Politics and propaganda Weapons of mass seduction \kholas IACKSON O'shai (.hmss,> Manchester University Press Contents Preface Introduction /•(life vi 1 Part I Defining n run and reasoning why 1 A question of meaning 2 Explaining propaganda 13/ 57 Part II A conceptual arrangement 3 An essential trinity: rhetoric, myth, symbolism 4 Integuments of propaganda f>5 1 10 Part III Case studies in propaganda 5 Privatising propaganda 6 Party propaganda 7 Propaganda and the Symbolic State: a British experience 145 158 (g 172 AT Part IV Marketing war 8 Nine-eleven and war 9 Weapons of mass deception: propaganda, the media and the Iraq war Afterword Bibliography Index L93 210 (o) 238 245 256 This book is nol an attempt to commission a new concept but to recommis-sion an old one. The term propaganda' faced conceptual extinction because it had become an anachronism. How could a cynical, media-literate cadre ever respond to its histrionic excess as earlier, more naive generations had done? The word had disappeared because the reality it signified was apparently no more. Yet ideas do not die. they merely hibernate. From the taunting videos of Osama bin Laden to the euphorias of the embedded journalist, from the lucid rhetoric of the anti-globalisation movement to the empire of spin to the scalding polemics of US campaign advertising, propaganda is back, centre-stage. What other literary formula might we use to evoke the theatre of imagery which we inhabit today.; The whirligig of fashion applies to concepts as well as clothes. This book is thus an analysis of the meaning, content and significance of the word propaganda' today. Its focus is primarily on the current world order, though history, and indeed the history of the word, is a constant presence. The content of its subtitle, seduction' (in Latin, a leading to oneself), is deliberately chosen because that describes the art of the process. Effective propaganda is often seductive propaganda. Propaganda is not usually a lie (because a lie Is not instrumental t0 its ends), but persuasion, and not the seeking of truth, is the objective. ln fact there is no unvarnished truth' anywhere, and even the success of ideas is inseparable from the fact and process of their propagation. If our current reality is indeed socially Con structed. In Searle's sense, then this must imply a formative role for „ • r j . r com- munication, and for propaganda as a sub-set of communication. There Is an ideal book about propaganda that has yet to be written jni is not it. neither does it pretend to be. But it is original in a number of WayIS It applies a conceptual approach to propaganda, and then grounds this analysis In a series of contemporary case studies, ending in an assessment of the role of propaganda in the remorseless new conllu t which began on 1 ] September 2001 The book also recognises I need to treat the subiect more broadly than hitherto, since its conceptual identity has become localised in totalitarian regimes or wartime hyperbole. As Hampton and Stauber (200 3) suggest what masv media, public relations, advertising and terrorism all have in common is a one-sided approach to communications that can be best thought of as a "propaganda model'". Moreover the book focuses not just on describing this phenomenon but according it some explanatory depth. The approach is both descriptive and analytic. For example, one key idea is that, like the seducer, the effective propagandist will not assault but insinuate, not challenge values directly but package the thought to fit the perspective. And we argue that propaganda texts are not necessarily meant to be taken literally but rather represent a fantasy we are invited to share (often a fantasy of enmity, where we seek self-definition through constructing our antithesis). Finally. I would like to thank my many friends, mentors and colleagues, but in particular Morris Holbrook of Columbia University. leannie Grant Moore of the University of Wisconsin. Nigel Allington of Gonville and CallU College Cambridge. Bruce Newman of De Paul University and Phil Harris of the I Iniversity of Otago. They have waited patiently for this book. Here it is. N.J.O. Introduction The iiliM of propaganda Before the spring of 200 3. propaganda as ,i concept had been relegated beyond the marginal to the irrelevant. Its conceptual identity was lost amid the new ■endemic lexicon of persuasion. communication theory and the manipulation of consent: the concept of propaganda in popular imagination relegated to the monochrome, stuitenng imagery of bolsheviks and storm troopers. Then began an awakening recognition, .1 cumulative cul-lural drift: lor in a culture where image is sovereign, where symbols matter. \\ here 1 he hair of public figures becomes a nexus of political symbolisation. it OOUkl not he long before an old word that could interconnect these phenomena would be rehabilitated. For we seemed bereft of a concept that could give ■ unitary understanding to the perplexing new realities of our own social back yard - from Wall Street analysts wrapping dol.com and high-tech shares in a cling-film of myth to the evolution of the accounting and finance profession (Arthur Andersen. Enron. Worldcom. Tyco) from purveyors of led to narrators of fiction, to the ascent of spin" (the affixing of determinate labels on to indeterminate events). Then there was Iraq. The word propaganda, like a lexical Rip Van Winkle, awoke to a new era. Everywhere, commentators claimed to detect the hand of the propagandist - in the embedded journalist, the elaborate propaganda ministry at Oaiar. the Coalition of the Willing' and other rhetorical bric-a-brac of the allies, and in the myths - of the Hussein Bin Laden link, and of the Weapons of Mass Destruction. This book differs from other books on propaganda in the elasticity it attributes to the term: orthodox literature has erred in restricting meaning to explicit texts such as the polemical tirade or black" propaganda (like the secret wartime radio station. Gustav Siegfried Eis). So the proposition is that propaganda is not synonymous with mere overt polemicism. but informs manv cultural products, including such apparently politically neutral areas . „ .U-imu-nliiries - and. wn,le tnis explanation h.,v, Wd. si,u,-1- ...templed 10 conceal propaganda cmenammcnt vohuk-s like- It* M.....„, Huron Munchausen or Lu,,H Kic/s (Rentschler 1996). One clear problem In the recognition of propaganda is the frequent d.ffi. cultv encountered ID dlSttaguUhlng U Othef thjD retrospectively. Pr0pa. nnda in the social environme.il is often naturalieed and we are unaware of it The merit of seeking to redeploy the term in critical discourse once again is that it does dutv as a sensitising concept. Foulkes (1983) drew attention to invisible proptfUldl perpetuating itself as common sense1, and quotes Orwell: all art is to some extent propaganda Thus for Foulkes the Nazi: has long ceased to be a real historical being. He nw inhibits the demonic twilight of the entertainment world: the mass-produced collective subconscious within which Zulu Warriors coexist with Invaden from outer space and the Waffen SS ... Propaganda docs not often come marching towards us waving swastikas and chanting Sieg heil': lis real power lies in its capacity to conceal itself, to appear natural, to coalesce completely and indivisibly with the values and accepted power symbols of the given s«>< lei y The explicit propaganda of earlier generations would strike people today as merely comical. The role of propaganda in human affairs has been underplaved by the limitations of its contemporary definition. The asp.ration here is to refresh propaganda as a distinct generic entity, and claim new territory for it as a pervasive attribute ol technological mankind for words dirJ^L . What we lack a word for we fail to perceive. Hnd uZct^T^Tc time the word propaganda" appeared to have LZ I ,blepcnod °f replaced by terms like persuasion' or advocacy w defunct- "> be the language and conceptual formulations currently bad! rCaIily tnrou&n integrate the apparently disconnected into n,\t,.n.^ ■ circulation, which enhance the conceptual richness through whi, h wraceS!?*' and tnus we neglect the interconnectedness of modern commu ! RS' demise ena. from spin" to the Afghan and Iraq war-. lcations phenom- The attempt to insert a new phrase Into the political Im, elucidate the meaning and conceptual anatomy r>f that te °n* a$ well as activity. With the Tight' terminologies, much else- might1/8 n° fliv°'ous nuanced debates and clearer and more rigorous bases for em °"°w - more Words are our tools: for example, the phrase 'presldenualP,f1C'1' itudie* something that Tony Blair has certainly been a< i.used of. OJ0?iVe^nrr»ent, meanings and debates - on Amerlcanlsallon. the cult of person*** many '^y. the demise of cabinet government mid parliamentary .........i rfwitj - mto a perspecvre Concept! may be right, wrong or half true, but vmboot them argument would b< ih< more Impoverished as we search for icrtnse formulae to describe tfv phenomena thai we can only dimly apprehend. Contents The structure of the book is conceptual rather than narratrye-ueau iptive in ' ' : ">': »'-xi is organ Keel round an explana; r ~.-.z--.:>~ Myth ; ~ * " Ph'Moru. iIn- foundation concepts of propaganda, are discussed in detail and seen as animating and structuring the core edifice, or ' --" ' '-' ' ••••>< rpt such as hyperbole. uie.\c-*- ?~ ' ' T.brup-ofefkXL deceit, the scan h for uiopia. otherness and the creauon of enemies Then the focus moves to a scries of specific case study analyses of ' - - • ' ' ' ornrria tfi.it embody these element - ir.z ; - r'o-r.enon of ^yinboltc Government', the rise of single-issue groups, negative political campaigning, a-A tb<- M Bd wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The organising paradigm to thus: foundahon concepts - myth, symbolism, rhetoric, key ele-f'jnia:tj. emotion, enemies, manipulation, deceit, Utopia. Summan rtnt*-/. of the key themes Defining propaganda The attempt to first, and necessarily, to try and define uiunaganda an elu-. - - • . ■( if it vernacular charge carried by the 7 v.- problem is that in the ssnMM olar propaganda' is merely a term of opprobrium. Yet ..- • bow we define something iUuminates the theories that we hold fn one sense, of course, the entire book is a definition of propaganda and its domain. Is it merely, as Schumpeter 11966» says, any opinion with which we disagree? There is unintentional propaganda press photographs (or example, and what is propaganda to one person is not -.- .\'.('. - •-, ■.■ ,-/h' i meaning is negotiable. The issues of definition are atooones of scopr. many things, for example a libel case • McDonald's), can be prop< Mutation, especially secondary education, is another theatre of propaganda, where state objectives are sought under the guise of the factual pedagogy of truth. This more elastic definition of propaganda -: . • ..-'.>. ' . of state activity that would no: nonanlj bfl .ncludcd in rnore orthodox reviews, hut such official vices as the manipulation of statistics, or the control of Information, are surely legitimate candidates for a V.V'.;r.- , <■/',!/ I In- stale Is inevitably one of the pnncipal loaHptfon :.".;-'.;>.■ ui a democracy it cannot resort to coercion alone or even at all. and all governments, even non-democratic ones, seek at the passive acquiescence of their people. The claim is that 'propaganda* is emphatically not merely another word for advocacy, is distinguished from mere marketing by its didacticism and its ideological fervour. Whereas marketing is rooted in consumer response propaganda asserts, and ideology is seldom submerged, although it maybe reinterpreted to fit the particular cultural paradigms. Explaining propaganda The book then continues by seeking to explain the phenomena that it has sought to define. The essential argument is that the propagandist dramatises our prejudices and speaks to something deep and even shameful within us. Propaganda thus becomes a co-production in which we are willing participants, it articulates externally the things that are half whispered internally. Propaganda is not so much stimulus-response as a fantasy or :onspiracy we share, the conspiracy of our own self-deceit. The force of propaganda is also the forcibility of the Utopian vision. We argue that Utopian visions are the underlying presence in much propaganda - the thirst for Utopia creates an illusion of a perfect or perfectible world order. This is manifest in phenomena as diverse as socialist realist painting or the advertising industry. And the successes of propaganda are unintelligible without the recognition that the persuasion strategies propagandists espouse are in the main emotional. Emotion is seen as the antithesis of reason and the power of propaganda is largely the power than hy assertion and ^X^^^ n^XTe^ tain emotions such as fear and anger: and escheu- ' J. ■ , rational decision maker. eu models of man as a Foundation concepts: symbolism, rhetoric, myth This review of what are seen as the foundation concepts of propaganda is ^tensive, and the conceptual basis for the applied case studies that follow „„. |t would be impossible to imagine a propaganda devoid of these elects Hfective propaganda is the synthesis and manipulation of all three Ttae chapters examine the definitions, meanings and debates over these uxms and their salience in propaganda. these Hhiioric chapter seeks to explain the enduring success of rh persuasion. We are concerned with how rhetoric works _el°rical forms of This th* u,ins o lhe c°nstituen dements of good rhetoi ic Ideas such us Ihe co production ol meaning, the power of ambivalence and the woikliitfs ol ihelorle subverslvcly within a value system rather than as an exiei mil challenge to It, and the distrust of the power of rhetoric from the nine ol Pinto expressed in the half fearful, half admiring description ol IViules ('a kind of persuasion pliiyed on his lips i Particular attention nttnehes io ihe Importance of metaphor as the key tool of persuasive rhetoi u Other ideas of particular NttfWSl ihe concept ol resonance' (Tony Schwartzi: good rhetoric smouldei s in ihe mind*, llic notion that rhetoric is not merely a conduu ol meaning; ImiI actively crealcs it; and. related to the concept of the Rheioi u-.il \ imoii (e y. Sl;n Wars'. Axis of Evil'): the Hall jamieson thesis on the Icinmis.iiion ol i heloric ; Ihe power of partisan language to embed itself in ewrydnv discourse and Ihus appear natural, neutral and objective the easily overlooked rhetorical forms such as bureaucratic rhetoric uoda\ the propagandist use (if language often has obfuscation as its objective such as Ihe phrase no clear proof of animal-human infection in Britain s I1SI-1 crisis); the propaganda use of lan-. • hange perceptions .»s M Ith the piVtfllN |TOUp Mfhk h myt that it advocates the "ethical thelV of mahogany products la perverse juxtaposition that seeks to ethicise the unethical by a linguistic strategy that places it in a fresh perspective). The political and social impact of rhetoric is critical - such as the lan-.'rategies used to persuade in the environmental and genetically modified food debates i Frankenstein foods') and in the American 'civil war of values' its historical impact, with examples of great rhetorical events like Reagan and the Challenger disaster; rod the rhetoric of war. both the lang'ja&e of dynamic metaphor as in Miller's images of blood pollution or RooseveltS day that will live in Infamy' to the evasive technical jargon of modern warfare which deliberately alms to detach people from the human realities, as with collateral damage'. 'Aulhi Nor could propaganda exist without the myths that rhetoric articulates. Myth, defined as the sound of a culture's dialogue with itself, expresses the kry values of a society in story form. We see myths as critical to society's Integration and sustenance, and to destroy a society's myths is to destroy The Impact of rnyths on history has been critical for example, the German mfttarfst myth of the 'stab In the back' by democrats at the end of World War I - and the core methodology of propaganda has been the creation and sustenance of myths, such us the myth ihat the US constitution tngfarmtt the right to bear arms. It does no such thing, yet the popular ill li.iimir.i: I IiMoi \ art t. ; • I I Ml iii i |.N C »\\ II >c : , • • •, i\>\ > i In i iIn1 impc r • -./if/ nl Iiisitu \ in the a v Bl Finland >taDa Mi lu.ilh die- train « 'I *■# AM Nii'l vvii.n playing the '.' I'/j/IniiI homelimes vn 4 I Ir. Iffiptti I i.i, ,|,( "• llulil I Ik v , i/i/l.l I1: In tin ||,| ' im/IIi rnlirpir I. Wrwl. ,„ ,|„. t rlvill |.y \1v; '.. / ih»I ntyrt ', immi I'.tlxuhclh I i':k 'jwnlhnl In silk ')[>.r/.iimln \\v - jp In l»»- y.irclrd : hr Wii*. wrm 1-,/r. H'iy ) The ^>ri1:<-<|»irni rs lot th .....i < I mi untile consumer crand.*. '.■,i i ognlllve short cut why read a treat Kr firm tunc .... iM «»l a i iincature Gennar. oaVai wlih | Inui^ln^ . ... monocle(Rhodes 1993 dbdft <-h imur vlvlillx , . I.i. niir form of mei < ' m. . niumunl , iv, whom •!»«• ad of reading a a chore. Symbols can and • mlwouler. simplify or r~..; /'li. I In- »lnlu\ 1. , • •' 1/ < hnip lot in ' i c _j t—i,,, r\,nnpK\ . , i \>j\\ iiiul uon-tixec . , - <•of a*sir^^H,,«,,»»HP-- . .....p.„n,u,h .he> '. .....« n,o >"1 '-mlnwiMl with „ mm.oolmlmeof symy.s. ^ in 11 iin l.isenstein /.„ Hrx,s a,v „H„ wlih lis literally fa tin Mm Ihoro cowboy. ......Ii St ' .u.»nU. \w\\ no it\sv* .^jj-oi tfc*raan«**'i the sum and .ii ti»«* ^«Hadcww1^,^r,,WM advatttaa* i <»i i . \ rli-iMi'iits of pmpa> Die lilnllv of Myth Rfi< \.,t , I.mi. Hi- .»1 propaganda hi,-: ,.■ nl in p.ii ocular: "•►K,li,m underglrdfl other major " 00H I prim IpU- themes in *c-me Manipulation ami deceit I,, -,.i\ that propaganda w rn. ||, |« nl i h.iraiteristic of th«; U-rrr rnie ol ihe term is equated Htfl l,iii nevei n nth seeking Oh/ -» ..■ iinleil iii persuasive advoca< v ly« piMpii^anda's iletinition. but n r. •' 'J'lm»- a necessary but not suf-■■■;-./.u,'\:i in the populist vernacular '■'■>■•' manipulation, even duplicit) ••'' ••" irrelevant, or at best suboreV ' ;• not some essential essence ' •■;! ". \Uc populai understanding ol p,..patniuda Deceit and [<>ryAn<, remains stale censorship, the denial ol Information. And then tb$Wt \\ passive (bureaucratic! propaganda, the use of reports, stai. > ••»/ \,t manipulate perceptions. Ihr ■<>, hit construction of enmilu I'm.p.ie.iiiila is a consequent- >.\ •, ,t n>><\ for enemies: they are not just il,. f, I.nl necessarily there: they jov"aV r«r uv. and definition to our values .ind ihey motivate us to b'.h'.t, \h'-y provide someone to blame when ihiiiv.- y<> wrong. Their commofj bMIMlty is reducible to a mere cipher, rim h .. « oinmunism's top-hat mmyt >,\ the r apllallst. It is indeed difficult to m...yine a propaganda with, . < lor enemies are essential to a com- pelling narrative structure, but th'v hoc <,\.u n,y,,.t,/ Ihnilresof propaganda. The list - li..idly exhaustive, bui dM. h ;,,-/,,i .,„,.» ,,\ ihi*significant phenomena lrlio„ hi,ve structured and cUUtlMK to dlrecl our politi rt propaganda in all its naivety, has be of pi opaganda thai culture. Today the old extrovert w^y^--- replaced In something more insidious - more akin to the art that conceals art. Spin and sound bile, negative advertising and single-issue groUps suggest pervasiveness of polemical forms of persuasion which amounts to the propagandising of our public culture even business is drawn into the vortex Situfh-issue groups We begin with single-issue groups since they represent an extraparliamen-tarv political lone of supreme power. They shape our times, and they do so through their mastery of the arts of propaganda. Victory goes not to the most, but to the most vocal. Their poverty makes them entirely reliant on the creativity of a visible public symbolism. The consequences of issue group propaganda, social and political, are very real and tangible. Since public opinion on many things is ambivalent final victory often goes to those who possess the best propaganda. Many mainstream political issues-Green, feminists - originated not in political parties but in single-issue groups and their masterly proselytisation techniques. The major ideological and value civil wars such as abortion have been fought outside the parties and with the tools of propaganda. Negative advertising Never was the word propaganda" more apposite as descriptor than in the case of US election campaigns, and this is an area where our discussion of the enmity thesis would apparently have singular relevance Negative political advertising is a tried and tested device and a sinister exemplar of propaganda today. At one time it seemed to have become the preferred mode of choice In US politics. Everyone knows about the Willie Horton advertisement, but the level of saturation of mainstream US po ti^with negativity is less well known internationally. Citizen alie t entry does not find a lenitive in rational discourse but in th ?, °n appar" tribes. A culture of contempt may be the achievement Qfy"Second dia" even if it is not the objective: but negative advertisino ai, °. proPa8anda defenders. g 3,50 has cogent Symbolic *)ver" mQSl COUnthes. politician and party are a materially Bui campaigns ca • ^ lheir abuily lo purchase media. The fight is impover,s u»d acto account, testing politicians' propagandist therefore for a favour reCOgnili0n that no public event is capable of of the media to bandwagon effects, has meant the expertise of governments increasingly becoming nol operational management or pollcj entrepre-neurship but communication skill, thai is. spin1. Democracy is .1 political system and .1 social ethos where we seek persuasion rather than coercion, and it is the recognition thai the interpretation of events can be managed or even foreordained thai has informed the work ol the Blair government In Britain, which hasbeeome a supreme practitioner of this craft replacing, for example, half the heads ol" civil service information offices with partisan evangelists. However, we identify spin as part ol a broader idea, the Symbolic State, embodied in the apparent solution of problems at the rhetorical level alone, preoccupation among politicians with generated imagery, the manufacture ol symbolic events and concomitant devaluation ol the roles of ideas and Ideology in politics. Marketing war Afghanistan/Iraq Both the motivation and the conduct of these wars were inspired and structured by communication, i.e. propaganda, objectives Again our conceptual formula is used to illuminate the meaning of these events. It seemed at times that asymmetric" warfare would be fought on an imag-istic as well as a military plane. Uniquely for a terrorist organisation. Bin Laden spoke in a symbolic language instantly intelligible to his allies and enemies - to recruit, of course, but also to terrorise, not just by the act but by the imagery, specifically Bin Laden himself as serial role player and personality cult. There was the propaganda of the act' - Nine-eleven -but also classic polemicism hyperbole, rage, an enemy to hate. Those vivid tapes, and the Taliban's posture as peasant underdog against the global superpower, made some commentators early on suggest that the Taliban/AI-Qaeda were winning the propaganda war. The US had been taken off guard. There was a general recognition that a global culture had sponsored global propaganda and the US had to master this if it was to retain hegemony in a global order. In Iraq the US sought to meld very old propaganda forms - battlefield leaflets, radio stations and the like -with some remarkable new ones: the 'embedded' journalist, the Hollywood stage set at Qatar and direct approaches via e-mails to enemy commanders, abetted of course (at least in the US) by shamelessly partisan media. New insights on propaganda emerge such as the importance of the coherent integrating perspective, or the problem of imagistic control in wartime. /"frodu,t|0n 10 AfwrwMnl v of the measurable impact of prop. ^ bo„K......• *l,h 11 brt .1.'erection of current events and as a ".",„ DM section of current events and as, Lnfe both ■••.....„lU fee failures in propaK;mua campaigns 1 1 • >i■ m \ i«'l,m" ..^ain^n insuperable problem guUllni htnd in hUtor) \c ; wnl- remains an Insuperable problem, ;,r, r,oi .inn- «i« loidenUQ w ■ ^ There js no ,in;,| wordi Debates but th |lI ••' ■N 7N * !Ul uxl onlv taken further. Hut that propa-'" h ;' ,l" ' ' ,M,VI'' Vr -m »n< m our society, an important social garni* »»•'< Iirni i» v 11111 \ |Ufd by [ls lrue name, and studied as part A question of meaning This chapter teases out the meanings of the term propaganda . a task complexified by it5 common usages and connotative content. We orient and nuance the derininon through a number of primary categories: rational persuasion, manipulauon. intent, breadth. The chapter seeks further clarity of definition by exploring the complex and ambivalent relation of propaganda to the mass media, appraising some of the limitations of the analytical methods that regularly convict media texts of the ideological determinism associated with propaganda. Subsequently we engage in a summary discussion of the conceptual elasticity of the term as embodied in such diverse cultural theatres as education, the arts, bureaucracy, war. journalism-Defining propaganda Propositions on propaganda. This is a dull chapter. No book purporting to explain propaganda can shirk the imperative of actually trying to define the term, a maddeningly elusive task which necessarily involves a recitative of competing definitions. We begin by reviewing the key propositions which summarise the principle debates about the definition of propaganda: a definition that must remain open ended since there can be no closure when a concept comes laden with so much historical baggage. Problem of definition: no agreement It is inevitable that there will be no collective agreement about the definition of propaganda in the sense that we might have accord on the meaning of many other words. Our task is to extract what seems most reasonable from the competing interpretations of the term. Since propaganda is a . ii is to pies* ilhe t«s social signification ~r;;;r:........................ and w have no rigorous sclcntllU source or juridical authorit, , X term but only hlslo. leal usage lo a.temP« lo deflna propaganda isto ^Ughtlyuponi.....iceptualn.....-lickM.....* define propaganda is* ESxpre^n»ni.^ ^98,therea* unagreed mutual...nHMtala.i.Tmwhjchallowthe •on of propaganda from Into matton Schumpeter (1966) said that uTcontemporarv <* I* u-rm prop^a.nln refers lo any statement .ting from a source thai * n* Ufa a I" «• Jones Singh 1989, sjectedtoseenod.llc.cncc between pi-opanlV widespread use until th„ k Of the ,wenu,th century who,, „ ^ J J 1!^^^^ employed during World War On, and those- law, used hv «.)«alitaria°^meT colloquial uses Nevertheless the definition of propaganda is complicated b colloquial usage wherein propaganda is always associated ^ i!** **Cl of a eSjOeSC, and only I term of abuse, signifying the hype^M 6 idea of declamatory. The pre-war anti-maruuana lilm K,v|,» Madneu extretne-its hysteria the kind of excess popularly ascribed to propagandas?*11* in rumours, the outrageous libs that vet tester in the gutter of ueXts°rthe * . * ft * I l 1 r . _ »i-------- o-'.wi vji num sciousness-that the Holocaust did not happen, that Nlne-elevin c°n" or an Israeli plot, that the lunar and Mars landings were ena^fSaClA led in a 4 furttion of mrntilnu II ■afywood Uudio ArmiliiT illustration would be so-calM m.„ v ,„„„„ gaoda. such as Oil llpanCM campaign against Sunkist kmom m wl|lr|| fapanev- agri' uliural groups 'spread the rumour via the media thai Amrrl-~ '•" *'d wllh Agent Orange' tl'hioigo Tribune. 1 2 June |S) A major reason for thin elusiveness of meaning is that no working dHiniiion of a concept can ever he separated mil from iLs colloquial uv:s Hyperbnllr ; " r";,"v paHiniliir uses of propaganda rather than d'-v ripiluns of some essence of propaganda llself. Nevertheless such colloquial usages cannot stmpl. ■■ it Midi scuss I he lerm obiectivelv are distorted by the accu - - - ol ihc (i)incpl through history, its asvy lahore, wiih the Third Reich, for example making dispassionate analysis difficult Ureseher 11987) argues thai 'propaganda' conjures up imizf of go-.f-rnrnrnially : ' •/"/.< 1111» r in the eoutext ol a h : - * .-..ir I sually. Americans ID par in ular llnnk ol propaganda as an activity that r. engaged .....-man or totalitarian governments. In fact a: fjrev h»r points - -,')a may involve the truth, even though it fall, into thf , ,(n-rather iliau hurrah' words. That the idea of propaganda •< >. y.ln'fi elements ol guile „ ;r:.r:.r.i. and if. .ire not - i' - ;,oar'.fii even from the objective definiuons. Can there then bf 1)0 merllorious propaganda- The genre Itself i. viewed - - , - . ■r« riily 11 iiuuiral and even its w^anirne uses consigned to the l^/wfc-al ambo of rieeessary evil, like the bombing of cities Examples of a ■ . , propa/arida are more numerous than we would imagine, and -- - .oi ui'-iely a psychotic e\pre»:. r. >.\ ■;. luuetion- - -• -,, <,< ,t virluous propaganda \\ hca I rexomp!'-propaganda alternative strategy to legal coercion, as demonstrated by the ■ v ' //" n ili«' very different attempts to deal with the scourge of ■egaJoYngt and thai ol cigarettes. The scope and complexity of the idea of propaganda have often been in pacta parochial definitions that invest it with its hmUlar and r verrisv ulai meanings. The word is not value-neutral and its strong connotatrve asso* laflOOJ need to be interrogated if it is to be used critically -. - - ......,m< ally II I ( "boose to speak I it meffaklg 11 ■propaganda' .. . ..... ',< < i ■.imIy 111a111 is worthless ii mag be iporthj bet aote the aapsr»J>/r- «-jahh-.h I he cause as a legitimate one is worthy. Words are took 76 use Ux>la iflaCl Ively demands not the search for the perfect tools , . . v, . hul rsilher that we recognise the limitations of (hose we do The term 'propaganda' may be conceptually flawed, but it Is not thereby redundh i >1 Clarity ■ | . a.^cihe unamhiguOUl transmission of n.^nd. genera.," ,tn^ ^of ^ '(lari.y may not be an e»c«i •« ,hjs inherem „ , ,,a,nly a normative soll)(iofls. Schick 11985?^ lion, that it is a complex pur\e\ot eIat* propapnda to media whose symbol systems are visible Foulkes -19^, ! ouW .bus argue that a propaganda doctrine, sociahs. realism, could p*. iray only thr.se problems and conllic.s for which the system ostensibly has •• solution and he also relates this phenomenon to western mass culture In Hhnonc Laya* Ml Kmson MIchtd Meyer (1994) argues that manSpalat - . .: ?- r.-.^da P'oeeed as .1the cjurslion they were dealing with were solved. However, good propaganda may disguise the fact that it thinks the is\\/ neutral 'communication . While the term propaganda' If tmutknu uwd erroneously as a substitute for other categories of permarion, M It not synonymous with persuasion as such .iiul i> in fan a high.7 1. .< f',rm of advocacy. There are many examples of non-oropagMidwt Ofrftiaflon. Authorities - Jowett ijowett and O Donnell 1992». (or exempt' do distinguish propaganda from persuasion: propaganda l- ■: / imlrrd with a general societal process whereas persuc^ '/:-:: . an individual psychological process'. Propapeaii is 'sanes eogfief>a. end its targets are the multitude, and this, as lowett say*, if what dvftngulfhei it from persuasion. Propaganda if sssotecil a* (bt Obverte of 'reason', or rational persuasion, oiter- c •:' - ■• - t.>,v\ information'. Thus some have claimed to perceive an e.T'.'.T'. >. : y. anty in ilie language of politics, that political language ha1; '.v. -.uyy. 1 he one emotive, that uses rhetorical- emotional appeakiprf/per/y - ''■>) 'he other passive (rational and informational). Propaganda if certainly not rational persuasion. The appeal to reason \\'-' ■ ->mmher propaganda strategy. When we ce; ym (lie attempt to distinguish it from advocacy, we also say thai %VAtt\t% 1 tense meaning" rather than a bounded or lexical definition - its "•/'//./. ition thai I know it when I see it'. To some extent one ./-xt.t.i f/, ir / and deline propaganda by what it is not. As a sealed ftffnufm tht COtlCCpi excludes notions of intellectual exchange. Smith etaf (1946]ftlngulfh between propaganda and educa-1 it in by arguing that the 1t*v' f > .">ui erned with attitudes on controversial issues w'hereas the letler if concerned with attitudes on non-controversial Issues. According tofenf**. | i 9$9), the problem with this distinction is that it assume w- . - >..: ■■.. non t out roversial, which it is for the haves ol society lee.'.''. . *: r. '.almon believes, are also manipulative and benefit from v/ J&y vtu 0MMd labels which conceal persuasive intent. Yet other cr II having no conceptual content distinct from rrw. •:. a, . hut propaganda is more specific than < ommunicauon'. a w**: >>• h r»>rs lo any transmission of information 1« • '"'i ,„u\ '"Ii without |utlgriiu'• deceillul H" ' communti atlon ihenrlil Hi merely •» * aim ii • • "'' ................1 mated, hyptjw ........(id HjtllH l"""' " Iti «''»«li are ,,,,,„ ,t || || ••••» bftWHIl prepay and ^ »1 ii ' ( , ..... | | ....... ....... Itiell Judgement**. ■ndcommumu .....i(............(, ,,,,„, wi,,. W(. YetUniU^............. ,..........lulled ForTa** ? tl,s,,,.li.......-------- ' .-,,„•. doing the the Interest! of Hi wwiv* IMlMl......1!,M '"»"ly Particular types of propignnd......Iw tltMltl.....I^IWhI «nme mm rptual essence of propaganda UmmI l i Manipulation Propaganda 11 | u < .hi id. .mllll.. i Truth its.-.................J..... ,V; for truth. subversion Allpmpu,......i.............. n ' ['» *nd works best by speak of an.....nmilpolniit. ,, ( i( ( "" ' ^'"'d u meaningless to conceptually roilmiildiii i., | J "J ' """ *ould ndet the term would mourn I hi 1...... 1...1, u|i M| ,,,, . ' ""' 1 .....Knhcri her people Reformation haditunhtt an.h.......,..... M,,,V which her Protestant tosubsi.ii.i,...........h m,,,.,, , ( J"" ......•''V.thrrc-lore.than soubriquet the Vlrglnl....... ........ n|M promoted the Mosl scholia* .tl.t.Mi 1......1. ,1,1 ,,..... •propaganda ,..„1 .1,. id............... , ,( ' |'( ...... I„,*,.,.