganda against Germany and German Americans. One war poster, referring
to Germany, declared: "Such a civilization is not fit to live."
Overseas the CPI subsidized publications and bribed editors. Zealousness and naivete led it to
publicize bogus documents aimed at undermining the Bolshevik revolution, an act that contributed
to deteriorating ties with the new Russian government. In its efforts to stifle dissent, the CPI
became an accomplice to the trampling of civil liberties under such laws as the 1917 Espionage
Act.
That act is a legal basis for the current administration's prosecution of journalists and
leakers . And that is just one ominous echo. When National Security Agency officials resist
explaining the extent to which they burrow into our lives, we can hear Creel arguing for
squelching public discussion of postal censorship. When the Obama administration discourages
journalists' access to government officials, we hear Wilson's secretary of state insisting that
none of his subordinates speak to the press. For his part, Wilson advocated "pitiless publicity"
of government actions but suspended presidential news conferences for the duration of the war on
the grounds that he was too busy.
Before the Great War, the authoritative Encyclopedia Britannica had no entry for "propaganda."
The subject was not deemed significant. In the edition published shortly after the war, an entry
on propaganda ran nearly 10 pages of small, dense type. Its pithy definition hinted at the
odious connotation the word had acquired: "Those engaged in a propaganda may genuinely believe
that success will be an advantage to those whom they address, but the stimulus to their action
is their own cause."
The CPI was a catalyst for government opinion-molding, which has become so pervasive it is
impossible to identify all the people who engage in it during all or part of their workday. It
also is a lesson in a fundamental threat to democracy - the too-easy morphing of wholesome
government information that the public needs to reach sound opinions into the distortion and
suppression of information inconvenient to a leader's objectives.
The most profound legacy of the information war of a century ago is the doubt it planted about
the integrity of government. "This whole discussion about the ways and means of controlling
public opinion testifies to the collapse of the traditional species of democratic romanticism,"
a leading scholar in the new field of propaganda, Harold Lasswell, wrote in 1927. ". . . That
credulous utopianism, which fed upon the mighty words which exploited the hopes of the mass in
war, has in many minds given way to cynicism and disenchantment."
John Maxwell Hamilton is the Hopkins P. Breazeale professor of journalism at Louisiana State
University and a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is
working on a history of the Committee on Public Information.
Though often defined as having opposite aims, means, and effects, modernism and modern
propaganda developed at the same time and influenced each other in surprising ways. The
professional propagandist emerged as one kind of information specialist, the modernist writer as
another. Britain was particularly important to this double history. By secretly hiring
well-known writers and intellectuals to write for the government and by exploiting their control
of new global information systems, the British in World War I invented a new template for the
manipulation of information that remains with us to this day. Making a persuasive case for the
importance of understanding modernism in the context of the history of modern propaganda,
Modernism, Media, and Propaganda also helps explain the origins of today's highly propagandized
world.
Modernism, Media, and Propaganda integrates new archival research with fresh interpretations of
British fiction and film to provide a comprehensive cultural history of the relationship between
modernism and propaganda in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. From works
by Joseph Conrad to propaganda films by Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles, Mark Wollaeger traces
the transition from literary to cinematic propaganda while offering compelling close readings of
major fiction by Virginia Woolf, Ford Madox Ford, and James Joyce.
Softpanorama Recommended
Notes and references
- Leading
Journalists Expose Major Media Manipulations. Retrieved May 2009.
- May 17, 2006.
Media Manipulation.
Author: Anup Shah. Global Issues.org.
Retrieved May 2009.
- [1] New York Times
article
- [2] Operation
Infinite Reach
-
[3] Daily Telegraph, "Clinton strikes terrorist bases", Friday 21 August 1998
- [4]
CNN.com, "Thousands stage anti-U.S. protest in Sudan", August 22, 1998
- [5] SF
Chronicle: "Anti-War Forces Get New Recruit"
-
[6] NH Insider: "Gravel dismisses CNN ... statement"
Society
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and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :
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Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as
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Quotes
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History:
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