Back in 1991, as I was in transition from conservatism to whatever it is that I am now, the U.S. was preparing an attack on Iraq, and was looking for ways to manipulate the public into supporting the attack. George H.W. Bush would trot out something new every day – it’s about oil, he said, and then jobs, and none of it ‘took’. Finally they settled on what was really a common and well-used theme:
(Fill in the blank) is the Next Hitler.
But Hitler alone doesn’t get the job done. They needed more. A public relations firm, Hill and Knowlton of Washington, DC, was hired by the government of Kuwait to drum up American support for the attack.
There was no Internet then, and so no viral emails. In those primitive times, rumors were circulated manually. But they were still used very effectively. Hill and Knowlton started one that Iraqi soldiers had burst into a Kuwaiti hospital and ripped hundreds of infants out of incubators and thrown them on the floor to die. It was started at a congressional hearing.
It worked. The rumor was surreptitiously supported by government and media. Months later the lie would all be exposed, the woman who told it to a congressional panel found out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador. But it did not matter. Agitation propaganda only has to be effective in real time. Learning about it afterward does not blunt its impact.
It is as a Bush official [probably Karl Rove] told Ron Suskind
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality –judiciously, as you will –we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Agitation propaganda (“agitprop”) is but one form of propaganda, but the most powerful kind. Most of the propaganda we endure here in the U.S. is “pre”- propaganda, or done in preparation for our whole lives of loyalty to the state. Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance every day, standing and singing patriotic songs at ball games, teaching children supposed “history” in school, making movies about the glorious exploits of our wonderful soldiers – all of these are part of the formation of attitudes that stay with us forever. Agitprop is something different, used when an immediate shift in public opinion is needed.
Professional agitation propaganda probably has its American origins in the work of the Creel Commission before World War I. By the time that infamous body was done with its work, Americans had rioted and burned books and schools (even in Lewistown, Montana). The country gleefully entered a deadly European conflict of no particular importance to us. Crazy times!
Perhaps even the Creel Commission itself was surpised. Agitprop is is powerful, and can lead to disasters, riots, lynchings, and even invasion of innocent countries.
But it is used for other purposes too. Currently, there is a professional agitprop campaign going on – it is being used to fuel the disaffected citizens calling themselves “tea baggers”. The insurance industry has hired some firm or firms – we’ll find out who later – to stir up passion and muddy waters, scare people and shut off debate. They are even bussing people into public events for the sole purpose of disrupting them. It’s working as planned. Polls are showing a steep drop in support for “single payer” health insurance and a so-called “public option”.
The propaganda itself is deliciously simple and amazingly transparent lies. They are circulating viral emails (the new form of rumor) saying that old people will be euthanized, that the government will decide who gets to live and die. The process – scaring low-information right wingers and senior citizens – is having an immediate and dramatic effect. It’s like watching a professional musician – the beauty of the melody combined with the skill of the performer are enthralling. Professional propagandists are masters of their trade.
Which reminds me – where do they get their training? It’s not taught in the colleges, not even elite Ivy League. It must be entirely on-the-job.
It has gotten bizarre. Here’s Sarah Palin on her Facebook page:
“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”
This is no accident – Palin is the poster child of the far right. Her entry into the debate with such inflammatory remarks is not something she did on her own. She had to have done it on advice or instruction, maybe as a favor. Perhaps she was paid to do it. She does need money. We’ll never know.
A while back I wrote in a comment over at Electric City Weblog that the reason that Blue Dogs and Republicans and Democratic leadership wanted to stall the vote on health care until September was to allow the insurance industry time to run a propaganda campaign. I also wrote that the American people were very susceptible to such campaigns, and that it would be effective, and that it would kill reform.
It’s way too much work to go find that comment. Anyway, I write maybe three hundred times a year at this blog. I just want to point out one time that I was right in predicting something.
Health care was killed by the insurance industry, who hired the public relations industry to devise a sophisticated campaign kill it. There is widespread support for this campaign in high circles of government and media. It has either worked already, or will.