„ ,he word information h pi........1 .......Ii in i|„ . ,,M'Mli,,,, r , pro™.....m v............1.................^ in Ca.lu.ll,.............................1.....„•;•"'•'••' W.wSS.1'" encevialhriii.iolpid..li..ii..| ..imiI.mI.. aMdi|„., , '"♦».».,, * l,c "I li'.l....... . . ^llUlnfl.- unusnauputiiyoi v\.....iwmi i Ii ...i(, ,,,,,,,,„'"''v. ^pee'ia"|"r" encevlathenmiilpul.il.......1 ..... „„,„ '" " ""<" u. „, " v iow«............................................:,;'unu terminal plan ol pirl.ila 1..... .1 ,.,i 1,,,.,„, ,.......... "" nil „ 0 19 to fulfil an objective'. Propaganda is the deliberate and to share perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct ~- ~ - -" ' --" '• - a response that serves the desired intent of the propa-: The word has attracted negative connotations and now refers to of communication in which a communicator manipulates others, their being aware of the manipulative effort, for the source's than the benefit of the receiver'. '1978) also attempts I number of definitions of propa-on deceit: the fcc= to the - "vu'ral iRoman Catholit meaning pr paganda has now - "• v.nrd rhetoric to mew: laofnap nd WBbal strategies aeptive and misleading, or which misrepresent the true motives is that language - most easily a slogan, but perhaps a White an editorial, a book - which influences the false doctrine ideology. es propaganda further: while propaganda might once the political exhortation or patriotic speech (propaganda of generally implies some element of deception, either in the or in the motives of the speaker Thus there is a very fine line oratory and propaganda, by their very selection of examples these and other authorities ons. slea2e would appear to be the common denominator. oe true of its vernacular meaning. Vet. while propaganda is g more than advocacy alone, manipulation is a vague - . - that incorporates c\ cr\:h:r.g irem selectivity of facts of fraud. All advocacy manipulates. Inherent in these • .. '.v on that propaganda a\v> >c a mere extreme form. • - .\hr\ to effective persuas ru: does a disservice to the to the definition of propaganda, and can one indeed a I propaganda? The point is not a frivolous one. since ' : - ;• omena embraced bj the tern: rrcpaajajftii would be vastly to extinguish the re^uinHnent of intent. The attribution a aaouve would ascribe an introspection, a level of self-analysis ers and evangelistsdc not r-jiseii- :he possessors of of truth do not see themsehrs as propagandists but as >.'/.'.-pting this point alsc ::~ploMBI r.t problem of defi-the term's conceptual expanse to embrace the work of ■ mixers and .he like. and. indeed. ^ , ,.............• " ; ;^Tno. a««rcof commiUin*The^ '">■'>>mr* February 1995I would nevtrhZ !!!!Dh»m«« •»• '"^^nch iheoreucian of propaganda, reganb*; """ ,„„,, )o* ' . >ht.n ihe biases are unconscious. Hj '"' ' ' -t^^TSKie ««en<. Ellul thus mate* TS- .h* <*^,SJrf. and bias. This is mt* would n.-« »"i f _ fcet^een pfopaS*,,,u. --- llM11,si ,a.i> i ^I^ariK biased, but not all bias is necessary I""|mh...u!.m i • » • ; * - even awafC that lhe messages'art 1' 1 'r n '' Ttoc bet pTOTT"^8 15 sometimes the most "wan- "i' i ^ burner ortheheaorian of propaganda might judge a testis ...... /. . j*prce¥tog use proudest voices of conscience and profession: the i ,>i the* sssrt ma>base been manipulative, but the intent may not haw been 1 he question of the irtanonship of intent to propaganda, then .i.iiiui no i tsj solution - particularly in relation to education, whose i><-.t.iv<<> >sss thessssssesssccsssssunicaiors. yes. persuaders sometimes. '" v" ,M>17 rsuchenucs. propaganda is defined by inten- NW ,IM1 í pobocal effect on a particular audience ...... V „ ,■.■1 ' - but it UnpUes that the com- Fc" I ,„„u,u.onal pi |iip ■ *i is produced all the time, much of h VOCaC> l.„ 1 \ 1 m . Uganda event may tuuss>u^ and be conscripted bv **Sl' in si the cause that sponsored sl This is exactly what hapDen!j™a8DIUSts , wnai nappened in the case Minora 1194 U. which contrived to ľľ«n s pbMSSŠC government but against the t;,m^"ul A question of meaning 21 a US officer in the Vietnam War ih.u „ M invessary to destroy the villa,, . .. 1 '"■"■NSiiryiodestroy tht in order to save it . circumnavigate.1 the ulolv. a self-inflicted wound Another illustration of how propaganda eau transmute into c propaganda is afforded by George Hush s landing on the aircraft-carrier Abraham Lincoln to declare the Iraq » a. oxer (In fact more Americans wen tninii'i —------------------—— —- » » wi\ it 'i n '\i i • i i > i olive-green Might suit and with I helmet tucked beneath his left arm. Inspi rational music kicks in as the spot conunues. An announcer runs through Kerry's record while the advertisement goes on to Hash images of him at various points in his life: making his presidential announcement before the carrier Yorktown in South Carolina, receiving a combat medal as a young navy officer, speaking with voters, speaking at hearings and writing at his desk. The \ew York Times comments the commercial does not bang viewers over the head with the image. In fact, the script does not refer to it once. Campaign strategists said that is because the moment speaks for itself and provides a good curtain-raiser for a spol that highlights Mr Kerry's vast experience as a soldier and politician.' Propaganda can be indirect, and a text can be usurped as propaganda even when the intent was neutral - the creation, for example, of an image in photo-journalism Key images from the Vietnam War were scorched on to the consciousness of world opinion: the napalm-burnt girl, naked, running in terror: the South Vietnamese General Loan (Eddie Adams I tiring a gun into the head of a helpless \letcong suspect: the John Filo image of the college girl kneeling over a lifeless body at Kent State (Goldberg 19^n. Whatever the intent of their original photographers and publishers, these images circulated internationally through many media as classic atrocity propaganda: their perceptual construction helped determine how we interpreted the war then and how we remember the war now. One communication wehjcie that particularly raises the question of intent in propaganda is the documentary. This announces in advance an intent of objectivity, addressing burning issues of the day. While nobody would suppose that a alimentary rilm maker would properly lack a sense of mission, the ostensible purpose is truth telling and it is therefore a particularly appropriate wehade tor the confection of lies. Television documentariescau mutate into propaganda by the very measure of their selectivity, and without, necessarily, any conscious intent on the part of the producers. Lesley Garner, the reviewer of a BBC-2 television documentary on euthaoaaaa. Death on Request, pointed out that the merciful self-chosen extinction exhibited in this film Is still one end of a long /fining what and rea.< m Mtll spectrum whi. I. - '"'« deliberate deaths of the disable. ' tinted (fftil,, ^ l295); ,U thÍS CaSf *«5 \Mkers recorded tl.. •,. I..I in. w„„ď. ..I .i I hitch motor neurone disease suf. ,-.u.r Ceo van Wendd ilr I.....k In mi ostensibly powerful documentary lboú, the organised ending Ol I I"....."< ^ ^ are protoundly moved by ins niflering tnd«nv1n( wl by ilir ImmimUy ol his official executioners, hut the tilm is about a >,mKlr . »'.r, mul II does not seek nuance or debate about the complex...... ..I 11..........•'" Al wlu.l stage does this, a partisan a.gument. mature from mlvoi m v i.....piopiigmulař An interesting point oi comparison is ail OVtrlly pro nilhmmsln propaganda lilm called / Accuse, directed by Wolfgang I.Irbniei wlilcli prtmlaredon 29 August 1941. The V..i functionaries .mpl...... i.....e. I I.H.i •• 19 19 (secretI euthanasia decree explained it to Llebene......I n,pi. .led n lilm (Herzstein 1978). since Goebbels had sensed dis.pii.-i among nuiiiy over the regimes policy, espe-v tally among Catholn / Accuse is about the dtttrlOrlUon inulri multiple sclerosis of a young woman whose hush.nul yi.mi. ihe release she craves by killing her. some-ihing doctors have refund I lei husband is put on trial. The concluding scene illuminates I In- II gumontfl I"" i lUl h.m.isia lhal the regime had sought to mobilise. The do. i.»i < haiiw". hh mind Comments Herzstein: the dialogue in ihls •.. n.. i. . hIm-mu-Iv .lleetive. intellectual as well as emotional in its apprul. mul n|'l">rtntty Cllculated to let the audience make up its own mind about tlK |m..I.|. ... Nm one Is portrayed as a hero or as a villain, audiences tell il.r il..-......|,,.|lnH sympathetic for the accused and his action. ElicltlriK Hum. ... in... ,„,,iiv ||U- aim of ihe regime. In I Accuse it is the law .I,.,, |„ mm|r ... seem barbarous, not the administrators of euthanasia Pni <.......... ||lm ... intelligently made propaganda designed^ precipitate ,. , ,......, ,„ „, ,c„e,a. climate of opinion by rais^ Both films use the COie Id... ..I „ h.lplrss sulferino r^r l die at a time and undei 11......iita....., 0| theli oWchoo^ WiShCS t0 documentary thereby propaganda o i wall (even thouahllirtf u the 1995 it is not perverted in *,>. lo, example.employsm^Sa^S^ it. ,i. it II i A questton <•/ meaning 21 USOClate with propaganda the Idealisation, ttoesitostareoí the British enemy. Ihr dwelling on Ihul enemy's atrocities while simplifying the causation but U is not propagánd*. The imperialism it denounces is long defunct. DOT tl there any cause in the contemporary world for which it COllld ba Mm .is lymbollC advocacy. In this it is different from another Altcnborough lilm, Cm/ Ireedom. Had C.undfii been made in the days of the k.ii ii would, Indeed, have been propaganda. Breadth However, ľi.iik.inis and Aronson (1491) note that as scholars began to study the topic in more detail many came to realise propaganda was not the exclusive property of totalitarian regimes, nor were its contents limited to clever deceptions The word had evolved: it is communication of a point of view u n h the ultimate goal of the recipient coming to voluntarily accept this position as if it were his or her own. Many critics define propaganda very indulgently. Lee (ll)Sh). for example, includes the press, since it: cmpli.isisi-s the existing and superficial and neglects socially important eco-nomle and political developments.... International affairs are stereotyped or caricatured, reduced to positive and negative generalities . . . political campaigns for office or for reforms are dramatised in simplistic and personality terms with basic issues avoided, glossed over or presented in a biased manner. Then there are such things as the development of obviously kept researchers, often under contract to prove specilic policy contentions or to ploi special Interest social strategies'. I 11111 (l U7 j), similarly, sees propaganda as an omnivorous force: arguing that his definition is too broad. Urescher (1SK7) criticises this tendency to see virtually any form of communication as propaganda: In Ellul's views everything is propaganda. Under these circumstances, it is equally useful if nothing is propaganda.' Hllul. Dreschcr argues, would consider the multinational corporation to be propaganda, but surely it is only indirectly political m its expression. Any label is rhetoric. Inscribed within it is both a perspective and a domain, but labels also have inherent plasticity and they remain open to conceptual repackaging. The word 'propaganda' needs redefinition as well as definition. No longer can we dismiss it as merely something to do with Der Stunner. Lenl Kiefenstahl. Pravdu, hveslia or even the occasional party political broadcast. Today it assumes myriad disguises and reinvents itself, now as an objective video news release on animal rights, now as the latest management lad or popular treatise on pseudo-science. The purpose of reclassification is to alert us to the new possibilities it has colonised. Perception , . kT.,ca.ula can ignore the special relev No attempt to discuss ae mlnment is historically the most the entertainment Indus*} c? War 11997). everything is political. Most enter- But we reject the vocm M . < ; f()r m i itnment either eschews polii >^ • *Mu u: . . . , yui Women eitne■ t. text ,t am scklom he Q noses or to estab isn the einuauv uum ______«. . . poica because politics is a signal which activates a defence mechanism. The broad social liberalism of mam entertainment products - ractal Integration, harmonv. social esteem lot different segments of the community-represent an ethos. Thla ethos ma> be celebrated overtly: it is more likely to be simply a benevolent nai ram,' assumption. But it is not propaganda. All entertainment is propaganda would be a nonsense, the notion that since entertainment is manufactured b\ commercial interests it will invariably celebrate the status (uo. The Frankfurt School in particular viewed all entertainment as propaganda for a dominant social order - as gratifying to the masses and therefore contributing to their further enslavement. This is a gross simplification. As a cultural product entertainment must seek out novelty and therefore sub\ ersion, since continuous celebration of the status quo would bore. Drescher et al. (1987) argue that what we classify as propaganda is also a function of receiver perceptions the same message may function as objective information or as a persuasive statement in a different context' and 'whether the message is interpreted as fact, propaganda depends on the perspecm e ol the receiver.... A sender may also tr n message with the intent that it sen e more than one function i!nSmi13 may also be transmitted with the knowledge that Nation A willV <\Ssages as statements of fact while Nation B will find them to be *gard them nature.' Thus Drescher argues that the speech that to some so^h^ "* simple patriotic praise may be perceived by others to have self-Ser^ ^ propagandist motives iBoardman Many apparent cases and ganda 'will be interpreted differently by different readers'. Tn Pr°pa_ lere are ambivalent cases which provide both information and fog - for e the newspaper which announced that nidation in March rose 3.2 rj^p]e Cent, question of nwunnuj 2S continuing the trend of declining rates of interest"! Films may In- prop., ganda only in the sense that some of the audience would choose to read as If to propaganda, since that is the meaning they have chOMO to appropriate from a repertoire of possible meanings. A literary or musical piece, such as Mozart's Marriage of Figaro which satirised the aristocracy 00 the eve ol the French Revolution, can be used as propaganda (Perris I 9K5). and as pollt ical propaganda it was the more beguiling, and the more dangerous, because clothed in a language that was not verbal but mush al and there fore both meaningful and imprecise. Derrida 11981) claimed that no single interpretation can claim i«> be the final one. He demonstrated this not by revealing how the text's meaning ll reconstructed but instead by deconstructing a text in the sense of showing its failure to be interpreted unambiguously. Of course this is not true of much historical propaganda, one of whose characteristics is that meaning is indeed non-negotiable. Even in the war propaganda realm we do indeed meet examples where an openness to interpretation exists: the subtlety ol a film like Powell and Pressburger's Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (194 U introduces us to layers of meaning. And Cook (1992) has described how -partly through the agency of para-language-the message and story line ol much commercial advertising is ambivalent. For example. Calvin Klein advertisements would seem deeply vulgar if put into explicit words (see J. O'Shaughnessy 1995) . This coheres with the Hovland thesis thai people are not passive receptors but active participants in the creation of meaning (Hovland and Janis 1959). The most extreme version of this view sees all meaning as a ultimately a co-production between text and viewer receiver (see Kellner 1995). An apparent propaganda event can turn out to be anything but. Responses - how people choose to interpret material - may diverge from what the producers intended or what logic would anticipate. This was. for example, true of the television film The Day After (Adams el al 19Nf>). about the aftermath of nuclear war. It had the distinction of the third highest viewing audience in US television history, and therefore (potentially) some social significance. The prediction was that It would foment opposition to the policy of nuclear deterrence. The reverse happened. The share of people seeing Reagan as the more dangerous Prcsideni declined appreciably, from 36 per cent to 2 7 per cent. This can be explained on several levels. First, the film was not the explicit propagandist evocation of nuclear armageddon predicted by the political right. In fact it was rathei anodyne. Second, nuclear holocaust was shown as survlvablc. which may have surprised people, since Americans already accepted the destructiveness of nuclear war. Third, the film had received considerable publicity, sensitising viewers to possible manipulation, and making the Dvtitunq w/iiir and rvasonln 26 S nlm an.ic.imac.ic. Researchers were unable in de.ee, even a „,,„ ,„„ ~!ZZl££ 1«» is Perhapsa morecornplex n.me, ,„„„,,,„. Moreover, .ut b. d js ideological-propagandist ,s, c meel and merge in a complex theatre of .dec oglcaI pluraUsm; polity opinion becomes less definite when people hold a portfolioo\ righ -wing and left-wing positions rather than coherent Ideological packages I, is ;i consequence of components of the 1960s counter-culture be.ng absorbed into the political mainstream. For example, elements of the l.gure o Kambo himself - long hair, bandana, androgynous breasts - arc derived Irorn it (Tasker 199 5) while for Webster < 1988) "the countrvs.de is a symbol that unites the contemporary ecologist with the old blood-and-soll Kighl (hinted at in terms like hick-chic f. Propaganda and interpretation Each producer of a message relies on its recipients for it to function as intended. This assumes they know how to interpret the message. Meaning is always negotiated in the semiotic process, never simply imposed implacably from above by an omnipresent author through some global code I Hodge and Kress 1988(.This is where the didacticism of much classic propaganda fails in persuasive terms, for example Soviet propaganda, which assumed a hypodermic model of opinion modification: C.oebbels in contrast sought to disguise propaganda as entertainment. Traditional semiotics errs in viewing the relevant meanings as frozen and fixed in the text itself to be extracted and decoded by the analyst by reference to a coding system that is impersonal and neutral and universal for users of the Code (Hodge and Kress 19 8 8). The media text does not have one meaning but has to be internreted Rambo for example, within the social and political context that eave hlrth m it. so that the complete meaning of a propaganda event therefore emerges only when we study the society that produced it. Like many coin, i^u rists. Kellner (1995) argues that the audience is not a passive pre-digested meanings'. The domain of communication andI cult ^ °f be clinically separated, and in Kellner's view they are an inten ^ C'annot There are dominant, negotiated and oppositional reading S?Slcm' propagandist this presents the problem of the unintended ^ F°r 01 Uu^av,MK mr~*X> Audiences......., d..................rrprtUtton and appropri- .,, ,magcs o create their own msinlngl] „,„„. f„r CXHmpIc, rncn ^w York homeless centre vv,,, .....lt(...... ,, ......,lliv|(. svmp.,lhcUc (owards Ihr pol.ee Mhis accords will, •................,, ,„.K,.mony and counter. hegemony: Kellner 199S) And wl„ ,, Ml. hurl Moore's Rogerand Me (Batenun ei al ilw.>>, an undeniably propagandist Um, was shown to a group of Japanese student*. il„ v a. luiilly reacted slightly favourably towards business in then own i OUntl v Negotiation of meaning Much in Him eludes precise study h can be dan ribed but Its nuanced rial ore makes analysis dilli, uli Mow do we dlssecl atmosphere' or tone? What ideological function do iim i ll.r i.. %iyllsti<- devices that qualify or even subvert a dominant klcnlogl. ,d reading, such as a certain playfulness? lasker < 1 9S> 51 complains ol 'StandardI "I truth against which popular films have been judged, standards whl< li rarely adinil the complexity of terms like fantasy". The new critics' lo< oj mi m face forms provides, it is argued, a valuable qualification lo a polltll al undei .landing of popular texts as an Uncontested space for the play ol dominant Ideology', since specific formal devices do not carry an innate 01 essenllal meaning. Attempts to stigmatise the mass media .is propaganda are usually doomed to failure because ol the Ideological elusiveness of much of their r on tent Yet. if political fixity ll .1 Charat LerlStiC of propaganda, it is rarely lo be found in the populai cinema I I ..-.kei I 99 11. As a consumer product, media must please target markets which are usually ideologically heterodox seldom therefore do Ihey Issue an ideological clarion call, more an snigmatic invitation to Interpretation Bntertalnmenl is both an important V|IJ(( , ol propaganda and en< BpSttlttM thl conundrum of its definition. Much entertainment that Is ehnrnclei Ised as propaganda by right and left-win;' < fines is seldom consumed as such by Its audience, since such critics are really searching for a i heloi leal bullel In an Ideological war. Critics are mo' h too willing to discern In texts I he hand of the propagandist and this Involves them simplifying the entertainment product in the cause of an ideological argument, such as those who dismissed the film Michael Collins because it had pre-invented the cai bomb and other pedantic details. The ,„n rtainment industry knows Hint II Is entertaining a politically plural audience, redneck as well us New York bohemlan. Interpretation is left open. Classification as propaganda may represent the coercive imposition ol .. rigid interpretation that the fuels do not support if Tacts' are taken to n.r lode the complete ensemble ........live structure, surface decoration ol i,vi stylistic devices, dialogue. ..leaning brought to the role by actors Il„ le.sull is a complexity //»,,.», ,\..... (( ( from U^«^^-^,ll()11,,spn,paganda ,..,,„, ,,1 .i dominant ideology -.0« I, »<,< privHM. for example - ne/ev..ioly ni»,i„„(| »wi thai people appropriate it as pr'^.,*.,,,-!., ,),„, '' r ,i .,11 lor example. Blackhawr Uo>m , ,.,i„lll(„v ",'< I.boiling bravery, military comrade lap , n . tl„-|„n, eelebratton or r^nswstly ■» 1 •>„ Indkl ',„|„y loi which the soldier r. m.vU I/, prty Mm , (.M, TopiUm (198f>) is more .1/ < .,n „„,, ,1 „ V; ,, ,„ .,, ,his in relation to ihr 7a hi, l..,,*,,,^ ^IIEi."' ... .dses the question ol mi.-,,. ,.r,d ..-hmIImIhI <:- y" ■ .......s a programme thai oMIy Wl ' ......i oilers a dominant ideology ,h ,......,, • . . ............ nationalists as a sour. ■ t \.\\ lean I *»MM ^ .. ^ . . . tt ... ..-I and'as a site of divur iv< .n mrau inginp,- .' ■■■.....1. milted in any lixed or stao< /,.>/ 7i. v>«-r« pro ..,-....,...,», «!• iriiiiinate material- /: ;»,',<] • / unplr h Ihr r r. ../..,/• ■.>■■■'<■/ \>, (.nllin students interpret -1-,(lr,,i, \u mc Kvade, propaganda', adding thai retportdcfiK t«• I*I anecdotesarilajWiatllf I"' In migration, there wa inn. „,nl,|Kully in the " "' ,hr "ivasion" story line .„„| ,,«, i„VM,d i,|e ological ittfl^'P'^^'I'ltio dwell excessively texts to Interf**** ,«fc ,,llVl! " S in fact Irmr """v....., •>,... B.rnouw fall, into errors of interpret,..,.,, <■* ....... ..) li.s liullfrcrcnce '" ' ' ■' " ^racier to tone ami ..In......I,,.,.- lulling i„ ,htccIvc ,,l,'fr'i,"Vf Un[1ual interpretations such as ih.i, s„i,„. „1 ihe1 ontptratortal wxid view embedded in straight or serious spy II....... Thorburn accuses Barnouw of seeing nnl\ thai ih, s.n.s envisaged American* as Irving among unscrupulous ..ie Inlei pi ci alive essence but simple surface features in ideological fables He . latins such readings •act lyplcal of social science aiiahscsol i.I.m lion (fol example, at the Annenberg school, a more sophisticated school. K.ivni.uul Williams and his Imitators, abo would surface television's ideological substructures as apologia for advanced capitalism. Thorbui n suggests ih.it ideological pres-are notdictates: television in the Thud Kei. h l<\ . nutratt, was being teamed as a propaganda instrument, to he kepi OUl Ol pi Ivate hands and " Television and Him are consensus narratives, so created by uvji*ad interactions between the text, itn am ettori. competitors, authors, audeence and socio-economic order (till l ORUnunallty explains WaW unorigftujAry and also their powej to u u. uliile ihe wisdom of the Ctmawunity that Inhehted understanding Is no simple ideological con-■ • "- ' ' and assumptions llu il mnlei |0I I continuous revision in the culturally licensed experience of con-the meaning of lUCh Cultural lexis were clearer Ihey might Indeed fcnicuon as propagamla > ' : nd scope of propaganda As we haw teen, critics differ in the elasticity ol definition thai they would ascribe to the word 'propaganda While we cannot fu-i mil a definition so broad that U cooes to possess an independent 01 Operational meaning, our pi - pecttstr to that current ■nilstandings have erred in restricting its ateanaag, lb ■ustratethis breadth we discuss thl propaganda endowment <>f such OWrw subjects such as war architecture, music, bureaucracy. For e*an Che dale of an attended event can have propaganda merit and be nom-taatad fc* that reaaon 911. theemergency telephone number in the United ftrlrt m picked by AJ-Oaeda with truly diabolical cunning; another -immpiL is bdoard Weawjm. with all the savvy of a Madison Avenue exec- »*agll-11-11 as the moment month, day and hour-for the ......- ; £ -p. a com can Inn. Hon ns propaganda, such "•' ITamijIlf tfll nrtrjrr"-*- dfiirthftanarhro- 11n Hi igaHf aarmr a new formula. ''V1^ 1'umillc. patrie. to vmdeme andienrtaa the values of (lie icgime Since propaganda is the 30 Defining what and reasoni den.al as well as (lie evangelisation of message, censorship also function, „, propaganda I or example, no legal case in history can have quite so b^n,. a title as The Government of the United States versus the Spirit of American Revolution, hut in 1917 the crime of depicting the BriUeh « America s enemies even in the context of the War of Independence was * fic.ent to merit a substantial (three-year) jail term (Kämmen 1978). Propaganda and the arts The problem of disscctmg theconcept of propaganda lies also in its breadth, since so many theatres of human activity exhibit propaganda content Architecture, for example, cannot be excluded from any discussion of propaganda - to involve it is not to extend the boundaries of the term, but to attempt to give n a completeness of definition. The fact that the master pro pagandist himself. Adolf Hitler, was such an enthusiast for architecture should suggest the prime facie existence of a connection between his twin passions. The Great Dictators were sponsors both of a massive conventional propaganda industry and architectural monumentalism in the pseudo-Romanism of Albert Speer. Stalinist baroque, or the triumphalism of Italian Fascist construction Architecture is not merely associated with the propaganda of totalitarian dictatorships. Lutyenss New Delhi, though actually built largely after the publication of the Montague-Chelmsford report which started the clock ticking for the Raj. is an extraordinary and studied essay in imperial superciliousness: it is propaganda in stone. The arts can also function as propaganda and. again, to apply the term Is by no means to imply condescension. Manifestly, the greatest art has sometimes had propaganda intent: El Greco and Titian were propagandist celebrants of the Counter-Reformation, glorifying the wealth, power and renewal of the Roman church. David, similarly, was propagandist for Napoleon, evoking the radiance of his impérium. Shakespeare was an apologist and occasional propagandist for the Tudors in general, and in particular for Elizabeth I and for that brilliant conception of monarchy arid legitimacy which was so beguiling to her court. Thus to say that art Is 'propagandist' does not consign it to being mere crude iconic representation Propaganda does not inevitably preclude the kind of nuanced subtleties critics find endearing. (Art ceases to be propaganda when it becomes art?) For example, the fierce dejection and fatalism evoked by Byron's The /V/ oner of Chilton is art. a melancholic analysis of one man's fate, but also impassioned curse on the authoritarian regimes which do this to people | propaganda. Its meaning is both individual and universal (political). the arts can be deliberately suborned for political purposes: the Informm I. , Research Department of Britain's Foreign Office, for example, had Orwell* isl allegiif v. 11 ,ni i. ' ■ • "**:gian (Adam iv, J H ami education m0maa\ been juxtaposed will/ ■ <;,-. ■»>i»fjwnii4>i aadeducation lies in the ideafhetpi: > ■•• • • / • ■ - : nation teac Ik ■ \* ',v -AMa*44ffcMMtai is seen as the real artiidot , W, , < -o.ersively. lln-v iiiiyji b«j >> tunc WM)D% For example. Na/< ma",*— #-.t W&kWW* *e tfOM of calculating lh« -)'/,,• iMtHflP? I^Vj 1 All education [if ncmnnanhit I "'.add of 1 588 Is pur if ay*/. . , • od education are ultimas . -)•/-». . v.- of education .r > • - / m education .r ..' v . ■ ,vr t* liberal propaganda fur *-/a" ,j (Govern. Dai/ty Teleyruph j | H . r • v^ils down to little moo- * a the whole ol \.>•■>•/ * .<••,.>• but do not assuifi* •• >• ••»•>-■ .-. conditions below deck.' Hint I «d*rgue that secondary ejtJu'r • •> i her offensive nor sou.«-r • • . . jes that stress comp**1 j <:' theatres. This (imum • . . . J he preference lur v/ - - r, ol a value prefercn<>>- v.- -vr (Kg* HBOOf professional brrtortam If i rtun among the owiwu .glum assume that it baft , - a world very familiar to uA education to jxr/j/-: out m the nineteenth and eariy to* ' i he purpose of text »//.«• • f • ,..i itoul English yeomen, thcli lpp|( cheeked children end biasing cottagi hearths. A different age. perhapi ,Ull one where the propagandist thread ... education is read.lv Identified, but K our own school history any ol.|" Can only one Ideological heK, mony Sourish In the education system -'"V "ne limc-is t,u',r no VaUu. Q, possibility of ideological plural,,...' Nowhere.locs this question of dtllciruii ation between propaganda and education arise with more BCUlty than iM academia itself: for when does an a< aderni< discipline become s|Vi lul plriul ing or group interest advocai y and when does that become propaganda Academics may be Involved ... the disinterested search for truth, hut th,\ also partake in a ferocious battle 0VC1 the distribution of resoiu.es Lhell aims, mission, findings and sul>j»« i dr.. .[.line are sold and soniclimes o\n sold - for instance, by the claim ll.al -.ouieih.rig (sociobiologv. lor ex.unplel is in fact a science*. Journalism Dr Goebbels. no slouch when it I erne to the analysis of propaganda. \c.\ properly observed, even the Times, the most democratic paper in the world makes propaganda in that it deliberately gives prominence to certain la» Is emphasises the importance ol other \ hy writing leaders or comuu'nls about them, and only handles other-, marginally or not at all' (Her/stem IK) ?%) Goebbels understood, lor he was < onterr.pluous of explicit propaganda, dls missing the Mylhos of Alfred Kosenberg as ideological belch. The dtltUM tion between conventional |ournali-.rn and journalism-as-propagundii Is well illustrated by David McKie's l I't't .contrast of the style of the Minor and Sum newspapers in the \ ti'u general election.The Sun-campaigned with a style and;. brutal w.l which the Mirror rarely mat* bed I he difference between the pana> he ol lie- \un and the Mirrors predlclahllltv was the difference between the Mirror , |. < lion-morning Time for a change ami the Suns 'If Kinnock wins today will t», - |,.. person out of Britain please tin u off the lights.' illustrated by I pfc tUTI of Nell Klnnock's head in a light bulhT Categories: direct action Propaganda, one would imagine. If popularly identified with il,r ,,,„ organisations of the powerful < or porallon, the nation state, the pre,- * nate. the totalitarian empire. Given the particular course .1 ^ twentieth-century history. It Is hardly surprising that propaganda tieern A question of meaning an activity <»i the omnipotent monoliths, and thai perhaps we should be grateful to them for not using its persuasion alternative, coercion. The identity of propaganda in the late twentieth century shifted fundamentally in so many ways. It is especially true thai propaganda is now no longer the exclusive prerogative of the holders of power communications technology, particularly the internet, makes self-authorship possible. Fverybody now can be a propagandist. Nol even money is entirely necessary. All that is needed is determination. Seen in this light, the idea of propaganda hec< tines more demonic to some and more acceptable to others. Propaganda is not only a means by which states and organisations can sustain their power and continuity, but also offers their miniature enemies a means of opposing them, such as the propaganda of direct action, and also, for anyone who can afford a computer, cyber-propaganda. Modern propaganda as a genre is a resource both of the powerful and of the puny. Propagandist direct action which is provocative enough, such as lesbian activists abseiling Into the House of Lords, will stimulate public attention. Many intelligent citizens, who would never see themselves as victims of propaganda, are nevertheless members of single-issue groups: not everything those groups do is propaganda, and nor are those of their activities which can be described as propaganda always contemptible. Often such acolytes simply do not accept that what their group is in fact doing is engaging in propaganda. (It is necessary to enlighten them?) At its furthest extreme, direct action becomes terrorism and is represented by groups such as the Real IRA or, on a more diminutive scale, the Animal Liberation Front. Such groups eschew constitutional process: they do engage in conventional propaganda but spike it with acts of violence. For Schmid and de (iraaf (Crelinston 1Terrorism cannot be understood only in terms of violence. It has to be understood primarily in terms of propaganda. Violence and propaganda, however, have much in common. Violence aims at behaviour modification by coercion. Propaganda aims at the same by persuasion. Terrorism is a combination of the two.' Bureaucratic propaganda War propaganda and revolutionary propaganda should be seen not as the (almost) exclusive contexts for propaganda, but rather as particular variants of it. Other kinds of propaganda might include, for instance, bureaucratic propaganda - the official accounts promulgated by government departments but. also, the way they manipulate information. Thus during the 1980s the definition of unemployment" was changed about fifty times by the British government. Altheide and Johnson (1980) assert that bureaucratic organisations through official accounts of themselves (propaganda) gstji'u'iy v».imi una ^roiMiL .. riu-v iK-m-i i»H",,mv bureaucrats draw q» create a selfMUsUficatorywor- ^ the |og|c Qf . ^ reafHrm a socially construeu H, s() forlh (KaKOW Th^ formation -statistics, annual. ■ in no the demise of ^ )rmauon - aw*——-....... The political forms of P......