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I promised last week to make more clear exactly WHO does propaganda by explaining a little bit about HOW they do it. Specifically, I want to talk about how the media and related "information workers"--without any conspiracy or even individual intention--distribute Propaganda.
I have referred to Deep Propaganda as the Propaganda ABC's because it is made up of the Attitudes, Beliefs, and Conceptions about the world that we carry inside of ourselves. Another way to say it would be to call these ideas our "internalized ideology." According to my Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1983), "ideology" is "the doctrines, opinions, or way of thinking of an individual or class."
When something is internalized, it quickly becomes unconscious. Deep Propaganda, then, can be thought of as our unconscious ideology. The important word is unconscious. It's important because, when something is unconscious, it is very difficult to think about it, including thinking about whether or not everything you assume to be true about the world really is true. In fact, the only way for most people to question an unconscious idea is for someone (someone besides themselves, that is) to bring it to their attention. And, in order for that to happen, that other person has to be conscious that there exists another way to think about things.
So, we can see that unconscious ideas can be challenged. But they can also be reinforced. The interesting difference between challenging and reinforcing an idea is that, while challenging has to be done consciously, reinforcement can be done unconsciously. If one hears an idea, or expresses an idea, repeatedly and that idea is never challenged, over time that idea becomes part of our internal landscape, and forms part of the framework for all of the new ideas that come our way. This is how we make sense of the world.
There is a famous quotation, usually attributed to the 18th-century Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke (although I went looking for the original quotation and couldn't find it), that goes like this: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing." In that sense, all that is necessary for Deep Propaganda to survive and flourish is for the people who receive it to do nothing. And that includes not only the people who ultimately receive it--that is, you and me--but also the people who receive it for the purpose of passing it on--and those people are, among others, journalists and other media workers.
Hegemony as the "Default"
Every computer has settings that tell the computer what to do. How wide should the margins be? What type size do you want? Etc. The settings that will be used UNLESS you consciously go in and tell the computer to do something else are called the "default" settings. That is, your computer world is set up in a certain way because the people who make the computers believe that most people like it that way. And most people probably do.
Hegemonic ideas are like the "default" settings of a culture. They are the "common sense" ideas that say things like, "Boys have to be tough to survive," and "The best health care goes to those with the most money," and "Supply and demand is what determines prices," and so forth. When an idea is so widely shared that most people have internalized it, it can be said to have achieved hegemony within the culture. The feminist movement and anti-racist organizing are examples of conscious challenges to the Deep Propaganda of the traditionally hegemonic ideas of sexism and racism.
Earlier in this series I said that "cultural hegemony" is achieved when certain attitudes, beliefs and conceptions about the world become so widely accepted in a society as to function as the de facto "organizing principles" of a society. These "default" settings are embedded in the stories and myths that we all grow up with. Last week I said that families, churches, schools, universities, the different branches of government, and the mass media all do their part to pass along and reinforce these ideas.
This happens in a million ways. Certain holidays celebrate certain people (think about "Columbus Day"); shared rituals imprint versions of history into our minds (think of how many kids play "Cowboys and Indians" and "war"); certain groups of people are assigned certain characteristics in popular culture (what image comes to your mind when you hear the word "Arab?") Stereotypes get passed on from generation to generation long after the original propaganda was produced to justify whatever injustice was going on, from the colonial expansion to slavery to various wars to whatever. Winners, Losers, and Deep Propaganda
So, we all grow up with certain ideas, or ideology, imposed on us, and the ones that are the most common become culturally hegemonic. That is not to say that individuals can't question, reject, and replace some of these ideas. But, who is most likely to do so?
Consider that every culture has what might be called "winners" and "losers," in terms of wealth, power, comfort, status, and so forth. The membership in those groups has a lot to do with the nature of the ideas that are hegemonic in that culture. That is, in a culture with a tradition of racist ideology, members of the dominant race will tend to be winners, and members of the "minority" races will tend to be losers. (I don't mean "losers" in the moral or spiritual sense, simply in the accumulation of wealth, power, and so forth.) In a sexist culture, men will win more often than women. And so forth.
I suggest that the "losers" in a culture will be more likely to challenge culturally hegemonic ideas than the "winners." After all, why would someone who is a winner wish to challenge the rules that they followed to become a winner?
Now is where we start to understand how Propaganda, especially Deep Propaganda, is perpetuated and reinforced within the culture, especially by the ever-present media.
When the powerful people who are the main sources for our news spout whatever Propaganda it is that they want us to believe, it's believability is based on some underlying Deep Propaganda. If a reporter has internalized that Deep Propaganda, he or she will not even notice that there IS a basis for the Overt Propaganda--it will just seem "logical" or "realistic."
And, like everyone else, the more privileged a journalist is, the less likely they are to question prevailing ideas, since these are the ideas that endorse their privilege, and often make their privilege invisible to them. By "privilege," I mean things like being college-educated, earning a six-figure salary, being "white" or being a member of the majority in other ways, socializing with the rich and powerful, and so forth.
Now factor in the profit-seeking nature of our information infrastructure, as huge corporations buy up media outlets and increase their profits by "cutting costs." As reporting staffs are cut back and resources, especially at the less-powerful regional newspapers and TV stations, shrink, a smaller and smaller group of journalists and editors in New York and Washington end up setting the agenda for the entire nation, and that small group is increasingly made up of society's "winners."
This is not a conspiracy, and "the media" is not "trying" to push a certain view of the world. But it's very difficult for a reporter who consistently questions the status quo to rise in the ranks to be a chief editor at NBC or the head of the New York Times Baghdad bureau.
So, to sum up, here's how information workers, and especially workers in the media, distribute Propaganda:
1. Deep Propaganda is unconscious ideology, often created by people long ago and far away, but reinforced all the time;
2. Deep Propaganda can be challenged or reinforced;
3. Reinforcement happens unconsciously. It's the default, meaning that it happens unless someone consciously decides to challenge it;
4. When an idea achieves hegemonic status, few are conscious of it. The more advantaged, or privileged, one is, the less likely one is to be conscious of it, or willing to challenge it;
5. In today's world, the agenda-setting information workers are Winners, that is, they are largely drawn from the privileged groups;
6. Those winners increasingly set the agenda for public discussion for the nation;
7. By failing to challenge the Deep Propaganda that underlies the stories they consider important, the mass media unconsciously reinforces the ideology that is dominant. This is when information workers become Propaganda distributors.
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