This Week:

Quote of the Week

Why Propaganda 1: To Marginalize Dissent

Why Propaganda 2: Six Specific Reasons

The Scourge of Propaganda: What To Do?
Dealing with Cancer, Dealing with Propaganda: An Analogy

Greetings,

Usually, when I start a series of articles, I have only written the first part.  That means that I don't really know what is going to be in the series by the end.  All I really know is that this subject is worth exploring in some depth, and it will take more than one issue of Nygaard Notes to do it.  Then I invite you all to follow me as I explore for a few issues.

This Propaganda series is a perfect example os a small problem with this approach.  At the outset, I said I would talk about "The What, Who, Where, When, How, and Why of Propaganda," perhaps making it sound like I had it all planned out.  NOT!  So now, in what is the last installment of the series, I realize that I never did get, directly, to the "Where."  But, since it doesn't seem to me to be worth a whole article, and since you can figure it out by looking at the "Who" and the "When," and thinking on your own a little bit, I'm not going to do that part.  This series is long enough!  And this is already a double issue!  So, please direct your complaints to the Nygaard Notes Complaint Department.

What I actually do in this final part of the Propaganda Series is to talk about why we have Propaganda, and what we can do about it.  Of course, the most basic conception of Propaganda is that it is any "attempt by somebody to influence somebody else."  We'll always have that.  But this Propaganda Series is about the social phenomenon of Propaganda, by which I mean the complex and fascinating process by which cultural, political, and economic hegemony is constructed and maintained.  It is the process by which authority and legitimacy is conferred on some and withheld from others.

It is really about, as Ed Bernays puts it, the "conscious and intelligent manipulation of ... the masses," which "constitutes an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."  As Bob Marley says in his Redemption Song, "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery/ None but ourselves can free our minds."  This Propaganda Series is a small contribution to the process of freeing our minds.

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

From the New York Times, January 5, page 12, in an article headlined "Bolivian Receives a Chilly Reception in Spain," comes the following "Quote" of the Week.  The "Bolivian" is the President-elect of Bolivia, Evo Morales, who is beginning a three-nation tour of Europe before taking office on January 22nd.  The following comment was uttered to the Times by a man named Enrique Iglesias, whom the Times identified as "the director of the Secretariat General for Iberian America, a newly created diplomatic forum in Madrid intended to promote relations between Latin America and the Iberian peninsula."  After telling us that "Diplomats in Madrid said Mr. Morales was new to foreign policy and was still learning that comments that played well at home could sometimes cause problems abroad," the Times quoted Mr. Iglesias as saying:

"The big issue is going to be helping him reconcile the demands of the society he represents with the rules of the game in international relations and in the market. It's going to be difficult, but not impossible."

I selected this "Quote" because it so neatly captures, however inadvertently, the irreconcilable conflict between democracy (here referred to as "the demands of the society he represents"), on the one hand, and, on the other, international capitalism (here referred to as "the market" and the mysterious "rules of the game.")  The publishing of such an outrageous quotation without comment--for instance, who makes the "rules" of this "game?"--is a good example of the way in which the media can unconsciously reinforce what I think is a very contentious piece of Propaganda.

Why Propaganda 1: To Marginalize Dissent

In a nutshell, we have Propaganda for a simple reason: to assure that the public mind is ready and willing to give consent to the policies preferred by the leaders.

Any government, even a totalitarian one, needs some degree of acceptance from the population it is governing.  If a majority of people withhold their consent to be governed, they cannot be governed.  In a dictatorship, what might be called "consent" is simply the absence of active dissent or disruption, which is the minimum needed for a government to stay in power.  That minimum level of consent can be achieved by force, threats, and intimidation.  Even in that case, Propaganda is useful, if for no other reason than to get people to believe that there is no use in resisting.

In a democracy, on the other hand, people have to be convinced to more-or-less actively support the leaders, since they have to vote for them on occasion.  The need for this active support makes Propaganda absolutely necessary in a democracy, and the less legitimate the authority of the government appears, the more Propaganda will be needed.

It is crucial to understand the difference between what might be called "publicity" (or advertising) and what I call Propaganda.  Publicity and advertising are simply the disseminating of information through various media to attract public notice.  Propaganda, as you'll recall from the first essay in this series, is the process by which particular ideas, doctrines, images, and ideologies are consistently produced and distributed throughout a social system, and in which countervailing ideas, doctrines, images, and ideologies are systematically repressed and/or suppressed.