^ ,hc state itself-have kv-» ..... grea, dicta.orsh.ps. bu, pw.. ..... ;md inUmu^^ bureaucranc pwjjganda Rcm. ......... P ^ » ^ £ saged: measures of air pollution. ior i i «nere Sere is no traffic. Information can......I*' M*™ '"character, such as the so called Parents' Charter' mailed ... every single British home under the auspices of the former Cons,-, value Education Secretary. John Pan* Then again, information can be censored or withheld, even ancle* information. The British government long cone aid items from World War 1 such as details about the trial of Sir Koger Casement or even the sinking of the Lusitania, or information about Ireland in those years What, for example, was the identity of thai master spy who from 1 884 to 1V22 gave Dublin Castle full details of the activities of Irish nationalist conspirators-We still do not know (Richard Bennell 199$) Some of what bureaucracy does is actually a propaganda activity, with the aim of increasing its power and diminishing its inconvenience. Bureaux seek the exercise of power for its own sake and to vindicate the magnitude of that power: and bureaucratic success is measured by the size of budgets and numbers of officials employed. Bureaux are organisations that seek permanence by self-perpetuation, they are thus their own self-)ustification and they seek their ends via. essentially, the control of information , in such methods as the denial of journalistic access). Incompetence is hidden energy is invested in preventing secrets, such as lhe bombing of Cambodia from being released (for example, the official persecution u Peter Wright). UUon of ^catcher Bureaucratic propaganda is I lad of Ufa |„ au T. evasions and bureaucratic fog often thrive beyond the r d VS**^ 'iCS' aganda textbooks precisely because they seem to |v the 1 fCrecn of ProP" publicly imagined to be propaganda, not hlgh-dc^ibel^1) 'S °f whal is mannered and arcane. Conventional propaganda Is equaled^ Silenl guage but here is manifest the reverse - bureaucratic langu° 'Urid ,an' to sedate and It is therefore ignored. Bureaucratic propaganda^^^ Seeks language of obfuscation and obscurity, evasion and denial1 |C,,8hl5 in the ciaJJy. seek to present itself as 'rational'. Administrative 1 d0es- ^Pe-idcological rigidities, proposals are made to seem logical and'seTf00 mtts^s indeed, the entire Nazi enterprise was often veiled In such bu^ 'dcni ~ formularies. Neutral' vehicles, e.g. reports, statistics, carry jo^^Uc .\ question of mraninq messages The normality' of bureaucratic propaganda is enhanced by its espousal of bogus rationalism, such as the claim in Britain s BSE crr.i. (Harris and O Shaughnessy I 947) that there was no clear evidence that BSE could move from anirn;ils lo humans (as if the requirements of scientific and civic veracity were the same). Moreover bureaucratic language is depersonalised, the author not an individual but a system. War as propaganda War is communication The aim is seldom the complete physical extermina-uon of the enemy but to persuade them to surrender the object of war is therefore the enemy's morale. The activity of warfare is structured by propaganda obiectives. and. partly because of this, wars are conducted inefficiently. Strategy itself is often dictated by symbolic aims - the symbolic meaning of the place, rather than whether it is the easiest route or the most easily defended The strategies of World War II are in particular a theatre of symbolism. For example. General Mark Clark's determination to capture Rome in 1944 rather than advance up Italy allowed Kesselnng to regroup. Clark could, potentially, have cut off their retreat, but was more interested in the propaganda value of capturing Rome. In the Spanish Civil War Franco's strategy was distorted by the propaganda imperative of capturing the Alcazar of Toledo. This point could be made by innumerable other examples from the most famous campaigns in history: that propaganda value is a significant military objective and often overrides a rational military calculus. Notably of course there is Hitler's inflexible refusal to make a strategic withdrawal at Stalingrad when the Wehrmacht was trapped: Stalin, conversely, would hold the right bank of the Volga at any conceivable cost. Stalingrad was the symbolic pivot of World War II - and upon its outcome hung the future of the war In World War I the equivalent was. perhaps. Verdun. Thus propaganda and war are inseparable. In the twentieth century war had meant the mobilisation of vast civilian populations. They had to be convinced. For example, by the end of 1944 Dr Coebbels even withdrew 100.000 men from the front lines of the dying Reich - the size in effect of the current British army to make a colour epic about Prussia surrounded during the Napoleonic wars. Kolberg (Herzstein 1978) Propaganda also muffles the reverse-, of war. as with Churchill's conversion of Dunkirk from physical defeat into a great (moral/rhetorical) victory. Symbolic sites can be murderously contested when they engage with national myth Nuremberg, the great stage of Nazi rallies, was militarily valueless but »tlll the target of a notorious air raid. Battle may be sought purely lor ih«- imagery it generates. The 1968 Tet offensive by the North Vietnamese was. military, a failure, and the United States was the ,lHnr Ypt the US public - with Vieucrtg appearing even n* Saybecamea US defeat because it wa- : ■ : a* such. Thus m^ llltl;, ls not lust a branch of military activtf* afitary activity itself ,8 ..'.hrmilly propagandist, in part, orenhnlv •, I „.„■ can be no final closure in the debate or. Ike meaning and definition „1 propaganda and there will always be those v.r.: icpri the idea as bogus But il the word has no meaning, under what other terms can we discuss the phenomena it purports to describe- \1< rt r.t--2 -^rms and formula-ttoni give neither coherence nor intellectual diction: a word is a class.l,. cation system, and definitions are meaningless if they would include mi yihing from Goebbels to the 'host and found*coknnn of the local news-paper in the same conceptual breath. Word' perceptions, we cannot be said to know' what we lack a language to describe, and without this particular word we become desensitised to the iibiqinty of its operation. Por example, when Governor Pataki asked that NewYorJt schools should teach the great Irish famine as a Holocaust, that is. of defixrate causation, he Is both undermining the historical primacy of the Jewish Holocaust and teaching children an erroneous lesson. The real comparator with the 20 million dead of Mao's Great Leap Forward | ] h 5 *fr-1961). and the derivative lesson on the rigid imposition i,l iv . - - : :Jeologies. is completely lost. Where propaganda is the text students come out of education not the less but the more ignorant. Why not. then, use the term? 2 {explaining propaganda Why propagandas This chapter seeks, if not to answer, then at least to understand that question better - or. more particularly, the persistence of propaganda into our own time. The salience of propaganda texts and events in history is not in doubt, although the measure of its impact is impossible to gauge and therefore permanently subject to dispute-, the visible continuity of propaganda as a mode of social mobilisation beyond the wars and dictatorships of an earlier generation and into our own age does, however, require us to seek some explanation. Where the entire communicaUons context is controlled, as in the old totalitarian dictatorships, as in the hermit kingdom' of North Korea today, the reasons for propaganda as a ubiquitous form of social control need little elaboration. What is it. v. .serious is why propagandas should still flourish in modern democracy, among a better-educated generation, one incubated moreover amidst the cacophony of mass media. 'Air cultural conditioning in Western countries includes the acquisition of learned defences against the blandishments of advocate':, and advertisers of every kind; indeed, did we not learn to filter out many of their messages, our reason and even our sanity would be in doubt. Yet propagandists continue in business via emotional appeals that exploit our uncertainty, stimulate our fantasy and take advantage of our credulity: we ask for belief, and the request is answered. Propaganda, as has been discussed, is no recent, or ephemeral, historical phenomenon. The crusades, for example, were pra^dkö on a cascade of ecclesiastical propaganda after Pope Urbans <*eiTiioil at Claremont in 1095 'Taylor 1990). since the church wished to externalise the destructive energies of the delinquent knights who were ravaging early medieval fcorope. While propaganda in some recognisable *em*eof the term has actuary been a characteristic of all societies since people first formed organised n**f «*s^ say. the ,scientthc ,e _ .. , ,,rlvlllK ln„Uc « far the signilte-nce.P^Sl I* M. '.....o.....^ century history .,^.jr,ni, god new looli of c,^ with urbanisation anc _{ >fj ril.Kflllllled ^ - meant that authors w- ■; ^the^|VC«rhalleng«U, ,_sed. Hierarchical socialow ^ omJtan, ()f ^ Ihegrtai ^; I / or rven primarily ssary. their police sta" propaganda. More- - but by citizen informants'--^ . „jf;i| mob||ifltton asto state now sought rr..- _ ' ^ , ,/)|r, tivlsJ1,lonTlu. .conscription, social<™*™»thai the threat of persuasion arose out of the reeopw" could not attain the ends the dWatorfftWgM oo eallv explain the success* propaganda today, in less naive open political culture^ ri for the perslstenoj a ,n stable, supposedly rational based and lechnocentrlc -re power of theimpav :r-". -~ '/ •< wl,n no,d I empirical evidence at all. and the tenacity of Irrational beliefs - acquired >.; ■ • v *-a "I the rational derived from the eighteenth >..--: raiv possibilities of via communications teclsnologtes (Robins ft Of. IUK7). For the modern state is. neccsear. . r.<-v apahly. the propa- People are in general not .....,,\ logic unci argu- we do not train them to be so. They may detect th« lie ami still ■r.e> believe its truth . n.nslsltfilth •id that people can respond f*vo»,r**r u, • ■ ■ igl even when that it is biased. ,da is also Utopian. While N * rrr^ ,, .„ , ,||f. „ m ^ 'AT.xh would be comprehensive^ - •,.,•/• . i u • nm„. „..n,h.t.vr . M"-wore. In the -,~r> propaganda text n^/^r-v/j/ iv„t :,„.,,.,„ liail.li iHllcs exist - the utoptan Wftom 2*„ , HlI|'h ^ Propaganda, . - - • • /.V. ~;'^-Mo Isonthinkable without some rtstrm of fhatevid ths w, i'i ■ the obiect of idealist striving. " 1 |,u tins chapter we first advance a thavry baud »»r gu,IM, _j*ty of propaganda today l»et pstrftndarly In u„ amotion IT (1 * -esponse to stimuli - - i ,|„"" 1,,'|von appeal that .i!ta:« the cynicism r - -Utopian vision sometimes the nitive processes - che the continued beliefs'. 9tK4 pretation and explore how the temporary parochial I. issue groups as j all loyalties are present, for where and thus the activity not the every level of our activities: 12) in spite of from the spectacle (if failed Utopias the of things still amuses the activists sr.: 111 hen there are aspects of our cog-information which may account lor - <. is to propaganda, such ;^ de's- : Mid the permanent possibilities of inter-In the second section of this chapter we > i genre is explained by the : - -, ■ coercive control, weaker..r.z v sources, the as< ertf '■' I \mfb-d pobocal expression. In such a conterL the possibility of defection is it has to be continually rer cannot cease, making Why propaganda * approaches Emotion: the Most propa; For Hitler, per They are like a abstract reason complement her despise a petitioner The notion of choice, as rati only of econo mists long clung maker: "but as Seare *1995$ what to eat in a ordered preferences indifference curw Laurence Moore Cults f 19891 -is totally bereft of mm s social and em ries as those wh.c ' as a calculus of rather than rational in the generation of collective' state has been determined less by for a strong force which W0M the masses love a commander, and is the core of propa; whether political or rven the governing | science and marketing. Yet iv-maximising rational i t ts implausible to claim, in have some set of antecedent M calculations to gel on to a tdO Shaughnessy 20031. Intact-God (1994) and Marc . er by a message even at all. and the appeal is t2000) contradicts and consumer decision i various options. Instead he "S deliberation in decision making as in the main descriptive - !h terms of self-described or other-described .mages of the choices ava.i-" whether a product or whatever. If decision making docs indeed resi 0„ mJj tiple alternative descriptions, propaganda s opportunity to persuade |le. in composing them. Faith can be based exclusively on trusi w„h0ut ^ real understanding. This is particularly true of the less well educated, wh,, tend to use the likability heuristic', choosing primarily on the basis of fCe| ing - the implicit favourite model - and then finding other evidence to justify choice. The search for evidence becomes subsequent, and not antecedent to. conviction. The rational model of decision making ignores the power of emotional prejudice to outweigh illuminated factual truth, our ability subjectively to decry a fact as false even when we know it objcciivdy to be true. In a study by Rozin ft al. (1986) people willingly ate fudge shaped as a disc, but much less so when it was configured as animal droppings, and similarly with sugar which they saw poured from a bowl and into a box which was then arbitrarily named sodium cyanide'. Known facts cannot bleach out negative associations and the powerful emotions they inspire The power of the emotional appeal in persuasion also arises partk out of our difficulty in resolving uncertainty, where there is no logical path but only multiple risk. Take the case of genetically modified foods. The concerned citizen remains mystified. One set of partisans point to the potential of CM crops to liberate the Third World from hunger, they argue also that fewer pesticides are required, less land needs to be cultivated, allowing more of the natural environment to flourish. Their opponents also claim closure in the debate by simple reference to the rhetoric of "Frankenstein foods' Previously we have argued |O Shaughnessy and OShaughnessy 2(M) J, lha. do no. react m proportion to the probability of some particular outcome emstem* emotions exist independently of assessments of logical probability n fTct simply to imagine an event causes emotion, even if th<- Zi , come is highly unlikely there is always wishful thinking while i and uncertainty create a vigorous market for dogmatic reass CUnty Today there ls no real reason to believe that rationality m publľ"tľ has greater sway than in the past. Some would argue that tod °urse cultural drift towards more extrovert emoiion-dnven forms of ^ {^CTt is a and therefore of persuasion, with our inquisitorial media < !„,'/,.. ^,i,viour shows, etc Many public manifestations of a mood of anti-vc "clonal u,ik attempt at reason: the rejection of genetically modified crow u,hu no I_,h_~l I___;„ ____.r I_____ . ľ* In not irranooaL was hyperbolic in expression. If human being* wer ° ,lSC'f rational dtaaon makers there would be little need for propaganda decisionaimply foals, they therefore Invoke values, and the MDoQoimh!^ "'at Explaining propaganda 41 OPretS, DOWN ind Undergird those values. Decisions involve choicei and trade-oils BJOd these ..re seldom value-free or devoid of emotion li vvnuld be ., ver) peculiar, unique perhaps, propaganda that relied on reason alone B superficial, 01 social, assent might be secured by mere logical exposition but often nol conviction and the commitment that Hows from conviction: indeed, rhetoric and feelings have by a tradition going back to Aristotle been viewed as the oppositcs of reason and logic, even gendered opposttes, feminine and masculine. Persuasion and propaganda may involve ractlral appeals to reason, but in general a process of logical exposition is peripheral lo it. Rarely can a process of logical demonstration entirely convince, since it cannot remove all doubts - and where there are doubts, reassurance and therefore further persuasion are needed. We have claimed (O'Shaughnessy and O'Shaughnessy 200 } i that in symbolic logic, by contrast, there is only one solution - answers are demonstrated, errors exposed, in a deductive process. In life, decisions both trivial and life-changing must often review different persixrtives. different interpretations, so that persuasion becomes possible. Thus the appeal of propaganda is in general to emotion and not to reason. It proceeds by dogmatic assertion, as if there could be no debate on the propositions advanced: in Le Bon's words an orator wishing to move a crowd must make an abusive use of violent affirmation' (Herzstein 197Xi Dogmatic assertion does convince, it elevates mere value judgement to the status of truth or law and. contrary to Petty and Cacioppo (19811, people-are persuaded by such when they are content to delegate their thinking lo others, be it pundit, priest or politician. Constant assertion can stun consciousness, naturalising the perverse as normal and interrupting internal dialogue to prevent counter-arguing. For propaganda is not a nuanced production: in it assertion has little qualification and the arguments of opponents are parodied rather than rebutted. There is frequent recourse to ad hominem: opponents presented as either bigoted or self-interested: repetition, simplification and black-white polarisation. Reagan, for example, would use anecdote and metaphor rather than argument, introducing citizens who had performed some selfless act. promulgating a never-never land of trickle-down effects and Laffer curves. Evidence is not to be assessed or explained, but manipulated or invented. Propaganda texts contain scant recognition or capacity for intellectual abstraction, they are actively antagonistic to abstract thought, eschewing the tentative, the complex line of argument, the weighing and debating of evidence. The concern of the propagandist is not with how we think but how we feel. There are numerous instances of propaganda and advertising exploiting this fear of emotional manipulation by claiming an appeal grounded purely in reason. This is. of course, an emotional appeal in itself. Governments are Defininq what and reoson. 42 ,„ m iking il in the face of some catastrophic error „ u,„u, pmnc to emotio„. and this is the rh° > ,„„„„ ft* r<,v,n » h ^'^never the state or big bul» „ „, (be propaganda argume C^nda aimed .1 sophisticated targets has. however, long ^ ,'..... -Irv S PW- homage ,» reason. As U „, World War II did not give up the blond beas and yellow pert, .::,;„ bu, took into greater account the need to expla n what people ,,,, for and what institutions they were defendmg. Ever, Goebbels oopelled U> create an intellectual' weekly. Das Re.ch. to counterbalance the intellectually moribund Nazi media. l.topia Ifa b propaganda would seem to register the existence of a Utopia - it can be l hoped-for Utopia, or a Utopia irretrievably buried in the past. Many polnir al extremist! are disappointed Utopians, and the vision of a perfect world or world order, its possibility, perfectibility or existence in the past, is tfv: undisclosed presence behind propaganda. This would account for the har shoes! of some propagandas and their rejection of any offer to compromise, as the achievement of whatever Utopia their creators have in mind QOdnoally eludes their grasp, as. in an imperfect world, it is bound to do. It '' Ihe impatience with the messiness. fluidity and compromise of the real world that marks the propaganda order. Thus activists rejected the claim of the first deaf Miss America. Heather Watson, to be ambassador for the deaf Sunday Telegraph, 26 March 1995). Hard-line advocates of cultural deaf-nev. resented the fact that she had learned to lip-read such that it was diffi-. , I, .o gueas B disability. I he current orthodoxy dictated that sign language .s the only acceptable form for communication for the deaf. Deaf advocates protested, saying that she had no right to represent peo^^i^S she was unfamiliar with. In the words of one deaf U*Z ^ CUlture clinically deaf, but she didn't have the social identity of a d"''/ * A vision of the perfectible does sustain belief It assuaticrhIk PerS0n of the newly urbanised twentieth-century publics and h ,insecurities mankinds need for meaning and a coherent value system IV S3tiSfy haps help explain fundamentalisms with their contempt fo.Would P"" lence of the secular world. From socialist realist art to the irnb arnbiva- of consumer advertising, the dull footage' is edited out in° cstasies 11982) terms, a Panglossian best in the best of all possible worldSChUds0n s al. (1986) have analysed Reagan's 1984 election campaign as S ^dams el lation of romantic pastoralism'. One photograph that appeared"1311^11" Exphinmj r^;.. depicts Reagan beneath a huge mural of Reagan , ,„.„., v |,,lh |.1Mll• nxers - miki! at the virtues for which Reagan oslmMhly thrift, hard work patriotism, etc. Such Imagery occurred In hi-. v,•...,„ »dver tising and campaign btopic: 'America had wandered. I.. n,ld U and the symbolism of traditional rural life becomes a way .»1 telling ui whai we had left behind. But this need for Utopia is what unites, com epiually and slyhs tieally. all propaganda. A yearning for the primordial loi il.r pure lor a perfect world, in fact - is prelapsarian fantasy. ForMuvea Eliade 11991). we long for something altogether dillerenl from the present instant, something either inaccessible or p*rmanenil> lost, in fact he argues that it is really a yearning for paradise Itself 01 • I hi| aigumaul, behind the hectonng. the meanness perhaps of am b propaganda, lies tin-search for paradise, rage at its loss and some half-arti< ulaied idea that ii once existed Hence. : : sample. Rubin (Kevles I994; \umm.mv i'-ehel Carson's vastly influential The Silent Spring 11 962) thus: 'such popularisations hare an excessively evangelical tone, akin to thai ol ih« n niprrance movement, which urges environmentalism upon us not only io prevrvc the earth but also to achieve a kind of personal salvation \o-.ialgja is one form of this paradise - in Eliade's view, the most abject nostalgia div U/srs the nostalgia for paradise. This. I think, is true of many poliiir -d < ulior.-s for example, the yearning in later Rome for the pristine. as< rti M ol the Republican era- This is no mere romantic speculation Wiener 1198 h. for example, in his English Culture and the Decline of the liuhr.trml Spirit demonstrates the way a yearning for a lost rurality. an an adla of Mrrrie higJand. permeated the culture, with negative consequences in Uis view In World War II this rural England was. time and again, the symbol in posters and films such as .Mrs Miruver. But nostalgia is not perhaps cx.u trj the right word to describe what is going on in propaganda. As Webster 11 'iHHt says of populist rhetoric, it is important to see it as a strategic mobilisation of the past rather than nostalgia' Indeed, the pasts of the propagandist bear little relation to the histoncaJ past - the Nazi creation, for example, of aboriginal Germania'. was largely an exercise in fiction, and Webster argn«-> that the Amencan new right' was a mass of contradictions. It mari.ijvl conscript a mythologzsed past social corrimunity in the service of free-market rhetoric. Reagan has been said to speak for old values in current ar / --est V and like the nation, of wtuch he is such a representative figure, he in ' or.iradu lion in terms-a hero of theconsumer culture preaching H'- I'roi. ' The anthropologist Mary Douglas (1996) argues thai Ihr most basic choice that a rational person has to make is the choice about the kind ol societv to Irve in or. if you like, his or her preferred life style. People are viewed as cnritmuousty 'trying to bring about their ideal form oh ornmumty life. In other words, the subordinate value for any person it his or rwrr iaeai Defining what and reasot}. 44 ""9^ ,„v and it is the emotional attachment to this idea WKl fo™ of common, v^ would view human beings as dominates as a concern co-ordinating prtaeWL? ich all dominates as a ^ ^ infers the co-ordinating principle J Utopians, so prolcsl against other competing waySof £ consumer purchase » minority view, the utopianism inscribed h 'ri; SS^M- no, merely exphcable b«, perhaps ^ its persuasive force. Always open to persuade: „hv the activity of persuasion can never cease . .au. nrvn to oersuasion. and therefore to that We are always, at «J^*^^ We may on occasion disobe variant of persuasion known as propaganoa. y ^ the most dearlv held pnnciple or ideal, smce principles are never specific com-ZZs b Z neral rules, thus raising the possibility of deviance in any car. J m^ We may be environmentally conscious shoppers but lapse on occasion: as Levttin and M.Uer , 1979, show, the relationship between general ideology and spectfic choice is not strong. Our choices are not linear projections from our principles - ,f they were, our beliefs would be extraordi-narily tenacious and saturate every action we undertook. Many decisions are complex and ultimately incoherent, drawing upon myriad beliefs and values, some contradictory, some changing in intensity according to context, if our principles do represent imprecise general rules rather than specific commands, the possibility of persuasion must exist in perpetuity, since there is always a potential openness in the application of the general rule to the specific case, a flexibility propaganda can always exploit. The art of propaganda lies in changing perspectives, and to change perspectives we have to alter interpretation, to interpret the emotion-arousing situation in a different way so people reassess its significance. This is a debate not about the truth of facts in themselves but about their meaning, and there is no challenge offered to values per se but to value judgements, which are reinterpreted. This process is in its fundamentals emotional, not. as de Sousa (1990) says, some sequence of logical inference but of emotional argument with the aim of persuading the audience to share a perspective or conjure up a certain experience. Only then, when both parties are conscious of sharing the same perspective, can rational argument and logical inference proceed. The cunning propagandist will not proceed bv assault. The targets and values will appear to have been left intact and the new argument will stress how the new interpretation coheres with the old values. For example the Irish Georgian Society sought to combat national ist prejudice against the preservation of Irish country houses as relics of colonial rule by proclaiming them the handiwork of Irish craftsman and Explaining proixignndti 4s artisans, and thus worthy of ,,-m,, .„,.,„ ,,, lhis scmsc gg()d r , subversive, since onlv by suh,.., ■ •„, - ...gftft tfve persuasion proceed Com mercial ads. for example. ma> ■.. ,\ u, assuage guilt through reinterpret* tion. particularly violation-, of t*M ml,-, acquired from past author.!-figures like parents, hence KtOfH ky I rltd Chicken identified its core marketing problem as guilt, whir h .1 sought 10 assuage with the slogan 'Its nice tofecl so good about a meal (AflfcM and My and theories may linger on even after their intellectual rejection, 10 IWfiPnM what Thompson (1979) calk excluded monsters' - for example Weber's thesis on Protestantism and the rise of capitalism. Thus explanations for the vAU < nv» nev,propaganda may he in the fact that many beliefs and attitudes cxlnl unknown to us. Propaganda is often effective where it resonate*'. surfacliiK dchwarH 1973) half-subrrierged. barely articulated fears and »%p»r»H"m that He beneath the level of everyday consciousness, I homr/.on hMhh Tlvnru (1979) has relevance here. 46 DefinÍn9What^rea Inthlstheo^ **> as a kind of deU ^totoSípropaganda can appeal, arous^dcotenmitiesthatS The example of the Balkans ts pertinen here, where a « h had occurred within the context of World War II was refought. ^ recrudescence of the old labels and the old warpaint. It ,s also trUe oi stereotypes, which do aot die so much as hibernate: propaganda refreshes and remvigorates them. Clinton, for example had not been high tax. high spenď but that image of the Democrats can always be easily resurrectedby i heir Republican antagonists. The impact of propaganda can be very long-term indeed, encouraging adherence to a cause long alter defeat has become inevitable or even already occurred. Hopeless causes still have life left in them, testament to the enduring power of propaganda. There are many reasons for this: we do indeed have aspirations to bring about something but. on occasions, recognise our goals will never be realised (e.g. to reintroduce laws prohibiting pornography) but pursue hopeless causes because it makes us feel we are doing something to bring about our vision: the cause may be lost, but it is not silent. Lost causes litter the landscape of history and pass on from one generation to another. Expectancy theory is impoverished when it ignores the expressive meaning of action, with expressive meaning involving the emotions. Expressive action contrasts with instrumental action. While instrumental action is a means, designed to get things done, expressive action permits us to ventilate our feelings or emotion. (O'Shaughnessy and OShaughnessy 2003) Second, whereas beliefs may be changed by new information, emotions do not necessarily cohere with them, at least not straight away They may continue to carry the charge created by past propaganda: beliefs have an after-life as well as a shelf life. Self-deception A further explanation for the persistence of propaganda is its role in self persuasion; the propagandist, whether party activist or Mormon ary. internalises adherence by the activity of propagandising0 jmiSS1°n* words, the function of the propaganda can degenerate into s ■ ° ° psychological needs of those who produced it in the first ljV1Cing tne Herzstein (1978) has argued that by 1944 Goebbels was makin^ Th"S ganda as much for himself and the leadership as for the masses' He Pr°pa that the later products of Nazi cinema and the slogan 'Victory in deathf81*68 resented 'visions of salvation*. For the Nazi elite films such as the colour ^ Explammq propaganda Rite of So, nfn p. where al the end eternity beckons with a heavenly chorus were allegories ol (he end I he aim was to transcend the doom-laden ores ent via belief in an immortality conferred by the approving judgements of history and future generations of Germans. Self-deception is thus another consequence of propaganda: it may also be an intentional objective. We can become co-conspirators in our own self deceit. Self-deception' is not necessarily always motivated by an aversion to some trulh but. on occasions, simply motivated by affection for some-particular falsehood. (This is particularly true when through self-deception we neutralise an ethical dilemma.) Some, for example, continue to believe that the prac lice of the Roman Catholic religion was once illegal in Ireland, although it never was. Self-deception involves refusal to face facts or to lend them an utterly perverse but self-serving interpretation. Often the deft propagandist wants us to do this, the aim of the propaganda being to serve up plausible reasons for that frivolous interpretation, or for those 'facts' being untrue. And the potential is endless. The historian David Irving, for example, can describe Auschwitz as a labour camp with an unusually high mortality rate [Dally Telegraph, 13 April 1994). Presumably he seriously believes this. And any evidence can be twisted round: he can assert that Hitler gave no recorded, direct instruction for the Holocaust ftrue. but in the context meaningless). When challenged with the lack of evidence for a world Jewish conspiracy, for example, the paranoid antise-mitic will claim lhal this merely illustrates the cunning of the Jews. While we see this as mere self-deception or irrationality, there are also other explanations. The truth can be impossibly painful - and self-deception may thus be a necessary strategy for survival: we are seduced by the propagandists because I hey offer us a way of coping. People thus persist in adherence to beliefs despite all the evidence to the contrary. So Germans continue lo believe in the essential decency of the German army, the Wehrmacht, In World War II while fully accepting the evil of the overtly Nazi institution!*: many found great difficulty in accepting the extent to which the army itself was compllcll in Nazi atrocities, as the outraged reaction to an exhibition on this theme in Germany revealed (Crimes of the Wehrmacht: Dimensions of the War of Annihilation. 