And anyway, didn’t we all know that Obama was the type of guy who would tear 312 infants from their incubators and throw them on the floor to die?
Ooops! Wrong campaign.
Piece of Mindful 
I also wrote that the American people were very susceptible to such campaigns
But not you. You are above the fray, able to discern the truth with a power above that of the average man.
What we need to do is gather such as yourself into an organized group, give them power and vestments, and once a week we all gather in appointed buildings where you get up in front and tell us all how it is. We will listen attentively, occasionally kneeling and bowing our heads in submission. Then a plate is passed and we give money to support you.
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Not useful. If you understood propaganda, you would know that smarts are not the issue. In fact, those most susceptible are the most highly educated. The antidote to propaganda is mere awareness of it.
Here’s something to ponder: if you think you are above propaganda, it is working on you even as you sit there. If you are aware of it and how vulnerable we all are, it’s effects are muted.
Propaganda is a byproduct of mass communication – once leaders realize the power control of media gives them, it is like Tolkin’s ring. They cannot resist it’s power. All countries use propaganda to some degree, the U.S. being among the most prolific and skilled. Some countries, like say Italy, once they realized its downside, opted out of the game. In countries where propaganda is minimal, like Canada, people are more relaxed and laid back, and life is more enjoyable. Here in the U.S., where we are literally inundated with it, we are tense, always on edge, easy to rile and likely to attack anyone on a moment’s notice. That is the effect of propaganda, which is insidious and omnipresent here.
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In countries where propaganda is minimal, like Canada, people are more relaxed and laid back, and life is more enjoyable.
Now I’m really riled. I need to attack a Canadian. I know a few I don’t like. Boy, are they going to get it. But first I am going to check with the Koran to be sure I’m in the right…Right…whatever.
If all is propaganda, maybe we should talk about who has the best coinage. It seems to me the Left has a few nostrums of dubious utility: everybody is equal, racial differences don’t matter, don’t use IQ tests for general employment, nothing wrong with illegal immigration, unions are all good, diversity is a strength…
Maybe the Creel commission was more right than wrong. Maybe the nationalist sentiment it engendered helped us prevail in WWI & II. I notice German and Japanese agents didn’t get much traction on our domestic soil. Unlike today, where it seems there are bundles of level 5 T lines carrying our industrial and military secrets into China, and Muhammad Atta is ushered through a pilot training program and onto a jetliner while officials in contact with him are afraid of hurting his feelings.
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I do wish we could lose the subversive attitude about propaganda. It simply exists – the powerful few cannot resist using it against the many. It just so happens that the US uses more of it and is better at it than most other countries.
And anyway, the definition above says nothing about whether propaganda is truth or lies (it doesn’t really matter, since formation of attitudes is the objective, and not dissemination of facts or lies), left or right, well-intended or malicious. All fall under the banner “propaganda”.
Here’s an example of a well-intentioned propaganda campaign, told me me by a banker in Billings, Jim Bennett: During World War II, everywhere you turned and on every radio broadcasts were advertisements urging people to buy war bonds. It so happens that the money the government raised by that means was not terribly significant – the real objective was to get people to part with their disposable income, as there were not enough goods around to be purchased anyway.
It was a propaganda campaign, but a well-intended one.
Here’s a tip from the master himself, Josef Goebbels:
That would be the method they used to spread the “death panel” meme. Since the stories were unbelievable, they distributed them by means of viral emails and rumors (“black” methods), with enough validation by leaders to make it believable. (Sarah Palin and Chuck Grassley were probably urged in private to chime in on death panels, offering the propaganda campaign credibility. Palin was probably paid to do so, as she needs money and would easily be bought.)
Enough ugly reality for one day, Fred. Absorb what you can, come back for more later.
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Absorb what you can
Yes, this propaganda of yours is hard to take in. But I’m sure I will be ready by the time the show trials roll around.
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This ‘life’ thing -you know – being alive and interested in how things really work – you make it out to be so boring! There’s really a whole lot more going on than you realize.
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