Think of it in terms of shopping.  Advertising is what aims to convince you to buy Brand "X" instead of Brand "Y."  Propaganda goes much further, as it attempts to get you to be perfectly happy with the brands on the shelf, and even to find ridiculous or unpleasant any other choices you might come across.  Really successful propaganda results in it never occurring to you that there even could be any other choices.  Ultimately, in this example, the point of Propaganda is to get people to buy the very idea of buying, itself, and stop thinking about making or doing.

To use a political example, advertising (what I would call Overt Propaganda) is what is used to get you to support a specific policy, like the new Medicare Part D drug plan.  But Deep Propaganda is different.  Recall two key concepts about Propaganda from Ed Bernays. 

1. The propagandist needs to "create circumstances which set up trains of thought," and
2. When the public "must think for itself it does so by means of clichés, pat words or images which stand for a whole group of ideas or experiences."

In the case of health care, there are two primary pieces of underlying "trains of thought" that have been established by many years of Deep Propaganda.  The positive one is the belief that the current system is the best health care system in the world.  And the negative one is the belief that something called "socialism" is "bad."  If most of the population can be gotten to accept these two "trains of thought" as their own, then there is much less of a "danger" that there will be a broad demand for structural changes to the system, such as the socialization of medical care, or even the much less radical option of instituting a national single-payer system. These ideas are so "crazy" or "extreme" that most people don't even think of them.

"Most people" includes reporters, as a newspaper database search shows.  A search of major newspapers for the words "health care" and "crisis" for the past month yielded over 300 articles.  But when I added the word "single-payer," the number of articles dropped to four.  That's successful propaganda. (If you add the word "socialize" you get only three articles, all in Canadian newspapers.)

People who are satisfied with things as they are or, better yet, who cannot imagine anything different than the current system, are very unlikely to make serious trouble for their leaders.  Even more so, they are likely to vote them back into office at every opportunity.  That is why we have Propaganda.

Why Propaganda 2: Six Specific Reasons

I explain elsewhere in this issue that the answer to "Why Do We Have Propaganda?" is to assure that the public mind is ready and willing to give consent to the policies preferred by the leaders.  Still, it might be useful to break down a few of the various forms it takes, and state specifically why this or that form presents itself.

As I reflect on the Propaganda Series up to now, I realize that what I have already written in the What, the When, the Who, and the How of Propaganda has also explained, to a large extent, the Why, as well.  So, in this final part of the series, I will refer back to earlier explanations and point out how they answer the important question "Why do we have Propaganda?"  And, since understanding why we have something involves exposing the basis for existence of that thing, I might as well point out the various ways that this basis for the scourge of Propaganda can be eroded, and the ground prepared for a more democratic system.

Let's start with the Nygaard Notes definition of Propaganda: Propaganda is the process by which particular ideas, doctrines, images, and ideologies are consistently produced and distributed throughout a social system, and in which countervailing ideas, doctrines, images, and ideologies are systematically repressed and/or suppressed.

So, what we are talking about is not why a specific point is being made, or why certain people lie or produce or distribute Propaganda.  What we are talking about is a PROCESS that is CONSISTENT.  There are only two ways to understand a process that continues over a long period of time: One way is to imagine a vast conspiracy, in which untold numbers of people, and their children, and their children's children, consciously agree to do whatever is needed to keep the process going.  The other way is to imagine that there is something in the social system itself that produces certain outcomes again and again, regardless of which specific people are participating.  Not surprisingly, I go with the latter option.  (To understand more fully why that is so, go to the website and read my series on systems and dialectics, which ran in issues number 266, 268, 278, and 279.)

So, what is it about the structure of our society and the institutions within it that make Propaganda such a big problem?  There are many, many answers to this, but here are just a few.

Why Propaganda #1: POWER.  Why is Overt Propaganda (that is, specific ideas and stories that we are supposed to believe) produced, and why do the things that are produced tend to reflect the interests of the powerful groups in society?  As I often do in this context, I want to quote Edward Bernays, the Father of Public Relations, from his book "Propaganda."  The very first words of that book read like this:  "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.  Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."  Then, on page 63, he explains that "The invisible government tends to be concentrated in the hands of the few because of the expense of manipulating the social machinery which controls the opinions and habits of the masses."

In case you can't guess, "the few," in this case, means the few who have immense wealth and power.  And it would be shocking, indeed, if wealthy and powerful people would produce Propaganda that calls into question the legitimacy of their wealth and power.  My examination reveals that they do not.