1941-1944. Berlin Institute ol ( ooirmporary Art. November 2001). Moreover self-deception may mean simply adherence to dominant values, avoiding the social awk-wardncv, ol questioning Ihem, at least publicly, and the embarrassment of standing out: self-deception cun be a group phenomenon and not just apply to the Individual. If propaganda succeeds with part of a community, it can in fact Impact all of a community since even majorities can be tempted simply lo > "long' wl,h ,ne slronSesl oPinion ratncr lhan lhe most represent alive BSBBBBBBeaBSBBSBBBBBBieiBBBBBBBBBBBBBr^^ Fantasy Hyperbole does not make the mistake of asking for belief-itisa f Zch we are invited to share, exploit and even paranoid, but the f ^ does nevertheless affect perceptions of he reality One form of hyper> classic atrocity propaganda, for examp e the Bntish claim in World that the Germans melted bodies for fat. Such exaggerations work n because people necessarily believe them but because they are willi * partners in a process of self-deceit of which they may be fully consci0us They want to see their own darkest fears and angry broodings made visible and'luminous. Propaganda does that for them. In other words, there is a political truth that exists independent of the objective factors in a given sit. uation. Propaganda is hyperbole - not all propaganda, certainly, for hyper. bole is a manifestation rather than a condition of propaganda. The aim of hyperbole-fantasy is to trigger self-persuasion by getting people to imagine some event, encounter or person: they talk themselves into believing or desiring something via this process of self-imagining. Much consumer advertising is also an invitation to share a fantasy, with the hope that imagining using the product will create an inner dialogue. Hyperbole became the rhetorical reflex of Serb media in the fragmentation of ex-Yugoslavia. For some time before the Serb invasion of Kosovo, the Serb media carried anti-Izvet propaganda claiming that he would establish a Muslim state. Pointing out that non-partisan sources of information such as the BBC were available to Serbs. Zimmerman H995) claims that people did not want to know the truth: they seem to know the difference between news and propaganda, yet when a choice is available most choose propaganda. The argument is that propaganda is often a co-production and that people lend to It a suspension of their disbelief, and they have a need to see what they recognise as their own fantasies rphJ, a ,. media, their own lies to themselves 10 of the public space. When critics claim that nrol?!! ^ UeS they perhaps envisage a passive recipient WhiT ,maniPulative'' exchanges may resemble this hypodermic form what propaganda the propaganda process may be more subtle. The id , ° 8°ing 0n 'm misled strikes at the root of the concept of man aT peop^e wi'»ngly maker, yet surely this is what occurred in Serbia Rwand rati°na' decision While much propaganda can be said to involve exa ^ eIsewhere-almost, is part of its definition - and indeed active misrepre86^1'0" " that> niably it sometimes involves the manufacture of falsehood11131'00' Unde" that its texts are even forgeries. Here we are in the realms of a^f^6 extent tion and deceit.Yet propagandists can do this almost openly with^ fa°rica" ence even conscious of the falsehood being perpetrated, becorni ^ auc^~ co-conspirators of an act wherein thev themselves are in a cf ^"'"g ense the fc*vr/.ii'»"W propaganda 49 ,ul,ms. Once again the explanation is ,h,y are ri.„„y bcm mvUed fe share ,n a mutual fantasy ,, .....,,. ,..........,„,„.,, |)y ^ who U)() ^ ,° reach lor words like gulhble .„„1 „;„v,- . utumlni the audience, have no recognition Of the techniques birlfig used An example „1 (his Is morphine ,|ohnson 194, i. When Prolrsso, Harold See stood In ihe \wh Alabama Supreme court election, one advertisement showed a skunk fading or mor-phing' Into the image of Harold Bm w.th Um wools Some things you can smell a mile aw a> Harold See does,, t think average Alabamans are smart enough to serve on juries.' Stamped on his face were the words 'slick Chicago lawyer'. A self-styled •Committee lor family Values" produced an advertisement claiming that See had a secret past and had abandoned his family, allegations he strongly disputed In lad. he won. Another case, in California, related to the anuria ol fwalie jaar Old Polly Klaas. In 1996 one of the Democratic candidates lor Congress. Professor Walter Capps. was attacked thus by commercials: when the murderer of Polly Klaas got the death penalty he deserved, two people were disappointed . . . Richard Allen Davies. the murderer. And Walter Capps.' Commercials showed images of Davies and Capps with the labels Davies the murderer' and Capps the liberal'. Davies and Capps were run" as a kind of double ticket. Congressman Vic Fazio found thai thfl fact of Davies was morphed through computer graphics into his own even though he had not voted against the death penalty for several decades (Johnson 1997). Why propaganda? (2) Modern conditions Social control Propaganda, whatever else It may be. functions as a form of social control in the modern world, a substitute for social coercion and for more passive forms of social persuasion. Some social control is always necessary, but its potentials remain both liberal and illiberal, given the question of its form, extent and source (who wields it). Propaganda is 'soft' social control, prison is hard' and generally the most extreme alternative. Ullul (1973) sees propaganda as made necessary by technological society and that its end 'is the integration of man into the technological system'. He believes that we should teach people to live In and igalnfl Technology. Many have echoed him. Thus propaganda is subsumed Into the form and structure of social control' (Robins el al. 1987). Propaganda Is seen as a key element in the ability of advanced industrial and post-Industrial societies to organise and integrate themselves and exert some sort of authority over their individualistic publics: otherwise how can we have a public body but not a public mind? Defining what and rrH.„„ 50 S"r,|"«^ . fhis isbccaust- cannon li.is bW de-legitimised' (Robins el«/. ,9h7 onVof the great ar.s to bi Cultivated Propaganda ,s the cheaper ^ doing this ILasswcll 1971 )< Social change Change entails uncrr.ain.v. ind it is to the insecuril.es created by maj0r social upheavals thai propaganda has often, in the past, appealed. Such uncertainty can be extreme enough to constitute a national mood - the classic study by Canlril I |9h U. which examined perverse social/national movements such as NaiUm, illuminated the evolution of pan-national moods. In such moods of nervous pessimism we yearn for the security we have lost and the emotional anchors that have been taken from us; there is a huge market in nostalgia, exploited by politicians, and by advertising: social change in particular is emotional because there can be no non-users' (O'Shaughncssy and O'Shaughnessy. 2003). The propagandist will thus contrast the turbulent or inadequate present with some imagined Golden Age - this was irue not least in the case of the Romans themselves, whose literature and political rhetoric often sought to contrast the degeneracy of the empire with the imaginary austere and stoical virtues of the ancestral republic embodied in figures like Cincinnalus: their habit, the strategic mobilisation of the past to critique the present, found many subsequent imitators. The mood is one of fear as social values erode, the familiar disintegrates, the old loyalties are betrayed, the old truths falsified and people grasp for simple certainties and reassurance, with persuasion by authoritarian figures and didactic assertion rather than logical argument. The question Why propaganda?' may thus be partially answered by reference to the prevailing level of social insecurity: Nazi propaganda, for rZlnv^ " u ft?* leVd °f rCSP°nSc umi1 *« «» ^ million unemployed Germans. While a society may in general feel secure particu- ar subgroups may not. In the early 199()s. for example. ,he preSow Wgh level of job security enjoyed by middle managers d.sanoe-.n d !u the mutual loyalty they received from, and gave to ZZ «"57 , they were being delayered and downsized, and a wkZ* i " agerial literature, often anecdotal and anti-empiricist aor—JSX man" to their insecurities. "PP<.urcd to minister Information overload Another reason for the rise of propagandists forms <»| persuasion society lies in the very complexity of life today - the pressure of mult^1}1" Explaining information sconced to digest information-fort h. The trend of the cation of inform vision and their The offer of proj cognitive misers. We sumer decision : on the advice of (1997) says, a r< fact that people ■ the pronouncements of minor decision, had to be tion for a single day: *si the possibility of Si and the consequent environment Is esrtSSl e-mail, direct mail and v> was towards the multipH-~ - I 1 channel satellite tele-■uginablc new height - 'A e become, of necess of issues, from our con of other countries, todeper. I be impossible. As May hew works cannot ignore the independent verification on every issue, if every ned we could not fun- -- f'. s ol others thai offer . Ambivalent opinion The opportunity for the propaganda* les essencaily in the confusion, the tentativeness of pubuc opcraon. V.e are sesdom without opinions, bat. mostly, they are weakly heidL That b why the minority church of strong believers in anything from the right to bear arms VRAi in the United States to the pro- and anu-toxbunting lobbies m the United Kingdom light the polemical war so vigorously Pa haps we seek to avoid the intellectual labour of reason and the moral labour of keeping an open mind. Moreover communication has to penetrate none and contextual density and this in itself is a reasor V ■-;/..-.< ■■ - -: propaganda, since they guarantee us a more ..£efy bearing. For we base become Toquevillean ■ to excess - only the lurid bestirs us from introversion and petty cares. We also exhibit a latent want (or variety, assay from that familiar which reassures but also bore*, ui Today political action. poatfcaJ parthspafion of every kind, becomes a part of the leisure market and competes lor money- and consumers with other kinds of leisure activities. The dense of parties and in particular the class structures which ga-.e uvsrri *n aoioaaatk corpus of support has led. in electoral terms, to a new constamertsns Id sttnch the loyalty of voters is rented. The coalescence of spending power and Sew Media creates choices, mar, partisanship, of every Jdntf. becomes enfeebled and the inherited wisdom and mythological structures of comnaaottes expire with their decline. Persuasion tenter? kl up U* v<** Tht nefnttaDon of multiple pressures make* People vulnerable, sjsj ajggf local stfcsflbm represented one possible defence Definimi what and reoso 52 "S^ 1. H^narture from traditional ways of knowing «*,«.«. propaganda^depart", "V V m°re Semic is the spaee vacated by tradition. S a> ""I f",he lety f social integrating mechanisms ,„ > for propaganda i f tradiHona, inherited loyalties: ^^^^Z^ of community and 5, ^SlKS— A" y is ,nta„ve. and^ LuZrtty ,s negotiated, persuasion becomes central. Single-ivsuc groups Another manifestation arising out of the fragmentation of the old monolithic certainties and the social organisations that were their expression are single-issue groups, and their ubiquity is a driving force behind propaganda (see Chapter 5). They were the political phenomenon of the late twentieth century. It is through propaganda that they are created and sustained and impact the legislative agenda. Single-issue groups arise as an organised response to an emotional call to action: a consequence of propaganda therefore further becomes a manufactory of it. for it would be difficult to describe the literature and generated imagery of single-issue groups in any other terms. Some of them are now actually bigger than the political parlies, as animal rights, abortion and so forth intrude on to mainstream agendas and usurp them (Richardson 1995). The emotional satisfactions of adherence to a single-issue group are stronger than party activism for many because there are fewer ideological compromises. They exert an immediate emotional appeal. For an issue can be personalised in the way a political party cannot be. the issue becomes our' issue, and participation becomes a hedonistic consumer activity, and also an act of social display. There is thus a symbolic aspect to single issue membership, it becomes part of our identity, one of the ways in which we articulate our social self News manufacture A further reason for the pervasive extent of modern propagand 1* press's need for a condensed story with a hero and villain and ^ that the press is enlisted, though perhaps unintentionally, as d r m°ra' S0 a propaganda battle. This demand for a story is inherent in the organ^"* *° and culture of the press itself, and derives from both the imperative'5311011 sity of news 'production' and humanity's deep-seated need for rnyths^h S" give structure and meaning to the fluid, amorphous events of hfe. The lo /•x/'/<»»'".'//,r"'""'"'"/" Si nf a t<)«> have subscribed to an entirely behaviouristic theory of propaganda. cmsii 56 Ih-lhiinu what ,„„/ „.„ Social psychology (sec Webber 1992) SodalcognitionsOj the self: self-awareness. When sell awareness e, f,^ we are less likely to act in accord with our values. I lie slsttc- ol reduced awareness is known as deindividuation. which can he created by conditions, including immersion in a group, physical or so< ,.,1 },nonyn or by arousing and distracting conditions. These are I be , ond.t.or.s W|,,f, we are less likely to be influenced by personal Integl H y I Ins immersion ,r,, group can be achieved when the propagandist has organisations at h.sd,s. posal such as the Young Pioneers in Soviet Russia lor even the immensely successful Young Conservatives in 1950s Britain). All these conditions of group emotion, physical and social anonymity and distracting conditions were present at the Nuremberg rallies. Jacques Bllul stressed how critical for propaganda was enrolment in this type of proselytising organisation: prop, aganda needs a membership list. The success of some types of propaganda such as telcvangelism stems from precisely this sense ol the presence of the crowd. People commit acts after joining organisations such as the Irish Republican Army which they would never contemplate as individuals. The German Nazis in particular focused on the group, and there were membership organisations for everybody (including university professors, on whom punishing demands for physical fitness were indicted! Grunberger 1991). Self-motivation. Self-motivation covers the desire for self-consistency. A particularly strong appeal in propaganda is to sell iiisidu anon (to retain our social prerogatives and deny them to others, for example I. and there is often much to justify. Advertising, for example, often seeks to give permission to our extravagance and hedonism, so that post-purchase justification is its critical object. Ronald Reagan provided rhetorical justification for inequality and free-market fundamentalists told the United Slates that high unemployment was good for it. Another major self-mot.vniion is the protection of self-esteem, which is also serviced by propaganda and this applies not only to individuals but also to nations. Propaganda is a distorting mirror. Reaganite propaganda flattered, and drew attention away from its civic profligacy. Even Churchillian rhetoric could on occasion ingratiate and assuage national complacency. Social information. We seem particularly hungry for Information about others and rely heavily on several forms of social Information Thu Hons of traits, or generalisations about behaviour are nnh. s PcrccP" ,,u ii i ii vers ill even though the attachment of a trail as a descriptive label involves the error f ignoring exceptions. Propagandists deploy the Ureal header traits ° medium through which all Leader actions are to be interpreted- such asceticism (Adolf Hitler), virility (Mao), grandfather of i|,c ,,.„', t**s •■•nion (de Valera). matriarchy (Golda Meir). and other enunciated traits Include thi like the family man (Blair), the tough Leader (Thatcher), the patriot (Bush £xp, also his own role as a cat lug lather figure. It is not merely the di< iilt(,r^' - ides the paternity, lor father surrogates can also be retrieved ^ history and perform the paternalistic role from beyond their graves.^ dims did this very frequently with Führer surrogates such as Bismarck^ Frederick the Great. Another way, of course, in which totalitarian pTQ^ ganda expressed the patriarchal order was in the many instances whert dictators were lilmed or photographed with children. The propaganda creation of the political family' extends beyond the building up of father figures Sometimes there are also son figures, and this is particularly popular with revolutionaries - Castro and Guevara, for exam pie. or perhaps the role given to Bttdur von Schirach as leader of the Hitler Youth, or indeed in some senses the relation between Izmin and Stahnas propaganda protected it (although Stalin implicitly conceptualised the relationship as Messiah Apostle) the locus of propaganda remains to enunciate elements of paternitv: the idea is of an all-knowing authority under whose benevolent gaze people regress to childhood and the pain of decision making is taken from them. Of course, there are mother figures as well. Propaganda has often conceived of the nation state itself as mother, as fertile provider. Indeed, in war propaganda women often seem to assume the roles of mother to their menfolk rather than the role of lover and wife. Then again, war films made with propaganda intent often seem to create groups of Individuals, typically an army unit, who are socially involved with each other but replicate again family roles in a kind of alternative military domesticity. Thus there is the mother role, the baby role. etc. The army Is the larger family. Such films even mirror the family life cycle as the •babies" grow up and rebel and eventually lake wer the leadership of the family. In US Ulms in particular, such groups ol soldiers have often represented different ethnicities and national subgroups, implicitly giving the idea of the nation as family. Another variant of the family idea which suffuses propaganda Is to depict subject or 'Inferior' peoples as children, the colonial ran- then assumes the Pat7,na,u0,C• AS l'hiUir0U' SU^*tl.peoP,es are innocent and enthusiastic and babble in a strange way. but have a need for discipline and tutelage These traits are all visible, for example, in a film like Sanders of the River '1935) with Paul Robeson, though Alexander Korda. as former llhu commissar in the short-lived communist government of Mein Kim In II GKulik 1990). would probably have denied he was making propai»andiUbr British imperialism. Others would be less sure. A psychoanalyst would be particularly intrigued by the salience of s • uality in propaganda, both as an inducement but more particularly area* ***** P"'Plcs and races are seen as a sexual m~. - - - •»«•'»* Purity of, hed„mi,.,.'.v:."-. . " ' ■H-N-xi. were P-rticulorK v.o.Z/;; ^ I, fcM^«ir,ct,ve women and men of subject ^ZT^ W^ZTmP ° ^ COnstrucUon of a subject peoX thai ^ " ':' Promiscuous- *™ propaganda - , ....... the terrible dangers of racial contamination: Prance, for examnL — ---------—-•• ■ '»>!«.. M7i example ^aj, ju Alrtcan soldiers, was depicted as the racial potaoner of Eurrl> —'- 1978» ft to r*A merely the sexual attractiveness of enemies we must be warned against- It has often been integral to the social construction of the enemy that he 1» teen as ■ sexual violator too. and the theme of sexual violation. » atrocity propaganda, is particularly strong. The enemy is and sometimes explicitly a rapist (for example the 1918 HoHy- '" P. hi wr Heast of Berlin) vVarandm.....11 a Hied and da of World War 1. (ierman atrocities were often depicted as against women, while the reaction of British soldiers to the of Nurse Ixliih Cavell surfaced the same kind of anger -see Chapter 4 The enemy as sexual violator does indeed seem the common currency of afl for propaganda, for example the Italian fascist poster of a Mack. - - < r ' arrying a classical statue of a beautifu .-. man RhodtaJ ] 99 5r the subtext is obvious. Of course the threat of sexual violence can be anada» propaganda by both sides, by the defender to create rage and by fight, that is. The World War 1 song We've watched you playing ttfcfce* ' - don't want lo lose you. but we think you ought to go" is an mw * l,v d many limes in propaganda posters and productions with slo-aansaudi as Women of Britain say Gď or Ts your besi boy in khaki* Thus ........... m, i he definition of malenea*. not to be ■ olaVr ■ Uh ease Z be a eU I.....i amaiculated. ('What did you do fa the war. Daddy, , Uměné* Hut for the British such modes of persuas.on were of cr.t, ......,„ lance because conscription was not Introduced until the . ... ,„ war. Appeals in recruUment propaganda were to trach-ZZu, , ol maleness. The genders are^allocated .........Uyut bravely, the women to look after the home here s sug inrn.li, /ii/ii r , . virginity of the motherland itself- ffWrtt iA ih« if /i»j/inlly. hut also tne \iik>«"^ 60 1 hll"l"H whui the two are equated. Women me also in......„.. abstract Co ^ as liberty (Madeleine). ,ncew«t^ There is also an overt erotic sir ai um m ihr linage ol propaganda r lions.forexample.connectwilhide.e.ul '.exiiuľllbcratlon' -theearl l'J of the Bolshevik Revolution 01 I he e ven Ir, ol ľm h In 19 H. Ke voluty often accompanied by proclamations o! lnr love arid a sense thattheS? been taken off all repressions'. Nol only n ruling < lass but an inter-moral order is overthrown and in Iii« pei toil before new authority iSe^ lished or bourgeois revenge lakes pltu « llieie Is a llowering of the avant garde and the bohemian. Sexual appeals me ol course the thing in Con sumer advertising, but they are cle.nly pnMOl in every form of pr0pa. ganda. The Nazis, for instance, used i iei mimy s Marilyn Monroe. Christina Soderbaum. extensively in their films Propagandu Ulms often succeed foregrounding the story of attractive women rod their romantic relations with men - the propaganda message Is se« reled in the background and in the story line. Indeed, it is a tribute to tin- potential of propaganda and.at its best, its resonance as an art form, that Cotablanca, probably the most famous film ever made, is also a supreme example of the propaganda genre (though it is seldom analysed as such). Dictators themselves may be framed In mi overtly sexual style, from the circulation of rumours as to their alleged potency to Mussolini parading bare-chested to his people, something which shocked the more bourgeois Adolf Hitler as vulgar. Eroticism can hi- .i strong element in propaganda. The Breughel-like peasants and earth -mother women who clumsily adorn Nazi art are hardly likely to tickle the sensuous fancy, but Nazi iconography also abounds with images of naked women and athletic nudes. Indeed, the male body as a power symbol (physical and temporal) features prominently in Nazi art and propaganda, .is in the denim and cosmetics advertising of later generations: Hingen Dais and Calvin Klein today would understand those associations There Is an obvious equation between the dominance of the master race nul sexual virility. But there is also an overtly pornographic element m propaganda, from the ravings of Julius Streichers Der Stunner to the lurid tales of Rasputin and the Czarina's court printed and circulated aller the April 1917 revolution (Orlando Figes 1997). Another characteristic of propaganda which could be of interest to psychoanalysts is its obsession with regaining the purity of SOme ideal, unsullied by the world. Totalitarianism itself could be represented as the wish for regression to some womb-like state of succour. Propaganda constantly assures us that a perfect world is just around the corner, from the myriad Utopias of the totalitarian to the sanitised world of material satiety projected by the advertising industry. Explain*'1* 61 Explanation in sociology | see OShaughnessy 1992) Social anthropology Astute propagandists are best advised to make i m conceptual universe rather than seek to undcrmin.. a,uuhers comforting set of private truths. Today tht mucin propaganda programme which is delicient in any of these even though the individual propaganda text may be. Great rhetoric never retires. To work effectively rhetoric mu>t resonate with attitudes and feelings within the target (Tony Schwartz h»~ \\ creel rhetoric is substantially a co-production between sender and receiver Rhetoric is a cheap way of reaching the target, since it is relayed b\ the press. In this chapter we argue that the power of rhetoric resides principally in ihe power of metaphor. But we will also discuss the arrival of new rhetorical forms such as spin, and we discuss in particular the rhetorical IS presidency of Ronald Reagan Symbols are another component in this trinity. Ultimate^ we irgUC that a symbol can be defined as condensed meaning and as such is an economical form of propaganda, for symbols are universally understood in ways that language can never be: a symbol eludes precise scrutiny and can be read' in many ways, endowed with multiple meanings Old symbols can also be re-used, for symbols have inherent plasticity The power of myth is the power of narrative. Propaganda rejects intellectual challenge, and it seeks refuge in the structures of myths Old myths can be re-created, but new myths can also be invented - that is to say. myth cntrepreneurship. Myths are a culture's self explanation, and thev are a key part of propaganda (stereotype, for example, is a kind of myth). Rhetoric and propaganda Seldom does mere logic alone frame our perceptions; u is emotion thai is the pathway to conviction. Rhetoric is emotional persuasion and its core is therefore emotion. Rhetoric is a subset of but lt is 0. confu ed with it. and the two words carrv rnanyof *e same cc^Jj probes, for rhetoric is also sometimes a term of abuse, and \ m refer to anv argument we disagree w.th. Along with symbol^ ^ mvths rhetoric performs a key role in propaganda and the three are inlerd twined rhetoric may be strewn with symbolic appeals that make reference to myths. The trinity of rhetoric-symbolism-^nylhs is the conceptual anatomv of all propaganda. Thus the relationship of rhetoric to propaganda is tricky to nuance, since an intelligent case could also be made for the notion that afl rhetoric is also propaganda. Much depends on how precisely we define rhetoric and the conceptual domain that they both share, especial!;, f ':/pand the idea of rhetoric to embrace the visual and physical as wefl as the verbal. Rhetoric was once the basis of European education At Eton College, for example, one of the great events of the schoo - -.till Speeches', where students dress up to declaim the great perorations of the past (King George III being apparently moved to tears by a recitative of the Earl of Strafford's speech on the scaffold. Fickle is the love of princes'). Rhetoric today is as important as ever, and its prime function. to pinpoint. illuminate and showcase the nub of the issue, is unchanged. But the forms are different. For example, the key focus of rhetoric today \s the soundbite, its form has become condensed and the art of rhetoric now is one of compression. Rhetoric, verbal and indeed visual, has been a critical part of the propagandist's armoury since the beginning of recorded hastory In Athens the participation of all adult male citizens in the av>ernHy and judicial process made eloquence highly desirable, and rhetorical 0:a< - sophists -could teach you. write speeches, and so forth. IU, ,n „, verbal persuasion was the core of sophists training, it was central to I n> i<-/al, w£m anH in the drama of Greek tragic theatre. Persuasion were the symbol of high culture (as in the <)r,,u>kil an/i Wr 1 • r i oration 'celebrated Athenian willingness to ■< " fUn6ral discussion' (Emlyn-Jones 1991). The" w k ' J "IT* * been feared. The theme of rhetoric itscTpi • Z'" "' haS ^ ^Ute^tostudyand practice d,/;,. ,.,„', ™om^ Gor- drug: this was the earliest attempt at t„.......Z^*^ chology of verbal persuasion . me psy- /In rwmlliil mnitif 67 KaHy < ni.< Rh,.,or, had Its CI Itk s from (he earliest times; for the ancients there was an tO* pendent truth, and rhetoric was seen as powerful and dangerous Many at il,. < .«11....... argument are repeated today, with their proponents perhaps u-ldom i.wurc .,1 their ancient pedigree, that the rhetorical privileging u\ b, h. I and reeling over fact finds earlier echoes. The art of persuasion bo arnecontn nm Aal, it was recognised that eloquence was not invariably an Dominant oi the truth: Aristophanes in The Clouds depicts the sophists as COW erned t<< teat h pupils the manipulation of situations by means of ille-gfflmate verbal persuasion' (Kmlyn-Jones 199D.Thucydides employed pairs of [X" fi'-.io .liable audiences to choose either interpretation, and his Cleon •« ' " ' '"'ihlv of being the victim of eloquence. Thus, according to Fnilyu loin-.. Athenian speech represented a persuasive force independent of the truth and .. quasi medical force which acts irresistibly on the psyche. Mythot wln< h in.-, ins word, also means argument; peithmei means lam per-luaded' but also I obey*, denies means marvellous and persuasive speaker. I hui I'" " I' ■> kind ol persuasion lived on his lips. He cast a spell on us. He w;r. ih« only "i BtOI who left his sting behind in his audience.' Rhetor! WBI pseudo-reason, it invented reasons for the sentimental (am y i" •■< In'-v .11 justification. Rhetoric was seen as the employment of the lymboll "I rationality to bypass the scrutiny of reason. Plato attacked oratoi I", possessing beliefs rather than knowledge, a criticism that rings true "I Member', of Parliament today: he thought that truth had a persuasive powei It respective of exposition. As regards late fifth-century Athens, 'nevei again were the psychological and epistemological premises upon wIik I. pj i luaslon techniques are based so thoroughly questioned' (Emlyn-fonef I 99 I ) Another reason for the attack on rhetoric was that it had be. omt pai h.illy detached from the search for objectivity and had degenerated Into ni". advocacy. Hence Plato differentiated strongly between philosophical thought mid its specious counterpart, rhetoric. Plato disdain"! 11,, mil.,i.,| claims made by Gorgias and the sophists for rhetoric, seeing il as the ar I form of the fawning manipulator. Certainly it could not be .. brant h <avs sorry when prodding them along the plank." Thus the keN to rhetorical persua>.on is \hc manutacture of visual images Foi Schopenhauer (Mason 19S9> the visual image remains long alter the a: g;:ment is forgotten. Through reflection, images accumulate mean •, Mason (1989) a live metaphor i> a switchboard 'hopping with signals mportant issues are up for grabs via such rhetorical devices because thev are the ones with inherent indeterminacy, an absence of analytical proof. Potentially metaphors can fracture existing paradigms of though: a:* d introduce new ones because their very vividness assaults our attention and lives on in our memory, and in this they are special, since subverting e\:s:ing and often culturally determined ideologies is the hardest thing for a propagandist to do. Labels Another method is to pay the most careful attention to language but. in particuaat labels. Under Reagan the Republicans even had a rhetoric committee, but judicious choice of label is the most important rhetorical choice of all. The -off for getting it right is considerable: the label adheres and over time it is naturalised so that people do not perceive it as a label at all. Labels are viewed as objective descriptions when very often they represent merely social judgements. They can be damning or they can be laudatory: but an ideology or perspective is inscribed within them. Thus euthanasia becomes mercy killing' and abortion becomes pro-choice". The supreme art is to make the label enter common parlance so that every time it is used it becomes an unconscious act of propaganda, as with the Right to Life' movement "amrds are always important since learning new words or concepts may result in seeing new classes of objects or ideas that change perspective 0 Shaughnessy and O'Shaughnessy 20O4K A zr.z . _ " - . this is the term political DORedneaa', which implicitly assocta:^ _:«r-__5m with the coercion of BC Sm M tillB This is not to deny the rxBsmtaty of liberal/left excess, merely that the left's opponents' surr „ fivntial trinity 75 v InHVMMg a label and getting liberals to use it was •, ,ri„mnu , .....visboscribeK brl lhey a,so v^tss lh« s.mu- rcalitv but.embody divergent lodgement, about tha reab v •vvhl„, prostitute . harlot and courtesan" reference the same activity but 1^ >' -l tifo™* '"eaning: opium, heroin and morphine are refinements of the same drug but their cultural Signification is entirely different Words get us to see something in a new light. Or they may be combined lnio a metaphor which catches on. even if there is little logic behind the panstcrence. The idea of a trickle-down effect" became so popular because it was such an excellent riposte to socialist confiscation, not because it was I particularly true description of economic reality. Another (shopworn) example of the power of labels lies in the rhetorical terms 'terrorist' and ■freedom tighter' and "guerrilla", since they illustrate the extent to which words describing the same reality can contain contrary judgements. Words thus do duty as sensitising concepts, such that if we have no word for something we are often actually blind to the existence of the phenomenon. An important function of rhetoric today is the seeking to replace the old culture of rhetorical denigration with a new one of rhetorical uplift: the spastics and cripples of yesteryear, along with the mendicant plastic figurines that dramatised their claimed enfeeblement. are banished to rhetorical Siberia. New terms emerge in their place, so that backward' children become special needs', with the hope that we will see them as such in a new way And terms may be deliberately chosen to limit our vision, language systems are a way of seeing but also of not seeing, and in modern warfare the importance of persuasion has given rise to a miasma of pseudo-technicalia (collateral damage', 'target-rich environment) to veil the reality of what is being done: so different from the reply allegedly given in World War II by Air Marshal Harris to a policeman enquiring about the nature of his profession (killing people'). We have become "masters of duplicitous rhetoric' -or hypocrisy. Rhetorical tactics1 One rhetorical device traditionally employed has been the vox populi method, to find a particularly striking phrase or dramatic moment to express what all are thinking. Thus Leo Amerys cry in the House of Commons to Arthur Greenwood, in 1939 'Speak for England. Arthur*, achieved this criterion ol • These well known sayings and aphorisms of the eminent can be gleaned from their numerous biographies and other historical works as well as from such ^^^"f^^ Dictionary of Literary Quotations (ed. Peter Kemp). The Oxford Dictionary jOf**?