Why Propaganda #2: PROFIT ORIENTATION MEANS LEAN NEWS BUDGETS.  Why does our media so often--and, it seems, willingly--distribute Overt Propaganda?  As I said in issue #312, many journalists nowadays are under unreasonable deadline pressure, or are working under too tight a budget, or are otherwise hard-pressed to find the time and resources to do their jobs right.  This lack of resources does two things: It forces journalists to rely on "easy," reliable sources, who tend to be well-known elites (or the well-funded groups that tend to support them), and they are the most likely to spout Propaganda.  The second thing a lack of resources does is to make it very difficult for a journalist to do the research necessary to give the lie to the Propaganda they receive.  Not every journalist even wants to do such good journalism, certainly, but there are plenty who do, and they are having a hard time doing it as the corporations who own the media cut back on their resources. in the name of profit.

Why Propaganda #3: PROFIT ORIENTATION MEANS AUDIENCE PLEASING.  The profit orientation of the media, as I explained in Nygaard Notes #314, dictates that a media outlet attempt to reach the maximum number of relatively affluent consumers.  Media outlets that alienate too many people tend to struggle in the marketplace, since "the marketplace" is driven by affluent consumers and the corporations that please them.  Therefore, we end up with media that, as Bernays says, "reflect, emphasize, and even exaggerate broad popular tendencies, rather than stimulate new ideas and opinions."

Why Propaganda #4: LACK OF DIVERSITY.  I also said in Nygaard Notes #314 that the people who set the agenda for the national news--and a part of that agenda is the set of assumptions and values that make the agenda itself acceptable--tend to be people who are "winners" in the culture.  That is, they are people who tend to be college-educated, who earn a six-figure salary, who are "white" or are members of the majority in other ways, who socialize with the rich and powerful, and so forth.  The problem here is that the people who are being asked to distribute Propaganda increasingly resemble the people who are doing the asking!  And the likelihood of certain "winners" being inclined to challenge the Propaganda put out by other "winners" is less than it would be if the people being asked were more like the targets of the Propaganda.  That is, the "losers" in a culture are more likely to challenge culturally hegemonic ideas than the "winners."

Why Propaganda #5: MEDIA CONCENTRATION.  Another reason why we have Propaganda is that the national news "agenda" is being set by a smaller and smaller group of people.  So, for example, when the Propaganda line is that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and plans to use them, only a few major news outlets have to fall for it in order for that to become "common knowledge."  If we had a less-concentrated media system, the chances of alternative stories, or versions of stories, becoming the day's "top stories" would be greater.

Why Propaganda #6: WIDESPREAD MEDIA ILLITERACY.  In Nygaard Notes 315, I explained how Propaganda relies on the lessons of modern public relations.  And how modern public relations is all about getting people to have certain EMOTIONS when presented with certain SYMBOLS that they have been trained to ASSOCIATE with causes, ideas, or products selected by the propagandists.  This associative process is less effective the more thinking is done by the subject.

The Scourge of Propaganda: What To Do?

The previous article gave six specific reasons as to why we have Propaganda.  Here are six things--directly related to those six reasons--that can be done, or are being done, to lessen the power of Propaganda and/or to allow you and me to protect ourselves from it.

Why Propaganda #1: POWER.  What to do?  Any and all efforts to redistribute the wealth of our fantastically unequal society will have the effect--among many other effects, of course!--of diminishing the capacity of any one class, or group, to dominate the Propaganda business.

Why Propaganda #2: PROFIT ORIENTATION MEANS LEAN NEWS BUDGETS. What to do?  Support independent media, or non-profit media, or other media that are devote their resources PRIMARILY to journalism rather than corporate-style "efficiency."

Why Propaganda #3: PROFIT ORIENTATION MEANS AUDIENCE PLEASING.  What to do?  Any organizing work that aims to create or support media that is NOT motivated by or dependent upon maximizing profit for its survival is a blow against Propaganda.  And, on another level, any work to change existing "broad popular tendencies" will, in turn, change what media has to do to "please" their "market."

Why Propaganda #4: LACK OF DIVERSITY.  What to do?  I'm not talking about tokenism, where there is some "target population" that is recruited.  I do believe that, if every newsroom included people who truly represent diverse points of view, and were rooted in and accountable to different communities, the internal checks and balances would change the way news is reported.  Every effort to support diversity in the media increases the chances of Propaganda being noticed and challenged in the daily news flow.

Why Propaganda #5: MEDIA CONCENTRATION.  What to do?  All of those who are working for a more decentralized, more independent network of information collection and distribution, one that is accountable to local communities and given the resources to do good journalism, are working to diminish the power of Propaganda.