*™** Partington.. The Oxford Dictionary of Twentieth Century Quotations (ed. Ehzabeth Knowles,. The •Bloomsbury) Biographical Dictionary of Quotations ted. John Dalntllh). memonibili.y I **** i^vinmed: a silent, angry witness. Life, ,lv, devices iMin ttf l)fft ft.....d up by Alexander Pope: 'What <>lt waMii.,,,^', bill or ii -.v I satisfying piece of class Invective. S.mii.iiio. rhatorlt I Ave* repositioning some literary or classical qUOtl llWUhChambert • ■■■ ''unichquotingHenri//V Part I ('Outof this nottld danger w«- p4ui h thai flower safety) or Mao letting a hundred Bowan blossom and ihttl dred schools of thought contend*. Sometimes rhetorical rlln i ii kilned I i Igfattfr perverting a quotation, as with Margaret ih..1.1.., phi Lady's not tor tornlng'. Brutality Is of course frequent^ I ih.ii.Miin-.il. rjj rhet/irlc - the brilliant insult, as James Maxton MPtoPrlmt Man i< r C.i-f, . fy,nald • Sit down. man. You're a bloody tragedy ) .11 i hun lull to »ri*r same -.ictim I'When I was a child . . . have waited lllis v'o io ..... '. Aonder sitting on the Treasury bench i «......l i!mIom< f,.,- . great merit, of course, of being recyclable: Peace With honOUl Wm Iral used by Disraeli at the Congress of lierlin. iluiu. • guidon), d v... vii;< HTlberlaln to Richard Nixon 'One nation' i> anolhci |d 11. ol I'Israeli's which ended on many lips, included Nixon's. ImagOl v II hoo.ui/ of the most vivid and appropriate image is crit-tCtJ tO .dl thelori'.il \,< r <,... >,-. 'Jr.. Maynard Keynes's description of D*vM Uoyd......;/. 1 I h,-. . /if.,orMnary figure of our time, this siren, this go.u looieil h.ud 1I.1 I,..If human .citor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and em luuiled wixxk of < Hiic antiquity') is memorable for the associations. 11 glvM i" the dominant feature of his protagonist's personality, his Welsh oloquom I I1 ytU I OimeCtl H with an ancient and darkly brooding world ImagOlCinbi pat kmmt J he workers have nothing to lose but their chains They have world io y.nu Workers of the world, unite', or banal, as Mao'f GrOBl Lfgp forward (with la 20 million dead), derisive (Lenin's garbage bin ..I hhinry , >,, r . hismarck's 'iron and blood'), liven an essentially luiiuil Imngi lit < I'mom- Minister Harold Macmllhm's 'wind ol , hange'. con mimm'Iiuw > ttU h on a. for example with Labourite Aneurln Bevans nuked Inlo llie /ooI-po"- chamber'. Frequently In political v ommunli tilh»11 lli< no..;" ,< bo / n are perhaps necessarily those of rinhal tlcinenl Hull. Imi||. iImIoim .aiurated with aggressive Imagery. ..oil Lpr- Ittdci Muilh UrtHxkell s famous Fight and tinht and light igabl Lg^jnii unilateral disarmament) shows liberals arc hardly immunised ,,sl such linages Siirrllk tal Imager) 1» another alternative - All I hav r v«»u Is Mood loll sweat ami tears' etc. l|U< h greet I hetOt k ll In fa t I simple IdM simply expressed but elevated l. 11 |i ■ |M a hi l> n i . s plangent 19 H ' I he lamps are going out all over . „ ('.real moments In the life ol a democracy can propel eventhe more mediocre lot isc to the ivt uslon thus an otherwise dull Speaker of the House ommons to the captain of King Charles's guard: 1 have neither eyes t<> v-e nor hps to speak except as this House gives me leave.' And Jawaharlal \, hrual Imli.in iiulc|Vinlcmv \i the sii okc ol the midnight hour, while the vo.rld sleeps India w ill awake to life and freedom: Great events are remem ....,( b) languafl anrarnai kablc as language but exalted by the occasion it articulated I hul Mul M Idilh i\tvell on the eve of her execution in 191 S: I icalife thai patriotism Is nol enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone IT* powei ol rhetoric is hence often contextual, it might bana| Q| , |dk uloUS 10 .mother setting: l am just going outside and MTDS IWM lo. some tunc is simple, vet the words of Captain Oates las he left the le.il fol I et tain death m the hope that his colleagues on Scott's polar a pedition , ould live) Inspired a generation of Englishmen. Rhetoric creates meaning Rhetorical devices Induce thl leader to apply particular interpretative bematS to the levt the grain of the rhetoric will invite the reader to adopt a certain Item c and attitude from which the world looks different from how n did before, Language is not meieh the \chicle for articulating our thoughts, it does •Ml create moaning, an active agent lor the creation of perception. If language was meirh a vehicle lot communication, there would be less " i in ll. hut in the words of linherson and Henderson (1992). lan->■■■>;•' due- inoieili.iu meivh express reality: it actively structures expcii ence . . . language and linguistic devices structure how we think about "V M language i> js>wer. then the control of language is the key lo that ' Urns the li\|vihcsis holds that language does not reflect reality *>ut rather creates it according to the structures and limits permitted by the ' ';'"•»»"• "I a gum « uliuie loulkes (198 H claimed that 'the rejection of 7b ".....i llur;l| hero can produce a rejet tlon .,1 thi i i the Indian-killer as i Names and words are no, neutr&| J in Vietnam as nation. ^ ^ ^ Wme iu.pl,,,, tools: they may con an * and (wilhin ,imits) lht. m,)K. **, and their use help. bUnlially lhc blaj mtrodiu ed resonant the word tlu grean l ________.... sonani. nu <.....^ , The current Itock ofl words In common circulation inlluences our ,)„,. ing signitkan.lv. a.ul when words cease to circulate, people may U:ri(l, think less tn Certain Ways (though what is cause here and whal || H|,,t unclear i I or example, when Dickens was writing, the English language po, sessed a word enterpriser (see Little Dorril) which was the equivalent of ,h(. French enlrvpnwui (aO earlier generation had used the word 'projector1. bu, that was more with connotations of speculation). In the 1970s and after, when a newly minted image of the risk-taking businessman re-entered pop ular currency, the language had to turn to the French for a single word to express that concept, since the English equivalent had atrophied: the social reality it signified had again come to be esteemed. For Foulkes í 198 i) even the dictionary may function as propaganda - it may be part of a dominant group's attempt to control recorded knowledge and prescribe linguistic behaviour'; he is concerned that language in its social context reflect! and transmits Ideology without seeming to do so'. He adds that: an obvious example is the way in which modern English is pervaded by the buried metaphOCI til capitalism; we exploit opportunities, prolit Írom experiences, cash In on situations once we have assessed the debit and credit side: we sell good ideas and refuse to buy the opinions of those with whom we disagree: pop singers and politicians may become hot properties once they have been taught t<» capitalise »>n their talents. Power Language is <>l ionise a weapon of thought control, the great theme of George Orwell's Nineteen eighty-jour. Nor were his fears without foundation. One of the disturbing curiosities of the Third Reich, which Grunberger (1991) described and Klemperer (1998) reports in his Diaries, is how ways of looking at reality as embodied in particular words and phrases became general currency. The Reich propagated a linguistic style which condensed elements of Its world, thus making formal persuasion less necessary; a new rhetoric of the everyday permeated the Nazi vocabulary and even that of the Nazis' opponents. Hitler himself was a convinced believer in the raw power of the spoken word over literary exposition, criticising academic emphasis on the written word: 'the power which has always started the greatest religious and political avalanches In history rolling has from time immemorial been the magk q| :-■ ' ' • li(,lshcv* literature.............i „.,„„„, ' '"ri"'' heaven which Ihousandi Ol .,,,.,,.„ I ■ ■ the service of an idea, talked int., people' (Blallí Ibpui"1* »fronp to identify with us. it is essential lhal we s|>eak lolfce«",i*rfr :' ' Rhetoric, as has been already suggested ' •' ' '■ ' •' dar cultural paradigms that ;i re shared With th( :.-L-' '--'-'* " h n if jue was to appropriate I he v >< íihulai v ol sooirfta»aBMl-fcaBy propagandist -draw from the cultural Stock hank í - • - 5r*nrm and images: thus Hitler 'concocted 111 InJldtl c.< ' 'fees familiar to his German audienci (Blatfl ]98St aadfrnm reftajftri in particular. Burke (Blain 19KK) argued that '.''.">■ rm represented a politic ;il perversion "I the ■ ' -ol gi)od against evil rhetoric owes much to the recognition ih.ii '". information processors, embody Bttd md ("jr.al perspectives, so that the skills ol persuasion iment is to be achieved. Certainly II < -annul be Successful persuasive advocacy line, occurs v/ outside it. and the 'correct' perceptions follow ■ '■ txerts its own tyranny, it is a sel of values In :al adherence, so that our decisions must tdc -.' 1 r^-cfive. The consequence is lhal advot ah ,are r cause in line with the audience's existing by rhetoric; sometimes by little else, and Ihc ■' ■ . y as brought with it a new respectability (bl the study of rfe«**te i m work of Chaim Perclman (19H21 and Brian Vidariilí^^Oeeelerr^r.f m changing perspectives is gelling our pari! -' - . - < ultural mainstream, i.e. I he Ideological is I not conclusively claimed thai the mofl efta live ~Jy c/i-productions. In this view an argunienl Is all „ rf rhe audience Is led to draw the conclusion I'm iisell. a mt* pcrntMtot when it is a co-producllon and the force <*rectry with the freedom left to the addrrv.nl mdl vkUi ,1 Ihose thai seem to be imposed seldom eonvl.uv. urs ;vllWK when .headdresseesto re.ee. II IT*couldeer^' v stronger wiicn n.v ..-------- rJefeltto characteristic of sophisticated forms of propagand^l?*^* ate tentative or confused. Rhetoric provides something for thought to get hold of. something concrete, an image, a scrap of language or feeling Mason 19S9). The power of rhetoric in a democracy lies, essentially, in the hands of others: for rhetoric is an unguided missile w hose creators have no necessary control of how it is conscripted and duplicated. The press and media are of course supreme among these powerful others, and the primary target for modern oratory, hopefully circulating and amplifying the rhetorical imagery we have persuaded them to project for our selfish ends. To achieve this degree of circulation and memorability, the rhetoric might be a simple and easily remembered phrase such as Cicero's Delenda est Carthagine.' Great rhetoric - or at least, that which seeks duplication - resides primarily in the choice of an especially appropriate image. The idea of resonance' tSchwartz 1973) is particularly apposite here, for good rhetoric fizzes, it smoulders in the mind', since often such imagery is open-ended and its plasticity invites curiosity and review: we turn it over in our minds, perhaps many times. Words are never neutral. They are assiviation-rich. There is. for example, no such thing as choosing a brand name that has no association. 79 » y .• ... 01 written discourse carries | tone as we as a content and s . ,n1 ivrsnasive power can be as much a function cl tone ax of ......* i>Shaughnessy and (VShaughnessN : . ; remark the . . uouis conjures up a fresh perspective but the choice of words may , v. v .v>»giu\1 to give a certain tone. say. of prole- . alism by the use of Lttin leHattfc jargon as occurs in advertisinc medicines to establish cwAMn* I hcv add: . viMiie words that are essentia I Iv v. ^ annexed-, tldkwd'. crushed", distraught', exasperated', fearful', hurt', pressured'. ... ined. worried' and so ,,n r-ere v~. that have i-\ .\xv.tt\r connotations like 'progress', new ^-...r :\ -calorie" . v. ami some words with negative connotation like old-fashioned', artifi-.. i-.v'.vdients'. non-user friendly', gas guzzJer- and » on. Even ostensibly v es> \\ ords have some kind of meaning: they may lack a concrete refer-. vr but still emlwlx a sense-meaning. Invented literary words and names, such *> IV*:'. S\\ ill s Yahoos in Gulliver's Trawls, do precisely this. . .. v perhaps, to see rhetoric as - -rr.-^.r.:::^ :v pleasing tltc exploding image, the cascade ' ••• - .-.-.J - :t< colloquial <-sc is so Rhetoric is the strategic and tactical use of language to per-. s s.-.ch far from language being : :r>. :■ c::"ec::\e persua-- c in deracinated language. According to Boardman 1197SL the - ... s. .. i muddy issues under the preter.re : itfBgjpfainatton.the ...... e: obscurity and deviation '! h> ^ „::-.-..:\a'?lc and .: c apparent content, associated with bureaucracy and jargon. ; : xample is ol words 'so care:.;..;. ..-. :. r.r.> rv.ore by what lt.....sav than by what they do saj :. . : - • > a denial : .> c.; -.[ Nixon: Hone of these [tiicga: BCMttBJ :cv.n place with my rspe\-::.c approval or knowledge' - note the rhetorical activity of that word sre. \ Koardman also gives the example I V\ ■ Cambodb - he de\ ice of dividing and defining What AnriOM would choose to donothing when he could go to the heart of the trouble? Rhetoric can be -ki. or even bureaucratic', with ide^s Gr.j ;g.c> naturalised' as :rcjs) speech. Fveryday speech is not H ■MH^ •"■ ■'- are buried the ::r: .^c.-.s of the culture. There is no one formula for effective rhetoric - different practitioners ■we mastered different aspects of the art. and different parts of it suit dif-rrr-.: -ccasions and different audienoa 1> fareSMflffa Dfl audience some •■era! public, or is it segmented in some important way - a professional ; .ce. perhaps? With general audiences such M km example a jury, the «"Moctionery of image counts. A good image has an adhesive quality and cannot forget it. a dweller in our half-consciousness tlitung in and out of • and s twilight zone. Framing and anchoring also matter - the way a Mil A(fmre*>«larTa^ ,,...... „, decision 8rfJ«td OM IrUIUfllCI thi way it M interpret ,„,,,., ,i for example: voter* art worrltd aboul versus voters haV* i„,ivorrted about . Wrought properly suggest th.it lime exist ••Irrnenlal appeals m ,,,„, |Mvr been made bv theto. .cuius slnCi the my beginnings of p^u ,„,.,,„„•,,1 Por example kM W Mains. . ullural totems, material , „ ,„,(• ..I the most efUvttve themes in Hie history of rhetonc. ........,1m ,1 in the ven wvnl consoi votive", and it is this that Hirschmao , uplurei In The Rhetoric of Reaction (1991), focusing on three fallacy „ hi, h mii h a rhetoric is seen loembodj 1 lb, perversity thesis: 'improvement' will make things worse, not better 2 The futility thesis: it will change nothing, hut will waste money \ ihe jeopardy thesis the COCt is too high In relation to the benefits, or 11 I. the loss of what we alicadx have I He, live rhetoric has also lYvxmcuilv been grounded in appeals to authonty NOurcei. American rhetoricians lot example, have often been at their Ifiofl •He* live when referring to the fVOfdsol the I nu riding Fathers. Hanrftoo. |, ||i i .«'ii and soon. Other cultures have sought rhetorical homage to other, mote |M-t ullar figures. Thus Muiiui t h> oi has shown the inihiences both of id, . I.e.'i. . .ind of Marx on Mhc.iu poliiii.il discourse. Post-independence African (Mililics saw the transition from a rhetoric with shades of Kiptng other literary figures to thai of Lenin and other leftist thinkers. The .....Iinutation between the kiphngosmie and liinmst traditions continues. ----.«.11111111 UdUlUOT. wiili a in.irked cultural schizophrenia in the |x>lillcal conduct of puiii iweaai Ah i. an . A good example was Nkrumah. who Ugan by quoung Tennyson in hiltaliy works and ended saturating his lust hooks with Marxist expressions ,„„1 pyinhols. Another case of ambiguitv was Tanzania s Julius Syerere. wince iheloric alternated between Shukes|vare and Marx I lie end of language is not sunplx to coininunu ale. as Austin points out iM.i.hii I ')Mr. there are statements that can he true or false f coristttrve » I,,ii ihei are also what he calls pa lot mutlves or performance utterances to uhi. h the«|uestion of truth or falsehood is irrelevant because they aredra- ......in gi< When Disraeli called Gladstone a sophisticated rhetorician, ine- l„i,iie,l with the sheer exuberance of his own verbosity' he was enacting a |,,i main e utterance, not asserting something that was true or false. Ii hoi course important to rememlvr that a him Hon ol rhetoric has been lo hi' lllUtl 'he killing of man by man ivople out- has never met and with who.....ne has no personal quarrel llmberson and Henderson -1992» ,.....In, ml a very timely content analysis of war related Monee in the Near \„d lime1, lor the duration of the rirst Gulf War. giving special attention ,,, .||,n i and Indirect references to death and killing I he, analysis related ln«vrftrJfl' trinity Ml ,,„„ mtJOl (hemes: 11) the existence of rhetoric! a™. ,,,.,„,... n.s,h.nMh,hiy for war-related deaths and reassurame o I • ,hl,,K * ^ (3) rhetorics that prepared me pu lor taint) -bout the t(-u.nl death toll. Certain memorable phrase. imeaboutai , result ol Urn war - collateral damage" famously being one; war was desci Ibcd .., (he new pseudo-science argot of the military. And speaking ol OP*™1 U'UV 1 reedom and >ts secondary label. Shock and Awe Hampton and Staubci i 2003) argue that this sub-brand enables its users to lymboll-cnlh ' eco.u ile I wo contradictory ideas. On the one hand, its (heoi isis use the term lo plan massive uses of deadly force. On the other hand, its Incus on the psychological effect of that force makes it possible to use the lerm while distancing audiences from direct contemplation of the human suffering which thai force creates'. \ new rhetoric \ isual i hetoric is the telegraphy of meaning via a significant background or foreground, I las visual rhetoric replaced verbal rhetoric? This is an age where 'visual literac] is often described as replacing the articulative skills Reagan'l use ol visual assertion accorded well with this new lingua franca ol popular culture For vlsuallty is a universal language. In Eloquence In the EleclronU \ge I 1988) Kathleen Hall famieson discusses how the nature of rhetoric has changed under the impact of television. In television eloquence, visual moments have replaced words: such visualities bypass the critical (acuity and we should nol in fact look to television for much by way of explanation. Reagan, of course, gave a good example of this in his I 1980) inaugural address, which he turned into a travelogue of Washington end its greal monuments, the cameras following as his words directed. Symbolic forms of discourse have particular value for a general audience, they resonate and they avoid the kind of categoric articulation of values which In I heterogeneous society can alienate. In Reaganite rhetoric, these symbolic devices took the form of visual parables, or moral stories, and more generally B visual rhetoric which would use the actual imagery around him say. the Normandy beaches, or images common to him and h.s ludlencc lamieson describes Reagan as being the pastmaster of electrons lorms o rhetoric, and she provides a close and sustained analysis ol his rhetorleal sivle. Thus frequently he employed physical props to signify and symbolise. H.s communication strategies engaged the use of ordinary citizens who would purvey some form of parabolic function - a youth, for example, who had shown conspicuous initiative in the tight against homelessness g2 Aamc^mitmt Reagan would commandeer shared visual memory, he would bUlld ( Sscene* chat he and the nation had recently experienced, but. l0s^ "such devices must represent some larger universe of meaning ZmZZ US fa therefore used a great deal of non-verbal commun1Cail0 me verbal cemr.Mte.tts were essentially colloquial and conversaUonal.Tw were often framed b> a dramatic narrative, a favourite Reaganite de£ w.th RonaW Reagan cast ... the role of storyteller. In this, of course. he ls close to rhetorvwins throughout h.siory. for narrative is the primord,d| mode of communication, which Keagan simply adapted and efTemin.sedf0r polmca.:v:v..,^Muna I'elevision Ayr There < ftaajavvr a Irai.dulencc implicit m the visual bias of the medium, for a visual -ecTeases ]crr..r> : i.so argues lot the leminisation of rhetoric. According to jamieson. trie. >.en has rendered the old manly style of rhetoric redundant — it is a medium that mandates the aria ulalion of feelmg. and manly style is a noose. In the ancient world, the metaphors employed by rhetoricians were drawn from battle, but now a rhetoric of courtship is employed and public : ->c has been peison.ilised as for example with Ronald Reagan s setf-disclosive moments. Traditional rhetoric, in contrast, depended lor its force on the physical aspo ts of performance - the drama, more than content; on the use ol von e, the mesmeric interplay of facial expres' and gestuie. It v\.e, a |»h\ u.il rhetoric, demanding the rigorous, choreographed gesture. Khetorii was physical articulation and seldom linguistic content alone, though powerful rhetoric could transcend this: Lincoln s Gettysburg address w.ts in fact inaudible to his immediate audience ar.i ma> even have had more impac t m World War II. Leathers (1986. gives a list of non-verbal channels for conveying messages. Facial expression: example, include smiles, frowns, eyebrows raised or lowered, eyes closed or widened, nose curled, lip pursed, teeth bared, jaw dropped, forehead knitted or relaxed Not all media with specllic rhetorical appllt ations are new. and nor are the old manh; rhetorical forms extinguished. I ar from it. One of the phenomena of L'S politics over the 199(K was tin- invention of radio as a polii- be i h 0U| drives 0n 1988, ^for *beb and tne ability ording i0 dundant aniy sryK toricians :>yed and Ronald ontrasi. drama. >f facial ng the ion and inscend nediate alhers Facia' low- . }*« phc- ^essential trinity SI ,ca| medium - reinvention, m tact since Charles Coughlin was the first and most spectacular exponent seventy years ago. Talk-radio hosts, along with single-issue groups. ha\r become among the most important politicians in (he inited States today What they offer is pure propaganda. This is a medium of reinforcement, not gaming new recruits but speaking to the provincial white male (he has the highest voter registration of alii in his own language, ariiculaung his anger and ministering to his self-pity: there arc 1.000 talk radio programmes and Rush Limbaugh himself had an audience of 20 million. In Kura's words. Tmus. Howard Stern and other loudmouths reflect a rugh-decibel society in which journalists insult each other on talk shows, pathetic souls denounce their relatives on daytime TV and politicians slam each other in attack ads' (Thomas Install. .\V\v York Review. 6 October 1994». Every day Limbaugh took events in the day's news and misinterpreted them as pert of his larger indignation over the state of American culture, indmdnal and group rights, sexual mores, and the ground rules of capitalism i-.: lerr.-xracy He presented the discussions over each of these issues as part of a continuing partisan struggle between a demonised democratic liberalism and an idealised Republican conservatism ... he look it as an obligation and higher duty to examine every action or pronouncement to show its deceptive purpose........ "I'm sick and tired of earning on my TV and being told that the Aids crisis is my fault too. becausr : : - : :a.-e enough— In this 500 anniversary year of Columbus s voyage, I'm tired of hearing him trashed. I don't give a hoot that he gave some Indians a d^ease that they didn't have immunity against. We can't change that, we're here. I'm sick and tired of hearing Western culture constantly disparaged Hey ho. Hey ho. Western cultures got to go. is the chant at Stanford Unwersty. What would Stanford be if the pioneers that are so reviled today as impenahsc racists, sexists, bigots and homophobes hadn't fought their way across a continent to California?" While segmenting radio audiences by ideology is a gift to the propagandist, such channels represent a rejection of pluralism and the idea of political exchange. The United States may be a democracy but its airwaves became a one-party state? Impact of rhetoric Rhetoric is power. Cotaaeernal rhetoric can make the difference between success and failure for a company. Branding, for example: the right name can easily justify a 20 per cent, or even 50 per cent, price premium. Thus in business the power of rhetoric can be measured in monetary terms. The power of rhetoric is diustrated by the extent to which a well chosen image, possessing traits of vrndness and appropriateness, not merely sticks . but S4 A "'""THwIu, ► Turkey as the sick hangs around for generations-»■«■-» sick man of We also remember the past ubrousjb to rbe rhu>the \varti,m. despite the qualifications \luth of the B/ifr (1991». are to fighting on the beaches, in the continues to do its duty in a Historically the power and Ifan scholar) has been -they have lain in the c ps the greatest em of metaphor gave her work a Irwef of never could have found, caaang, far preservation and insect con* success lay principally as a military strategist). What we meat his moral character, but also to has rvrsonification: thus on bayonets in her Arc:., starved lips her phil< -. v as V,1KUs i aldn!",' Churchill presented ih surrendering: the rnel of any author, preacher Milium exclusively rhetorical tor example m the case (»| p.-r Carson w hose mastery that mere rational exposition the chemicals used for wood of death (Kevtes 1994) Churchill (certainly not for example as a refers certainly to of articulation, metaphor and sharpens her through self-s 1985). Rhetoric and ideas For one writer. Geoff Mason »19991 realms of opinion, for the actvr Only if certainty is dema cannot be reached, rhetorical .Mien defined as the endeapcaar to do not follow on from each other vtth dae eaving room for possible mg people disputing the ngoor of I urse in practice is concerned wH absolutely critical in the pr the intellectual ideologies that because their sponsors were the a the need for rhetorical devices to an intuitive feel for the pumu of mankind and burn its Rachel Carson was one Silent Spring, did more t rrr. ronmental movement lption of her writing forms of propaganda tlounsh in the permanently a final conclusion we. Argumentation is onh because reasons of mathematics. * tuning prevent-proof, so every dav of rhetoric has been ine twentieth century l have (arguably I done so • - - xnenLs understood attention, they had the introversion of Thoughts. 1994. Her great polemic. The to bring about the modern by anerary power. Carson's of the more sophisti-combtnatlon of .1» m0***l*nUu 8S todii-l knowledge and deeply fell en.......»«1 r.«.|M,„sc . In such propaganda ^.^.slheiiiNeKevarehnil,,.,,,.,..,,,,!,, , ,1 .,.,„. ,..... K „ ls ,„„ dishonesi wr.ling. hul n remains „.....,.....alive, since facts are selected |i)m>, t(, the guidance- <>l .... .nierpn-iaiive Irarnework. and decorated |M1i .ind metaphor thai lead ll.e reader m the right emotional ror. mm Ihisisnol men- polemi, hul nellher r.it rational anal\m> One such device was personilu atlon She writes of her realization that, jhpplte our own utter dependence on the earth, this same earth and sea have no need of us'. In this \\av she pa sonifies nature, and nature becomes ,, real person whom we need hul who doesn't need us. Thus both our dependence and our littleness are emphasised, an important part of the Carson project: she left government service increasingly despairing over the future of nature'. Carson often auihroponmrphised nature, attributing human leelings to fish and animals m order 1«) explain their behaviour to peaders who know little about thern; we must not depart too far from analogy with human conduct if a lish. shrimp, imnh jelly, or bird is to seem real to us' or 'I have spoken of a lish "leailng" his enemies, for example, not bet ause I suppose a fish experiences lear in the same way that we do. but bet f.>l » — ^ unpractical Londoner Patterson commit* M „, ,.v,lhllsh , from symho u J,-, dm ^Wishing a direct M ship with the .*JJ'.r»ucs that by u*» between p.iM and present r^™?_ »__,__ . .T. . 2 Freud spared himself the resnmwfcl'tv for presenting a upcai tton\ There In also Freud's analogy lo describe repr^lon-that of a pen* Irving lo Interrupt the lecture »The anarchtM F/nma Gotananwas preseat in the audience*. kaaaVr the analogy intense dramatic frioinct. hi** analogy the person ts taken out and people have lo hold the door states then there Is hanging on the door The chairman talks te> heat and he is persuaded to resume res attendance at the lecture analogy describes the rnevhanean and the treatment, and H «aa accident that he chose an analog? that eJcmrd him to portray" his audience as being one Freud was very cumtiped lo protect an Image of his own non-credulity Vkrresrr Iv portrays himself as a tant convert to p>\vrx\*naljrsss. lor example to the notion of ahty He 'began, by slstnli img' Then he flatters hts compliments thee*aneeatieneas He uses the metaphor of ai grate the lecturr* estate* ptrsmt hmiyll a> an equal -tual fellow traveller others doubling could also follow the he did. a selenitic fata* who merrh dev. nt» his private tourney to psr-choanah it i> *rth rvnet and hewiklenng feelings that I w/—B*■ the New World before an ■ucaence of expectant enquirers', life and ostensible equably nrmosr v.u o! didacticism intellectual bulbing They abo establish Fieud a disinterested truth, not status vMeeafranon b another device by which he this II had no share m as eeree-sl beginnings 1and the denial that he actually trying to persuade - - *tener> Time and again he rejection to his ideas, then answer* it it is not always easy io tell the L especially when one ana id he concise: and I am thus today obfesjed to correct the wrong stasesnent that I made in (he last lectures' Patten remarks. In fact he strengthened hts case. First, his willingness to enters objections mnlorced hst aaaftnarr'staith in his openness Second, m the uhiei non N gave haassesf the c*oportunity to present more evidence an support <>l h- K7 • •■ • •'•••■'••"n Micoess in the Clark Uvtuvs t> , lnbuU. lo th(. •• v;'MU were extensiveh describe m newspaper e.v « • • vx' enthusiasm: thus the Pa<.v J^-ribed him lartnf the kuwlh la, «• Ihnl age would never suffer Vhe Tnmsmpt claimed IS* the k\ lures had won the adherence of mam of the scientists there. TV hviures market an Important element in the history of psychoanalyse 4ixl ap|vart\l 111 English within a year: by 1^1 ^ psychoanalysis had • • be .;>: H lopu whose merit was ac:v:aa S onl\ a handful of v vrvan intellectuals lo a subject that was discussed m Qmd Housekeeping tad other populai magazines. After the Clarke lectures Freud was awarded .; • ' • v v.iee which, he noted, was the first official recognition of our end** wins (Patterson 1990). Thus rhetoric also plays a crucial role in academic discourse. For one aatafl. ft is rich In metaphors, and even scientists are forced to use imagistlc rtVtvwvas then public language, since the.: rr . ate language of mathemat-k> > ... ^ • . onl\ id the lew. Scientific met a: "\: .> not merely a way ol ■ . . \c w ill external constituencies .: aflbBbl Mas wa> that scientists •. ■• v .-.> ;vi. en e then realities: in faci a metaphor created lor the purpose of pubfcc communication can. perversely, spnng back and affect the think-.rc a :> creators as well. Metaphors help stxucrure and limit disciplines, and pve rfierr a unity the astrophysicist, for example, speaking of black holes' -Kh rhey can also illuminate the values of their creators and influence their . - ......Hums In the social sciences ::v.< > particularly true - is man tribal a herd animal, a robot, etc.:- Different metaphor? underpin different s.v . ^ : paradigms. Kconornists in partcu.a: have traditionally conceived of man as a self-seeking, rational decision maker with a clear, hierar- . -.....on ol Ins needs and pn. r.:.e> arc rvach of their language k that embodies this, and as McC".o>ke\ 1 °°0< has shown, econ s:> . ...... |> use rhetoric to persuade even ±c\: professional peers. Myth and propaganda ■ - - s n* niav not be pari ol HQ H W ■ definition of propa paaaa. but most propaganda is concerned among other things with the "■ - -o' imths: mythology is thus almost a part of Its working del a«am. A mvth is a paradigm and shorthand. It surfaces the human Inter est and narrative quality that make it memorable in the sense that the aaaaract lecture or mere eloquence could new be. Propaganda makes l~ use of myths: they are always a point of reference, implicit or caaaUL in the propaganda texts. Myths pnwide a common cultural vocal, aaary they unite, they Hatter, they elevate the argument or group thai , h.im initiation with them. They avoid the nerd f,„ , ,„„,,,, M..... anbe incorporated by minimal pU\nt\.*\fU-,rUli ,„J''> l, ,.,,.|.r-!v. symbol: in simple lerrns. mylh i; »h-Idea* whereas ntual is the acting out. the ariir uIluTon of myth. V/,l(^" ihr building Weeks of myth and the acccptam c or mn-r ai,/„, of ^%n^ I .jonfkant aspect of ntual. A ritual generally ohv r /« i),. |av,,7 n with wh,' b * symbol is invested, which a symbol I OTftpi I* J rui mythj^ niMKlH in rituals, liturgies and symbols, and rcUn-wt \,t ., symbol ••• quite tufBdent to recall the myth for Ihr, memrVf \ of ifn < onwnunih without need to return to ritual' (Schdpfllfl I ')')7). Myirn are universaJ. in democralic regime-, as w II a-. .iui// r.e•.,, •" / 'in k'/jtimacy. They are also a constant tm I B9 hr.t'ay and nave fr(jrri •1««i» annuity been part of the political panoply of all r' ai all limes. I he 'lefinition of a m>th A myli, iu<, v: described as a story or event thai illuminate-; the lury values "' ''"<• or association: the events tan \»' real or imaginary, but. •dirioft cert á; r.y. imagination will have embroidered tbffll Irur propagan-dlM ibu* draws from the existing stock of sodaI nrfÚUÁO0M a* well as inkling to them. These core myths of a sociel y are ii. four el.a ion f!«ah -.uch ••• '.ovrr.or r.lhrop's City on a Hill" and IhHr unďr finning < r tales KM lal upheaval. Myth r. y conceptual rynchpin of propaganda and it i . in,y,.-,''A<- to imagine i|,r propagandised without their myths. Myth .are N .itur< of all human • - It ••^everyH-here. Amyth is a story, the story a < uHum- ulh ahout itself to IH-rpduate lUetf. the sound of a culture's inter rial rliulr/gur I h« of the ' Irefkl uKÍÝJAX\hns. for example, were jusl like us huflUUM »> «11 our weak-• • and tnviaJjty. they are a commentary on our fo.Mi , [Any of emo-UOAI and petty jealousies. Myth' in popular language rnewn* loventkm or untruth but mat a not me academic meaning of then r m I ho;' aiders fli* Myth »1 thi Mitt (1991»is not claiming thai (he L, .tore al r/n nu/i / of the bliU i untrue, merely that there are important qualify .,( '.hau^h-urMy JMM) \,M ScriopQm 11997> culture ilsell may k< >U\utl*\ rtä h syr»Urm /in essential trinity of collectively held[notions, bebefc. premises, ideas, dispositions, and understandings, to which myth * es a structure We have argued that what thev share is the attempt to identity a basic level of cultural experience marufcaed in words and deeds throughout history, and concerned principally * articulation of the core concerns and preoccupations of their hc*t r - -(O'Shaughnessy and OShaughnessy 200 31. For Overing (1997) the myth is an exemplar of the work of unconscious logical processes: it serves as a symbolic statement about the social order, and as such it reay-forces social cohesion and functional unity by presenting and justifying m* traditional order Mythic Discourse reminds a community of its own idennrr through the public process of specifying and defining for that commur.tv .-_t distinctive social norms Whether or not people believe in the irrational anient of myth is irrelevant, for the symbols of myth have metaphonc vaiue aid serve a crucial social function in maintaining the given social order Eliade (1991) defines myth as an account of the events which took place In principle that is. in the beginning, in a primordial and non-temporal instant, a moment of sacred time He says an important property of myths has been that they can change people, that is. they have a redempuve function: 'we may even wonder whether the accessibility of Chrisuamty may not be attributable in great measure to its symbolism, whether the universal images that it takes up in its turn have not considerably facilitated the diffusion of its message'. Culture may be defined as a system of coUuimJj held notions, beliefs, premises, ideas, dispositions and understandings to which myth gives a structure. Social myths are perpetuated by propaganda, celebrated in film, ritual and print, and this has been a ceaseless activity. A myth can be manifested as a non-specific image perpetuated through time - that, for example, big business is amoral, or government is incompetent. (Nor. of course, do such myths have - as the vernacular sense would imply - to be untrue! i Or it can be a highly specific idea (as Keynes said. Practical men. who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually ube slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air. are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few-years back'). Or it can be a generic myth, recurrent throughout many societies and periods of history, such as myths of a Golden Age or of an ascetic and uncorrupted past. Romans imagined an earlier and virtuous pofity that was well embodied in the figure of Cincinnatus. the farmer called from his plough to serve as consul to save the republic from its enemies who. having done so. returned to his plough. 'Ml A(°nrfP,Ua'ar^n9rr>w Why wo have myths i„ The Marketing Rmwi oj Emotion (2001) 0*Shaughne«sy andrm, ,„«sy argue that every culture is it storehouse of myths which, J?J questionably accurate, suggest ihc origins ol the culture's prefeitSJ CerUln beliefs and values and in the process reafiTrm a set of preference l„r Schopflin (1997) myths are about the ways in which commumuL regard certain propositions .is noi in.il and natural and others as perv, ..nd alien'. In Athenian Myths and Irtsfirwi - W Bluke Tyrrell (Tyrrell* * BrOWD 1991) examines how nwth Hiakeis rolled, define and defend^ status quo. For Tyrrell, mvths .etc. to tclations inherent in the culture value system, they depict in imaglnat \ lot in a model to be emulated, aswell as the destructive forces active In so* let) winch left unattended, could rupture the social bond. By telling what happens when core values are lo . myths teach what is cultural!) valued thc\ act to assert the status quo-in the case of Greece. I warlike imperialistic society of aristocrats. They become a kind of universal perceptual lens m Schopflin's words (1997) 'myth creates an intellectual and cognitive monopoly in that it seeks to establish the sole way of ordering the world and denning world views'. According to Tyrrell, heroes are particularly important in myths and establish model behaviours. Those who would expose mythologies should do so with care. Any society needs its myths, and if we aggressively and systematically demolish them we may be doing real damage, for nw ihs are intimately bound up with a society's identity, its ability to transmit a coherent culture and moral code to cadet generations and lo inspire pride and a sense of community. Moreover a society whose government ca\ aherly neglects its core myths faces trouble, One reason for the terrible alienation of youth during the Vietnam War was that US actions contradicted the myths of stainless American decency that had been projected bv film and popular culture in the ideological cocoon of the 19 50s. It is necessary for a regime to keep myths in being to guarantee its survival the Roman emperors, for example, having to sustain the pretence that Rome was siill ruled by people and Senate, perpetuated in the slogan Senatus Populusque Romanus'. the SPQR of the legionnaires' banner. Much of the intellectual and artistic energy of the ' 1960s generation' has lain subsequently in the gleeful demolition of myths for example, a British television series. Real Lives, concerned itself with hiking famous national figures and posthumously outing them as gay (liaden-Powell. on no real evidence. Vkiily Telegraph. 7 December 1996). bastards (Group Captain noughts Baderi and so forth. The pantheon of national heroica was serially assaulted on its plinths. News, especially, deals in myth. As Bird and Dardenne (1988) explain news narratives are constructed not through neutral techniques but via s>Tnbolic devices and the confection of myths and manifest in simple explanations, reassurance and so forth; in fact the myths endemic in a ture constitute a form of selective perception of the world. Selective parcas> tion. common be rr.e~.rer? of d given culture, has the effect of importing .1 characteristic mterpretaoon to phenomena. Myth and story Myths work because integrate mear..r.c:u. andHastie<1993»sh ber numer" zf=. ; could make sense of ti plate to era.učte the rejection of advocacy rative. We identaypa succeeded not throoj ethos and belief sysu reader through črom TheProdiga:S:r. the the Vineyard ar.i so :'; nised in any cufrnre. accords pnmacy to s system that can ther Aztec. The figures of C theon of :ig=r. n.'..-the tpregr.ir.: Virgu deity, or where the a with the Celuc cross. they are structured as stories, as elided stories that facts into a persuasive framework. Thus Pennington • a urors dealt with their inability to remerr.-.-• rr.ro> rg a story framework through which the*. Ik tacts, and they used this master narrative as a tem-r.arrative of prosecution and defence: acceptance or • - determined by its cohesion with the master r.ir-iple's perspectives by the stories they tell. Christianity ih the exposition of abstract ethical rules alone: as m gained inspiration from stories which carried the a beginning to a middle and an end and a message. :•: >amantan. Dives and Lazarus, the Labourers at .•. ere simple talcs which could be instantly reerg-The narrative superstructure of the Gospels, which i;-..-;e ir.l rebirth, constitutes a primordial rtv toy usurp other sacrifice-based systems such as the hrisnan scripture and tradition could absorb the pssa-; via a manufactured resemblance, as when in Mexico i of Guadalupe replaced a (pregnant) Aztec fe oss hes within a circle representing the sun god. The impact of nrvths Myths have had a real impact on the course of history, and since the creanoc of myths is a permanent activity, myths continue to be important even, though some die out. They are merely replaced. The progress of our lives is festooned with myths There are myths round every corner. Myths their tissues of truth, faitrh^ and fantasy, are the context we inhabit and the atmosphere v.* breathe. Sho|)ping behaviour is inspired by mythological structures - diamra*** far example, are a rather common little rock, bat they are also a girl's best friend, and the success of the de Beers cartel tz pouring meaning atalesaiusrrity* into this stone ranks as one of the greaies: myth-making enterprises of all rime. 92 "OHiorpn^j Mvth u thus impactful i he exculpatory myth fabricated by theľ general staff m 191S - (be myl h OÍ th« stab in the back - had hoi£> conseqiieucesasaresult oi to acceptonce by German public oPinio"V , nitedStatessopowerful has been the 'log cabin to White House rny^ one candidate. Benjamin I lar. .so... oruereu i.n.e tvuooeo model cabj? bJ, supporters to carry around (Melder 1992). even though he ^ J couata of an English lord I'ol.i.cullv created myths have performedsterfol service for their manufacturers, for example the myth of the winter of J cor .-.asendlessly promulgated by the Conservative Party through^ the 1980s, and it served them well. Myths can be destructive I Lev can affirm our current sense of inferiority by reference to a more glorious past. They can perpetuate untruths, and the social mjquities which flow from this, such as the mythology of the Indian martial races' which grew up under the Moghul dynasties and was inherited by the Bntish. It took World War II to make people realise that all Indians, not merely the splendid tribes. Jats. Dogras. Hazaras and so on. could fight well (Cohen 1990> Military myths are extremely important, establishing a powerful masculine identity for a nation or fortifying its wish to hold and conquer. I ranee, for example, had the myth of la aloire. the belief that military success was a function solely of Han or spirit, fix." pantalon rouge, e'est La France.') And myths endure. I heir long shelf life illustrates both their convenience as a shorthand for talking about one's culture and our failure to interrogate them I hat Britain is 'strangled by the old school tie' is still a widely believed myth even though the social reality that underpinned it has faded. Such myths -fit they save us from new learning and thinking. The press deal :r,U> in one particular type of myth, stereotype, and one should never .r.:U,>cian Ml P--existingstatus.w whatever, (eel supenor. ^............. First World War British, for example. Vwwh magazine invented iTft^L?* of German Frightfulness' to remind llicin of the Germans' moral iSSj Race myths - using race in the sense of a socially constructed catl^ which is not. of course, how believers regard it - were almost universal accepted in the nineteenth cenliuv The Impact and propaganda va|Ue of race myths endured long alter lhc\ had become discredited amongthe intelligentsia who had once embraced them. Thus the notion of black Aryans. i.e. Tutsis. took hold in Rwanda during the colonial period and. since it was also a basis of prefei mailt (UJ thai polarised the people, its legacy grimly apparent in the massnci BS ol the c.u l\ I l>lM)s (Robert Block 1994). Some race myths are almost too well known to merit discussion. The notion of a pure northern 'Aryan' race, uniquely superior, had been propagated by the Count de Gobineau in the nineteenth century and popularised in Wilhelmine Germany by Huston Stew art Chamberlain and sundry pamphleteers iSnyder 1976). From such sources the party ideologue Alfred Rosenberg constructed his gimcrack .\h/(/io.v. I'hese formative influences on the young Hitler and subsequently on Hess. Himmler and others were strong. They sanctified instinctual bigotry with the liturgies of scientism. The race myth was not only handed to the Nazis through the nineteenth-century pseudo-intelligentsia, there were also artistic sources, preeminently Wagner, whose Nibelungs. the dark and scavenger race, were deliberately likened by him to the Jewish people. In the twentieth century the ancient libels against the Jews that they had. for example, engaged in the ntuaJ murder of children - were supplemented by freshly manufactured libels such as the French forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion' elaborated and propagated by the Tsarist secret police. The Tsar had sought to combat Bolshevism by fomenting Russian nationalism, and this demanded the fabrication of an alien threat - as ever, the Jews. The 'protocols were found among Nicholas's last few possessions (Figes 1997). but their influence upon European fascism, on characters like Archibald Maule Ramsay MP and his Right Club', were considerable (R. Griffiths 1983). US myths Now most propaganda is deeply embedded in myth. Propaganda creates new myths, of course (Horst Wessel). but more often it draws from or reinterprets old ones. Both sides in a dispute can. and do. pick from the same stock of myths and give them a different interpretation, thus 'Log cabin to a common integrating myth of US culture which all parues of US myths - the frontier, cowboys versus Indians, etc. in its cultural products. The family farm is another, viewers saw images of a deserted farm and the c lost a farm. It was a family. Vote Democrat i Webster 1988) were tapping into a key myth of the American heart-: imagine how a culture could exist without the myths and give it meaning. So myths celebrate the key The very language of a culture carries its core mytholo-: reals are used extensively in advertising. Thus Andy i Tyrrell 1991) cited the ten most common words Such words evoke the dreams and aspirations promised myth. Discover", 'fresh', new and Light mat is. promise and opportunity: natural and real' what the extra', rich' and 'save' what accrues from lninaOve. -c.more (1975) argues that a role of achertising is to . something that it is constantly doing, ons various cultural myths that affect what Ameri-the power of emotional resonance, such as the which was even (according to Barbara Stern 1988) r commercial. Myths are the stuiT of the United DNA. How many Hollywood movies, for example, tell of the little guy battling the system or the big corpora-such as Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront. 19 54. • These are 1 fabrics and fibres of Hollywood, yet they are also myths. Other redeployed myths include the damaged Casablanca, Rambo and many others authority figures electors, lawyers, policemen rebelling against authority. Harry persona (reflecting Americans' ambivalence ■sd the officious). - such as the notion of Americans as benevolent. which .ndation of the republic itself - endure (the British by lereiy satisfied that they were lust.'). Myths retail the story historical conflicts. Our image, for example, of the founda-States is that of the Mayflower and its austere cargo of Fathers; yet this is essentially a post-CrviJ War image, for was of course Virginia, the heart of the Confederacy. .American War of Independence, as set forth in such films as - ! th Al Pacinoor The I'atrmi ... .-. • :.- .-. . c r-orra-Most Americans would be bemused to learn that the rev-theatres and caused actors such as the American • milUins lo emigrate (A.J. OShaughnessr jr^ Compaq d 101 'h., .ulSfs Of the revolution were resent*^ S numberfd among in ^ ^ Oltholics of Quebe: _ ,, extension ol v u k ^ lhe attempts by King Oeor^ Gardiner and | * ^dtag westward into the Native Vmeruans with whose leaders it had signed treaties ViZ*^*< vwuctoi imths those of the vanquished either J:-terraneen evisteiue Net myths have remained critical v «-L vw the\ line: ;\c: :!ie piescnt. throughout their hiv v •• x v.\ strategies has been the mobilization of vws-.c: '.°ss- \ei in lies nut Teacher told Me James Loeiaea | aatoates lust BOB false the history we are taught so often is Most probata* bdkft - thev haw been told so often enough by the National RaV Assooa. bon - that the\ possess a constitutionally enshrined nght to bear anas' They haw no such thing, otherwise of course cities like New Yorkco&U ' .' ... :u:i i'm gun ownership. The cor.?:: a right to bear arms only as members of a legally constituted miatta, yet this myth continues to exert a baleful influence on the pnfcti<^| beaefcef erxans to the extent that the battle against the gun in pubfe laebas emigrated from the politiirul arena, where the NRA has effectively i <: rviential opposition (Anderson 1996). to the courts of M\th and mam rdom Deaths and mart> rdom have always been fecund sources of myth I Christ was the ultimate martyr, and all martyrdom has therefore the unc-. .. - Republican martyrology. for exarr.r r -i it. .t~.:ii subiect in itself Bobby Sands was the last of a great asseiiihUsje of Irish ---ryrs stretching way back in history well beyond Cat prints, books murals and. especially, song and ballad tjn such as Kevin Barry, the university student who [Mi lit Sjilnl in a tact on his way to a lecture in 1920 and was subsequently executed by the British. Bennett 1995). rtyrdom is a particularly persuasive way of inflating a sense of moral r. and has been critical in the establishment of religious faiths and es. Foxes Book of Martyrs (Ridley 2001), published in the reign of Queen Elisabeth 1. gave the Anglican church the ethical r~*Z'~ it nrt^rf Elizabeth herself ordained that a copy should be chained to paftptt. and the book was carried on the ships fighting the Spanish Ar The death by hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney. Mayor of Cork, i fff^irai propaganda blow against British rule in a Ibe suicide bomber, of course, kills many others in the p '"to 8W Ofie of. cot Ik:, 1. iv 1 nor,*' ,U"0n'en<|s U,ed ,n P"Wic IfcC 31 law. myth making efore the tine-is an intricaic blage of Irish nai Plunkeii. 'e celebrated icipated in a t/y executed faiths ^ , the tdf pedigree J 99 himself- Bu' ,,K",u 1 ni,,v stl" impress those who need most to be impressed, the tentative and the weakly partisan. ^11 nations, anil all causes, seek and attain their martyrs. The martyr docs iiol have to die. but death of course is desirable. The more gory the death, the belter. The death of the heroine of French independence. Joan of Arc. by llame. created a permanent nation-building myth to be used by French patriots for all time, including de Gaulle. Events such as the death of Nelson and i he assassination of Lincoln and Kennedy gave those men a martvr\ crown: the manner of their death added retrospectively a sacerdotal glow to their high triumphs, and they became, as it were. Saints of the Nation. In some cases nations and groups have consciously sought to create a cult of death, and this was particularly powerful in all European fascist movements. Spanish nationalism, for example (Preston 2000). Nazi culture was permeated by a kind of death fixation: a movement which was responsible for the deaths of countless millions was itself animated by a bizarre death cult. Triumph of the Will is dominated by memorialist enactments, the rising to hail the memory of Field Marshal Hindenberg. the salutation to the dead of the First World War and the recitation of its battlefields, the solemn march of the Führer to the flaming plinths. This funereal quality of Nazi propaganda is one of its many curious aspects, but is made intelligible both in terms of the need for reconciliation with the enormous losses of the First World War and the need for preparation and acceptance of the great blood sacrilices that Hitler would now demand. One successful fabricator of myths was Ronald Reagan. His achievement was to make the problems of the present disappear by flanking them with a reassuring vision of the past and a dream of a benign future' (Lule 1990). He did this by creating new myths that had resonance with the past, such as his production' of the Challenger disaster, where old myths (the conquest of the west) were used to manufacture new ones (the conquest of space). So the creation of myths has continued throughout history. They are simply too useful, to the advocate and to the propagandist. Kenneth Burke (Lule 1990) asks 'whether human societies could possible cohere without symbolic victims which the individual members of the group share in common'. The question is not how the sacrificial motives revealed in the institutions of magic and religion might be eliminated 'but what new forms they take'. In the Challenger disaster Ronald Reagan deployed effective rhetorical strategies, using these reference points, to turn disaster into a heroic endeavour. Even a seemingly decisive event with an ostensibly unambiguous message - such as the poor leadership and mismanagement which disasters reveal - has plasticity, the territory of its meaning open to contest, and the function of rhetoric is to affix an Interpretation which ■■■■■ -future discussion . Luk" ' ' • quite possibly the ChoUenmjr ************** failed policy andmtwed leader** « shuttle and renewed L'Scomwi*^^ men! of lh* ^r<" < '/ consolation and purgation However, he referred to the / • ■• •"• And these questions of OMSflftl l.ulc quotes I> / "i I. Ml ....."'"".J/1,, '•"•lAuirri, •1.1. | •llh "",y .....I ""X ' .III', t Propaganda in tracing the metaphors ths*^« tit^ " lu'H,,r^Hr In that society experience things , ****** mmVkfn** % to tfructuit the eulogy - astronaut* and pV/r»w» vy*** mwi 0M /•»" dmih and life everlasting; Reagan Mftfftsv ffcat ffcf ffcatftf crrw w«> ritrndjnj America's boundary m>o %mmt kU '*'lv*'*t l**v»» i"»-r directly to the dead and hemnpmmd Pw —WW twmmi tier u*\ UU- through thrlr sacrifice for the nation. I.ule also note-, tha* lions of blame or r*:'.[/,u-. lips qurs (he astronaut', had 0MM }t>4k U* tU* t.f'«*fkMM) bickering over their loss, a: if tr.<-,r 'I'vK. • . ■ « \m%w\\I bu» • h«*r1ble nililukr wcjuld rob the death* of iMptHf mn4 flMMftig, to Chit w«y Kragan'i eul"fO used the victims to effectrvefy #Smtmim4M%p\4<9*r*y*n >A rr*pnfie1hilii\ Hy placing the .par'. pr'//c,rr.^./ „ ■>. e, jttMtmM American plonert imdi tion. debate on the prog/amm* « m+t > *,+ ■ ,1 -A\ <* htnMmi I/mII* ti^hm "l when and hw the pr'///arr,fr,/ » . , - ^ i^r promt* !«• Iiilllllrd Propaganda and symboltari If myths are the heart of r,r,;, , „A)mn la 11» .„,0, >,;„„.«m indeed, to speak of a prW,.v, . : >7/,y| gf ayMMtam j, r^Jy ^ ^ gp^. Ing about some other pb'-uutw u>tn Itt * f'tftUftui* bereft of symbol structures would be unintell.giM* ** i*'nW'**U* HymbtAu telegraph moaning, and life is a cacophf/ny //f *ymhtA§, +w* thmy are llw martini heuriltli • or short cuLs through v/hr 1/ '!.#»!/ htefc k>*> i\min\ „,„\ .„y,,,,,.„ ,| \ l,,v function of propaganda r. t', rtiHtiutm hit* a$t h n, t^%\\\ttu ,|,.V|,, Propaganda texU are tyrni/'fi. • > I'^m, \,\v i;,i,inkhi Hie ihinu of the ship's guns in f\p'. \unimntnmA With ihotl ol I,**** trinity ponderously regal stone lions front*, a palatial edifice They symbolise the jni,en rranne. Nor do we see the Isurst a**,* k.lled: instead it is the s on *• « Sm3Shed Rf°mdn * «nM»n in particular became an idiom and symbol,c grammar o, va:.o,> , s, r> Napolcon. Mussolin| a™ especially the Nazis. Ihe propaganda of the fetch was encrusted with Roman imagery: it became, m the Roman salute, an adjunct to every dav communication. I he Nuremberg rallies themselves were gimcrack Roman tnumphs. with llames atop coJuaaaa. gjfeant:, eagles, temple-like structures: the very word fast* k of course derived from the Roman fasces, >\ mbol of magisterial authoru\ Commercial advertising also acknowledges symbolism. Much commercial signification celebrates the idea that matenal things are not an end in themselves but a means of express**!, signifying affection, status. Gift cuing is symbolic drama symbols represent social meaning rather than point to something concrete. Products are means to social ends such as admiration, and the thrust of much adwrusmg is that these things are attainable through the agency of some purchased symbol, that is. a commercial product. When this is understood we come finally to the view that the briefest, most comprehensive definition of a product is simply as meaning'. The symbol has been described as a sign that incorporates something in addition to its direct references A symbol, unlike an idea, is something visible, something into which cornmunkation has poured meaning, it is a dynamic referent that refers not itself but to the myriad associations that have been packed into it. For Douglas »19821 symbols are the only means of communication. They are the only means of expressing value: the main instruments of thought, the only regulators of experience." For any communication to take place, the symbols must be structured. Symbols, often considered the most powerful and complex forms of comparison, are thus a class of representatives which stand for other things (Firth, in Stern 1988). without the explicit expression of comparison. They are commonly regarded as metaphors from which the first term has been omitted (Beeks and Warren, in Stern 1988». Symbols act as heuristics or cognitive short cuts: when relative choices are confusing and ambiguous we fall back on symbolism. The value of symbolism Symbols are effective because they save cognitive energy, but also because much appraisal is first emotional and only latterly a cognitive evaluation. Persuasion can resort to mere syinhnaam alone, rejecting any kind of rationale or rational construction of a case, and this has been described by M in hen I i 997) IS the rhetoric of presentation. A statue, for examDl photograph without explanatory text can be doing simply this. 0r' Sj tnbols ire in important aspect of propaganda and one which the Litermture on propaganda has tended to devalue. First, they J* extar ire Ininieiiaah cheap form of propaganda: they attract public notice, they * remembered for decades or even centuries afterwards. A symbol s^ dtrectfa to the heart and does not tax the critical intellect. Commercial organiv.it.ou> have long grasped the importance of symbols. (Some service example are Prudential Bach's rock, the Travellers' Insurance Company umbrella and Merrill Lynch's bull: Stern 1988). A brand is also a symbol, and breeding is now a commercial science: corporate investment in brand designs brand building and brand identity is really testimony to the endur-log post or of symbols. Brands resonate in ways that ultimately defy analysis. Advertising itself has been described as 'pouring meaning into the brand'. \ symbol iv shorthand. Its essence is compression. For a symbol expresses, often m visible form, what might take ages to write down or debate. The French revolutionaries were 'great believers in the use of symbols as a means of transmitting complicated ideas in a simple form' (Taylor 1990). such as t he Phrygian cap denoting equality, the fasces for fraternity and Marianne as the symbol of liberty. It is also economic. A memorable symbol such as the wartime Y lor Victory' campaign in occupied Europe is an extraordinary w capon, since it can be brief, ubiquitous and costless. In this case the V signature was daubed all over the lands the Nazis occupied and incessantly broadcast by the BBC as the opening bars of Beethoven's Ninth. S\ mbols are attractive also to those with less capacity for abstract thought. To Pope Gregory the Great, for example, statues were 'books for the illiterate' (Taylor 1990). It is a paradox that, the more educated people seem to become, the less symbol-conscious they appear to be. Often what we mean by saying, for example, that academics are 'out of touch' is that they are unaware of symbolic values and the charge they carry, for reason is myopic when it confronts symbols, and the process of education is one of editing out symbolic awareness. This, perhaps, is why intellectuals become so perplexed when they look at situations where the issues are, or are in the main, symbolic. Northern Ireland in particular baffled them because everything was organised around symbolic issues where the core of political debate comprised such arcane matters as the kind of cap badge that police officers should wear. The symbol speaks, essentially, to simpler folk: academics are often so trained that they are immunised to the power symbols hold for ordinary people, and thus too often their analyses ignore them The fact that the highly academically educated tend to be insensitive to nonverbal symbols and dull their meaning is central to the difficulties of Christianity today. For example, the Catholic church hierarchy failed to see the fssmiial trinity lOJ ^nficance of Friday's abstinence to the Irish labourer in London. For him it symbolised allegiance to a humble home in Ireland c.-.i k c 0Ottaoi tra-joonin Rome (Douglas 1982). A ntual is an enacted symbol, and any ritual is propaganda of an authoritarian and inherited kind. Rituals act as a social adhere, prescribing and proscribing the key concerns and values of a oo—afci. Recognising this, propagandists in times past, from the French re-. -a_-.es :: the Nazis and Stalin, have sought to create new rituals, ones plagiarised from the ritualistic performance of religious and monarchist instmiiions but celebrating new state ideologies. During the French revolution, ceremonies. Festivals of Freedom and Statues of Liberty helped "to consolidate the Republican idea in a society familiar only with nxmardiical government' Taylor 1990). Today there is an attack on ritual and we speak often of 'empty symbols and meaningless' ritual. Yet rituals are seldom meamagkss and the astute propagandist will recognise their value. Douglas 19821 argues that one of the greatest problems of our day is our lack of commibnent to common rituals, while more mysterious is a widespread, explicit rejection of rituals as such. Ritual has become a bad word signifymg empty ' '■-Smm-jh She also suggests that many sociologists, following Merton. use the term ritual' of one who performs gestures without inner cxmimitmeni to the ideas and values expressed. This is a distractingly partisan use of the term, since anthropologists use 'ritual' to mean action and beliefs :n the symbolic order without reference to the commitment or noncan continue as symbols long after the reality of the content they represented has changed. Hardly any prisoners were left in the Bastille in 1 789 bat. for the French revolutionaries, it was the most powerful of the symbols of the ancien regime, massive and darkly brooding. Since political control of symbols is a crucial feature of poliucal power, failures in political control of symbols are therefore political failures. Symbols can appear to take over and even usurp political authority, and one of the physical props in a situation can become its embodiment Under appeasement Neville Chamberlain's umbrella seemed to assume a life of its own as a symbol of supine British policy. The political intent underlying the creation of a symbol may not be 'read' by the audience: they may wilfully misconstrue, and a propaganda symbol can be conscripted into becoming a counter-symbol. Thus. Prince Trubetskoy's statue of Tsar Alexander was read' by the enemies of the regime as a satire on it (and that might actually have been Trubetskoy's intent in making it so huge and menacing: Figes 1997). Indeed, it was subsequently conserved by the Bolsheviks, thus servicing the propaganda apparatus of both the Tsarist and the Soviet states. a Sj mbolism and the social sciences What has characterised human advance has been the reliance on ever more sophisticated symbols - language, art. myths, rituals - for understanding the world, communication and social organisation. For Mircea Eiiade (1991). all that essential and indescribable part of man that is called imagination dwells in realms of symbolism and still lives on in archaic myths and theologies. To have imagination is to enjoy l richness of interior We. an uninterrupted and spontaneous flow of images. He believes that the most commonplace existence swarms with images, the most realistic man kves by them. Margaret Mead (Taylor 1990) spoke of the significance of visual s culture, the more of post -Wo: : of une than b> For BOH d and what WWW] have no They are bleachec .. Symbols social and meaning. A branding in the ism. Such area: interpretation meant r. entertaining realm, and c gandist is to Talcott and not n relations: the man rja symbols in political al events in the Cameroon ulture are discussed in id a specific policy of substance (Stark 19tg \\. Lance Bennett 1996). by HI ill*1" wherein the d disintegrates. There ren or nuance beyond the,: rr^rt & from the things signified cyr^s.'^ meanings of signs, meaning, and many of the aeon that it is the meaning of thm&t Lr^at symbols organ iv: ':/..: >.'. ■ :\^mple. is a symbol < - y. al world is a tester - . y. . _ anthropology or/; > focus ihermeneutics) and vee people a rial calculation, Geertz . y models through which i\ vvsrs? all a system of symbols; the tad the symbol systems of a cult - mm advocate of the imp; x, ■ in meeting people's rto*s*rH .'v^r infants began by sdessuTying objects and extending the ai matured. This stress on symbolic, status-directed reward* C activities ot* massy propagandists, from the inventors of the of the Soviet I moo to the Nazi presentation of the ceressssssft German ptmpf at the age of ten (Grunberger J 99 l , i^tWi of the utie v-Ke-presadent in American corporators*. Tstk convey status and ewery social order produces 'hem. asssl i enterprise could be seen as a status exercise: one wa» m*»lm proletanaL die alternation a 1 brotherhood of tmmktwt best more alluring. Another approach to the role of sysjtfMas mm via behaviourism (based on the concept of the v,-.