Why Propaganda #6: WIDESPREAD MEDIA ILLITERACY.  What to do?  The more we can teach young (or old!) people basic media literacy and critical-thinking skills, the less susceptible those people will be to Propaganda.

Dealing with Cancer, Dealing with Propaganda: An Analogy

We live in such an individualistic culture that I think a little analogy will be helpful in explaining what we can do about propaganda.  How about thinking of Propaganda as a sort of cancer in the body politic?

When an individual thinks about an illness like cancer, there are several ways to go.  One way is INDIVIDUALISTIC and REACTIVE.  This way focuses on what to do about the disease after it appears, as in "How can I cure or heal myself now that I have cancer?"  A second way is INDIVIDUALISTIC and PROACTIVE.  As in, "What can I do, now, to reduce the chances of me ever getting cancer?"  Yet a third way is SOCIAL and PROACTIVE, and that involves seeing oneself as a part of a larger social group--a community, a society, a planet--and asking "What can we do to prevent ANYONE from getting cancer?"  I suggest that the best thing we could do is to have a system in which most people are prepared, and willing, to think in all of these ways.

But what we have, I think, is a society that--in line with the overarching ideology that has achieved hegemony in the United States--that focuses largely on the individualistic and reactive approach to cancer.  The result of that approach is the so-called "War on Cancer," declared by Richard Nixon in 1971 when he asked for a "total national commitment" to "find a cure for cancer."  In the entire text of the act, passed into law on December 23rd, 1971, one finds no occurrence of the words "pollution" or "environment."  As the Cancer Prevention Coalition puts it, the history of the "War on Cancer" has been one of an "overemphasis on the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and relative neglect of its prevention, coupled with ineffective regulation of carcinogens in air, water, food, consumer products, and the workplace."

This approach is almost entirely individualistic and reactive, as it supposes that cancer is a problem only, or primarily, for those who get it, and that it can best be dealt with--maybe it can ONLY be dealt with--on an individual basis, by "curing" those people, one case at a time.  I am not about to argue with the efforts to find a cure for the dreaded disease of cancer, but many don't want to wait until after they HAVE cancer to deal with it.

Many people are aware of the very high risk of getting cancer in modern society (currently almost 1 in 2 for men; more than 1 in 3 for women), so they do all sorts of things to reduce their personal risk of getting cancer.  They exercise, they take nutritional supplements, they eat an anti-cancer diet, they do things to boost their immune systems, and so forth.  There's nothing wrong with doing these things, and perhaps they actually do reduce one's risk of getting cancer.  This approach is also individualistic, but it is PROactive, instead of REactive.

Another approach, and one favored by many people (if not the cancer "establishment") is a public health approach.  That is, we could take steps as a society to reduce the chances of people getting cancer in the first place.  This approach is SOCIAL AND PROACTIVE.  The longstanding public health campaign to reduce the use of tobacco is an example of a public-health approach to lung cancer.  As a society, we realize that it is a lot better to have less cancer, and we know that less smoking equals less cancer, so instead of spending all of our resources on treating lung cancer, we spend some of our resources on removing one of the main causes of lung cancer.  Brilliant!

I eagerly await the day when we collectively embrace an effort to reduce and remove the numerous other causes of cancer that are not matters of individual choice, like the presence in our shared environment of carcinogens like industrial chemicals, certain pharmaceuticals, radiation, pesticides, and various other byproducts of living in This Modern World.

The analogy I am driving at is one between cancer and the manufactured political and social delusion that has infected so many of us in the United States.  Like cancer, this "delusion disease"  is brought about by consistent exposure to toxic things, in this case Propaganda.  And, as with cancer, one can respond to this delusion in a number of ways.  One can take steps to "cure" or "heal" oneself from Propaganda, which is individualist and reactive.  One can try to inoculate oneself, so you are not as susceptible to Propaganda, which is individualistic and proactive.

But, as long as we live in a culture that is permeated by Propaganda, no individual can really heal or protect themselves effectively, since they'll be surrounded by infected people and the policies and systems they have been Propagandized to support.  That's what makes Propaganda a SOCIAL PROBLEM.  And that's why it's not enough to simply learn how to defend ourselves from Propaganda.  For real social change to occur, we need to deal with the systems of Propaganda that make such defenses necessary.  This is the meaning of emancipating ourselves--all of us!--from the "delusion disease" that is the Propagandized mind.