-; Chapter 2 >. that continuous exposure to repeated stasssift m and these Iwusasr both inevitable and predictable ottfasa* lions have been made. Certainly propaganda uvet »yfltfe«a*tj (the Bntish hnlrtnsj. deftly leased from the iconography tjf mm by Tony Blair so has 1997 campaign?). Indeed. uV**a*fcj when a familiar symboi M dropped, as the Democrat* *Um their donkey 4- -SN- 109 conclusion 41997) goes further than other authorities in perceiving myth. " ritual as constituting a language that lies deeper than language c grammar which uudct girds and transcends mere verbal 1 foftevs thai what is not symbolised i> cither very difficult to communicate or — ~v.inic aled at all. because H is no! a part of the fund of knowl--af the community The language o I IJIIlbuk ntuals myths and so on is. a part of the web of communication shared by any community oodentally, more sigullicant than language itself Members of the shared symbols can continue to recognise one another and communication even after thev have abandoned thetr language in sense propositions true, then myth and symbol would not represent _ a number of creative possibilities for the propagandist. In fact ©choice strategies based on their use are not just useful, they are and no propaganda can truly aspire to work that ignores them Integuments of propaganda Key foundations of propaganda This chapter explores key ideas which are generally associated with the concept of propaganda though they may not be integral to its definition. Propaganda, it argues, represents hyperbolic possibility and multiple exaggeration: it is emotional, deceitful and irrational: it does not ask for belief, rather it represents an invitation to share a fantasy. Above all. we identify the creation of enemies as a fundamental activity of propaganda (the Mary Douglas notion of how we structure our universe by knowing what we are against rather than what we are for). Since propaganda as the rhetoric of enmity aims to persuade people to kill other people, others must be demonised in a denial that we share a common humanity (atrocity propaganda). Emotion Propaganda has a highly emotional foundation to its appeal. For Aristotle, emotion is central to persuasion: Pathos, distinguished from Ethos and Logos, relied on putting the audience in a state of mind that stirred the emotions, for our judgements where we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile' (O'Shaughnessy 1995). The aim and content of Hitlerite rhetoric were pure emotion, logic could safely be ignored, reason simply jettisoned, thus contradictions were no problem, the Jew could be both capitalist and communist, and this was just further proof of Jewish cunning. For Hitler was a theorist on rhetoric and propaganda, and all his persuasion was constructed round the idea of the supremacy of the emotional appeal: 'the people in the overwhelming majority are so feminine by nature and attitude that sober reasoning determines their thoughts and actions far less than emotion or feeling". Changing behaviour that has a basis in emotion involves changing an interpretation, and for this to be done the communication must relate to thc values of the ■udlenca, and avoid the son of emotional experiences that led W tne Vi,llKS in ,lu''"sl Pli,(■«■• 1 \\hai then is the long lei in impnel o| the emotionally driven messages characteristic of propaganda! They IVOUld tend, according to the Pctty-Cacioppe- Elaboration Likelihood Model, to lead only to superlicial acceptance of tin' message via lhe peripheral route to persuasion (Petty and Cacioppo 1979». I'he central mule, which supposedly involves the recipient of thc message in intclleciu.il engagement, is claimed to lead to long-lasting and rational attitude change lb accept I his model would mean that we believe the consequences ol propaganda lo be short-term, but the model has been much criticised on the grounds (hat it devalues the power and significance of emotion, the deepest Influent es on behaviour - personal attitudes, religion, morality - are inlegi.illv linked lo emotion. In contrast, other theoretical models have downgraded the signilicance of rational persuasion. Zajonc and Markus 11 lll) I). by way of contrast to Petty and Cacioppo. have argued that attitudes may have a slrong emotional base, developed before any cognitive elaboration. Such altitudes, they claim, can be changed only bv exercising emotional influence that bypasses the cognitive. There are certainly many difference! m the kinds of emotion propaganda exploits - for example, social propaganda under the auspices of non-profit organisations and government often seeks to exploit feelings of guilt. Many 'safe driving' appeals would lit into I his category as well as some of the most famous social advertisements of all lime, such as the Saatchi pregnant man - Wouldn't vou be more careful if il was you that got pregnant?' - and the Salvation Army's grainy black-and-white images with the refrain For Gods sake. care. Give us a pound.' Behind the guilt is cognitive dissonance. (In FestingerS 1957 theory this arises when a person holds at the same time inconsistent beliefs: people Iry to reduce the discomfort by reducing the conflict. I Ideology It is difficult to imagine propaganda without ideology. For ideology lends to propaganda both its structure and Its clarity. A propaganda for a vague and timidly defended belief may still be classified as propaganda but it would be scarcely recognisable as such. Propaganda feeds off ideology. At one level, of course, everything, all discourse and every text, can be viewed as ideological' but that perspective may not be particularly helpful In Ihe analysis of propaganda. There are degrees. For example, some might even argue that all journalism is ideological and therefore propagandist, though journalists themselves frequently claim to represent free opinion or information rather than ideology base. According to Bird and Parxienne 11988) v mugs to new realities - this is how the UbqIm^S e prevailing maps of meaninc haw come to be ace* blinding us to the fact that ever . cir.mon sense -P' '»v example would be the frequent description hich can be solved via some technical typ ol quick lix that is the source o:' loreign-policv which can be solved' via some technical tvpe of°!!!flhl^ * 7, soll%n - blunder- ut propaganda is that it is not merelx '.dcvlogical but '■' • :<.uions.emrK- * " ' -:':*.> :hat lor the genera' guish a propaganda text from other forms of persuasiv w SB-has. indeed, consumer marketing, where the attitudes of th mmt the producer, determine ideology. Ir.her words it is not the >gy alone, but that the .\_;x is both producer-driven felt, that distinguishes the propaganda text The public image is thus of an explicitly ideotogkral media communication, in lies on the surface: it does not court the viewer or lis-andeven berates and assaults them. An example of this a would be the anti :>c ir. education in the :f media imagery, such a blatant style may not be as effective propaganda forms: but it is not made thereby less ideolog-n. merely more subtle. For example, there is the printed Mxteenth- 7rc_: >e -uair.st the Mutter- ■ anne Papists in Corners (Foulkes 198 31. or the laudatory inanltrtln .-•: -■ iustavus \ a diatribe .•rman of General Motors, Roger Smith, whom it accuses of oying the town of Flint, ibility of big business is laid dream is dead ay Grapes of Wrath' I lay-offs made some 30.000 there are media prcxiucts Tumid dispute. There is the no disguise - for with particular force _--e extension I the Moore argues and we are 1992). At Flint, t. n as propa-lts purpose the anti-nuclear propaganda the 1980s (Diana Papade- Into'" (ft** SJ BtUJSSSSasll 1989) Susumi Hani's Prophecw was a half-hour a„ Srning the victims of the US atomic attack ontL^S^ C°n' VM,, o< Nagasaki. Hiroshima and their Inhabltan^o^^ ? u |lf ,he bombing. It thus exploited familiar imagery hlf 5 5 praP^nda » ven propaganda as entertainment can also eschew I committal I m. uncompromising in its beliefs, clear about sen m" Bnd Utopian in Its aspirations. Such a film might, for examole hTT Mother* Son But what is popularly imagined to be propaganda is actual «" particular^ kind, namely the ideological, explicit propaganda" announces itself as such, and self-articulated in formats well known for their propaganda uses. \;ilues Propaganda deals, obsessively, with values, and no discussion of propaganda would be intelligible without reference to their centrality. Values embody the highest strivings of a civilisation, its wish to be just and to be free, as well as the non-material and self-centred concerns, to be in control, to enjoy high self-esteem, to be comfortably off. The gap between what we have and what we want always has the potential to cause powerful emotions and to be exploited by propaganda. Although Milton Rokeach 119711 speaks of terminal and instrumental values, they are better seen as the highest court of appeal, whose word on otherwise irreconcilable tradeoffs is final. And all trade-offs invoke them. As Alastair Macfntyre 119811 says, questions of ultimate goals are questions of values, and on values reason is silent. Yet reason cannot arbiter values, cannot prescribe, it is a tool in the service of values and not their replacement. Propaganda does not try to destroy values, it attempts to conscript them Every advocate knows that values are almost impossible to change overnight, but move slowly over time as a result of exposure to rival arguments and mature reflection. This is because they are difficult to challenge since they are not vulnerable to factual revision. Values can be neither • i. . T. _r„ ai<-0 Di,rt of a structure where to revise one life-changing event. E.,u> ^J^^TJ£^^ virtue would get nowhere. On the W rcvj of the m0S, powerful ap^*« 1^ more gener'a, enioymen, 0. nance not merely in Cnnstianuy. uu expressions of group solidarity. vaiuc-drenched ('Give me liberty Political rhetoric, verbal and visual, is ^ ^ ^ or give me death* (Patrick Henry), n tyrants' (Thomas from time to time with the blood of patr.ots Jefferson). This element of appeal to values is especially ^ enlisted in controversy. Mussolf s (1991) analysis of congress*^,*** illuminates the role of \ alue-referenced rhetorics. Opponents of bJ***« giant businesses invoke free enterprise, and. fearing this appeal. counter bv defending their regard for this value and by asserting its^1 relationship to the policy proposal: the same values are conscTirjted^* the purposes of the rival partisans. Hence propagandists seek messages^ resonate with values. Persuasion should speak to values, it should reb and reaftirm and revisit those emotional experiences that first gave the^ birth. Hyperbole An important function of propaganda is to stimulate, another is preachment to the converted. Propaganda is not dialogue but monologue. Hyperbole is another characteristic, and a technique (often associated with advertising) which carries the potential for self-parody. Hyperbole does not make the mistake of asking for belief, it is an illusion which we are exhorted to share, explicit and even paranoid. Our pet bigotries are drairiatised and enlarged to surreal proportions, but the fantasy does nevertheless affect perceptions of the reality. Thompson (1979) claims that the media merely exploit prejudices, and this absolves our leaders. Others argue that propaganda is often a co-production and that people lend to it a suspension of their disbelief, and they have a need to see what they recognise as their own fantasies reflected in an equally fabulistic media, their own lies to themselves reflected and sustained by the larger lies of the public space. When critics claim that propaganda is manipulative', they perhaps envisage a passive recipient. While some propaganda exchanges may resemble this stimulus-response form, what is often going on in the propaganda process may be more subtle. The idea of people willingly misled strikes at the root of concepts of man as a rational decision maker, yet surely this is what occurred in Serbia. Rwanda and elsewhere. While the relation of journalism to propaganda is a complex and elusive one. there are certainly hyperbolic moments in the history of journalism whose status as propaganda few would dispute. The determmation of the British press to package opposition Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock as an ignorant boor and an alarming leftist is an illustration of this. Tabloids instructed reporters to discover all manner of blunders omirnitted by Kinnock on overseas trips, and the indiscretions were duly produced. The Sun capped this process with one of the most lurid fantasies in the history of journalism, the eight-page pre-election spread 'Nightmare on Kinnock Street'. The contents can be listed at some length (McKie 199 5): 'Unions will expect ■nts of propaganda 115 labour 's lukewarm start p^jl to cough up. -—«. ' 1 »«n on unnugradoD VM| r,.r an «"fll« r Wl ddim lnat he had never held down a r.-;, • JJJJe on planning applications (even loft conversions and ynji (0he..ppn»vrd b\ g.c. and lesbian groups). 'Baby Carl would not haw forT<>rv NHS reforms'. Lest we forget' (pictures and story on the Wfcwa -/ IV content). Alan Sugar of Amstrad blasts Labourscon trick', "lor;* doc barred as Kinnock visits hospital It's Mao or never, swore Neil'. Allegedly a i gated some famous dead people how they would vote in the election vatives were Churchill. Montgomery. Elvis Presley. Sid fames. Queen Labour supporters were Marx. Stalin. Trotsky. Robert Maxwell, etc /p. 7|.Tbe Sum also claimed that the first day of a Labour government would see mares drop billions in value Uncommitted voters were more likely to choose the Tories if they read a conservative paper, and in the year up to the 1987 aVvtion there was a 5 per cent overall swing to the Conservauves brrrx^ persistent reader-, of Tory tabloids it was 12 percent (McKie 199 5 The emotion-driven hyperbolical propaganda text is exemplified by a two-page advertisement placed in The Times (17 February 1992)tytheliHeFBa-lional Fund for Animal Welfare. The caption - large white letters in an 8 av red hov read. Jo show you what kind of animal your MP is. we're i „arnes." I In u • ■' rh': word animal' is a rather laboured doub>-pro-huntmg MPs are animals and in the advertisement their names marked with red dots This may be contrasted with another, scarcely beoer-mannered ■JuilaaatMrt (pro-hunting) that pictured a scorning mug with the i ..pi ion I BC voice of reason?" {Daily Telegraph. 10 February 1992). clearly an advertisement which is configured in such a way does not. as social and commercial advertising so often does, invite several mterpreta-tions Mcning here is not a matter of negotiation between text ami reader. It is a fixed and highly political meaning where all dissent comes***** dated with an iconic representation of mindless proletarian vicJeoceAjt instantly surfaces other civic fears about out-of-control youths: irnphcoh ry represent the same phenomenon. Their aim is to motivate sjrmpa-; , act on and to identify hunting as part of conservative, property- owning values The partisan propaganda approach may fail on several criteria get opponents to question the vehemence of their resolve, does it pc. neutrals? The task of inciting core loyalists to action should not be sought at the cost ol alii natmg other constituencies whose support or neutrally coaai be solicited more ambivalence permits supporters, the neutral and even the opposition a limited degree of lautude in affixing their own meanings. Propaganda has a popular image, that of the polemical rant, an ^ I shameless diatribe fomenting war and revolution in exotic places Th d rency of this idea of propaganda does certainly anaesthet.se peopjj^ more ubiquitous and less visible or more sophisticated forms, but it ls in* tant to remember th*i jrude propaganda, propaganda in its popuiar ^ standing, is still ofaing its benediction for the indulgence of manxi^ most rmserabte instincts. The cootmuity of classic propaganda of agitation (in Ellul s terminology, remains not nsereh a political force but also a social threat. Tribal and ethnic tensions, successors to the dying imperialisms of the twentieth cen-tury are irrttated by a propaganda that galvanises hatred into violence Events in Rwanda were precipitated and orchestrated via polemical radio broadcasts which stigmatised the Tutsis much as the Nazis did the lews those broadcasts, their content, number and impact, are a critical explanatory factor in the genocide of the 1 million Tutsis. Serb and Bosnian Serb television adopted much the same role in ex-Yugoslavia - chauvinist hyperbole which ckanooised the Bosnian Muslims as 'Turks and so forth, nighdy decanting the noxious bile of sectarian propaganda. I nfortunatesy die role of classic' propaganda in precipitating and sustaining modern conflict tends to be under-reported. News reportage is responsive and crisis-driven: causation and antecedent events are analysed only retrospectively, often superficially, with the focus on personaUties and moments of critical evolution but not on phenomena of persuasion. Communications lend to be neglected because analysis and objective measures of impact aredtfficult I we ignore what we can't measure) or they are seen as manifestation of discontent rather than causes. Depth research or long residence is thus beyond the opportunity of the average portable newsman, and. when tK>a**—finally come to excavate the significance of communications, the daatowiy is no longer newsworthy. Time has marched on. The signature of propaganda on events is missed. Subversion Much of prooafanda works, essentially, by subversion. Never in fact was that word more appropriate, since propaganda will rarely succeed by directly crtakmnog a deeply held belief or value, but rather proceeds by misrepresent?**1" that insinuates the individual's ideological defences. Gaining agreement wnh a certain definition and the ideological perspective it illuminate* it the key then perfectly logical arguments can then be deployed (and dm essentially is what the activity of spin-doctoring ^0« 117 to achieve these shifts .........,pr,,}....... > a way of getting people to rethink ,xis.m„ ^;man>- propaganda slogans are framH, .....JlIllls WH«th).'Whose finger on th. tn,,,,/(,*,,,,, I aspect of Hitlers rhetorical technique wa* to nZ of critics at the beginning hi- -.pen \\<-, flilaln )nsts argue that this is a highly effective method, ton is when the persuader ha-, arr.wo-d .ill the y the audience, or those the audience had in mind to reposition in the mind of the target tttdbaH I vrnie -nguage had made problematic -.oihai ih«- disabled abled. Demonstrating something to be socially appropriate rassment connected with it Alternatively show More generally, persuasion must identify net most important but what is most meaningful to the ': r.paigns targeted at teenager' -.souId ihu- emphasise than the health consequences of smoking, drugs and rehaviour. To show endorsement by someone s social :';rm of persuasion, and advertising doe-, this all the be talked into an emotional state, talked mio I mere state but also talked out of an emotional state* and O'Shaughnessy 200 3) *'. real or manufactured, in the m<>:i ftWUTOkk *UJf Pbr _on that 10 percent of the population .•rein a state ol I more emotionally charged and tl,. of..,, persuasive - mpressive claim that 90 per tent of if..- population are matter. People will still feel that b' • I labelled per s superior to that labelled 25 per cent fat. even idler they lasted it The model of utility-maxim, m;.....nomlc man ;ring up alternative chou-, mykt.-.the impact ol the way these choices are presented. involves seeing events or feature,, ol.....d when thev a is constantly creating illusory correlation. In pirtk> for example between the product and -„< I..I success. 2. un „m..nti-d bv an advo* air who does not .:;;;::r:::r.'-.......... would be an alternative eip".......I "' I'"""""'"» 118 AconcWualQrt feminisation of rhetoric thesis.) Hence the persuasive (perl act uses indirect means. °Cuiionir It may be necessary to position a message away from its true. obje , tion. Thus the 1997 Hyde Park rally in favour of country. i.e blood^1' was ingeniously positioned as a 'countryside' rally and we were tolrf0^ some of those attending had. in fact, no special fondness for hunting ^ there is 'political correctness'. An important distinction between mJ| propaganda and that of earlier historical epochs is that propaganda often has to be more indirect and therefore relies on devices such as coda language and the subtext. People cannot today be addressed directly in the language of their prejudices, even if accessed in the specific media appropriated by their group. This is because the collective consciousness has become progressively more sensitive to the agenda of every kind of non-mainstream group. Governor George Wallace of Alabama, for example, offered, especially after he had formally eschewed his earlier racism, many of the same populist sentiments as Reagan. It was greater urbanity, not a different ideology, that made Reagan electable. Deceit in propaganda Forgery While much propaganda can be said to involve exaggeration - that, almost, is its definition - and indeed active misrepresentation, undeniably it sometimes involves the manufacture of falsehood, even forgery. Here we are in the realms of active fabrication and deceit. Thus Bush's spring 2003 State of the Union speech 'cited alleged documents stating that Iraq had attempted to buy 500 tons of uranium from the country of Niger. However, officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency looked at the documents and concluded they were counterfeits' (Rampton and Stauber 2003). Deception, it should be added, is one of the constituents the Pentagon includes in its definition of 'perception management'. Propagandists can do this almost openly with the audience even conscious of the falsehood being perpetrated, becoming willing co-conspirators in an act wherein they themselves are in a sense the victims. Once again, the explanation is that they are really being invited to share a mutual charade of anger, a point missed by critics who too easily reach for words like gullible' and 'naive', assuming the audiences have no recognition of the techniques being used. The fabrication may not be obvious at all and the audience really deceived, an increasing criticism of certain television productions. This is nothing new. March of Time used real footage but also staged scenes when describing the rising Nazi menace (with some footage being banned in Britain: Taylor 1990). Such methods, of course, always carry the risk of is tá p^l nullified as rr--rjmamm . ^ of fabricator ' . i? ^ propaganda qggfrtrfEiscircu'j * run by a Nan to ^jrtes about the mjniment of the N ^hen claims were c tisave Berlin, a fabe mgftjae' iHerzstein 1Q" Deception has been involves hindering Hestern countries a shrunk the propaganda needs xcome deceitful, through stylistic ±e docu-drama. iigters Another the documentary ieliberate mixing of a definition of ranant of this: they tuning 'actuoliu tanes use this Minister Jonathan dressed as pseudc- xj cam be Bay mouncec :n £aked scenes in show {Daily Teiegnprt. Fonda peacenik in?age ganda technique wmcr. propaganda video, "fins s «c media, whose moassBrsBSBsJ The media thus utic but symbiotic. . sume transmit frcru *n particularly enabling therr. than those creates : Propaganda does article, a slogan, fx ■re exposed. Rumour is „ -- --.Hned with wartime radio station ft "man services, clairr - ; -"v. alising in the inver.■•■■ Rumour was also a " ".he rinal days of the and his army were p :.*:e Cišltcrdámmerung rj. *h* x rational process, since c of information Tod«r • literate generatio'. '.i ?-:oacanda in that, to The incentive* I • greater. One medhassi more plausible form ai ~::::rn Kane and The baivs S) on*, giving assistfe'.-.fc y inventing part of ft. 71» that could actually serve » Dfwsreels represented an early al consumer products DSSav g'. Television docucne--expose' of the former Catssset laaasBSari of Arabia*, where actors z the exotic sands of iflssav 1 5 April 1995).There wer» t 'ake guests on the VaneK* and notably, the faked Kerry-ftskuary 2004). Another prr^ uuence in recent years is the retailed free to the amass 15 the reproduction o! >., -the relationship is not v. "-■ relieve the images they issue groups have ■■lir: propaganda, the r \k-raw and autheri' Chapter 7). - - an image, a symbol a p tw a process of denial, by 120 *""'CrP"M,°'^ oppotltion text from ever emerging or by rinsing out any neRal. ■J -live thai might contaminate the mainstream media. In apart* !>r. Africa l Tomaselli 1987) one form of censorship was of course lnpS Dhvflcal intimidation of film makers: with arrests and confiscations 1 > L (in the case of Sven Peterson's Land Apart) intimidating MCMsT oflicc in California. Control of distribution, specifying who precisely ifllcfa the film, is a significant form of counter-propaganda. Whites^!? trusted with more subversive material, since the state operated ,n lhe lllU.rrsts. and about one in three films passed for whites was banned Z blacks, the most ridiculous example being the ban on black viewers seeing the Mm Zulu 119661. The Minister of the Interior said 'there are some films which can be exhibited much more safely to the white child of fourteen wars than to an adult Bantu', but much depended on who the audience was. Negative and even socialist views could be allowed. Nor historically has gi rvei iuncut censorship been the exclusive province of reactionary regimes, lor example. Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1966) was banned by I ranee until 1971 {New York Times. 4 January 2004). I Ims propaganda can be made through creative use of the censor's scissors as well as specifically commissioned propaganda films. Tomaselli (1987) points out that film 'may have the meaning inverted through censorship directives' I tae example is where the South African directorate ordered cuts ami conditions so that, according to the Appeal Court, 'the emphasis is thus changed from a successful to an unsuccessful terrorist attack'. (In another Incident the Minister of Information said that no African had asked to be Included on the censorship committee.) Decisions in a commercial environment made under political pressure (though not direct government diktat) can have the same impact. The effectiveness as propaganda of Susumi I lams Prophecy and Terry Nash's // you Love this Planet was emasculated by the reluctance of distribution agencies to show them (Papademus 1989). ( ensorship is not the prerogative of governments alone. During the 2003 I raq war Al-Jazeera 'became a target of hacker attacks that kept its English-l.mguage site unavailable throughout most of the war and kept down its Arabic language site for nearly a week' (Rampton and Stauber 2003). And the- most effective form of control remains the intellectual self-policing of the media themselves. Peace groups were denied the purchase of air space by all major networks, including MTV: anti-war demonstrations in European capitals were ignored. Rampton and Stauber claim that 'the rest of the world did not experience the war as the clean, surgical operation that was presented on US television, where major media outlets cited reasons such as tafte, news judgment or concern about offending viewers to explain why I hey are rarely showed images of dead and injured civilians'. They add that during the entire war the Chicago Tribune's front page had 'fewer than six' plCtures of dead , rJ*"""^ •»* European and Australian pubh-5,ons were ten tunes more Arty to mention cluster bomb* than i»„,r ^erican equivalents. ' propaganda m**+» > ' "* the political information••/•!.•„, and hence the political 4tnfrifnunist propaganda', wag tppar-ently malign. It engaged, aa II never should have done. In domastli < ;im-paigns. for example to dascreOH left-wing churchmen or anli-( ornmon Market campaigners fa 'awamiMiaaVio-;pired plot'). It supplied Inact urate information to dipiomaCa anr: <■ y.\\\\< a\ decision makers: according to Adams (199 3) one report e/amj/ie alleging the Cubans were in Guinea training Africans in guerrilla warfare, was questioned by King and eventually tracked down \<>>.:. (.'du<;i P^' on Soum Airi(-;"11 e a me back with one he: . : ' ';; 'he communist peril'. Propaganda can thus pollute the spr.ngs t A Hbmatvm and fatally distort the policy agenda. There is a process of COwttaiaJly Hlfftjlllg in small deceits that lead inexorably to large deceits and the Um ol moral perspective. The question of integrity is an intereaUnf MM I -J -habitants of the IRI) were presumably blazing with moral zeal, loathing of Mjriattirn and all its works. Hut this idee c ill j , u „ ,4hrr kind ol abuse, their own included. fixe blinded them to every M*ae Bogus empiricism k, anda wllh lls demand for Another device 1 " since tne slandartls demanded proof. Ultimately th*h \y governmcnls cause .irmly ol proof can be ' r, ■ lnem seem (and who would wish under the auspices *^J»£^ emotion, otherwise) to be on the %*ot » TV^ t0 conceal the sins of govern-So 'proof is ofter, q{ vll|agprs ln M()Zolc. Sal-ment. as with the h ^ ^ ,,,„.< m at the time was seeking to certify -adorlDidion 1904, .,,,) and military assistance. A massacre Salvador as being 'd'H' ( ,oUght to discredit the reports on was most inconvenient MM ' ^ ^ vidence\ even though there were pho- thegrounds that ih ,(|klng the ideology of sclentlsm by e . - tit*** ilieY wei graphs of cor( demanding the exacting standards of evidence needed in rhe^ oratory but unnecessary m political decision making whereT probabilities may well be evidence enough. The New York T,rr,^^ port the journalist who had written about eye-witness ' bodies, who was also vilified by the Wall Street Journal, and rtv.^ *± US effort in aid of homicidal bandits became the mostexpenshtL support a foreign government threatened by insurgency since (Didion 1994). The state invited the press to become ~~ rnm\\k am exploitation of a cultural reflex that all decisions be made rattstssi| JJJ basis of empirical evidence, and its success in apparently peri leans to reject the contextual information provided by others was a, stroke. The finest propaganda always does resonate with the rellexes of a culture, and here propaganda created a legalistic employed to rhetorical advantage. Science's ostensible monopoly of truth can be used or science, and then there is pseudo-science, and the role played bj\ ence in propaganda has been, and is now. a critical one. Science i the antithesis of emotion, which is equated with disproportionate! and those who use overt emotive appeals are making an open i their intent to manipoJate- The self-concept of highly educated of reasoning individuals •. r. rr.ake rheir decisions on the basis ctf < and analysis, not feelings. Scientific empiricism is the core of modern ern culture, underpinning its material achievements, technical strengths, so evidence becomes the stock in trade of and exposition, fashion magazines, for example, reviewing the « the latest medical investigation at length. Implicitly, all our ultimately technical ones and amenable to technical solutions. Vmwtmm ideology, the evidence of experts carries great weight and prulkaai 0*»^ elucidated via data Questions of interpretation are given because the belief is that they can be made irrelevant by sufficiently ous pursuit of the correct data. What cannot be measured to be excluded from the argument and dismissed as subjective. How then can there be mtuitive or interpretative standards of since these are neither demonstrable nor empirically verifiable/ 'evidence' can be manufactured In the case of alar on apples, a account by an emironmentaust group was expounded or, '.uty and caused mayhem: sales of apples collapsed I Vandcrwicken \*fh Hcwson (Sunday Times. 11 March 19951: most junk science started with the tobacco industry arid n-vol simple word proof The tobacco companies just adore pnx.f U Im out the moolah to their tame professors and then come up win claim that there is no causal Ink between tobacco and thai 11* ir».,. >/ ft* fir | of ;'r.'/M'f«»i((n 123 w|]|,h millions of deaths seem to suggest are not u dreaded weed nconnected with the 1,1 ' c i i. . ' ",,,,u mai a ive-ve;ir-n H C.n ^ that in matters of public health the burden of proof comesXm" dinVrent direction to its legal cousin. We don't want scientists to prove ha British heel is dangerous. We want them to prove it is safe' Since the IS public places great reliance on data, a growing industry has develops to create the research to legitimise policy positions or marketing objectives White bread won't precipitate the pounds, and it is nutritious asserts a study from the people at Cooper Institute for Aerobic Research (its sponsors are the bakers of Wonder Bread) while Princeton Dental Resource tenter assures us that chocolate may actually inhibit cavities: they are funded by Mars (Vanderwickcn 1995). All this, of course, is a gift to the propagandists because it potentially offers what they most prize, concealment. Facts', the antithesis of emotion, can be allowed to 'speak for themselves'. The selection of some facts and the rejection of others, the choice of particular base years on which to draw figures, the claim that something must be a lie because there is 'no evidence', the privileging of some types of evidence over others - all these are famously part of the manipulative process, but unless exposed by the acuity of counter-analysis they are more successful than other forms of propaganda because the craftwork of manipulation is more submerged and the masses will give them the deference they have been trained to give impartial data' and expert scientific opinion. (There is also a technical component: very few have the relevant training to critique statistics and other analytic techniques.) Why we need enemies Propagandists invent their enemies. The creation of a despised other' is neither an essential part of all propaganda nor an integument of its definition. Nevertheless it is difficult to imagine a propaganda cleansed of victims: the creation of an internal or an external threat is achieved by seeking out blameworthy groups, domestic marginals such as Armenians or cosmopolitan threats such as the 'international' jew. In psychology the granfallon technique' where groups cohere according to arbitrarily acquired labels, shows how easily otherness' can arise (Pratkanis and Aronson 1991). Schopflin (1997) argues that thus 'the existence of community is preserved from pollution and thus its means of cultural reproduction kept safe from 124 ^""""-w 1 °V I-1 outsiders Such otherness" is not merely a phenomenon ethnic dispute. Academic, religious and philosophic argute ^\v. with the serial creation of enemies, and apparently closely 2 *S * seem to hate each other most: Sunni and Shiite. Trotsky,te indwj *t The essential triviality of such destructive differences was 2?!* Jonathan Swift in Gulliver's Travels, where Big-endians and Utle"^b are polarised over the issue of which way to crack an egg open. People know, and know abundantly, what they hate: they are ambivalent about their likings. As emotions our hatreds are more in^" than our affections. This argument has been made by the social anthropct ogist Mary Douglas 11982): as discussed in Chapter 2. for her any choosin, 'for' is a choosing against' because to choose x is a protest, with each choice a declaration of defiance against alternative lifestyles and a signal of alt giance to his or her opposing lifestyle. Much political behaviour is symbolic, and that symbol is of what we wish to be perceived as standing against Lupia (1994) shows that less educated voters in California see any support \ for something from those they oppose, any endorsement, as negative symbols and they vote accordingly. The 'enemy' can also be more abstract, an idea perhaps, and the more sophisticated forms of propaganda may eschew i a human enemy, though there is always a suggestion that only the less admirable human beings would associate with the discredited ideology. In the world of managerial propaganda. Oliver describes an evangelist for a new management theory thus: 'there was to be a discarded old order and a shining new order, the expression "cost world" was used to denote the old order and the "throughput world" to denote the new one. encompassing JIT. TOC and Total Quality. A large American was introduced' (Oliver 1995». So propaganda usually needs an enemy, and if none exists it will create one - the social construction of enemies is one of the key defining characteristics of propaganda. The sense of superiority thus created is attractive to people at the bottom of some social pyramid, and they can be managed by creating a new people lower than they, upon whom they can look down. Those in the Middle East who are antagonistic to the West face an enemy that is richer and stronger but a sense of worth can still arise through recognition of the Westerner's moral deficiency and infidelity - their faith, and our faithlessness - convinced, in Samuel Huntington's words 'of the superiority of their culture, and obsessed with the inferiority of their power' (Huntington 1996). The absence of enemies sends us back, naggingly. introspecuvely. on ourselves - indeed, since the end of the cold war the United States has been seen by some as experiencing a problem of enemy deprivation In this light, new enemies like Saddam Hussein are not just there but necessarily there. ^tsof prepay |2J need enemies because we need someone to blame when things R0 ,|M. term witch hunt Is apposite and propaganda involve inding I .ppropri^ vie Urns. 1 he qualifications for victimhood would include (hings like physical appearance, membership of some social subgroup a tcndenc> to look and eel intimidated: the key is separateness from the social mn.ustream. lo Over.ng (1997) myths of alteritv are not usually subtle, for they dwell upon the exaggerated excesses of the despised and threatening other . Merely to be Afghan could have been enough, as in the case of the taxi driver paralysed in London, even though Afghans were themselves the first victims of the Taliban. The social construction of an enemy fulfils several important functions. We define ourselves by reference to what we are not. This clarifies our values or where we stand, and gives us a coherent sense of selfhood. Second, it is only by reference to enemies that we became united, and the greater the internal discord within societies the more powerful will our need for enemies be: the propaganda construction of enemies is a source of social integration. Schopflin (19971 argues that this process will frequently go together with the construction of mythic enemies who are attempting to destroy the collectivity in a demonic conspiracy'. According to Blain (1988). 'just as people can be talked into buying things they do not need, so the political leader can talk the desire for revenge into people---- The rhetoric of enemies is a potent means of gaining and sustaining social integration in modern society." And Blain believes that political agents concoct a rhetoric of motives that they use to incite their followers to fight their enemies': he claims that the main effect of war rhetoric is social integration through the constitution of common enemies: a victim-villain hierarchy is necessary to the production of political incitement'. Politicians, especially governments in trouble, look about for new enemies to manufacture. Hence in Britain New Labour's search for a reactionary' enemy (Blair's 'forces of conservatism) against which to define itself. It thought it had found one in the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and their failure to admit an undeniably bright state school student 'o study medicine (Stevens 2001). This served several purposes, including d-verting attention from low state expenditure on education and the quality of state schooling. In totalitarian regimes, the creation of enemies is an ■mportant part of state activity. In Khomeinis Iran, for example, the figure of the author Salman Rushdie was a useful enemy because he could be Presented as a blasphemer, thereby subject to a death sentence even though o«m« hi? translators were in fact murdered, he lived in a Western country: some ol nis iranMdiui Ml Is difficult to imagine propaganda without enemies.) Zimmerman (1995) had argued that when government assumes pre-«-sely .he opposite role to that of protecting the competition of ideas, when H OOOl its pOWOT WW the mass mtdlt to exhort people to hate lvvk to me press DO) fol Information but for emotional rea*^ % ejan take satisfaction m disch.u ging their anger at their neighbj^ lV ■on realise that highly manipulated pictures of the maimed anJiX in" 9 h dered. the cleansed ami the condemned, are seen every rn^ b e\er\body m the forniei Yugoslavia, you can imagine the endurin^ they have Moreover, enemies si .initiate and focus the energy of an^!' hate, they are great motlvatOTI to action, and the more horrible thev made out to be the noti c.uiK.sed our anger becomes. Horrible ene^ also cause fear, propaganda leads our imagination to paint in lurid cok what will be done to 01II OUI enemies succeed. Indeed, many of thCVcr \\or>t atrocities are carried out because their perpetrators are fearful.Th^ hi Rwanda the [utsls not onl\ refused to reject the leadership that ur^es them to kill but sincerely believe I heir own survival depends on kill^ BKvk 1994). Enemies also liee/e our conscience and assuage our guilt, nothing we do to them t an possible be bad enough. Pointing out that in Ruanda the killings wen- neither random nor spontaneous'. Block adds, but almost everyone you meet in l he camps does not see their ordeal as sell* intlicted but as the fault of the Tutsis. There is no guilt.' And after Nine-eleven Anne Coulter had proclaimed, This is no time to be precious aboul locating the exact Individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack. We should Invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity' Rantpton and Stauber (2003) comment: \ Shortly after Coulter's column appeared, it resurfaced on the Web site of the Muiahidean Lashkai <• Talbt one Of the largest militant Islamist groups in Pakistan - which works closely with Al-Qaeda . . . During the period when Goulter'sarticle was featured, the site was decorated with an image that depicted a hairy, monstrous hand with t laws in place of fingernails, from which blood dripped on to a burning globe til planet Earth. A star of David decorated the rest of the hairy hand, and behind n Mood an American flag. The reproduction of Coulter's column used bold I ed letteri to highlight the sentence that said 'invade their countries, kill their lead. 11 and convert them to Christianity.' Yet. even here, there urlse propaganda lessons relevant to our current circumstances. Particularly here: In the management of the current crises a necessary condition of success is that the doctrine and practices of one billion Muslims are not suhje. i to denigration. Conversely, we must recognise that terrorists and llieli apologists can perform those acts - and we now know that no imaginable Outrage is beyond them - because they have been convinced. Terrorists .„, persuaded, not born, and their monstrosities arise out of a proctSI ol conviction. That rhetorical activity which arouses and sustains terror, and which in current conflicts we should seek ourselves to avoid. Is the rrriillon ol Ihcdemonised other', a phennm»-n ,nCally the essential dynamic of propaganda, and whose key (rpjch * coor|CtfcoB that some out-group does not share our common pri1Pt'rtv 1 naCs been the preface of genocide throughout time. The terror-numan,lN " ' wna( they have done because they have succeeded, first, in jsls b«" us in tneir own minds. Conversely, the danger for us is that ldicr he is about to sh unawares, rem.nding Orwell of their common human,,. \ saving his life The other' is reduced to broad brush took* d dominant characteristic* - whether the Marxist class enemy nist of the 1950s Untied State- or I'uruh magazine s nineteei image of the Fen.an a- -..age whose features are barely hu polemics dwell on the symbols of otherness - facial tvpes. dre*.. the mere symbol, such as communism's Image of the silk-hatted „ will suffice, the fuller picture Is already understood so well thai the^ alone will signify it U is also important that propaganda stresses our supenonty a*^ enemy's inferiority, that it teaches us thai a vast chasm ter-from their redundancy. Naturally the Nads paid particular The German social welfare state was contrasted with (Hitler prcln ooier todehe»S*lB?is enemy, it is necessary to put into circulation stereotypes mtuch deay^S3 autonomy as an individual ■ h.ir.n ter In /ew Nuv> t the of the Third Reich iancw Jewish slrrmi\\x in, teatevi one ghetto Jew of other Nazi prop.^-.n i.l.i i i suv\t iprvnheim is a court, the ugjy message is that vmic |rws have a veneer of ci\ ihsation. and they ar* the most dangerous lHerzsteui 1 *#7H > \ s novel \m. i., n , i.dut, '. u> depicted a orrthV cal dictator. Kig Brother and his li» tiilous cneinv I inmanuel Goldstein, alii is a focus for populist rage, wiih .uolyles roaring at Goldstein in quoufaan hate sessions The enemy will morr usually he a real one. but the purpose of propaganda will fet to motivate us by making us really hate. In Rwanda. Hutu propaganda su« h .i H.idio Inter, ili.inmc port Lived Iutsis as homicidal aliens who had to be liquidated, even I hough they had been in Rwanda since An jimo pin re ul extreme paranoia arose in which as ctvfc duty. As Khnk . 1994» explains. 0 the fifteenth was derived from the hamitic theon o. the I mope ,„ ol.>n.^ w^ch posited the existence or superior northern \ ., tftcanAnans in lad. Ilutus had their own version of ihi> ;Nv » , the f0reign'1l'vs 1,1 ,,u' lu,M u',s a,",r"' U-net of Hum p • Kad.o ^erahannvc was owned hv their henchmen, it was hate-tilled . . , ^t> virulenl i"id singled out politicians who deserved to die In ten mvk> the mil,tia killed half a million people, helped by Hutu civilians Ituxxighoul the slaughter the radio continued to encourage Rwandans to till the hstf-emp»V^r..\is \\ hen vou kill the rats do not let the pregnant one nsts, but the Serbs themselves exhibited a particular fondness for name calling: all Croats were I'tasha (German allies in World War II). while Bosnian Muslims became Turks a particularly inllammatory term, given the long history of the Balkans under Turkish occupation (Zimmerman I WSJ Bm Laden exhorts his followers against Zionists and crusaders It the enemy is not reallv an alien, we can still find the ways of making them appear to b* so. Language is used to divide us from others in our own country. Foulkes (198)1 for example, making comparisons between the concept ot un-American and Brechts reference to the prevalence of the term unAVrman in Nazi Germanv. The dianes of Victor Klemperer (1998) are in part a study ol theivloaft-sation of language by ideology intent on severing the bonds of vvmmoo humanity with another segment of the community: the lews Nxvme (or example a hyphenated entity. )ewish-Bolshevik. r^mocrades at war have also found it necessary to manufacture a nomenclature of vWro$atton. often with radaJ overtones: Huns. Nips. Wops, feg preceded in an earlier generation hv Hie (rnthci ^nleeifc^T^lw icans needed a rhetoric of cnmliy is well aller N»>e-eie^^,V Rivera of the Few network. Al-Q»edii were nhvav* torn* *>ot*>S* always heroes 'and the network audience was ^Orvrcenthajfc, previous yean. CNN was thus forced In burnish us patrxxKcttde^S had ordered .iscorrcspfjndcriis hnrler inihe 1 I th s*tÄaAee^0^J time footage is shcrv.r. of r iviliaiiiasiiallics in Ujslumsun 1 11 November 2001). Olhemess and the media A good story needs a villain. Narralive slrticlure in no\riand< film often arises from polarity, especialh ihc prtmordtal lea good and evil, more particularly so since lhe c\ il pTTOnafcrj evokes «rat debased energy whose arousal and ulliin.itc siihui momentum. Partly, too. this is because In literary tray evil than grxxl Villains test the hero's coni|\ :. narrative dnve arid create opportunities for rich characti merely saintly cannot oiler (liven Dickens found it dilDcuktoi interesting, a-. Oscar Wilde said, one would have to ha\e a not to laugh at the death of I.idle Nell. I This structural villain in the production of media texts creates a need to targets and therefore the debased causes with which vtii associate. The Mafia cannot, of course, sustain this rote there is villain fatigue, and political correctness V and it is this which makes Hollywood, not in linitionaaV iTi on occasion, a propaganda machine. An example of this is populni i uluiiv > nK.;s. . Big Tobacco (Sunday Timet. 2 1 March 19^7) Assaults on this rewk opportunities for exposing tin- corruption of power and the. ness while avoiding accusal Ions of being ann-hu Frank Freudberg (j 996), I dying smoker seeks m less corporate monoliths who led off his addict (|ohn Gnsham I 996), anonymous corporate ex< cancer lawsuit: in ihr I'ratthr, a I IS teleusio: lawyer fighLs her old law professor in another court deft victims. The far t that these works stand prunanS d> aaaa that good entertainment ollen demands a \ illaänu need : status as propaganda. They stand squarely with the in populism as discussed by M. Kn/.in in his hook Tar Am (1995). Oshmsky has argued [N?w Vorl Firnes. 12 Febraa its rhetoric had always stressed I he lighi between ^x\: 113 *iu 0/ propaqamb W"* tended to P<>rlrl,v „„,, ........ SH™5 „„„ (fc, example. WlUlami lenning.s Hryi„, ;,„hn '1992) discusses Nimmo and Coombs' view ol television as pseiido reality. (They claim the 'romantic quest structure' has been particular!', important in television news, while Met ice called the quest a 'uni-ajrsaJ tructure' that gives meaning to political praclices and rituals.) Dobian also quotes CBS news reader Pred Graham: news stories on CBS tended to become two-minute morality plays with heroes, villains and a IJdy moral to be summoned up at the end. Graham iddfd thai despite the fa i thai many important events did not present clear cut heroes, villains, morals, the correspondents became experts at pointing them lewd was no terrorist, and real terrorists are the ultimate other'. How-< , language of denigration confuses, not clarllles. the Issues In the Bra place, governments can be terrorists yet are seldom described as such rthat of apartheid South Africa, for example). Instead, oppressive govern- „„,„. are ,ccn as maintaining order', conducting ope.......ns . etc. <\i, u.er 1990). Second, the international media's,, actio,, lo groups such .... ,f(, ,;„m|-, is seldom uniform and may change 0VS1 time, thdl ethical judgrrnenls calibrated by a language which gradual fro,,, ..-rronsls to r i .lias to freedom lighters: the choice of these terms Is the lormulatmg ol .an v,rial judgement rather than the description ul a set ol phenomena r.u 1990). Thirdly, there is a rationale loi lerioi whl. I, the language of « conceptual QrrQn^ IM Hvohenation. while entirely iusUnedasav. ,lf pe****"* >P l0 some bloody outrage, servesio0^'; d^^TtfUl morri r<' melaphors such as plague ttmo^ CtOOtt00* " ,,(: „1 bi'M' dMnalvSls. and the motives of terror^.. 'Vhe USCf ' reab" "( 80013 „^blaCkmaiV.orUUcitlinkagesate^ rorism from » • hkc game or Wnen lhe moUva^ trivVaUsedvv. A \\C ^.^alional. policy makersare\ed^; that is< Socio/ \n\vu_raUon The creation of is easy. The right inflammatory rhetoric, judicious selection of bctl >nd malicious parodies of custom can successfulh demonise v;. >thes of the human race: 'there are many situations where the society in question lacks the cognitive instruments to see the message t fiat is hidden behind the myth and will accept the causation that is being offered as proper explanation for its fate. The use of xenophobic narrative and s< apegoatmg is an easy next step' (Schopflin 1997).Thereis a particular < all lor the media to pioneer the responsible role. A climate of contempt is I rated for the enemy's culture, with even the more sophisticated members of the media competing in parody, for example the assertion in the Daily Telegraph (12 September 2001) and elsewhere in the British media that Islamic martyr-warriors believe they will be awarded seventy-two virgins as brides in heaven (with no authority from the Koran, which along with ih<- other laiths of the book'. Judaism and Christianity, explicitly forbid, suiudej. 'I hose stigmatised as hostile 'begin to accept the demonic role assigned to them and behave in accordance with it' (Schopflin 1997). Jewel's caff WBi ;> moral tale of our times that illuminates our need for heroes and villains feted by the Olympics' business sponsors, he himself did not seek publicity but was soon its victim. Finally the Atlanta Journal announced, 'Hero guard may have planted a bomb', and offered a full profile of the lonei ai publicity-seeking drifter hero wannabe: he was the unabuhha'. investigated exhaustively by the FBI. followed on motor cycles. Yet lining the profile was the only 'evidence' about him. (www.auguslar fironicle.com/headlines/102996/jewel.html) Thus ih'- BCtlvltlff of the news media compromise in large measure the search lor villains, and I be press thus creates whole categories of social enemies. Yet in Britain the .Sum newspaper, once notorious for its social insensilivlly, now lakes ;i lead, with two pages devoted to the defence of ordinary Muslim .. lealuring profiles of five British Muslims (www.thesun. co.uk). I lolly wood i ould be a powerful force, for if its media products today have a common Ideological denominator it is the importance of social 'ons i is ^ration: we can inspire inclusion.just as we can incite exclusion, rartb (h:> to ^"i* " f0r Presidenl Bush to visit a mosque after Nine eleten «ras.« ™"al rhetonc- on* of the most signilieam things he could have dot* uotlywoofs needfor enemies ■od entertainment needs an enemy. Hollywood's prolonged romance with -he Nasis tsee I klanski 1999) was due not so much to a predilection for history as to the ability of Nazism to project superb villains. The need for enemies is inherently political, since in choosing our enemies we define what we are and also what we are not: our values are illuminated and defined by their obverse, and this process has a political character, Mine it involves choice over ultimate ends and means, what we as a community stand for or against. We understand ourselves by our selection of enemies. Thus drama needs binary opposition to create those attributes that are key in dramatic suspense: fear (there can be no dramatically effective enemy of whom we are unafraid: we desire their demise because of their unfathomable wickedness and coldheartcdness). and identification - the our" (good) side stresses the best of our values and character. Changing values do not result in a sophisticated and mature vision in which complexities of perspective and character are taken on board They simply create new sorts of villain to replace the Red Indians. Nazis. Matiosi and gangsters, complete with all the traditional attributes of villains, and Big Tobacco fits the bill admirably: rich, amoral, deceitful, powerful, it has no redemptive virtue. In Feds a mephistophelian pseudo-militia. CigSoc. attempts to besmirch the good name of an anti-tobacco prosecutor by secreting cocaine in his home, one character remarking, obscene profits and the fear of losing them are turning otherwise decent people into lying, deceitful manipulators' {Sunday Times. 2 5 March 1997). Political correctness and global harmony are. it is claimed, playing havoc with traditional sources of treacherv. These workings can be seen, for example, in the farm film. It is the manichean good-evil universe that has been a staple of Hollywood from its first beginnings. On the side of virtue are the family and its farm and the role of agricultural labour, a synonym for honest toil. The villains are the banks, which foreclose on farms after having been promiscuous in their lending, and. beyond them, the big business which pressures them, masking their complicity with the allusions to the free market (Webster 1988). _ „ . . , . Hollywood has always needed villains. The little guy or girl against the rotten system a decent man badly wronged who needs to be avenged are classic Hollywood down through its history. It is when the enemy is given some sort of political-social character, and often this Is necessary both to the conllic. meaning and because- social political ideol^ „ Inrce for difference, lhat considerations of propaganda arise. "H, Y,t enemies are not necessarMy conce.ved as either human appear and the real .heme . man s mastery of hosule na,uri. ; X'bv solidarity and team work. I he war him F.res «w 4torw „,..J oTht.answer .he question By whom, Thus the enemy came s,m-) „ reoresem all that man must battle agams. to be a man. connect^ warume public with all the natural oPPress,ons that the.r ancen. a„c«u„ had endured. Enmity in action: Slobodans propaganda war There was nothing inevitable about the genocidal 'ethnic' tension of former Yugoslavia. People had intermarried and lived together for years, and countries, as with Czechoslovakia, can and do sunder peacefully. That, for ten years, they had been killing each other in an orgy of fratricidal butchery not seen in Europe since World War II owed everything to the determination of Slobodan Milosevic and his henchmen to sustain dominance through the toxic agency of propaganda and their understanding of its power to mobilise the emotions of fear, rage and hatred. Through propaganda they created a rhetoric of alien threat lhat is always the necessary preamble to mass murder, and I hey vjught to synthesise ancient and modern fears, the old terror of the Turk neatly elided with modern fear of Islamic fundamentalism. The crisis thus arose also out ol I fie propaganda tradition of communism. Marxism-Leninism, the post-war Ideology of the Yugoslav state, was never a mere' belief system alone but a proselytising creed whose evangelism was an integral part of its ideology. This supplied a ready-made methodology for attaining and sustaining power. Nationalism was just a way for Milosevic's henchmen to retain control by reviving ancient and long dormant tensions, yesterday they were communists, today fascists. Power, not ideology, was what mattered to them, lor the I rench theoretician on propaganda. Jacques Ellul (1973). 'ideology and doctrine arc mere accessories used by propaganda to mobilise individuals. Tin aim is the power ...'. This was abetted by some structural similarities between < ommunism and ethnocentric nationalism. Both, for example, diminish iln individual, making the substitution of one ideology for the other relatively easy. This propaganda assault was contrived round four principal themes: the Muslim as social and cultural >Ure aN It a*.* % 0f former andcoUn-for ten butchery tennina-roinance ng of its ^ propa-cessary nt and fear of unism. lever a m was jgy for evic's sions: was ques -opa- dby rjofl' tion was jrai ,•.»1"'" I 1/ , Lhreal ol in Islamic super-state, the intcrn-m. ,s,, i- •...........JU« of Serbia's enm,!^ """ uk" ......i .1.........a" v:..rK .........._ i mi v rhc „, s, j. i ,mi theme of Serb propaganda was the foreigi I. i clím 111 • i ii 111.i i_____..... seldom enough I Ik . -of then Muslim neighbours. Orders to kill ;^™«"^n musl d11'1 1,11,1 j"J*£-* through the bestowal of social sanction muJ murdei obtalni Its alibi through this rhetoric of otherness ^on ol ihc alien la nol natural but socially constructed, it hassomci h ,1 |iu ^s m anclenl differences, but mostly it is a fabrication. In Rwand , tenockte a ai pi eceded by several years of anti-Tutsi radio polemics itrei • m mists' forelgnnesi even though they had been in the country fo. H00 ftm i rhe lama was true of Na/i Cermany. ilk-fore then, the extinction the lews faced wai rati enough via iniermarhage.) For Saled (Zimmerman 1995) ..ii nationalism, national Identification with the nation is based on tin- fantasy ol I he enemy, an alien who has insinuated himself Into OUI jocietj and constantly threatens us with habits, discourse and rituals thai are nol our kind'. In BOSnll thll was achieved by sarcasm, by such devices as merging a Muslim nea/SCaSter'l UOlca with lilm of chattering chimpanzees, or Serb newscasters mumbling phrases from Muslim burial rites with satirically bowed head; I he stress on Muslim racial pollution, however, comes straight out of Ihc imagislic lexicon of (heThird Reich: 'it was genetically deformed material thai embraced Islam. And now. of course, with each successive generation this gene simply gets more concentrated." To Radavan Karadzic Muslims were an urban population with no attachment lo the soil' (Zimmerman 1995). Another theme dear to the Serbs was the vision they had pedalled at v;ir ions limes of a '(.'realer Albania', or of a muscular Islamic fundamentalist stale digging deep Into Ihc heart of Hurope and embracing Bosnia. Kosovo. Albania. Turkey and Iran. They spoke of a threatened Serbdom and the extinction of Serb Identity. Serbs were the guardians of Christendom who had merely been defending themselves and European civilisation from Islamic fundamentalism. Serbs, then, were the defenders of the West, and the W'esi was loo craven, myopic and ungrateful to realise it. Schdpfflfl (1997) in his taxonomy of myths speaks of myths of redemption and suffering, 'where il is clear thai the nation, by reason of its particularly sol rowful history, is undergoing or has undergone a process of expiating ii sins and will he redeemed or. indeed, may itself redeem the world I.. i Buropean myths posll a bleeding to near extinction so that Europe mold llourish These invlhs should be understood as myths of powerlessness and compensalloii for thai powerlessness.' Then there were Ihc alroi Hies of Serbia's enemies. For the Serb bad' i the bellevablllty of this was crucial lo their programme of ethnic < Iram.tfiy nconcepluah»^ Serbs claimed lo have found proof that Muslims were plannin else all Serb hoys and kill all males over the age of three and sVV^ between the ages of lilleen and twenty-five into a harem to pr^ ^ saries1 (Zimmerman 1995J Of course this is ridiculous, but prote^ does not have to ask for belief to be effective, people (as We ha*8** become co-conspiralors in magnified fantasies of their own biJ^ and fears. Similar a< counts *lso appeared about the activities of kl^ Kosovo even as the S'-rbs mutilated that nation. Projecting your J! crimes on to your enemy is a familiar propaganda technique (as in the film featuring llriiish concentration camps of the Boer War. Ohm Kn^ in Herzstein I97H). Zimmerman (1 995) also djjcusses Nato's great anti-Serb conspiracy,:^ no propaganda is complete without a conspiracy). After the Daytcr. accords. Serb aUtl-NATO propaganda shifted into hyperbolic mode, and the psychological prologue lor the Kosovo war was strenuously prepared. NATO with their military transporters and tanks ... are running over children and mothers on your Serb roads, arresting our best and bravest warriors who fought in the war only to save their people and Serbdom.They are bombarding us. poisoning us with radioactive bombs, destroying our homes and bridges, taking us to court... they want to exterminate our seed.' According to Zimmerman the Serb media manufactured the ultimate fiction, that NATO had used low-intensity nuclear weapons in Bosnia, and people were contaminated by radiation. One historical parallel was thus irresistible: lilrns of NATO peacekeepers merged with archive footage of German soldiers, and television maintained a sentimental diet of World War 11 partisan films. I he international community had betrayed the Serbs. The International War Crimes Tribunal was cast as a partisan body with no further aim than to criminalise Serbs. These themes were articulated through techniques of rhetoric, myth making and information control. Control - of Information, of images - was the core of Serb propaganda methodology. Zimmerman discusses how Milosevic had long learned to muffle internal critical voices almost to the point of silence by such devices as manipulating the cost ol newsprint. By banishing all Western media from Kosovo he denied the West that which would most galvanise it into military action, visual images of massacred civilians, of which we could see the merest peep. The images and information the West got from Belgrade were also controlled: journalists could be expelled, telephones cut. pictures censored. The effect of Information control on Milosevics own people was. however. Incalculable, and. as journalists such as John Simpson reported, most of them simply could not understand why the West was attacking them or assumed II was some malevolent international conspiracy against Serbia. ^nmis of propaganda M9 arv. for Turks'. Mus,im and Croat ^rl'^ZZ^ ^fcadrrn ,jW warnors, M,Orr Mus|lm ho de butchers. All Mushms became 'fundamentalists', and comrade' ^ did not matter, the Muslim was the ternble terrorist but he was also ^ultaneously the smiling dull-witted bahje .rude peasant. .Zimmerman 1995). Such words direct thinking, they are sensitising concepts, in that a „ord or phrase is seldom value-neutral but embodies a picture, an image or an ethical judgement. To get our opponents to use our cho.ee of words is the greatest propaganda triumph, though in the case of the term ethnic cleansing' - so reminiscent of Judenrein - this rebounded on the Serbs and ::.T.S£dnda became counter-propaganda There were, of course, the myths. Monuaanery has argued, 'if Yugoslavia is to teach us anything, surely it is about the malleability of historical memory, myth and identity' (Zimmerman 1995 \ mythic, folkloric Serbia had been created, with Kosovo as a kind of holy land, its sacrosanc-tiry in no way diminished by the fact that for well over 500 years it had ceased to be Serb. Schópflin (1997» speaks of myths of terniory. a land where purity was safeguarded, where folk virtues were best preserved before contact with aliens. These interlocked with other Utopian self-sustaining myths, such as that of the Serbs as galant warriors, the image of martial prowess defined by a nightly television advertisement. Schópflin further argues that: The Serbian myth of Kosovo essentially begins wvh Ike redemptive dement, in that the defeat of Kosovo Polie is explained by tbt choice of heavenly glory over earthly power. Self-evidently. this is an ex mmt ftetm rationalisation of the military defeat of the Serbian forces by the Onotran armies in 1J89 and the subsequent conquest of Serbia: today the A tiantwir are reconfigured as Turks, the ancient enemy. Myth, he adds, makes communication difBcuk. ance mythical language is »»> in. ne anus, manes tuiiiiiiuuit.uuU.. for intra-, not inter-community communication'. Murder is a deeply unnatural act. We have no inherited predisposition kill. We do it because we have been persuaded to. because our deepest err Hons have been colonised by somebody ebe. The murderers going abou their work in Kosovo were not monsters but normal men Vet their barbarism is incomprehensible unless it is placed in the context that explains it. years of saturation propaganda at once sentimental sett-pitying, vindictive and xenophobic. The real culprits in this long list of execution*. Mian inon. drownings, burnings, massacres and atrocities furnished by our report, are not. we 140 cone ft* repeat, the Balkan peoples. . . The true culprits are those vvh public opinion and take advantage of the people's ignorance to • misll',Kl ihř ing rumours and sound the alarm bell, exciting their country intoe' ' real culprits are those who. by interest or inclination, declare co nmi,y'^ war is inevitable, and by making it so. assert that they are powerless to it. The real culprits are those who sacrifice the general interest to personal interest... And who held up to their country a sterile polic ní flict and reprisals. (Prom the report of the International Commit ^ inquire into the Course and Conduct of the Balkan Wars of 1912 and ton Zimmerman 199Si